For many years I lovingly crafted soundtracks for my sessions, occasionally even adding sound effects. Done well, music enhances immersion in the game and kicks engagement into a higher gear. Done so-so, it still adds to the game, but ends up serving as little more than pleasant background noise. Done poorly, it distracts from the … Read more
It varies greatly based on the game we are playing and the campaign I’m running. Typically at the start of a campaign I’ll set out to find art that either matches my vision or helps inspire me. This is particularly helpful when launching non-fantasy game as it helps people grok the tone, atmosphere, and/or vibe … Read more
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. Pathfinder Playtest Review: Roll for Combat looks at the new Pathfinder 2 rules and how well it does in achieving its “different, yet familiar” goal. It’s a lengthy read so you’ll want … Read more
“Good game.” I can’t point to one particular compliment that stands out from all the others, but any time we have a great session and someone goes out of their way to say “good game”, I appreciate it. A great example of such sessions are “Terror in the Woods” and “Strange Thunder”, two episodes from … Read more
I’m contemplating a return to lunchtime gaming. It’s been on hiatus for quite a while do to an overwhelming lack of time, but I miss it and so do the rest of the Gamer Working Group. As a brief re-cap, the Gamer Working Group consists of a few RPG players at my day job and one … Read more
I struggled with this one until I read the earlier iteration in the originating blog post: “Which RPGs do you enjoy running even if they are difficult for you?” Two games immediately come to mind. The first is Dungeon World, which I ran as a one-shot at Nuke(m)Con 2017 (my gaming group’s homegrown convention). It’s a very … Read more
It’s been an exceedingly long day at work and home, so to avoid falling behind on #RPGaDay2018, I’m going to point to a blog post I wrote about the life and times of the Aeon Harrier, one of the signature starships from our Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic campaign. Its flight through a protostar nebula (a … Read more
As a group we’ve become more tolerant of non-standard character concepts, especially when it comes to the World of Greyhawk. When our Dungeons & Dragons campaign started 20 years ago, we were diehard devotees of Greyhawk canon (there is a reason, after all, why the biggest Greyhawk fan website is called Canonfire). We had holy wars over whether you … Read more
There was once a Blackrazor redshirt named Zilanderan. A strange man, Zilanderan claimed to be part of a larger, near-infinite multiverse of alternate realities. He’d excitedly talk about how this multiverse interacted with this, the Prime Material Plane, boring his cohorts to tears until something happened to break the tension. Alas, the eccentric warrior-mage was … Read more
It’s a toss up between Forceful Truth and Zilanderan … but I want to write about Zilanderan for “Wildest Character Concept” for Day 12 so Forceful Truth it is. A few years ago another player in my lunchtime gaming group took on the dungeon mastering role because he wanted to try out a still-mystifying Dungeons … Read more