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Category “Advice/Tools”
Getting The Party Started
As a GM, there are few things I hate more upon starting a new game than the mess that inevitably arises from getting a load of PCs, who may not have anything at all to do with one another, into a vague semblance of a coherent group. Most of the time, it just feels like [...]
Death Is Only The Beginning
Death is the threat that hangs over every character, PC and NPC alike, at the table. For the longest time, death was the ultimate punishment. The consequence that couldn’t be topped. The fate that every character faced and every player hoped to help them avoid. The fear of death is a natural one because in [...]
“Why” and How It Can Improve Your Game
Willful suspension of disbelief is a concept that comes up a lot when talking about fiction. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s the idea that you sometimes have to stop your mind from saying “That’s ridiculous”, “That could never happen”, or “That is totally not real” in order to enjoy something. It boils [...]
D&D: It hurts so good
A couple weeks ago I wrote up a bit about how I was doing D&D wrong, but I didn’t feel like I was wrong to do it. Happily, that garnered quite a bit of discussion, more specifically on Twitter (where you can find me faffing about all day anyway) about what makes D&D “feel” wrong. [...]
D&D Discussion: Are you doing it wrong?
I used to post these updates over on my own site (www.vanitygames.com), which started out as a totally D&D DM blog-centric site. I was attempting to support my spouse, who had some vague aspirations towards game design, so I got into D&D so my spouse’d have a cheerleader on the sidelines. Well, that totally fell [...]
Kill the cleric!
Alternately titled: “Turning player loss into dramatic character death” but that sounds way less catchy. The setup: I have a player for whom we coined the term “D&Dmo.” When he was present at the table, and I mean present and not just sitting there, he was fantastic. Bright, beautiful, an engaging roleplayer, a great tactician, a [...]
More To Stealth Than Silence or Shadows
Whether you’re playing an epic high fantasy game, a gritty cyberpunk campaign, or a spooky horror game, chances are that characters are going to have to move around at some point or another with a great deal of stealth. They may have to sneak into a place, sneak around while in a place, sneak out, [...]
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