Role-playing
The Old School Renaissance Handbook Dead Tree Giveaway
Update: The contest is now closed. Would you like to own a hardback copy of the Old School Renaissance Handbook? Would you like the only guide to 16 different old-school rulesets in pressed wood pulp form? This is the only version of the OSR Handbook that includes interviews with Kirin Robinson of Old School Hack, … Continue reading »
Relationship, Fact, and Opinion: A Character Development Tool
Martin Ralya asks in a private post on Google+: I want a system-neutral layer I can add to Call of Cthulhu character creation which gives every PC connections to, information about, and opinions on the other PCs in the manner of convention event pregens. It should only take a few minutes to implement during chargen, and … Continue reading »
Quick Promotion
I’m helping to run an online game convention, Indie+. It’s a con run as a set of independently-run games and panels, all organized centrally and run as Google+ Hangouts. It’s running this week. I volunteered to shepherd the gaming side of things. There are quite a few moving parts, including several different schedules to sync. I figured it’d be no big deal, as we were running this for the first time, so I wouldn’t have too … Continue reading »
A Troublesome RPG
How do you encourage players to make interesting story choices? Imagine a mechanic that encourages delayed gratification, that frequently poses this question: Should I get what I want now, or ensure I’ll get what I want later? We can accomplish this with a simple in-game economy of tokens to represent this delayed gratification: coupons that players … Continue reading »
4 Reasons to Be Excited About D&D Next
1. It’s a huge, open playtest, the first of its kind so early in the design process. Thousands of people will be publicly providing feedback on a game’s design, which will be improved and re-published for testing every month or two. 2. That design will go through designers. This isn’t an attempt to crowdsource rules; … Continue reading »
$200 of RPGs for $25
What You Get: Several dozen RPG products, including systems, adventures, worlds, and artwork, normally costing a total of $220. Price? $25. Why We’re Doing This: All the profits will go towards the Wayne Foundation, which fights child prostitution. That’s a pretty damn great cause. Why I’m Talking About It: I’ve put a handful of my products … Continue reading »
Helping Players Play Better
As a GM, how can you encourage your players to role-play more fully and effectively? That’s the trick, isn’t it? Let me introduce you to a tool called Drama Time. Come up with a term that will mark a switch in your game into intense storytelling mode. I call it “Drama Time.” Discuss this with … Continue reading »
Create a Little World With Your Friends
Microscope is a game of world-building. Grab a couple of friends and some index cards, and you make up a world’s history (or a significant chunk thereof). The game provides a helpful structure for keeping the players focused on world-building. If that sounds like fun, read on. The Basics of Building a World The group … Continue reading »
Great Generic RPG Systems
Many players come across a world that’s just begging to be role-played, but for which no system fits perfectly. So, how about grabbing a generic system? The following systems can be used to model just about any world or genre, and they’re all free (to various extents). d20 d20 is, of course, based on the … Continue reading »
You know what you need? A classic D&D retroclone
Update: I\’ve added an EPUB version of Dungeon Raiders, so you can read it on your Kindle, Nook, or other eReader. Download below. If you want a Dungeons & Dragons retroclone that explicitly mimics first-edition mechanics, you\’ve got Basic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Heroes Against Darkness, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, Searchers of the Unknown, and Swords & … Continue reading »