As a GM, you have access to a lot of information the players never see. This can be mutually frustrating, because you have ideas and concepts you never get to illustrate, and the players may have holes in their picture of the game world that they would like to understand. One of the less common techniques for giving the players a broader view of the world you’ve created ...

A lot of my gaming friends and I are into gaming as a storytelling experience. I tend to talk about improving games and focusing on the story at the table. That is how a lot of my games go. However, some of the recent books I’ve been reading, some of the movies I’ve recently seen, and some of the games I’ve run in and played ...

This is the fourth and final article in this series -- the home stretch. My definition of "roleplaying-intensive" is in Part 1, along with tips 1-3; tips 4-6 are in Part 2 and tips 7-9 are in Part 3.) 10. Driftable Mechanics (This topic was suggested by Gnome Stew reader Irda Ranger -- excellent suggestion, IR.) "Drift" just means taking an element -- usually a mechanic -- from one RPG and ...

(The first three steps, and my definition of "roleplaying-intensive," are in Part 1; tips 4-6 are in Part 2.) 7. Make Good on Your Promises By this point, you've made two promises to your players, one explicit and one implicit: Here's the kind of game I'm going to run. This is the explicit promise you made in in step three, when you pitched a roleplaying-intensive campaign to your players. The follow-through ...

(The first three steps -- and my definition of "roleplaying-intensive" -- are in the first post in this series.) 4. Choose Your System Wisely Suggested by the Stew's own Patrick Benson in the comments on the first roleplaying-intensive game post, picking a system that reinforces the kind of game you want to run is critical. Some games are just better suited to a focus on roleplaying than others -- despite all ...

There are probably as many ways to define "roleplaying-intensive" as there are gamers, but for talking purposes here's the definition I use: A game in which mechanics take a backseat to character interaction, where all (or nearly all) in-game decisions are purely character-driven and where most (or all) in-game conversation happens in-character. I've been running a Mage: The Awakening chronicle since October of 2007, and from the outset I ...