Needles of Knitting +5: Using The Craft Skill To Its Best Advantage

There's no such thing as wasted ranks in the Craft skill.[...]
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Wounds and Wound Penalties

Most RPGs have combat as their central conflict resolution mechanic, and why not? The kinds of stories that most gamers seem to want to play, it even makes sense. If you make a grand epic of swords and sorcery, at some p[...]
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Random Generation: Interview With Chaotic Shiny’s Hannah Lipsky

Readers of this site know I'm absolutely crazy about random generation, tables, and charts in role playing games--I love 'em, and think they're tremendous fun. Today, I have an interview with Hannah Lipsky of Chaotic Sh[...]
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Minions on the Table

Monsters can lose a battle before it begins if they have bad tactical positions. This is even truer with minions. Even if we assume, narratively, that your minions have no way to know they’re little competition for the[...]
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Magical Location Design: Ravyn’s Guide to Geomancy

In yesterday’s post about creating magical locations based on their purpose, I mentioned the possibility of the purpose being to channel magic, and said I’d discuss it later. “The following day” counts as[...]
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Inspired by Facebook (and Shelly Mazzanoble)…

In this lovely informal Facebook poll, our good buddy Shelly Mazzanoble asked her friends to identify themselves into one of three categories: “DM”, “Player”, or “Both”.  I, of course[...]
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World Building 101: Another Day at the Races

Several months ago I discussed player character races, largely in terms of choosing which races exist in your setting and how they might differ from the bog-standard versions described in the core books. Today’s articl[...]
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Toronto Fan Expo: The DM Master Class Seminar

One of the highlights of my visit at last weekend's Toronto Fan Expo was the one hour panel I had the honour to share with RPG legends Ed Greenwood and Robin D. Laws. We ended up speaking to packed room of 100+ people. I[...]
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Rolling the Hard Six

"Sometimes you have to roll the hard six" ~Admiral Adama, Battlestar GalacticaDo you know what that means? It's a term from Craps, and essentially means rolling a pair of 3s on two six sided dice, instead of getting a si[...]
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Unisystem experiences and “unbalanced” games

Earlier this year, I was trying to expand my vistas by playing with some new people. This also meant playing some new games. We used the Unisystem from  Eden Studios, Inc. To summarize I guess you could say that it [...]
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Magical Location Design: To Every Place, a Purpose

One of the most common first approaches I see for designing a magical location is determining its purpose. Sometimes, it’s to channel magic in a certain way, but that’s less common and not necessarily likely [...]
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preparation – everything or nothing?

This month's RPG Blog Carnival is about preparation.  For some a necessary evil, for others a breeze and for the brave few, something they've heard of - once - but have no truck with.... Click the title if you want[...]
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The projector setup is a success!

It’s late.  I have to go to work in the morning.  I don’t care, though – I’m excited, and I need to write about it! This evening I put my projector setup into action for the first time.  I ran [...]
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The Importance of a “Go To” System

Yesterday we talked about how important it was to play multiple different systems whether you are a GM, a Player, or a Game Designer. While doing that, I briefly made mention that it was also important to have a 'Go To' [...]
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Come to me my jungle friends!

Recent events in my life have me thinking about pets. Be they familiars, animal companions or summoned animals, whatever way your system of choice calls them, why do we feel the urge to have pets in our games? I can see [...]
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Magical Location Design: Establishing a Mood

I talked yesterday about designing a magical location around the effect it was supposed to have on the audience. But it’s one thing to say “I want this effect”, and another thing entirely to get the effect in q[...]
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Dice, Dice Baby by MC 117

Ok, this is pretty good. Thanks to Dave "the Knave" for this one: Dice Dice Baby by MC 117.[...]
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Beware the Siren Song

As more and more players come to Dungeons & Dragons from a video game background, they bring with them a very specific sensibility. The result is that the teacher becomes the student, and D&D players begin to int[...]
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iPad App Review: RPG Cartographer

I took the picture to the right last night just before we ate them. They came from the first garden I’ve had in about a decade, and the first garden veggies we’ve grown since moving to Edmonton. A minor theme[...]
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Why You WANT To Play Multiple Systems

Everyone has a go to system. The system they're the most comfortable with. The system their group knows. A system that has given them hours upon hours of enjoyment, where they pretty much know the rule book backwards, fr[...]
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Are mini-campaigns the solution?

Back in the day, when we were still young and had too much time on our hands, we played in long campaigns, sometimes even spanning years. But in recent years I haven’t finished any campaign properly. Either we lost int[...]
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Three Starting Points for Designing Magical Locations

What fun is a fantasy world without inherently magical locations? They make it clear which genre you’re operating in, provide a little color, and because of the ability to use elements not present in mundane locati[...]
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What Starcraft 2 Taught Me About Running a Game

I’ve been playing Blizzard Entertainment’s Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty for a little over a week as of now, and I am having a blast.  The game is fun so far, and the campaign mode has some very interesting [...]
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Opportunity Actions: Hybridizing Gameplay

It’s tough. People’s schedules just don’t always line up the way we’d like them to. People move. People get married, have kids, and other things that make getting together less and less possible. [...]
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Tower of the Archmage 2010-08-29 13:00:00

Ok, 46 of you follow my blog. Yet I only have 5 votes in my poll?  There's a 2 way tie, your vote could make it a 3 way tie! And because I know you aren't supposed to post anything like that without offering an[...]
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Dealing with Problem Players

One of the things which has been on my mind recently is the issue of dealing with problem players. My weekend group has recently shrunk in size due to a lack of shared vision leading to a horrible rift in the group. Wha[...]
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Mood Music

The frequency with which I find myself posting is erratic at best, not adhering to any schedule but only when the muse strikes. This is a trait that defines my writing habits in general, in fact. But lightning can appa[...]
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What’s in the (fortune) cards?

Having spent far too much time today reading and reacting to other people’s opinions about the forthcoming fortune cards for D&D from Wizards of the Coast—including opinions from people who don’t play D[...]
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New Technology At My Gaming Table

I just ran the first session of a Ravenloft campaign last night.  If anything, Ravenloft thrives on mood.  I had a table full of seven players, so I knew I had to step up my game to keep them on-task and in the mood. [...]
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Lazy Friday Fantasy Metal Post: The Sword – Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians

There has been a lot of post-apocalyptic game talk recently, so this tracked seems very appropriate.   It also makes me think of Beyond the Black Gate's raven lance.Oh, and if you want some "real" post-apo[...]
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Bad Choices

This is kind of an offshoot of the post I made yesterday, as well as stuff I have talked about several times before on here. It is also probably going to be a quick post, but hey, it's Friday right? So what I want to tal[...]
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Put your hand down and play

A few weeks ago, I was playing in my bi-weekly 4e game.  (Wait, is bi-weekly every other week, or twice a week, I can never remember…let me try again.) A few weeks ago, I was playing in my every-other-week 4e game[...]
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The Uses of Ancient Civilizations

There’s one in every world, isn’t there? Somewhere in history, there was a civilization. It was advanced, or at least looked advanced, probably in the areas of magic or technology. At least one society is des[...]
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Practice Makes Perfect

I've been contemplating the rules vs. imagination 'conflict' in RPG's and feel the need to weigh in briefly. I think that rules can serve two functions: to define the possibilities of an expansive world (D&D, GURPS,[...]
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A Picture Should Be Worth 1,000 Words

How good are you at doing two things at once, both of which require concentration? That’s what I thought! Few people are. And yet, we GMs often seem to expect our players to be able to do just that, and on a regu[...]
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Get your free copy of Retrospect RPG

My entry for RPG Geek’s 24-Hour RPG contest is now available for free download. In case you’re not familiar with the idea, the contest required participants to write a complete RPG from concept to final prod[...]
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What Going Rogue Teaches About Super Hero RPGs

So, I'm not sure how many of you people out in the blogosphere are playing MMOs, but I'm going to assume that most people here have at least played one. The question is then, how many of you people are currently subscrib[...]
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What’s in a name?

I’ll admit it, naming non-player characters and places in role playing game is HARD! If you are not careful you’ll end up with names your players will make fun of for years to come. The noble and serious NPCs that wi[...]
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Characterization Exercise: Who’s Your Ideal Enemy?

There’s a lot to be said about the peculiar dance between two enemies: a blend of mutual hatred, a peculiar sort of chemistry, and who knows what in the middle. It makes conflicts interesting—but like a good roma[...]
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World Building 101: Getting the Most From Your Players

Previous discussions in this column have explored collaborating with your players on world-building efforts, mostly through character backgrounds and attentiveness to cues in their roleplaying. Not every player wants the[...]
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Opportunity Actions: What I Look for in an RPG

There are a lot of RPGs out there. That much is clear. The question I’d like to take on is: Which one(s) would I play, and why? There are a few criteria by which I will judge this: Theme/Genre Character Building [...]
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Handling Conflicts of Interest

It’s bound to happen in any game.  Maybe it’s over something like material wealth, or perhaps over a given course of action to be taken by the party, but conflict of interest happens with a moderate frequenc[...]
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Catching The Feel of a Universe

So, yesterday I had myself a little rant inspired by a blog post by Robert Donaghue. You can get all the details by clinking on that link above, including links to Mr. Donaghue's original post. The gist of it, for those [...]
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Eureka!

Some time ago, Martin Ralya of GnomeStew.com and Engine Publishing asked me if I was interested in reviewing Eureka. I’ve read about Eureka before and since I am chronically under-prepared for my games, it looked like [...]
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Trying something new…

I’ve never been particularly handy. I’ll write, talk in public, and I can tell a pretty good yarn (or so I’ve been told), but I’m not great with cars or home repair. I’ll hook up your computer or your home thea[...]
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Building a better portable projector rig

I originally put most of this information in an earlier post that described a similar mount that sat on my table.  This information is pretty much the same, except that it’s floor-mounted and the angle of the proj[...]
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The Iconic Character Type

So, over at Space To Think yesterday I saw this post. The author talks about it, but I want to go into it a little bit more.What is 'it'? Well, it is the fact that when you are making a game for an established fandom you[...]
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Tutorial: Editing Canned Adventure Maps for Face to Face Play

This tutorial will show you how to take those canned adventure maps from WOTC and remove any `DM Only` markings to make them suitable for face to face play. First we`ll need some tools. Well.. one tool. The GIMP – [...]
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Bringing New PCs into an Existing Group

About two weeks ago I was talking to Ben over at Ben’s RPG Pile and we decided to co-write an article outlining a variation on the cooperative party building method.  What follows is the result of our collaboratio[...]
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Food & Games

Don’t worry; this has NOTHING to do with all the electronic cooking games out there. This is about gamers and the food they eat when they game. Junk food and role-playing games are connected in poplar culture, and in a[...]
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