Posts Tagged by techniques
| September 19, 2012 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
If you’re the GM, you accept the fact that you are the monster guy. It’s your pleasure and privilege to bring to life the bad guys in your world. Invariably, though, the pace of the game can rob you of that fun — portraying evildoers, that is. You are the devious designer of hundreds of snares and pit traps placed throughout the underground warren by the mad kobold king … which the PCs just sidestepped, outright avoided, and foiled on lucky rolls, not triggering a…
| July 19, 2010 | Posted by Phil Vecchione |
One question that comes up over and over when I talk to different GMs is about how to take notes for their session. It is a topic that I take personally, as I have gone through a number of different note taking styles and used all sorts of different tools, over the years. Thanks to Stew reader Tabulazero for suggesting this article topic. Rather than this being an article all about types of notebooks, special pens, and templates, I want to discuss the philosophy of…
| November 4, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
One of the best ways to convey the theme of your campaign, the tone of your game, and the flavor of the game world is to use reinforcement — specifically, reinforcement of small things. This technique is based on two principles: Choose elements that represent what you want to convey, and repeat them. As part of your game prep, consciously choose a few things you can reinforce. They don’t all need to get crammed into one session, and they should come up organically — but…
| October 7, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
There are many ways to build a good character, but one aspect that often gets overlooked — or conversely, over-worked — is motivations. If you know what motivates a character — PC or NPC — you can extrapolate a lot of other things on the fly. The trick is not to make your motivators too broad or too focused. Too broad, and they’re meaningless (“She’s motivated by a desire to do the right thing”); too narrow, and they either dominate the campaign or never come…
