This trope post is going to be a bit different. Instead of applying tropes to characters or adventures, why not explore a few tropes that could apply to the actual structure of a campaign? As I’m pondering about my last campaign, I decided that I would spare you the analysis and discuss the key lesson […]
Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: The Truman Mirror Tomato Surprise!
This is a series that explores Tropes and tries to apply them in RPGs. Have a look here, I wrote over 20 of these so far. So Sorry for the double feed, something happened when I posted this the 1st time and 1/2 the text was eaten! One of the things I’ve seen GMs struggle […]
Chatty’s Mailbox: The Magnificent Villain
While I was writing my 300th milestone post, I got a very interesting email from a reader. Here’s what he wrote: Good afternoon! I’ve been a long time reader of and commenter on your blog, and I was looking for some brainstorming help. Specifically, what kind of holds could a magnificent bastard have over a […]
Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: The Quest Improbable
It’s been too long I know. After having done more that 20 Trope related posts, it becomes kind of daunting to try to produce one that won’t be a re-hash of a previous one (or, you know, bad!). As I was losing time on the TV Tropes wiki looking for some more character specific trope […]
Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: The Crowning Moment of a Character
As I reading through the recent changes on TVtropes.org, I stumbled upon a Trope whose application to RPGs is as simple as it is brilliant: Crowning Moment Of Awesome The moment in a show when a character does something for which they will be remembered forever, winning for them the eternal loyalty of fans. While […]
Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: This is the End, Friend
No no, I’m not ending this series, no worries. As mentioned here, I’m exploring “Endings” as applied to RPG campaigns… Many long-lasting Role playing campaigns based on power-gaining PCs hinge around a progressively increasing threat that almost invariably escalate to the World Destroying level. The threat usually takes the form of an impeding Cataclysm that […]
The Rule of Fun!
(Image stolen from Critical Hits) This blog was more or less noticed because of one short text I wrote way back last summer about a Wiki I discovered and a fundamental rule that I believed a successful DM should live by. There is another one, related to the Rule of Cool, made specifically for games: […]
Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: Have Time, Will Travel.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the Bronze Dragon flying toward the sunset. In that post I challenged readers with a stupid question and the winner(s) could chose the subject of a Trope in RPG post. Davetrollkin stepped up first and requested I tackle Time Travel. Since time travel, much like the […]
Mining Tropes for RPG Goodness: You, Bastard!
As promised, after having covered the Overlord trope in all (well at least some of) its RPG glory, I now want to tackle another of my favorite character tropes: The Magnificent Bastard (I’m making no reference whatever to any good friend of mine, honest!) Love him or hate him, there’s a certain type of character […]
Mining Tropes for RPG Goodness: Fighting Depression with some Deep Pression!
This is the blog’s 200th post! I’ve written a lot of stuff in the last few months, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. Thank you one and all for giving me the continued gratification of reading these many lines! Now instead of making this a stats-laden article, I thought I’d write another post from my most […]
Recent Comments