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. One way to help players feel like they are taking part in a dynamic setting is to always have things happening in the background. (While mentioning that there’s a two lovebirds snuggling in ...

Tell us a little bit about yourself... You’ve probably come up with some oddball character backgrounds, either trying to justify your twinked and leveraged character build, or just because a Somali Pirate-Ninja would be cool. (What’s not to like about a swashbuckling sneak with his own supertanker?) But have you given much thought as to your own background? What elements from your own past have you used, either to run ...

When does a character's story start? Books and novels often begin just as some exciting event kicks the characters out of their routine and pushes them on a new path. Occasionally the movie will give you a few minutes, or the book a few chapters, to get used to the character's normal life-- then it all changes. Thanks to A Butterfly Dreaming for inspiring this post and ...

When I ran my first 7th Sea campaign I introduced each adventure with a short piece of fiction. This was often a cut scene that gave the players a little metagame knowledge as to the focus of the adventure. For those of you unfamiliar with 7th Sea, it was a swashbuckling RPG based on a fictional world that strongly resembled 17th century Europe lightly flavored with magic. One PC in ...