While reading Patrick's article and related comments yesterday something struck me as a good Hot Button topic: As a Game Master, what do you do when two of your players break up and both wish to remain in the game? If you've gamed for any respectable length of time, then you've probably had at least one romantic couple in your group. Sometimes they join as a couple. Sometimes one of them ...

Today's Hot Button is related to a previous article, but I think it is worth debating on its own. Psionics (or psi powers, or psychic powers, etc) have traditionally had a troubled relationship in fantasy games, especially in Dungeons & Dragons and its various permutations and dirivatives. The first time I'd encountered psionics in RPGs was in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook (1e), which relegated psionics to ...

I've been to three gaming conventions (GenCon 2007, 2008, 2009) and played in a lot of games. The overwhelming majority of these have involved pre-generated characters with little or no customization. I usually have a blast with these. Obviously, with only a 4-hour investment, it really doesn't matter to me what I play; I'd rather not waste time generating a character and be stuck with a 2-3 hour ...

No, this article is not about Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky and Mike... Any successful roleplaying game will eventually have a new edition. No matter how well-written an RPG is, there will always be room for improvement. Broken rules, unanticipated needs, rules expansions, errata, clunky systems, etc. can make a new edition attractive to fans of the game. However, a question always accompanies a new edition; namely, how closely should a new ...

In response to my article "The Concept of a Star Wars RPG Should Die in a Fire", the Star Wars community, as represented by www.d20radio.com has realized how untenable their hobby is. We're getting together for a podcast to discuss the necessary transition from Star Wars to other RPG options on the evening of the 7th, 9 eastern, 6 pacific at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/order-66-podcast. Be sure to join us to watch historic progress being made towards phasing out this blight on the hobby, ...

I can't stand playing in a Star Wars RPG. The problem, as I see it, is there's two types of players in any Star Wars game. There's the 80% of players who have seen some or all of the movies, know who the big names are, understand some of the bigger themes and plots, or have heard about the setting, acknowledge that it's pretty awesome and want to play in it. Then there's the ...

This article is third in a three part series. You can read the first part here and the second part here. While my gnomie buddies have been duking it out over whether you should or shouldn’t use a gaming table, I’m going to attack the topic from a different perspective: you should set up your gaming area to convey the type of session you are about to play. ...

In my last Pathfinder session, one of the PCs was hit by a confusion spell from an unseen enemy and began attacking the rest of the party. As it turned out, this PC had only joined the existing group in the previous session under somewhat mysterious circumstances.  Given the situation (and numerous failed Sense Motive checks) it wasn't a stretch for the PCs to feel that they were betrayed. They ...

Back in the Reagan era, it was considered a cardinal sin in my gaming circles to read boxed text in published modules (which was High Gygaxian for "adventures").  We didn't want to listen to the Dungeon Master (yep, this was during Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' Golden Age) drone on in a monotonous tone about the room description, when all we really cared about is that it was a 15ft ...

Traditionally, being a player is an hourly job while being a GM is a salaried position (although both are usually unpaid). Players are expected to show up on time to a session, play the game, and clock out after the session, often giving it little thought until the next one. GMs, on the other hand, have many responsibilities that transcend the session. While there certainly are GMs that can ...

Sometimes when I meet a fellow gamer for the first time, I'm amazed that they've only played one or two games -- and not from lack of opportunity (like having no group for several years, or something), but from lack of interest. "I play X. Yeah, I tried Y once, but I didn't like it. So now I just play X." Like what you like -- I'm the last person ...

Let me tell you about the schenanigans my friend and I pulled in the 4E game my wife runs last Sunday: My wife is huge on custom magic items. Some are just little flavor differences, others are completely whole cloth inventions of hers. That's how our party ended up with a magic levitating ship.  While neutrally buoyant and able to be pulled with effort, it requires magic residuum (pricey stuff) to ...

What distractions do you tolerate at the gaming table? When I was young and still playing in my parent's basement (no, it was not last year! I was still a teenager, honest!), I had a GM that insisted he could run a game with the TV on in the background. Needless to say, every time we played like this, he'd get engrossed with what was on the screen and ...

Not long ago, I was surfing the boards (I won't mention where) and I came across a post from a gamer who insisted that it was the GM's job to serve the players. I'm paraphrasing, but it seemed to me that he was saying that the GM should always allow player decisions to trump her designs. It's a viewpoint I've heard echoed before. In the early 90s, I played ...

If you've gamed long enough, you've probably been subjected to the "bait and switch" at least once. The GM has given you the campaign pitch, you roll up characters according to that pitch, and then you find out that the actual game is very different than the one you've been playing. Sometimes this is obvious at the start ("this campaign is more about noble court intrigue than combat" ...