Posts Tagged by Mistakes
| May 21, 2013 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article is by Richard Dansky, who tabletop gamers are most likely to know for his extensive work with White Wolf, particularly Wraith: The Oblivion. He’s a GM, a 14-year veteran of the video game industry, and the author of six novels, including Firefly Rain. His latest novel, Vaporware, comes out May 24th. Thanks, Richard! Nobody gets GMing right the first time. To be fair, most people don’t get anything right the first time, but GMing can be particularly tricky. After all, the novice…
| December 12, 2012 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
Run a campaign for long enough, and one of these will happen: Your players will ignore every subtle (and not-so-subtle) hint you throw at them, and do That One Thing that will tank the entire campaign. For whatever reason, the party swallows the Blue Pill, lets the Ringwraiths get the Ring, or vaporizes New Tokyo. Those opponents you created to challenge the party are a bit too challenging, and half the party is dead or dying by the end of the first round. Chalk it…
| September 20, 2012 | Posted by Don Mappin |
If only during the course of planning and play our games came with convenient warning signs like this. Sadly, since they don’t, you’ll just have to live vicariously through my own experience that, recently, included experiencing the feeling of impending termination from both sides of the screen. In reality neither of these are the end of the world, but certainly could have been handled better. The consideration of ending a campaign is not necessarily one to be wondered aloud in front of your players. Behind…
| February 24, 2012 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
I am not offering any GMing advice today. Instead I am sharing a story from my GMing past, because I believe sharing these types of things have a real value that is hard to categorize and quantify. Take from it what you will. I had a player in my games who was notorious for always playing the loner PC. His characters were not just orphans without any close friends, but they also consistently found reasons not to be with the other PCs no matter what…
| November 14, 2011 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
There’s a gulf between GMing theory and actual GMing, and standing in the middle of that gulf is you, the GM. You decide how to bridge what you know about GMing and what you actually do at the gaming table, and for me this is one of the trickiest aspects of GMing. I know a lot about GMing. I’ve been a GM for over 20 years, published two GMing books with the gnomes, blogged about GMing for five years, and written about GMing as an…
| November 9, 2010 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
As soon as I saw this comment from Chando42 in our Suggestion Pot, I started writing — this one’s a doozy! In fact, there’s so much too it that there’s no single theme that can tie together this article. Instead, I’m just going to tackle it piece by piece and try to offer useful advice for each element. It’s pretty freeform. My hips, I have shot from them! The truth is, I’m not the GM I thought I was. I must say, I read just…
| October 12, 2010 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
Have you ever heard the following said at a gaming convention, game shop, or at the game table? “The average RPG player is smarter than most people.” Maybe you have never heard that exact phrase, but phrases that imply the same thing count for the purpose of this article. RPGs are full of wonderful mental exercises. You must read and usually apply basic math skills in order to play an RPG. RPGs are full of puzzles and logical riddles that require concentration and focus in…
