Recently Vanir brought back a good post about the spotlight-- who gets personal (as opposed to group) attention. Much of the article is about how a player should treat spotlight time, which started me along a path of thinking-- who is responsible for spotlight distribution? Before I dive in, let's figure out what we mean by spotlight. (Or cheat, and just use Martin's definition in GMing 142: Spotlight ...

Over the past few weeks, I have been writing about the lessons I have learned, from running my three-year long Iron Heroes campaign (here and here).  As this campaign charges into the its final sessions, I am starting to realize just how much this campaign taught me about being a GM, and how to manage a campaign.  In today's post, I am going to talk about one of ...

Every time with every group that I have ever been in, when the GM was bringing his or her campaign to a close the question "Who want to GM next?" came up. With some groups the hands shot up without a second thought. With other groups you might as well have asked "Who wants a red hot poker in the eye?" That isn't the issue I'm addressing though. Thinking ...

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 ...

Ah Halloween! Jack O'Lanterns, candy, kids in costumes, and everyone is just itching for something to scare them! But you, oh dear GM, should be thinking of more sinister thoughts. Like a zombie crawling from its grave to feast on the living and bring them into the folds of the undead, you too should be turning your ravenous eye towards those non-gamers and scheming as to how you will ...

This past Saturday night, my group played the final chapter in a year-long, 18-session Mage: The Awakening chronicle. It was one of the best campaigns I've ever run, and, in 20 years or so of GMing it was the first campaign I've ever ended according to plan. Planned for the Very First Time Up until a couple years ago, I'd never even been involved in a non-one-shot that had a ...

Rust, over on www.youmeetinatavern.com posted a link to an excellent resource for GMs who want to crack open their old school rpg books or who want to stir some ol' school flavor into their modern RPGs. It's called A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, It's written by Matthew Finch, and it's available as a free download from Lulu. Frankly, I'm not sure why this little gem is free but I'm SOglad it is. Described ...

Hey all! I just thought I'd share a personal GMing issue with you. A couple years ago, I started running a game at a friend's house on alternate Sundays. Most of the group played in a second game on the Sundays I wasn't there. Occasionally, the two groups would swap Sundays if there was a scheduling conflict. This was never a problem, as both games were held at the same ...

I know when I get the urge to start GMing again it is usually because I have seen something so awesome, so incredible and so inspiring that I immediately think: "Wow. I need to run a game that gets at that feeling!" Sometimes this inspiring moment comes from reading a book, sometimes from becoming engrossed in the story or the mechanic of a video game and sometimes ...

In the D&D Supplement Heroes of Horror (2005, Wizards of the Coast), authors James Wyatt, Ari Marmell and C.A. Suleiman recommend constructing a horror-themed adventure with four components. They are: mood, setting, plot and villain. So, it seemed natural to try and pair that approach with some of the other D&D supplements I had at hand and see what horror-inspired adventure hooks we could devise. Oriental Adventures “A ...

In the suggestion pot, Clem asks How about an article on ways to handle sense/detect type rolls? The spectrum goes from “player knows what attribute to roll against, what number is needed for success, and what is being checked for” to “player knows attribute only” to “just roll the dice” to “gm rolls openly” to “gm rolls secretly” to “gm rolls before the session and applies the result ...

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 ...

What’s the Crock Pot? Just a simmering bowl of lentils and herbs, with a dash of DMing observations. Don’t be afraid to dip in your ladle and stir, or throw in something from your own spice rack. Screen scene I finally picked up the Fourth Edition DM’s screen. (I was waiting for that perfect confluence of events: store coupon, item in stock and cash on hand). You know the screen ...

I have no idea if this concept has been floated before, but it's new to me -- and it's been enormously helpful over the past couple of weeks. As my Mage game draws to a close, I'm working towards a specific ending scene. I don't know what'll happen in that scene -- more to the point, what the PCs will do -- but I know what I want it ...

Some could argue that the Fourth Edition designers took the bite out of Lycanthropes — literally. The Monster Manual lists only two, the wererat and the werewolf. And making the condition hereditary rather than an affliction makes them no different than shifters, at least thematically. The two shifter templates, for the longtooth and razaorclaw versions, provided in the racial traits section of the Monster Manual, can serve in ...