News from Around the Net: 3-FEB-2012

February!?! Where’d January go? Geesh! Here in Colorado, the snow started to fly last night and we are in the first real winter storm in 2012. What does that mean for yours truly? Not much really… I work from[...]
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Social Media in Modern Settings

Not a full on discussion, but something I'm hoping to get folks' input on. How many of you have taken the time to consider what social media can mean for modern day games and events? the rate at which information can spr[...]
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Publisher Interview: Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games

The “Old School” gaming movement continues to impress me with the enthusiasm of the gamers and game companies supporting it. One of the games many gamers are excited about in 2012 is the Spring release of the[...]
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Privilege vs. Success/Failure

Did you have a good Wednesday? Mine was ok. Sorry about the late notice on no post. I completely forgot that I hadn't prepped something ahead of time until my head hit the pillow, and at that point I wasn't getting back [...]
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Book Review: Unusual Suspects: Guide to an Interrogation Session by Robert Oglodzinski from Library of Ancient Scroll

When I started working with Robert Oglodzinski a few months ago, I reviewed Walls Can Talk, which collects a few “legends and adventure ideas” for fantasy and horror games. The layout, done by Michael Wolf (S[...]
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Doing The Impossible

It seems I have once again set this blog to update at the wrong time. Sorry for that.RPGs are funny things. Especially the campaigns that you run at your own table. Why? Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'd wage[...]
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Supplement Review: Caves & Caverns (PFRPG) by Creighton Broadhurst and David Posener from Raging Swan Press

Just about every fantasy campaign I’ve ever played in has involved a cave system or cavern at one time or another. And though I’m a fan of dungeons, I really like it when there’s more of a natural eleme[...]
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Concepts You Shouldn’t Allow

This is something of an odd topic because there is a lot of variance between different play groups, and so I'd imagine that there will be a lot of different opinions on just what you should and shouldn't allow a player t[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: To Punish and Enslave (or “Being Lawful”)

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. - Albert Einstein One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who wi[...]
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News from Around the Net: 27-JAN-12

Hope everyone has had a good week! Mine has been interesting… We’ve been dealing with getting some water damage assessed and fixed in our house after a small overflow in an upstairs bathroom resulted in a fam[...]
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Review: The Game Master by Tobiah Panshin

  I thought I’d do something a little different and review something slightly more out of the ordinary. I’d originally planned to have this up and online in November when I first heard about it, but I[...]
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The Multi-Strand Game

I promised I'd talk about this at the beginning of the week and then got distracted by other things. That said, today I want to actually talk about it before I break my promise.Now, I don't know if this kind of game is a[...]
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The Gassy Gnoll: What Makes a Location Fantastic (RPG Blog Carnival)

Once in a while a question crops up via a RPG Blog Carnival topic that makes me scratch my head and ponder for a bit. And yes, before you ask, most Gassy Gnolls are predominantly pondering people. We like to ponder just [...]
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Make Or Break Time (What Would You Do?)

As I write this, I'm fresh out of a game where going in the GM was not sure if he had just killed us all with what he was planning for the session. The good news - for the PCs anyhow - is that everyone made it out alive.[...]
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Adventure Review: Frozen Wind (PFRPG) by Jonathan McAnulty from Rite Publishing

When I read the first couple of adventures of the Curse of the Golden Spear adventure trilogy set in Kaidan from Jonathan McAnulty and Rite Publishing, I was blown away. I remember the first time I saw the Oriental Adven[...]
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Small Obstacles are Sometimes The Best

So, my Friday game has come and gone. Over all it was a successful game, though I did learn a few things about the weaknesses and strengths of the format I've been using for the game - more on that later in the week. How[...]
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Adventure Review: The Haunting of Larvik Island (4E) by Stephen Newton from Thick Skull Adventures

Though The Haunting of Larvik Island has been out since June 2011, I’m coming very late to the party. Written by Stephen Newton and published by Thick Skull Adventures, this adventure for a group of five 1st level [...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: The Rules of Chaos

Last week I spoke about playing good and evil characters but promised that I’d follow up with my thoughts on playing lawful and chaotic PCs. When I started to think about it, I decided to break this post into two p[...]
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News from Around the Net: 20-JAN-12

Welcome to the gaming news roundup for the week of 20-JAN-2012! This week was “one of those” weeks with work, so I’m gleeful that it’s Friday! Yay! The debate continued this week about “D�[...]
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Favors and Compromise – Politics Part 3

Today I'm going to conclude my talking about Politics with this last bit. We talked on Tuesday about the NPCs and doing prep on it, with some great additional bits of advice in the comments. Yesterday we talked about gam[...]
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Game Review: Quantum Flux by Kieran Kowalski from 6d6 RPG

Though I don’t read much sci-fi these days, I’m still a big fan of films in the genre. Sprinkle in some horror and I’ll probably go see it if the trailer looks good enough. The golden standard is of cou[...]
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Court Games and Distractions – Politics Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, this Friday one of my games is moving more heavily into the realm of politics. I am simultaneously scared and excited by this. Why? Well, I've got an awesome group and I want to do this right fo[...]
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GM Questionnaire

From Zak originally,GM QuestionnaireRepost and answer. Or, if you don't have a blog, answer in the comments. Or be a big rebel and do neither.1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what[...]
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Running Politics

This Friday my L5R game is taking a very rokugani turn into an area where I'm not super comfortable in my ability as a GM. Where is that you ask? Well, the PCs are taking a bit more of a court focus, which means that pol[...]
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Game Review: Fantasy Craft by Alex Flagg, Scott Gearin, and Patrick Kapera from Crafty Games – Chapter 5

There’s only three chapters to go in Fantasy Craft from Crafty Games… Combat, Foes, and Worlds. Unfortunately between those three chapters and the index, character sheets, and so on, those last three chapters[...]
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Writer’s Block

Writer's Block is the name for the phenomenon that - traditionally writers - is used when no matter how hard one tries, they're unable to find inspiration for how to continue a story. It can be applied to almost any ende[...]
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Tools Review: Dungeons & Dragons Virtual Table Beta

Right before the holidays, Rory Madden from Game Table Online dropped me a note wondering if I’d like to check out the D&D Virtual Table they’ve had under development for Wizards of the Coast. It’s[...]
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Endings and Beginnings

When you're running a game with a strong narrative bend to it, there will come times when things need to come to an end or when things are just coming to a beginning. These moments can be very powerful moments in the gam[...]
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The Gassy Gnoll: Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men with Nine Kids (New Year, New Game)

The “New Year, New Game” efforts from the great folks at Gnome Stew and DriveThruRPG suggests something we should do as gamers anyway – try new games. Though not every game is for everybody, by trying n[...]
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Game Review: The One Ring: Adventurer’s Book by Francesco Nepitello from Cubicle 7 – Part 6

The end is nigh! Well, the last part of my multi-post review of The One Ring: Adventurer’s Book from Cubicle 7 and writer Francesco Nepitello anyway… “Part 6: Fellowship Phase” deals with that par[...]
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Prep an adventure in the time it takes to boil an egg {GM Secrets}

We've all been there. It's the night of your regular campaign and you gather around the table eager to roll some dice. Except, only two people have shown up because the others bailed last minute because of illness or wor[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: The Dwarf, The Elf, and The Onion

Welcome to the New Year dear readers! I hope 2012 will bring you more great game sessions and plenty of inspiration for new campaigns. Along those lines, hold on tight as we head into a new adventure… This time I w[...]
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News from Around the Net: 6-JAN-12

That’s right, it’s 2012… The year we see if the Mayans were right or if they were too cheap to buy a new calendar at the office supply store. Hopefully everyone had a happy and safe New Years’ cel[...]
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Game Review: Fantasy Craft by Alex Flagg, Scott Gearin, and Patrick Kapera from Crafty Games – Chapter 4

Another one of my goals for 2012 is to finish my chapter-by-chapter review of Crafty Games‘ Fantasy Craft, Second Printing book. And, since we’ve dealt with character creation, action resolution, and spellcra[...]
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Game Review: The One Ring: Adventurer’s Book by Francesco Nepitello from Cubicle 7 – Part 5

One of my New Years’ resolutions for 2012 is to finish up my ongoing review of The One Ring, so I’m going to push forward with my part-by-parcel review today and focus on “Part 5 – Adventuring Mec[...]
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News from Around the Net: 30-DEC-11

“It’s the end of the year as we know it and I feel fine…” (apologies to Michael Stipe and the rest of REM for paraphrasing the lyrics to “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I[...]
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Stage Fright

This is something I've spoken about on here before I think, though perhaps from a different angle, and I wanted to bring it up again. Why? Because it has been on my mind of late, and generally what is on my mind gets put[...]
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The Importance of ‘Normal’

When playing/running a RPG it can be very easy to get caught up in the dramatic and swept away with the tides of high adventure. However, there is also a need for the normal to exist. The normal grounds things in the wor[...]
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The Gassy Gnoll: The Circle of Trust (or The Power of Odd Jobs and Beginnings)

Have you ever noticed how adventurers always seem to get the glamorous jobs and only rarely get the dirty jobs nobody really wants to do? Let’s take a simple example. A new group of PCs gets hired to kill some rats[...]
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JiB on GM’ing: Pathfinder Variant Rules, Character Advancement

Our final exploration of the variant rules for Pathfinder found in the Ultimate Combat Guide discusses character advancement, the effect of magic and magic items, and takes a look at creatures and how to convert them to [...]
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Product Review: Dungeonmorph Dice and Cards from Inkwell Ideas

When I first heard about the whole geomorph mapping paradigm in early 2011, it was at Dyson Logos’ blog – A Character For Every Game – but I came to discover only recently that they are a very old idea [...]
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Protagonist Driven vs. Antagonist Driven

Wow, I'm doing really bad this week on these updates. I apologize. Not really sure what is going on, but between missing a post and setting the wrong time, this has probably been the worst week for the blog in a very lon[...]
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Game Review: The One Ring: Adventurer’s Book by Francesco Nepitello from Cubicle 7 – Part 4

As I continue to dive deeper into The One Ring from Cubicle 7, I’m finding that there are things I really like about the system conceptually that I’m wondering if I could translate from here to other games[...]
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Supplement Review: Divine Favor: The Cleric by Stefan Styrsky from Open Design

Open Design‘s Divine Favor series has done a good job of presenting some interesting options to player characters (PCs) using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Many of their options revolve around classic traits of [...]
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Preparation – Part 1 – Priorities

It amuses me to no end that this post is going up late, because it is talking about being prepared. Now, when I say preparation I do mean for the next session of the game you are running, but it can also be much further [...]
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Game Review: Fantasy Craft by Alex Flagg, Scott Gearin, and Patrick Kapera from Crafty Games – Chapter 3

When I started tackling Fantasy Craft a chapter at a time, I had no clue I’d hit a chapter filled to the brim with 41 pages of spells and spellcraft. When I was working on early books for Moebius Adventures we came[...]
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Ancient Scroll’s Secret Room: Scary Christmas Tales

Today’s post comes from my friend, Aleksander Daukszewicz. He is part of the Polish creative collective Lans Macabre. Those guys are one of most talented groups in the Polish RPG industry. I am proud that they publ[...]
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Naming NPCs

((Whoops, this went up early. Ah well, you don't mind do you? Supposed to have gone up at 8:00am. Le sigh, off to bed, I am the tired.))I can't think of very few statements I disagree with more than "A rose by any other [...]
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Supplement Review: So What’s For Sale, Anyway? II by Julian Neale from Raging Swan Press

If I was going to open a store specializing in magic items for D&D, I’d think that inventory would be a continuous problem. Well, unless there was a secret set of “magic item” elves that would, whi[...]
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Bad Stuff / Luck / Unluck

Want to know a secret? I despise the "Unlucky" disadvantage in most games. Why? Well, it is how the abilitiy works. Usually, unlucky works by giving the GM a set number of times each session that they can make a player r[...]
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