I forget... are we playing Saving Private Ryan, Doc Savage, or Dragonball Z today? "I want to shoot him with my trusty .45, blowing him back through the door and into the room. In the chaos, I'm going to dive in the room after him, tumble behind the couch, and come up in a ready position." "I'm going to run up the bamboo, jump off at thirty feet, bounce off ...

Note from Chef Telas: I apologize for my absence from the Gnome Stew kitchens over the last few weeks. Our first child showed up on June 5th. Not only was she over two weeks early, but the first thing she did was break my wife's water, probably not the last thing she's going to break... Everyone's doing fine, but since then, we've been knee-deep in diapers, bottles, breastpumps, ...

Random Thoughts on Gaming, Gamers, and Other Things. Every now and then, I'll hear or think of something that seems cool, but isn't worth an entire blog post. When I collect a few of these nuggets o' wisdom (or dross), I'll post 'em here under Wandering Damage, along with something amusing or geeky I overheard at Gen Con. -Telas Game mastering is an art form. Don’t let any overeducated elitist tell ...

“Or: How to draw aggro on a GMing blog” One of the Holy Grails of gaming is the “sandbox game”, where there is no overarching meta-plot, or even individual plot arcs, but where the characters are put into a world that is both realistic and autonomous, and allowed to interact in that world however they see fit. To a True Believer of the Way of the Sandbox, everything else ...

Random Thoughts on Gaming, Gamers, and Other Things. Every now and then, I'll hear or think of something that seems cool, but isn't worth an entire blog post. When I collect a few of these nuggets o' wisdom (or dross), I'll post 'em under Wandering Damage, along with something I overheard at Gen Con. -Telas Gaming should be a part of your social life, not a replacement for it. Does ...

“Everyone Digs the Custom Rigs” While running a game in a published campaign setting has a number of benefits, there are a few hazards. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan and active consumer of published settings. I’ve run Greyhawk games since the early 80s, and have no intentions of stopping now, regardless of which rules system I use. The benefits of a published setting are obvious: The authors ...

Random Thoughts on Gaming, Gamers, and Other Things. Every now and then, I'll hear or think of something that seems cool, but isn't worth an entire blog post. When I collect a few of these nuggets o' wisdom (or dross), I'll post 'em under Wandering Damage, along with something I overheard at Gen Con. -Telas Real Life Comes First – because you can neither ‘retcon’ nor pause the action ...

Faster than a Tectonic Plate Do your combats seem to take forever to resolve? Do you hesitate to begin an encounter in the last hour and a half of a session? When a combat is taking place, are your players’ eyes glazed over, or are they looking around for something less boring? Good news: We can rebuild your combats. We can make them better… faster… stronger. I find that faster combats ...

Have you ever had that weird sensation that you’re not actually playing the same game as everyone else at the table? You’ve described the scene: a noble and his retinue are in a large hall. The noble is about to engage the party in conversation, almost certainly to hand out a mission. And then the rogue chimes in with, “When he starts talking, I’m going to try to ...

One of the most important and least-discussed elements in a successful game is a shared set of assumptions about how and why the game is played. But many gaming groups want to jump straight to "the fun stuff" without making sure that everyone shares the same definition of "fun" (or even the same definition of "stuff"). A few minutes or even hours spent ensuring that ...