Take A Setting and Spin It

One of the things I like doing with an established setting is to focus on a particular aspect of the societies and norms inherent to it and either highlight or twist it slightly. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, even small tweaks can actually have significant effects on how a game feels and plays [...]

The Care and Feeding of Players, Or Being a Nicer GM

One of the topics that deserves more airtime would be the obligations that GMs have to their players. Given that GMs tend to be more vocal about their games than players do, it’s easy to get side-tracked into taking a solid GM stance, without taking the time to look at what we’re doing before blaming [...]

The Curse of the Lazy GM

In a counterpoint to yesterday’s article, Sheimaruen contacted me to talk at length about the other side of the coin, the subject that tends to be glossed over in many an article regarding the issue of Metagaming: that of the Lazy GM. To put it simply, Metagaming occurs whenever a player knows something that the [...]

The Fun of Being Ignorant

Sometimes, it’s fun to be oblivious. When I end up playing a game, I try very hard to achieve a certain level of knowledge in the campaign setting as to make the GM’s job easier. It’s difficult to convey the nuances of an entire campaign to people who haven’t read the book, so for my [...]

The Art of Compelling Settings

Settings are memorable when there is something about them that makes the players want their characters to go there and do something. The art of creating compelling settings isn’t easy, and that despite the title, I don’t have everything honed to perfection, but there are a few things that every GM should be aware of [...]