I write about TTRPGs that I play. Or want to play. \ \ Share your thoughts with me! \ \ {{ posts|limit:5 }} \ \ \ \ \ Icon by...
I used to be very strict about what happened at the table when playing RPGs. Oh, you didn't specifically mention you were whispering after you sneaked all the way here? The guards attack you. I forgot a very specific rule that has never come up before? Let me spend ten to fifteen minutes hunting for it. You guys just do whatever, this is important. There's a reason people keep coming back to my…
Being creative is really hard when you're put in front of nothing. Most people need some kind of constraint to be able to squeeze out their creative juice. That's why humans have been putting new spins on ancient tales since the dawn of time. That's why art challenges such as Inktober are so successful. And that's why we buy RPG manuals instead of sitting around a table making up random stories.…
... and it's not even close. It requires a stupid amount of buy-in from the players. They need to read one manual for character options, another for how magic works, and then maybe a chapter from a third one to understand how to actually play the game. (The GM has at least four manuals to read, so of course the scale is still tipped the right way.) In the first session, players help shape the…
I used to be awful at ending one-shots. It always felt terribly unsatisfying. "We ran out of time" / "There's nothing else to do" / "You surgically avoided the plot". It was frustrating and it made me avoid running one-shots altogether. As with most things, experience helps immensely. During the pandemic, I joined a Discord server so I could finally play instead of GMing all the time. After a few…
I first read about West Marches style campaigns a long time ago and I've been dreaming about running one ever since. The closest I ever got was a D&D campaign that I was running for two different groups, in two different parts of a shared world. I'd only created a huge hex map for them, told each group "you're about here" and asked them where exactly and why. And everything snowballed from there.…