This year has been a potent reminder that “may you live in interesting times” is a curse. The year has seen natural disasters, civil unrest, viciously polarized politics, and a massive global pandemic which has caused its own enormous set of problems. I have to admit, it was hard to […]
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I have made it known on both the podcast and this blog that I am not the world’s biggest fan of published adventures or settings. A lot of the creative enjoyment of GMing for me comes from making my own stuff, and with that as given, why would I skip […]
Today is election day in the US. If you’re reading this the day it drops, live in the US and haven’t voted yet, mask up (we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, after all) and go do so. Much depends on it. If you’re looking for a little late-in-the-game […]
Fall is usually the time when we turn to horror media. Halloween decorations of witches, skeletons, zombies, mummies, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster and more start to appear in the yards of houses, horror movies, books, and games all come out, and people embrace the weird and spooky. Large, multiplayer video games […]
As I’ve mentioned on the podcast, I have a supporting role in EN Publishing’s “Level Up” project, and they have, as of this writing, released three playtest documents. The Origins document, which details the new “race” mechanics (split into heritage and culture) and backgrounds, the first ten levels of the […]
This post has its roots in a recent blog post from Richard Beck in which he laments the worst effects of social media and makes the rather bold and controversial assertion that Christians shouldn’t be on social media. It’s a short post – I’d ask that you read it and […]
One thing that I have noticed on social media (specifically the TTRPG corners of Twitter) is that when people try to change things from how they’ve been done in the past, there’s often significant pushback. In addition to the usual nasty internet behavior such as name-calling, insults, sea lioning, and […]
My Sunday group finally got to play again this weekend after I had to cancel two sessions in a row. Because the sessions are every other week now, this meant that it was over a month since I last got to play with that group, and I was very anxious […]
One of the most common challenges of GMing is to keep coming up with NPCs that are meaningfully distinct. Another used to be coming up with names, but in today’s world of the internet, that one is solved. Between name generators, baby name sites, and sites that break down the […]
I’ve written about the planned game for the Saturday group a couple of times, but one thing that’s been interesting for me is that various meta-considerations have altered my plans for it, though the general plan remains the same. So let’s talk about the way that’s happened, how the changes […]
A quick acknowledgment and thank-you to my supervisor at work is in order. I had him look this over before I posted it, and he thought of a couple of things I didn’t. In particular, the note about URL shorteners is to his credit. This post has been on my […]
Things have stabilized enough where I feel comfortable coming back to the post I wrote about King’s Quest III back in May. I mentioned in that post that I think it’d make a good fantasy scenario – let’s take a look at what that scenario would work like. Meta Considerations […]