Image Source: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho Martin over at Treasure Tables had a recent post asking DMs what were ideal gaming sessions and the shortest ones we’re comfortable running (Quick Answer, 4 hours, 2 hours). That made me think of the shortest, craziest one-shot game I ever GMed. It was right before D&D 3.0 and, like […]
Nothing kills a fight faster than starting a combat.
Image Source: Fiery Dragon Productions A few months ago, while reading the most excellent, and sadly concluded, DM of the Rings webcomic, I came upon a very inspiring strip. I wrote a forum post about it but I’d like to re-edit it here instead of letting it fall off the 20th page. Shamus’ cynical comments […]
The Stages of a RPG Team's Development, Part 3: Storming
Let’s forge onwards in this ‘D&D and Workplace teams are similar’ analogy. With the four stages of a team’s development concept, we’ve covered the introduction and the forming of a new RPG gaming group. Now onwards to the choppy waters of a Storming group. Storming Half the players are reading from their manual, fiddling their […]
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Running on the Edge
Image Source: Gamespot This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki. All right, so Marty’s dead now and we need […]
Selling Fluff to a Crunch Diehard
I’m a crunch junky, always been and I know it. I love the rules especially those involved in the creation of monsters (I’m looking at you Mr Chaos-Shaped Were-Boar Ogre!) In fact, that’s probably why I like reading stuff by Mike Mearls (Iron Heroes, Book of Nine Swords, Book of Iron Might) so much. That […]
The Stages of a RPG Team's Development, Part 2: Forming
In part 1 of this series, I compared a management job to that of a DM. I really think the comparison holds on many levels as you’ll find in this post and the next ones. I then went out to introduce the 4 stages of a team’s development cycle. I concluded by saying that a […]
New DMing Challenge: RPG Improv with my Son
I just finished reading my 5 year-old son’s bedtime story from a Pokemon pocket novella. When we were talking about the story after I could not help but notice how much he still loved Pokemon and the whole concept of being a young pocket monster trainer. This gave me an idea. I have wanted to […]
The stages of a RPG team's development, Part 1: Introduction
Image Source: The Cartoon Source. Those who know me know that I’m a very meta-(insert subject) type of person. That’s why discovering the TV Tropes wiki made my month as a DM. But tropes are not all that I find fascinating. People interaction and motivation is also a great subject of interest to me. There’s […]
Online Tools, Take 3
I’ve been thinking about it for some time now and I finally set everything in motion this morning. (I love Sunday morning cartoons, both my kids are watching while I tap away and keep an eye on them to the sound of high-pitched laughter). After talking about it here and here, I went out and […]
Adventure Prep, Session 3: Adapting a published adventure
Image Source: Paizo’s Dungeon Magazine Two players can’t make it to the game next Friday. According to our social contract when 2 or more players are missing, we try to move the game back one week. While this extra time could allow me to prepare a super extra awesome adventure, I find that I spend […]
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