I’m starting to get annoyed at all the hate being spewed about the Tyranny of Fun, whatever the fuck that expression means. I won’t link to any of them as I find that a rational discourse on this is nigh impossible seeing how emotionnaly charged the atmosphere around that screwed up concept is. Google it […]
Player Motivation and Types Revisited, Again
The Gen Con 2008 seminar I’ll co-host with my friends DNAPhil, Zach and Vicki is going to be about sharing tips with GMs about prepping RPG game session . My parts of that seminar (What I’ve been doing most nights of this week and possibly the next one) will cover Using Tropes (yay!) and Player […]
Afterschool Tropes Special: What’s That Fridge Doing at the Table?
I’ve decided to rename my trope series because the posts feel like I’m writing a new season. I’m also experimenting with slightly different formats of trope posts. It remains to be seen if I’ll be jumping the shark or making the series grow a beard. Have you ever had the experience, at school, in your […]
Chatty on 4e: Exploration vs Competence / Fun vs Satisfaction!
I’ve mentioned in older posts that D&D 4e seemed to go back to the roots of the game for simplicity of Game Prep and monster stats. So far this has been true. At worse, game stats for level 30 creatures take one full column of the Monster Manual. Such baddies are usually limited to 4-5 […]
The Stages of a RPG Team’s Development, Part 6: Stagnation
Somewhere between September and October of 2007, I wrote a series about comparing a RPG gaming group to a workplace project team. The analogy was rather solid and I got a lot of good feedback on it. Since then, I was pointed toward Kyle Aaron’s similar work over here. There, he pointed out a key […]
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 […]
(Really)Mini-Post: A GM’s Authority
I took two days off from work today and tomorrow and that somewhat includes blogging (unless I get an inspiration like I just did now). I’m currently writing a guest post for another RPG site and while I was editing my work, I added this small sentence: It’s one thing to have a rule book […]
Mini-Fluff: More on-the-fly world building
Mini-posts are approx. 500 words posts on one of my pet subjects. I usually do them when I have a busy evening, like Adventure Preping or doing things like, you know, exercise! I’m deep in adventure prep, deeper than I have been for a long time. I don’t know if it’s the same for you […]
Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat…
Sooooo, a few days ago Vanir puts up a post about what his Epic Level Heavy-Metal Bard called Bat Loaf did when he was riding the Tarrasque with his pals. My brain broke down somewhere down the line but now that my memory matrix has been reconstructed, it seems that Bat Loaf got his metal […]
Robin's Laws Revisited: Part 2, Player Types and Traits
This post is part of a new series that explores Robin Laws’ seminal work on GMing. This time I tackle the book’s fundamental subject of player types and what they seek in RPGs. Part one can be found here. The second chapter of Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering brings up the subject that knowing […]
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