Posts Tagged by Tips
| October 17, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Over the past few years, it’s become clear to me that I suck at pitching games to my players. That realization goes hand in hand with another: I’ve muddled my way through this key aspect of being a GM for 20-plus years without ever really knowing what I was doing. Sometimes I pitch a game and it gets traction right away, and we play it and it’s fun, and unicorns are fucking while an angelic choir sings in the background, but I have no real…
| October 10, 2012 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
Bringing a particular mood to a gaming table is one of the most difficult things for a GM to wrangle. First, a given group’s play style has to be receptive to mood-based storytelling. The players gathered for a beer ‘n’ pretzel-style table, for instance, are unlikely to embrace the approach, no matter how skillfully the GM executes it. The jocular table banter — which is how such a group defines “fun” (all the power to them) — pretty much precludes any other attempt at creating…
| October 9, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article was written by Gnome Stew reader John Fredericks, and it tackles the topic of gaming with kids as young as four years old. Thanks, John! As parents we all hope to pass on our interests to our children. Whether it is sports, music, art, or gaming, we hope to see that glimmer of interest in their eyes. However, sometimes it takes and sometimes it doesn’t. Not every child (or adult) is wired to like roleplaying games. However, if parents play with their…
| August 16, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Guest author David Miller is a displaced Louisianian living in Calgary, AB Canada. He is a husband, father, minister, GM, and gaming convention planner. He and his game group plan Underground Con in Calgary, and he tries not to take too many breaks in his home game. No one really likes death, and for certain no one gets excited by the prospect of dying. When player characters die in a game, there is often fighting and fist shaking involved. For example: Seeton was a sorcerer,…
| July 30, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article was written by reader Ryan Latta, who took Phil Vecchione’s Prep-Lite articles — and other articles about keeping prep light — to heart, put them to use, and wrote about the results. Thanks, Ryan! I hate prepping for a game. In fact, the more prep work I find myself doing, the less excited I am to GM whatever it is I’m prepping. Naturally, I was captivated by many of the articles here on “Prep-Lite” and began to apply as many of those…
| July 24, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
I recently got to play two sessions of Marvel Heroic Roleplay (which rocks — it captures the feel of supers better than any other RPG I’ve played, including FASERIP Marvel; see Don’s recent article for more in that vein) and I used a trick to speed up my turns that I thought was worth sharing. While I was a player in this game, not the GM, the trick applies equally to GMs — and to games other than MHR. And it’s super-simple: Just color code…
| June 21, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article was written by John Fredericks, and addresses a topic every GM bumps up against periodically: time, and not having enough of it to do everything you want to do during a session. Thanks, John! Ever played in a session that just would not end? Maybe the GM just couldn’t bring things to a close, and you had work the next morning. At that point, you really didn’t care about the fourth owlbear. Or maybe it was a convention and you wanted to…
