“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” - Mark Twain Around Halloween, a series of stories were posted on a number of gaming sites, claiming that the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF) rejected over $17,000 from Gen Con 2008’s charity auction, because some of the funds came from the sale of Dungeons and Dragons materials. The initial story outraged gamers and ...

Okay, that's not entirely true -- what good would a diminutive glossary for a subject as broad as roleplaying be, anyway? This puppy is anything but diminutive -- in fact, we believe it's the largest RPG glossary on the web. It's insanely comprehensive. Just click a letter and scroll down until you find the term you want to look up, or use your browser's "Find" function. Entries are cross-linked, so ...

For the past five years, I have attended GenCon with an average of 10 of my friends.  On the larger years, it has been as large as 14 people and on the smaller years around 8.  Coordinating a group that large, at the largest gaming convention of the year, is no easy task.  Over the years, I have figured out some tricks for organizing such a large group ...

This year at Gen Con I ran three scheduled events, several impromptu games, three seminars, and had a wonderful time from beginning to end. With that said, I did have less than stellar moments and noticed areas for improvement as a GM. The great thing about convention games is that you can experiment and try different things as a GM. The downside is that you only get one chance ...

Hi all! I have to say that my sophomore Gen Con experience was not only better than my first but also far exceeded my expectations, both as a gamer and as an RPG freelancer. It's always great to put faces with the names in the industry, as well as the opportunity to meet them. I also got a chance to meet a few fellow gnomies (I apologize for Saturday, ...

(8:55 pm MST) Since I couldn't be there this year, I've been tormenting myself by reading GenCon tidbits, and I just saw some awesome news: DungeonMastering.com won the gold ENnie for Best Fan Product! That's totally badass -- nice, nice work, Yax. You deserve it, and I think this will be an inspiration to RPG bloggers everywhere. I know it will be an inspiration for Gnome Stew next year. I was ...

I finally got a chance to playtest "Dead Man's Hand," the Victoriana game I'm running at GenCon. The adventure was designed as a sequel to last year's "Lost Luggage," using the same characters and background. Since the 2nd Edition of Victoriana is only now getting a full print run, I decided to run this adventure as an "introductory scenario" (which saved me from having to update the characters). Since "Dead ...

In addition to my hats as Game Master and Gnomish scribe, I am also an RPG freelancer. One of the companies I'm contracted with is Cubicle 7, which produces the second edition of the Victoriana game. When I decided to use Victoriana as my monthly game, I asked Cubicle 7 if they had any interest in using my group as playtesters for upcoming products. I was excited when they agreed, ...

In my first post in this series I spoke a little about my experiences at GenCon 2007, concentrating on rookie considerations. Obviously, I'd learned much more than that and my experiences in actually playing con games also remained with me. Last December, I'd decided that my weekly game, which took place on Fridays ostensibly from 8-11 (although we were usually lucky to get in 2 hours of play), had ...

When I was approached to don the pointed chef's hat and add to the stew, one of the first posts I drafted reflected on running a monthly game. I've been running a monthly game for almost half a year now, and it occurred to me that there were many parallels with convention gaming, parallels I couldn't make if I hadn't gone to my first gaming convention (GenCon 2007) ...