Character Reputation
So, the other day when I was nerdgasming about the adventure hook a friend of mine came up with, one of the reasons I said I liked it was because it used the character's reputation. See, my opinion is that far far too of[...]Read on >>
Such a Simple Yet Amazing Adventure Hook
One of my friends has recently stepped back up as a GM at an online game. She's doing it in order to help the current GM team wrap the game up, so that it can move on to the next one, and has been tasked with getting cer[...]Read on >>
Premature Ejaculation
I was speaking with some friends over the weekend, and we got to talking to some of the campaigns we've been in over the years. One game in particular started to dominate the conversation, which in turn brought up some o[...]Read on >>
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' [...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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,[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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 [...]Read on >>
How Do You Act During the Last Session?
I've talked a lot about the end game on this blog before, the mechanics, the story, the almost freeing nature of it. It's something that has been on my mind a lot lately, and why shouldn't it when both games I am running[...]Read on >>
Redesigning the Wild West
My Star Wars game has been on hiatus as of late, due to real-life constraints. So while I haven't had anything new to post on the 'running game' front, I have begun work on the 'designing game' front.I've had this visio[...]Read on >>
RPGs as a Story Telling Medium
No, I'm not here to explain to you that RPGs are a wonderful way to tell a story. If you don't know that by now, you either haven't been reading or have never looked through an RPG book that wasn't based around minis. Th[...]Read on >>
Where Videogames Beat Table Top
So, yesterday we talked about how Videogames just can't compare to Table Top RPGs and went over a number of the strengths of the Table Top forum for gaming that simply blows videogames out of the water. Today I want to t[...]Read on >>
Videogames Just Can’t Compare
So, for today, I've decided I want to talk about the strengths of our medium, the table top RPG, and how they make it so that a video game just can't compare with a good table top experience. Tomorrow, I may do the inver[...]Read on >>
More thoughts about Typography, or the tools used to create it…
August 13, 2010 from Moebius Adventures Blog
Filed under: GM, Inspiration, RPG Hub, dungeons & dragons, roleplaying
Image by voyageAnatolia.blogspot.com via Flickr Long title, I know… But basically I am wondering how we might take the small things, such as the method of writing, and use that in a game. And by “method”[...] Filed under: GM, Inspiration, RPG Hub, dungeons & dragons, roleplaying
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Running a Horror Session – Friday the 13th Special Edition!
Well, being as today is Friday the 13th, I figured I'd pick something thematically appropriate and talk about running "Horror" sessions in your table top game. Now, I am not specifically talking about horror games like A[...]Read on >>
Joining the Party
So, earlier in this week I went over the XP/Power Level considerations when you bring a new character into your game. Yesterday, as part of the RPG Carnival we talked about introducing a brand new player to the game. So,[...]Read on >>
RPG Blog Carnival – Teaching the Hobby
This month's RPG Blog Carnival is being hosted by Evil Machinations and is being used as a continuation of last month's discussion on how expanding the hobby. So you've gone out, you've grabbed those new gamers from the [...]Read on >>
Bringing In New Characters
I'm not sure how it happened the first time in a game I ran. It was way too long ago now that I think about it, but I remember the anxiety it caused for me. Not because my hands were stained with the fresh blood of a PC,[...]Read on >>
What do you bring to the table as a PC?
What do you bring to the table as a PC? Being new to the pen and paper scene, I still have a lot to learn. I’ve read the core rulebooks, I’ve rolled my character, I have dice in hand. I’m ready to p[...]Read on >>
“Wasting” Combat Rounds
A lot of RPGs when you look at them are actually two games in one. The first is the actual Role Playing Game that you may or may not have signed up for. Making a character, rules for advancing them in power, rules for co[...]Read on >>
Choices
My gaming sessions have gone on a temporary hiatus due to player absence, a reprieve I'm actually somewhat grateful for. Two of my players have run across terrible work schedules, another is in the Army Reserve and is b[...]Read on >>
Review – Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters
Today I’m reviewing Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, a book produced by the authors of GnomeStew.com. Here’s how the publisher describes their book: Featuring a foreword by gaming industry[...]Read on >>
Bad Luck vs. Fear
In the trend of a few of my recent posts, I wanted to go back to talking on a topic I started before. Heck, in this one I even said I was going to talk more about it later and so I figured I'd bring it up here. Only this[...]Read on >>
Character Types Part 10 – The Wanna Be Hero
Today marks a big day for the Character Type series on this blog, today the series hits double digits with the 10th installment. I considered trying to do something super special, but honestly when talking about characte[...]Read on >>
Dramatic Situations – Hostages
So, following up yesterday's conversation about setting Win/Loss conditions for your encounter, lets talk about a specific one that both sets a Win/Loss condition while adding further and drama to your encounter. That's [...]Read on >>
Win/Loss Conditions
So, it must be self reference week here or something as this is yet another topic that is more a continuation of previous posts as it is something new. I'm also taking a bit more from the AngryDM post I referenced yester[...]Read on >>
The Importance of Pulling The Trigger
So, I've talked about this before, at least in part, but a post by the Angry DM yesterday got me to thinking about it again, and I wanted to touch on the topic once more. What is the topic? Well, specifically I am talkin[...]Read on >>
DMing 101: An introduction
Welcome to the first installment of my new weekly advice column, DMing 101. Since it’s the first installment I thought I should include a little introductory explanation about the purpose and nature of the column f[...]Read on >>
Too Many Tokens a.k.a. Too Much of a Good Thing
Looking through the modern systems that are coming out, whether they be more 'old school' or 'new school' there are a lot of ways to reward your players for various things. I mean, just going off the top of my head (and [...]Read on >>
Here Comes The Story Train…
A busy week outside of the gaming life, though things have been going well.Saturday's session wound up with some railroading. We all know that sometimes it can't be avoided. Sometimes, as a GM, you just need to push th[...]Read on >>
A note to problem players: the view from the chair
I’ve been reading around the blogs and gaming boards the past few weeks about the problems that GMs have with their players. Strange thing is, a lot of them are very similar and revolve around the player wanting/do[...]Read on >>
What makes a bad GM?
It was one of the gnomes articles that got me thinking about this. I haven’t encountered many GMs, I could count them on my fingers probably. And I certainly haven’t encountered any myself, though I have hea[...]Read on >>
Benefit of a Battle Map
So, last night I brought Jebediah Shepherd from Mass Effect 1 into Mass Effect 2. Well, technically I did that a couple nights ago, but I actually started playing the game last night and did the first couple of missions.[...]Read on >>
What Comes Next?
So, I find myself at a bit of a weird spot when it comes to GMing. Both my games are going fine, perhaps even great, and people are having fun. No, the problem comes in that one of the games has the ending in sight. Not [...]Read on >>
Dealing With A Missing Player
Let's talk plainly for a second here (don't we always?). If you're running a game, then sometime, at some point, you're going to have to deal with missing a player at the session. Now, with luck, they'll have told you ah[...]Read on >>
Saturday Recap
So Saturday's game session went quite well. A friend of mine from work joined the group, playing a Kel Dor scout working as a hired gun with the Exchange, sent along with the other players as back-up for their second fo[...]Read on >>
A Campaign or A Story?
So, you've got your rule book handy, you've got your players, and you know what game you want to play. The question is, and you might not have even thought to ask yourself this, are you looking to run a Campaign or are y[...]Read on >>
RPG Review: Kingdoms of Kalamar: City Map Folio
July 16, 2010 from Moebius Adventures Blog
Filed under: Campaign, GM, Inspiration, RPG, RPG Hub, Reviews
As a GM, it’s nearly impossible to get by without a few maps. Sure, you can come up with a village on the fly, or maybe a 5-room dungeon, but cities are sometimes tough to design at the drop of a hat. Not only are [...] Filed under: Campaign, GM, Inspiration, RPG, RPG Hub, Reviews
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Rewarding Game Investment
Anyone who has GMed for any amount of time has probably come across this problem. You've set up the world, set up the game, the players have their characters, and you are coming around to the first session. Being the gre[...]Read on >>
For the sake of it…
Ah Wednesday. With the weather, it should be more like Thor's Day. Bah, who am I kidding, this is San Francisco. There is no weather. There is only Schroedinger's Weather.Wednesday has called upon me to be a posting [...]Read on >>
Games To Run, Games to Play
So, being as we just got out of Origins, the ENnies are going on, and Gen Con is fast coming up I figured I'd take a look to the future and what I'd like to be doing game-wise 6-12 months from now. See, it's that marvelo[...]Read on >>
How do you handle PVP?
So, this is going to be a quick post (the main post for today is the play update below) but I am interested in discussion this week. That said, today I want to talk about Player versus Player in RPGs. Now, this is a touc[...]Read on >>
Good stories need good endings
Though one of my GM mentors recommended the “never-ending campaign” that has no ending, I rather like endings to be honest. It comes from liking the ending of stories, though not the fact that they end, as it[...]Read on >>
Iconic Characters
So, in an interest of trying to get a bit more discussion going here I figure I'll try making the posts a bit more interactive this week as a test. Not that I'm expecting much, especially with how young the blog is, but [...]Read on >>
Encounter balance…
The current trend in game design from Wizards seems to lean towards a balanced, fun-for-everyone, GMing is easy sort of thing. So encounters are intended to scale with your PCs. Is this actually fun?Sure you'll get som[...]Read on >>
“Let’s split up, gang!”
July 11, 2010 from Level 1 GM
Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, GM, RPG, RPG Hub, dungeons & dragons
It is said to be the bane of GM’s everywhere, the words “Let’s split up, gang!”. A GM already has to have at least five ideas in their head at once, so the idea of dividing that into two can lead [...] Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, GM, RPG, RPG Hub, dungeons & dragons
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The Confused Bantha will return…
July 11, 2010 from Level 1 GM
Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, GM, RPG, RPG Hub, Star Wars, dungeons & dragons
Well, despite my own doubts, we did finish the campaign. Not as polished as I would have liked it, and definitely several loose ends that need to be tied up. But, it’s done and it can be “ended” again, [...] Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, GM, RPG, RPG Hub, Star Wars, dungeons & dragons
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