Dice Deliberations

  Questions like this are always fun; there are so many interpretations and answers and none of them are wrong. In this essay, I'm going to provide a few options, some serious and some not. Henry Cavill This is my celebrity pick. Sure, he's a hot star in both senses of the word; he's famous and has been in several fan-favorite shows. But from what I can tell, he's just doing all that to pay for his Warhammer Armies, and would rather spend an evening playing D&D than attending a Hollywood premiere. And the beauty of it is that while there's a lot of hype about his geekiness, that's just the press focusing on it, rather than him trying to promote it. There are other celebrities that would be amazing: Vin Diesel or Joe Manganiello for that same "well-publicized but personally quiet love of the game", Stephen Colbert for his oft-proven brilliance, Kevin Smith because...duh. Jon Favreau is a master director, actor, and chef, so he must be amazing at D...

  For TTRPGs, there seem to be three general types of applications available: Those that do some of the work for you, so that you don't have to, those that help you develop creations for your game, and those that help you keep track of everything you know about your game.  Help Handle the Work My must-have website when I'm running a game is Fantasy Name Generators . NPC names are a bane of every GM, since any person the party encounters may need one. Names generated by the GM on the fly can have similar-sounding names, not be appropriate to the area, or frankly just be lame. This website has collections of real names or generated themed names organized by type. The area we're playing in now uses Moroccan names, and using this site gives the whole campaign a consistent feel. As a bonus, it also helped name a geographically significant lake that I left unnamed for over 20 years. Another bane of gamemastering that never had a good solution was "initiative tracking". ...

  This isn't exactly a gadget, but it's something that I've had on my wish list since I saw it. I've always wanted a gaming table, but have never really wanted to spend either the money or the space to have one. The nice ones can replace a dining room table, but they also cost several thousand dollars. This table, the Gamefold table by Yarro Studios , is really just a folding table with special features. Dual Purpose The real value of gaming tables is that you have the game you're playing setup, but then can put a topper on it, so that you can use the space for meals and other home uses, in between games. This is really valuable for board games that either have a very long setup time, or games that have a long play time, and no "save game" feature to get you back to where you were. It's also valuable if you have a multi-session combat or dungeon exploration going on in a TTRPG, with miniatures that you don't want to have to photograph and setup fo...

  I haven't used miniatures for RPGs in years. Long before we stopped meeting in person, my main game switched from giant dry-erase girds and minis (often just "spare dice" for the monsters) to Roll20. And most or all of the other system games, convention games and one-off games that I run are theatre of the mind. So while I loved the process of shopping, painting and playing with miniatures, I didn't have a reason to get them. Three things changed this viewpoint. Tools and Skills for Painting My wife got me two Reaper Miniature Learn-To-Paint sets. These have a set of paints, 2 brushes, 3 specific miniatures, and instructions on how to paint each miniature to look good. They seem pricy at $45 each, but when I opened them, I saw that the set comes with 11 well-reviewed paints (assume $3 a bottle), 2 good brushes, 3 high-quality plastic minis, and that the case could serve for longer term usage and storage. That's pretty much $45. A month or so ago, I pulled the f...

  I used to be a big fan of GM screens. I could have my adventure, personal notes, dice, and anything secret hidden behind a 3-6 panel copy of the rules. In a world where players would try to see the adventure so they'd know what was coming next, a screen was a great asset to keeping the surprises secret. They were also useful for things like to-hit tables for the different character classes before THAC0 was invented. However, I realized that other than the to-hit tables, I rarely used them. I had memorized most rules and could find anything else I needed quickly. And over time, I moved from secrecy in my adventures, from hidden rolling, and similar reasons for having a screen. That said, I'll list a few screens I do like. Games I Don't Know If I'm running a game that I don't know well, it's useful to have a convenient reference at hand and not be forced to flip through a book for critical mechanics. I purchased Mythcraft and Shadows of Esteren . Both came with...

Numerous innovations have been made in dice over the last few years. In fact, my biggest takeaway from last year's GenCon was the number of unique dice vendors and the variety of dice. Previous innovations included metal dice, gem dice, and interesting fonts and etchings. Now, acrylic dice methods have been perfected. They allow liquid cores, objects inside the dice, and incredible color and material palettes. They've also made acrylic dice feel good so you aren't sacrificing with the new designs. In fact, the new designs inspired me to buy my first new set of dice in years; I purchased the Stained Glass design by Gatekeeper Gaming .  However, my "Desirable Dice" are the glowing, Bluetooth-connected Pixel dice by Systemic Games . Being LED dice where LED behaviors can be controlled by code and/or an app is almost enough to want to buy them. At their most basic, you can have them glow green for skill checks, yellow for saving throws, and red for combat. But you can...

I often give advice to other GMs on Reddit, Discord, etc. and I strongly "new GM month" in January in any way I can. And there's a lot of great "starter" advice to get new GMs going in terms of sizing their adventures to the time available, handle the unexpected, reminding them to have fun, etc. But today, I'll be talking about a few pieces of (related) advice that have really helped me as an experienced GM. Assume Players Can do Anything The 3.x Epic Level Handbook by Andy Collins and Bruce Cordell was designed to allow campaigns to go past 20th level. It included special spells, currencies, feats, class levels, target difficulties, and other such mechanics for the things that happened above 20th level and into very high levels. For that, it was fine, though no campaign I ran ever got past 17th level. However, what was REALLY valuable about the book was the (paraphrased) line "Assume that players know everything, can get anywhere, and get around anyth...

What makes a great player? Thinking about this was an interesting exercise; the campaigns and games I've run or played in, with game groups or at conventions, have all been very different experiences/  I've experienced great players and not great players. As I thought back on specifics, I developed a few consistent themes, regardless of system or story.  Supportive An RPG is collaborative storytelling, where everybody at the table is supposed to be having fun. When players keep that in mind and do what they can to support the table, the game, the other players, and the gamemaster, that's a sign that they are good players. We have a standard in my long-term campaign: Clarifying rules with the GM is appreciated. If the GM is making a special ruling or wants to run it differently, that's okay, but those of us who have been playing for decades across multiple editions often make mistakes: do you get a free 5-foot move to get out of range? Is an attack of opportunity trigger...

Dinner is Served As I've mentioned before, the current campaign in my world is a sandbox game. It's slower, has a lower power curve, and is really focused on the plot elements that the characters choose to pursue. Some of those elements still end up with dungeon crawls, boss mobs, loot and threats, but there's a lot of engagement at a character level, instead of just the story level. And an NPC center-point of this campaign is "Mom." Mom is a ranked priest of Cime (Kimmy) of Spring, the goddess of the season, fertility, sex, beginnings, and impulsive decisions. Her rank is such that she is also a leader in the House of Dawn, which includes the related gods: Artem (the ever-changing but reliable moon), Body, Magic, "the Fool", Life, and the Sea. Nobody is sure how old Mom is. It's clear that she's at least 60, given how old her children are. She has an ageless look, but might be older than that. She brushes off the question if asked. Nobody is sur...

Before I started writing this, I'd have said it was an easy question. The obvious answer is my 7-year campaign, called the Guardians of Ridlen . However, my two "honorable mention" callouts ended up being almost full writeups of their own, so I'm going to just go with it and include all three. The Guardians of Ridlen  The concept of this campaign was that in the prosperous country of Thorin, there were seven duchies and the characters were special problem solvers assigned to and reporting directly to a duke. I'd run one campaign earlier, when I lived in New York, called "Guardians of Greenlen." I liked the concept and decided to change the location for the next game, when D&D 3e came out. The campaign started with just two players, but quickly expanded to include numerous players over several years, but ultimately ending up with six core players. The growth was friends, friends-of-friends, and one person I met at a game store who seemed nice, so got ...

In the 20+ years my gaming group has been together, I've run about 14 years of games spread across three campaigns. In those 14 years, we've had some incredible multi-session adventures and story arcs. Today, I'll describe one of the most memorable of those. The Moon Realm of Drendir In my first campaign, the characters (mid-to-high level) had to acquire artifacts and information that didn't exist anymore, so they entered the dream realm of an ancient elf by the name of Drendir who was also the Old God of Artem, one of the two lunar objects.  At the time of the campaign, Drendir was long dead and had been replaced by one of the new gods, but the old gods of my world are strong dreamers; the death of an elf-god didn't necessarily mean the death of his memories of his life. In Sherlock terms, the realm was literally his "mind palace", and was somewhere that could be found if you knew where to look. The realm was multi-phased and each phase was defined as a ...

  I'm not even going to try to limit my answer to one example. There are just too many things that make a session great, and so at least a few examples deserve to be called out: Dungeon Crawls I have to start with a special callout to dungeon crawls in general. Each one, if designed well, sticks with the group in the mental archives of what you did. They are filled with challenges and loot at much higher rates than you get through exploration and RP, they involve epic wins and failures, and some of the funniest stories come out of them. There was a dungeon I had only half-finished when the session started. It was okay, they always started by going left, so I was prepped enough. They went right, so I turned the map over, and proceeded as if I'd meant to have them to right the whole time. There was a dungeon that was only there because the party chose to explore something I hadn't prepped. I basically ad-libbed the dungeon, and it included one party member exploring ahead, an...

  The next four days of RPGaDay questions are a progression of RPG memories, which cover a larger scope of time with each day: Memorable Moments of Play Sensational Session Amazing Adventure Classic Campaign As always, I don't look or think ahead, but in this case, I had to put at least a *little* thought into what each represented relative to the others. (It's obvious when you write them down, but not when you just grab the next prompt off the list, and see something similar for the next day.) Matrix Games I think the most memorable moment, or at least one of my favorites to share, was in a game of Cthulhu on Campus  using  Hamster Press Matrix system , by Chris Engle. To clarify the story, I'll give a bit of background on how that system works. Matrix games are designed to be very narrative and cinematic: Each stand-alone module sets out a scenario in a given genre, and players take roles within the story. A twist is that while the storytelling may be collaborative, the...

  This one is a no-brainer, for me personally. The most engaging RPG community I personally interact with is the Cypher System community, and the heroes of this are the Cypher Unlimited team. For this article, I'm going to share what makes it an engaging community, as well as a valuable one. Welcoming The group at its core is welcoming. On the one hand, people who like the Cypher System are a bit fanatic about it (in the best possible way) so are very accepting of anybody new who wants to be part of that community. When people show up on Facebook or the Cypher Unlimited Discord, they are welcomed to the community. People often reach out to them and offer help--and that help is delivered at a level where people are, not where the community "wants" them to be. New players, new Gamemasters, OG players who are just new to Cypher system, people who don't get it or people who have legitimate issues are all welcomed. Diverse This touches a bit on what I said above. And by ...