Blogworthy is a regular column dedicated to blog posts that I’ve read and enjoyed. It’s a direct outcome of my RPG Blogs Reading List on Feedly. 5 Reasons Someone Might Build a Dungeon Filled With Clues, Tests, and Riddles: DM David runs down the reasons why someone might create archetypal puzzle dungeons like those featured in White … Read more
Gaming increased my confidence, made me more articulate, taught me how to lead small groups, and increased my organization skills. As a geek in middle school and high school, my self-confidence was low. I had a hard time meeting new friends and connecting with my peers (who often bullied me for being weird). Dungeons & … Read more
I played the best convention game of my life at GenCon 2000. It was a multi-round RPGA event called “Barbarian Lives”. It used the newly-released Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules to tell a soap opera-inspired tale of romance, heartbreak, and monster hunting. At the time, the Role-playing Gamers Association (RPGA) was still a notable … Read more
For those of us with kids, the answer’s easy: teach them how to play. I started teaching my son and his friends how to play three years ago during our annual summer vacation on Lake Champlain. Two years ago, our gaming group started scheduling “D&D Kids” sessions and running our children through the classic B2 … Read more
By getting the players and their characters emotionally invested in the world … and then leveraging that investment. Both of my RPG entries for #RPGaDay2018 — “Most memorable NPC” and “Favorite recurring NPC” — used this technique. Damocles Everton worked because the players were already heavily invested in the Blackrazor Guild, having saved it from the … Read more
Ideally players can make a world more real by helping to build it. Whether it’s creating organizations as background material for their characters or building out the finer aspects of an existing religion for use in the game, having players contribute to the campaign can be a tremendous boon. It distributes the creative responsibilities, easing … Read more
Calvin Cloudmore. He started off as an inept bandit who’s gang was wiped out by the adventurers that went on to form the Blackrazor Guild. With the party in need of a cleric (and Cal in need of redemption) he became a cleric of St. Cuthbert (albiet with a wisdom so low he had a … Read more
Damocles Everton, the upstart master of the Blackrazor Guild and agent of the Dark Circle tops my list. Hated by the player characters after he stole control of their guild from them, the appearance of Damocles kicked off an epic story arc that culminated with the Fall of Obsidian Bay, the hero’s home city. Everton … Read more
Imagination + good rules + group buy-in. Those are the elements that fueled our longest running games, even if the campaigns the RPGs were powering jumped from ruleset to ruleset. Our Blackrazor Guild campaign, now in its second decade, has seen numerous prequels, sequels, and spin-offs. It’s been run using Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, … Read more
My answer today is very different from my answer 20 years ago. There was a time when I loved a good, crunchy RPG, with a ton of splat books and optional rules (in short, Dungeons & Dragons 3.x). Implicit in the crunchiness was a love of customization and the flexibility that came with it. Now … Read more