Category: GMing Advice
| May 20, 2013 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
Random luck affects us all the time. Just last week, the sewer line backed up in my house. As it happened, a local plumbing company dropped off a coupon the next day, fixing our headache at a very reasonable cost. Conversely, several years ago, my brother called me to announce that my first niece was due to be born any minute. I ran out to my car – only to find one tire completely flattened. Neither of these situations had anything to do with my…
| May 17, 2013 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
I love my Underground campaign. Its been one of the best things I have run in some time, and it has done wonders for breaking me out of my slump. The game has been rolling along well, until we came to a small bump in the road…the rules. After some debate, we decided to pull a rules shift, and swap out one set of rules for another. This is the first of two articles about Rules Shifting. In this article I will talk about the…
| May 13, 2013 | Posted by Don Mappin |
Having just wrapped up its first season, the FX Cold War spy show seems a natural selection to spend some time dissecting, looking for elements to use (or avoid!) in your games. Suffice it to say that there will likely be some spoilers involved, so if you haven’t seen up to the season finale, you may want to come back a bit later. The Setup The Americans is about two KGB deep-cover operatives who are put together by design to act as a newly married…
| May 10, 2013 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
Last week, one of the groups I play in decided to end our Pathfinder campaign, and after some discussion it was decided that Bob is going to run Numenera for us. It has been a little while since Bob has run something, and we got to talking about getting back behind the screen again, along with some concerns that Bob might have. Having just come back from my own slump, I thought I would share some advice with Bob…and you all as well. A Little Background Our group…
| May 9, 2013 | Posted by Scott Martin |
In the last article, we sketched out the boundaries of a hidden world. (Quick recap: A hidden world is (usually) a world that seems much like our own, but that’s just an illusion. However, the “modern world” isn’t what it seems… for some reason. Compelling reasons include conspiracies secretly running things, aliens quietly interfering, supernatural forces existing and meddling with the world, or even this reality being but one of many.) Welcome Behind the Curtain One of the most influential decisions you can make for…
| May 7, 2013 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article is by John Fredericks, and it’s a unique idea we’ve never discussed here before. Thanks, John! Introduction All GMs long for player investment in their characters and in the campaign world. As GMs, we’re often (very) caught up in the planning and running of the game. This makes it difficult for us to gauge whether we are meeting the players’ expectations at the table. In this article, I’ll share an idea that I used recently to garner more player input on their…
| May 6, 2013 | Posted by Walt Ciechanowski |
Back in the earliest incarnations of Dungeons & Dragons there was a player defined as the “Caller.” In addition to playing her own character, the Caller had the job of collecting all of the other players’ decisions in a round and communicating them to the GM. While this made sense in large games with 20+ players, it seems a little ridiculous when there’s only five people around the table. For my groups “Caller” was merely the D&D term for the party leader in-character. Still, I sometimes…
