Posts Tagged by world
| May 7, 2013 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article is by John Fredericks, and it’s a unique idea we’ve never discussed here before. Thanks, John! Introduction All GMs long for player investment in their characters and in the campaign world. As GMs, we’re often (very) caught up in the planning and running of the game. This makes it difficult for us to gauge whether we are meeting the players’ expectations at the table. In this article, I’ll share an idea that I used recently to garner more player input on their…
| September 12, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Looking back at the first game you played, or GMed, can be illuminating, and as evergreen gaming questions go, “What was your first RPG?” is a good one. But another equally interesting question tends to go unasked — so I’m going to ask it here: What was the first setting you ran a game in? And as a follow-up: How has that setting influenced your GMing since then? The first setting you ever experienced as a gamer is also a good one to consider, but…
| March 12, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Ever since Troy’s article about running red box D&D for his kids at the end of January, I’ve been immersing myself in the OSR (Old School Renaissance). It’s been a ton of fun, and one aspect in particular has been some of the most fun I’ve had as a GM in years. Even though I started gaming with the Mentzer red box, I never fully experienced old school play in the most classical sense (a group of treasure hunters/tomb robbers go on dungeon crawls to…
| May 1, 2009 | Posted by Matthew J. Neagley |
My new campaign is starting this weekend, and my group opted to make use of Dawn of Worlds to design the game world. Dawn of Worlds is a collaborative world building system for use with RPGs, novels, or anything else for which you’d need a world. It’s system neutral which makes it useful for anyone, and it’s a lot of fun in it’s own right. We used Dawn of Worlds for a number of reasons, and coming away from it, I can say I’ve learned a few things…
| April 13, 2009 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Over the years, I’ve met lots of GMs who’ve created and lovingly detailed their own campaign settings, most often for D&D. These settings are usually extensively developed, complete with maps, country write-ups, elaborate histories — the whole nine yards. But as much as enjoy writing setting material, I’ve never actually done this myself. I’ve dabbled — drawn detailed maps for fantasy worlds, written chunks of material for specific cities, etc. But I’ve never had what I consider to be one of the quintessential GMing experiences:…
| March 4, 2009 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Fang asks, What Makes the Perfect Gamemaster?. It is having fascinating world, scenarios and characters? Being able improvise, but not railroad? Perhaps if one lets players act whenever / however they like? I’m a big proponent for keeps things moving; is that it? Maybe a perfect gamemaster can handle a split party with perfectly equal spotlight time? Memorizes all the rules? Is fair to the players but not the NPCs? I like his required skill set, though they’re as impossible to reach as perfection implies.…
