Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is all about how to cleanse your stories from tropes during the worldbuilding stage. If you’ll consider the following Jurassic Park analogy: your original story, whose genesis is unique to you, is the dinosaur DNA. But during story development, you might find there are times when “strands” of it so to speak…
Today’s #GMAdvice is all about how to resolve disputes should they arise at the table. A majority of issues tend to stem from the perception of an uneven distribution of “screen time” – aka the time spent where the GM is primarily focused on a player – and/or items/treasure/goods. In these cases, it’s important for…
Today’s post comes from one of my favorite movies and story worlds: Lord of the Rings (again haha). I found myself watching Fellowship of the Ring for the upteenth time with my wife, brother-in-law, and future sister-in-law, when I saw a frame I had never noticed before that is just too stunning to not share…
I’m continuing the #newbieTuesday thread from last week on correcting some of the perception v. reality issues prospective players have about playing stories via role playing games. It may seem super basic to some, but I’m going to literally describe what it’s often like, sitting at the table, playing a story with your friends. At…
We hear “open world” all the time these days in video games & RPGs. For today’s #worldbuildingMonday post, we advise on to what degree your world should be open. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” answer of course. Should your story take place in an “open” but expansive city? A huge, multi-layered world? Etc. There are two main…
Today’s #GMAdvice centers around a hot feature that’s been making the rounds, especially in video games, in the past several years: the Nemesis system. There’s numerous incarnations of Nemesis systems of course but, at it root, a Nemesis system is one in which players are incentivized to have a rival or rivals throughout the duration…
Continuing from last week’s #tbtRPG, Isaiah is seated in the cargo area of the military spacecraft, staring out the window many thousands of feet above the chaos of Coruscant, the obvious thought hitting him: is this all real?⠀⠀Isaiah hears the Hundred Faced man in his mind: “Do not waver. Continue to act on what you…
Today’s post is all about #FourPlinko and RPG mini-games. Never heard of #FourPlinko? Well, that’s okay because it’s a mini-game that I made up for one of our RPGs several years ago! Mini-games are fun little side events GMs can throw into their stories (think Gwent in The Witcher or Blitzball in Final Fantasy) that…
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, barriers to entry for folks who’ve never played a tabletop role playing game before is the gap of perception between what playing stories is actually like vs. what the uninitiated believe it’s like. The next several #newbieTuesday posts will aim to correct some of those misconceptions. The…
For today’s #worldbuildingMonday post, we’re discussing how to set the stage for your world in a pre-session. Many downstream issues can be avoided here with some simple expectation setting exercises. Get everyone to the table. Your goal in a pre-session should be to play a one-off story – perhaps a prequel – using the system…
