Archives
Published in
8 min readFeb 3, 2019
2024
August
June
May
- Divination
- Villain motivations: Heroism
- Villain motivations: Corruption
- Villain motivations: They’re just evil
- Villain motivations: Revenge
April
March
February
- How do you want to do this?
- Tips & tricks for the non-professional GM
- Hurry up and wait
- Grounding questions
January
- Encourage player interaction: Stir the pot
- Difficult doesn’t have to mean confusing
- Challenge or certain death?
- Scaling evil
- Reflecting level-ups in game
2023
December
- Role-playing makes us all children
- The needs of the many
- Help! The party is sneaking past EVERYTHING!
- Individual yet ensemble
November
- The alley-oop
- No one fix
- Link: Make your Big Bad a lich
- It’s not just about the destination, but the journey to get there
- My first X card
October
September
August
- How to run a war
- One way out
- Too much of a good thing
- Link: How to create a compelling (but not overwhelming) backstory
- Individualist parties
July
June
- Customizing Snake Eyes
- YOU can prevent Storyteller burnout — Part 4
- YOU can prevent Storyteller burnout — Part 3
- YOU can prevent Storyteller burnout — Part 2
May
- YOU can prevent Storyteller burnout — Part 1
- The worst laid plans
- Your party is a character
- Players need to play along
- Tactics shmactics
April
- Maturing minions
- Practice makes perfect
- What rhymes with riddle? Part 2
- What rhymes with riddle? Part 1
March
- Players, characters & the waterslide
- No-win scenarios
- Random encounters
- Dramatic damage, part 2: Mechanics
- Dramatic damage, part 1: Storytelling
February
January
- Fight scene flow chart
- Putting the pieces together
- Avoiding the wind-down
- NPCing someone else’s character
2022
December
November
- RPG crypto follow-up
- Sweet and simple
- Your plot’s in the way of my character
- Chonkers
- RPG crypto
- What’s their name?
October
September
August
- What would my character do?
- When to roll for initiative
- Survival at a cost
- How to tell what’s strange in an RPG world
- Foreshadowing
July
- Loaded Dice 4 — And also a short hiatus
- Video: Getting your party to RP with you
- Crafting a “big” world
- Player versus player
June
- Last-minute update
- Video: How to keep your BBEGs around just a little longer
- Tanking for Storytellers
- Attainable, exciting, rewarding
May
April
March
- Checking boundaries
- Nothing is carved in stone
- Backstory versus personality
- Being the center of attention
- Having “the talk” with a player
February
- Give your Storyteller a heads-up
- When the game stops being fun
- Non-optimized builds
- Notes from another Storyteller
January
- World-building toolkit
- Keep a shenanigans list
- Mastering mastermind plots
- Does the Storyteller need to know all the rules?
2021
December
- Character backstories
- A whole new world
- Putting characters through hell
- Razorsnout, our best friend for five minutes
- Role-play amongst yourselves
November
October
- Playing through the past
- “What would you like to do?”
- Fixed points in time: Avoiding immutable moments in your game
- The No-Prep Gamemaster review
September
- Luck of the dice
- Table talks
- Reassuring your players
- Killing off player characters
- Combats are chaos, crises offer control
August
July
- Tactics outside of combat
- So you’ve figured out my evil plan…
- RP handholds
- Front-load your story guidance
- In-world rules before game mechanics
June
- How to lead players into story areas they are ignoring
- Pacing dramatic arcs
- Putting some meat on a scene
- How to build a house (rule)
May
- Practice makes perfect — but it also takes time
- Short session pacing
- How to foster role-playing when you’re bad at characterization
- Taking control of player characters
April
- Player buy-in: Storytelling edition
- Art for your games
- Pyrrhic victories
- Always give your players a goal
March
- Short first acts in RPGs
- Link: VtM shows the right way to confront an RPG’s problematic past
- On surprising your players
- Make sure your player characters shine
- Crises as combat scenes
February
- Player-initiated scenes
- How it all comes together
- What does a session of TBRPG look like?
- When players play to lose
January
2020
December
- Brass tacks: How concrete details help your players better react to a scene
- Main character material
- That… did not go as planned
- Don’t sweat the plot reveal
- Getting wallflowers off the wall and helping them bloom
November
- Curveballs: Planning your game around the chaos of dice & players
- Try and try again
- Finding my voice and my agency
- Beware self-awareness
October
- More and less than myself
- Rewards
- Plotting a romantic arc
- The room where it happens
- Autism follow-up
- Ada’s Three Laws of Storytelling
- Animosity as a tool
- Flexible crises
September
- Careful with the kooky
- What to include in the last session of your game
- What should the first session of a game look like?
- 10 things for players to remember
- 7 things to think about when making NPCs
- Let your players build your NPCs
- Knocking NPCs down a notch
- Creating a crisis on the spot
August
- Emergency exposition
- How to play with the party
- Links: Accessibility & disability in RPGs
- Character versus crunch
- Balancing crunch
- Link: Creating a code of conduct
- Quirky NPCs
- First-game jitters
July
- Farewell to Grant Imahara
- Following your own advice
- New Werewolf game
- Less is more
- TBRPG wrap-up
- Link: Dice shops
- Role-playing & power-gaming
- Boundaries & compromises
- Snake Eyes preview
June
- Minor, move and standard actions
- Some new (to me) map artists
- Link: A Guide to the Pathfinder Skill System
- Make the changes you want to see in the world
- Link: Use Emotions To Make Sessions Memorable
- A new Snake Eyes update
- I love your enthusiasm, but hold on a second
- Creating characters with my players
- Link: Tip to Address Overpowered PCs
May
- Link: Introducing Large NPC Casts
- Gaming with autism
- Link: Littlebox RPGs
- De-Flanderizing an NPC
- How to talk to your Storyteller
- Flanderizing characters
- Advice for a new or returning player
- Dealing with limitations
- A Snake Eyes update!
April
- eRPG update
- eRPG
- Link: Breathe Fresh Life Into Your Cities
- Link: Create Compelling Monsters With These 3 GM Tips
- Anatomy of a guide NPC
- Playing RPGs virtually
- Gaming at a distance
- Gaming with obsessive tendencies
- Link: Onboarding New Players
March
- Guest post: How to Play Storium in Meatspace
- Pacing an RPG
- Link: Confined Space Campaigns
- Mystery plots & investigations in TTRPGs
- Guest post: Storium in the Time of COVID-19
- Quicksand: Navigating the sandbox
- Link: How To Arrest Your Characters In Style
- When paradigms clash
- Link: Gaming Horror Stories to Avoid
February
- Guest post: Kindred: The Embraced was the Best and Worst LARP ever
- Link: How To Get Away With Playing Antagonists
- Link: DMing by the seat of your pants
- Scenes with more than one goal
- Tydalus: Dark Tide cover
- Link: Renamed D&D modules
- Link: FATE RPG calls out Lovecraft’s racism
- Be creative on the battlefield
- Snake Eyes update: Nomenclature
January
- Layering scenes for impact
- Updated Snake Eyes stuff!
- Making the game fun is your job, but not your whole life
- Vampire check-up
- Link: D&D manuals for kids
- Role-playing a jerk
- Link: Tips for Storytelling Horror
- Pivoting a scene as a player
- Prototype Snake Eyes character sheet
2019
December
- Link: 5 Incredible Indie RPGs
- How to get your gaming fix between sessions
- Snake Eyes update
- The best NPCs suck
- Early release!
- Flawed characters
- Loaded Dice
November
- We’ll be back in December!
- Starting up Tydalus again
- Playing trouble-makers
- Coping with struggles by learning from them
- When in doubt, play an investigator
- Storytelling for part-time players
- Link: One Page Dungeon & City Generator
October
- Playing a character from a book or movie
- Link: Tips for Playing D&D When You Have Social Anxiety
- The ol’ switcheroo
- Wheelhouse characters
- A case for group character creation
- And we’re back
- Surgery and spotty updates
September
- Building the world for your players
- Nurture your badass
- Making a sad character
- Reusing an old character
- Playing to your audience
- Roll20 progress
- 100% off-topic this time
- Maps & mapping assets: 2-Minute Tabletop
- Learning Roll20
August
- Running a campaign for the second time
- 99% off-topic
- When players get sidetracked
- Link: Tips to help restart games after a hiatus
- Scheduling games
- Link: How to create “good” villains for your campaign
- Slow progress is still progress
- Level-based vs. purchase-based RPGs
- Snake Eyes: Learning from other systems
July
- Storyteller tool: Exposition
- Character buy-in
- What I learned as a player this year
- RPG system: White Wolf
- RPG system: Dungeons & Dragons
- RPG system: Big Eyes, Small Mouth
- Vampire session #2: Just another night in Rail City
- RIP my Wraith campaign
June
- Combat: Maps vs. Theater of the Mind
- Snake Eyes: Equipment
- When GMs are players
- Wraith session #10: Major problems & two players out
- Link: How to Participate in Free RPG Day
- Snake Eyes
- Link: Red Nose Day 2019
- Jumping in
- Wraith session #9: Low-energy game sessions
May
- When the PCs fail a critical roll: Success at a cost
- Link: Visualizing the Fantastic with Geek & Sundry
- Update & an announcement!
- Wraith session #8: Proactive vs. receptive players
- New Vampire game
- Follow-up: Fixing my character
- Communication between Storytellers and players
- Fixing my character
- Wraith session #7: One missing player & a hangover
- Equipment and consumables
April
- Tools: Dice rollers
- Yes And
- Psychopaths can be team players, too
- When combat goes wrong (and how to fix it)
- Link: Geek & Sundry on NPCs
- A sound emotional investment
- Wraith session #6: No hurdles!
- Example crisis scene: Dealing with anxiety
- Wraith session #5: Non-game anxiety
- RPG system: Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG
- RPG Storytelling with migraines
March
- Storytelling for kids
- Wraith session #4: Player engagement
- Multiple choice
- Accepting the stumbles
- One-on-one role-playing
- Wraith session #3: Our first combats
- Last-minute NPC saves
- Putting the fear of death into your players
- My second Wraith session: More anxiety causing more mistakes
February
- Using a Costoryteller while maintaining authority
- My first Wraith session: Dealing with intra-party conflict
- The lies we tell
- Minions in a boss fight
- Follow the NPC
- Aggravated damage in White Wolf
- Storytelling for first-time players
- Why I stopped using wound penalties
- Keep an open door & put out the welcome mat
- Collaborative character creation
- Play to your Storytelling strengths
- Don’t try too hard to surprise your players
January
- Wraith characters are ready to go!
- How I ruined a game without actually doing anything wrong
- What is a role-playing game?
- Maybe don’t kill everyone
- Should you give an NPC enemy a high defensive value or lots of hit points?
- New game starting tomorrow!
- The Crisis System
- How much to plan, and how much to make up on the fly
- Group cohesion & working together
- Group rolls
- The carrot & the stick
- NPCs in combat
- NPCs: Authority figures
- Connecting PCs to the plot
- Sandbox vs. rail games
- Making it feel real
- What makes a good RPG story?
- Planning your game or winging it
- Costorytellers
- Why I don’t use combat or RP scene XP rewards anymore