Initiative Tracking Tools
Initiative tracking is very important when it comes to running a Dungeons & Dragons game. Gamers all over the internet have come up with some unique and creative ways for tracking initiative. I thought I would take a[...]Read on >>
It’s Called Tabletop Gaming Not “Rebooting My Laptop” Gaming
Watching my fellow players and their fixation with technology in the past months has got me thinking quite a bit about the place of technology at the gaming table. They use their iPhones to store their character stats, r[...]Read on >>
recession-proof gaming VII – mission to game
Is that light at the end of the financiapocalyptic tunnel? Maybe. Here's some more stuff anyway. Browser Tools hack/ has produced some neat RPG bookmarklets. I've mentioned... Click the title if yo[...]Read on >>
World Building 101: Incorporating New Content
Roleplaying games evolve continually. Even “dead” editions, that have been retired by their publishers, can still see unofficial support from fan communities. For systems still in print, new content tends to emerge[...]Read on >>
War Campaign musing
I've joined Arm Chair Generals forums to work through some of my campaign problems.One of them, I'm stuck on is military readiness. Using GURPS mass combat, plotting the precise human resource is very hard and difficult [...]Read on >>
Virtual Table Top and DDi
No, this post is not going to give you an update on the status of WotC’s Virtual Table Top Program. Sorry to disappoint you. I know that some people are eagerly awaiting the announcement that it is complete and[...]Read on >>
Reader Voicemail: Building an Adventure
The response to the voicemail has been pretty fantastic so far, and there’s probably no way that I’ll be able to take advantage of all the voicemails that have come in through a podcast alone, so I thought I&[...]Read on >>
The Old Girl: Vehicles as Characters in Your Game
"She's not old, she's in her prime." I'm not going to lie to you gentle readers, I'm an inveterate gearhead. I love machines of all kinds, but vehicles especially turn my crank, as it were. Anything from a 50cc min[...]Read on >>
Take My Car For A Spin Around The Block
somewhat WoD related...My players and I are discussing the idea of sharing the mantle of Storyteller in our Changeling: The Lost chronicle. I think it might be a lot of fun to see what can be done with the campaign in th[...]Read on >>
i4e review
I’ve been meaning to post this review for awhile. At the end of last year I blogged about playing without my character sheet. In the comments, DM Ron suggested I check out a iPhone/iPod Touch program called i4e. It[...]Read on >>
A Hidden Gem
I played Hackmaster 4th edition, but I never served as GM. HM4 is something of a bitter sweet memory to me, one that I haven't discussed to date. I do plan on discussing some of my group's experience with th[...]Read on >>
Previews for RPGs (No, Not the Catalog)
Here's a nifty trick I tried based on advice in the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG: Previews of the next session! Now, DWAITAS is strong on genre emulation, and since it is based on a tv show, it recommends[...]Read on >>
The A-Team: A model for RPG campaigns?
Yesterday while watching an episode of The A-Team on TV, it struck me. Wouldn’t The A-Team make a perfect model for a RPG campaign? Let’s look at the basic premise, which is summed up pretty good by the voiceover[...]Read on >>
Playing it right
Well, I have hit a stone wall (or is that a duracrete wall?) in regards to the Star Wars Saga Theatres of War campaign. It’s been flagging for more than a while now, I was starting to worry and then I heard back f[...]Read on >>
Ask The GMs: Penetrating the veil of mystery
March 7, 2010 from Campaign Mastery
Filed under: Adventure Prep, DM Advice, Game Mastering, Inspiration, RPG Hub
Why are mysteries so hard?
Campaign Mastery was asked,
I’m making a Hero System 5.5 campaign for some of my friends. I wanted to do a non-power game that was mystery based. First session went off fine, and I [...] Filed under: Adventure Prep, DM Advice, Game Mastering, Inspiration, RPG Hub
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The Good(?) Guys, Random Allies
Character creation in Cyberpunk 2020 includes rolling up a “lifepath” or series of events that has happened to your character before he started adventuring. Unless they’re very unlucky, players will usu[...]Read on >>
I Don’t Know Anything
Those poor fools. Playing in the Forgotten Realms at the height of TSR's Silver Age. Dolts! I went to bed reading GURPS 4e last night. When I got burned out on AD&D 2e I played GURPS 3e revised and thought I'd found [...]Read on >>
Where do you game at?
When we first started gaming in our current home, I would set up one card table to DM from, one to put my battle-map on and everyone else would sit on the couches and use TV trays. This set-up worked just fine, except it[...]Read on >>
Shorter Games are Cinematic Games
The Game Knights get together once a week (Friday or Saturday) for gaming from 8 pm to about 10-10:30 pm. Of course, it usually takes a little time for everyone to look over character sheets, grab some snacks and drinks,[...]Read on >>
Help Me With A Campaign Portfolio
The other day, I was struck by a brilliant idea. I’m running a modern game where corporations have a great deal of negative impact on the world around them. I decided to have our character creation session be run a[...]Read on >>
GURPS Mass Combat – Fief Manpower tables
Manpower is produced by a warlord's fief or province. They don't have a cost to raise because these are duties peasants and nobles owe the master of that realm. This can take many forms: Feudal obligations, Civic or Reli[...]Read on >>
I blame Wolfgang Baur!
Who is responsible for all of the following AWESOME? Personally, I blame Wolfgang Baur and his crew over at Kobold Quarterly. Now, allow me to explain. Yesterday, our friends over at Super Genius Games (SGG) announced a [...]Read on >>
Live The Dream: Building a Career in the Games Industry – Marcelo Figueroa – GamesU 2009
March 6, 2010 from Temple Lion
Filed under: Advice/Tools, Fluff/Inspiration, Game Design, RPG, RPG Hub
Marcelo Figueroa is a 17 year veteran of the games industry. In that time, he has held just about every position in field. Retail sales clerk, demo team member, author, game designer, talent agent and national sales mana[...] Filed under: Advice/Tools, Fluff/Inspiration, Game Design, RPG, RPG Hub
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The Characterisation Puzzle: The Thumbnail Method
March 5, 2010 from Campaign Mastery
Filed under: Adventure Prep, Encounter Design, Game Mastering, Inspiration, RPG Hub, advice
This is technique number 1 for getting inside your character’s heads. It’s something I was taught in a Graphic Design course that I completed back in 1992 – so here we are 18 years later, and it’[...] Filed under: Adventure Prep, Encounter Design, Game Mastering, Inspiration, RPG Hub, advice
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The opening crawl, the perfect campaign intro
As a Level 1 GM, I have not had the opportunity for much table time as a player. So I think I have witnessed three campaign intros at the most in-person, two done by experienced people. Everyone basically had the same so[...]Read on >>
March 2010 RPG Blog Carnival: How to be a Better GM?
Wow, time really flies and it's already March. I remember signing up to host the RPG Blog Carnival back sometime last year and now the RPG Blog Carnival is pitching their tents for the first time at the Questing GM.As fo[...]Read on >>
Social Combat
social combat in actionIn regards to story telling systems, a poster at RPG.net wrote, "Why do I want to spend several sessions engaging in nothing but social combat? That's what I do all day at work!"I had a nice chuckl[...]Read on >>
GURPS Mass Combat Cards
GURPS Mass Combat is a tool so that you can run a fun and exciting War Campaign.I've trying to run a war campaign for the longest time. I've made several attempts and there are just too many problems at times. I do admit[...]Read on >>
The Sandbox and Player Character Backgrounds
My post yesterday on structuring your sandbox has been making the rounds of other blogs. Like this one at Trollsmyth. This caught my eye.There’s been some talk about getting players “plugged in” to the campaign. [...]Read on >>
Mapping Outdoors: The dilemma continues…
Here is the second twisty little cave complex in the Caves of Chaos. Luckily the rest of the lairs are much easier to map, being much more traditional 10' corridor style dungeons.So do I just give this to the players on[...]Read on >>
World-Building 101: Watch your Language!
Anyone who has read Lord of the Rings has encountered the fictional elven tongues Tolkien created for Middle Earth. Anyone familiar with Star Trek has heard snippets of Klingon. Fans of Star Wars can more than likely r[...]Read on >>
Come see the Neoncon crew at Gen Con 2010!
I am proud to announce that Neoncon has been selected as part of the first class of Gen Con Marketing Fellows. Congratuations also go out to our fellow classmates, Wolfgang Baur and the crew of Kobold Quarterly. To get a[...]Read on >>
Worth More Than Gold
Fantasy games are a funny thing. Most English language games are based on a European-like setting and background. In many ways, we tend to have a romantic view of historic elements that are put in the setting. One such a[...]Read on >>
Are You Afraid of Hurting Your Characters?
24. Arguably one of the most popular television series of the last decade. The premise is simple, each one-hour episode depicts an actual hour in the main character’s life. That character is Jack Bauer and over the[...]Read on >>
Liege-Killer–Post-Apocalyptic Role-Playing Inspiration on Space Colonies
Liege-Killer by Christopher Hinz is an older novel, but still well-worth your time. Since this series of posts focuses on a post-apocalyptic campaign, the Earth is, of course, blown all to hell. However, rather than a st[...]Read on >>
Some structure for your Sandbox campaign
In this post at the Old Guy's RPG Blog Chgowiz talks about a difficult session he had as a DM. One comment caught my eye1. Make some defined missions available. Not everyone wants to go out and explore and just figure [...]Read on >>
Mapping Outdoors: What’s the best way?
I have worked the original module B2-Keep on the Borderlands, into my group's D&D3.5 game. The party are trying to find the lair of a White Dragon, which is ravaging the lands and cities held by their patron, Lord Le[...]Read on >>
The Hundred-Dollar RPG
In this post, I present a fairly detailed review of what I do and don't like about the 3rd Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play.You may or may not have seen the latest edition of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, the versio[...]Read on >>
Well done, my young apprentice
Every do often I talk about my own methods, but a lot of them tend to be of the game mechanics sort. It has been a fair while since I talked about what happens at the table. Or rather, what happens before we get to the [...]Read on >>
DMs Should Join Other Games
I think the best thing any Dungeon Master can to do improve his or her game is to join a game. You can learn a lot from other games and gamers. I find that I learn so much about how to improve my own DM’ing skills [...]Read on >>
World Building 101: Legends of Yore (and Mine)
A good campaign setting has a rich history, with plenty of legends and stories of past heroes and epic deeds, gods, monsters, and powerful magics. These stories can add atmosphere, give color to the fireside conversatio[...]Read on >>
Management and Role-playing II; Problems with Pure Evil Races
Continuing The use of the Art Critical Thinking in RPGs.1. Making High-Stakes Decisions - This is the introduction to the lecture and poses to the listener how people decision and how there are techniques that improve[...]Read on >>
Ask The GMs: Essential Game Master Skills
March 2, 2010 from Campaign Mastery
Filed under: Adventure Prep, DM Advice, Game Mastering, Play, RPG Hub, advice, behind the screen, campaign setting
What are the essential skills of a GM?
Loz is a frequent contributor to the comments here at CM. So when he submitted a question to Ask The GMs, we were inclined to pay close attention. Here’s what he had to [...] Filed under: Adventure Prep, DM Advice, Game Mastering, Play, RPG Hub, advice, behind the screen, campaign setting
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Barding it up around town
I’ve always thought Bards made cool characters in books, but implemented horribly in roleplaying (and most computer) games. The 4e PHB2 introduce a Bard class that doesn’t suck. We’ve had a Bard in my r[...]Read on >>
Pamphlet Prop
The last few posts have been background information for my campaign planning because I was inspired by something posted over at Held Action back in October about making pamphlets for players. It’s an absolutely bea[...]Read on >>
Regions Sizes in a setting
On the Swords & Wizardry forum here a question what asked on how size different realms on a map. This is my answerEstateFundamental unit of feudal societies this is typically 1,500 to 3,000 acres supporting a landowe[...]Read on >>
Playing the ‘bad guys’
So, consider this. You have a group of five guys. A pilot, a scout, a highly connected noble, a sniper and a natural leader, all Imperial stormtroopers. They begin their story on a dropship, being dropped off on some pla[...]Read on >>
Hating the sound of my voice…
Just a quick post to plug two things… I had the chance to join in on a discussion of the “Underdark” book over at “The Tome Show” podcast with the show’s host, Jeff Greiner and two add[...]Read on >>
February 2010 Blog Roundup: Choice Bits
March 1, 2010 from My Girlfriend Is A DM
Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, D&D4e, Fluff, Fluff/Inspiration, Game Design, Inspiration, Legacy D&D, RPG Hub, advice
I keep telling myself I’m going to do a weekly roundup of posts I like in the blogosphere, but I never get around to doing it. So here in no particular order, are ten of the many posts I bookmarked this past month.[...] Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, D&D4e, Fluff, Fluff/Inspiration, Game Design, Inspiration, Legacy D&D, RPG Hub, advice
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Anatomy of a TPK, Addendum
February 28, 2010 from Continuing Clockwise
Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, Game Mastery, Play, RPG Hub, advice
I made a key dungeon mastering mistake during last week’s near total party kill in my Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition campaign. I share it here as a warning to those who follow.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m using Harl[...] Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, Game Mastery, Play, RPG Hub, advice
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