Dice Deliberations

  The Final Battle In the last session of my year-long arc as GM, the players went up against a crime boss who seemed to be the link to a key figure in a vast conspiracy. Their efforts had been going on for several months and they were starting to get close. They had names and locations, and had caused a lot of problems while getting this information. But the boss started lashing out with assassination attempts on the character pushing hardest for answers. The final days of the arc were spent checking out then invading the boss's headquarters building. Nearly two dozen opponents waited for them throughout his stronghold. Some were sentries at the door; others clustered in dining halls, or in the final room by the boss. Some were even sleeping during their downtime. The battles was fierce and dangerous--and the party claimed victory at the end of the day with only one opponent dead. For everybody else, they had used non-lethal tactics, allowing some to run, and leaving others uncons...

  As a GM, I love alternate planes and have used them for some of my most successful stories. To me, they represent an opportunity to throw out the normal rules, to define a custom reality, and to introduce story elements that are completely alien to the characters. I do this in two ways: I take elements from another plane, and I have them intrude onto the material plane in ways that the players can see and interact with. This could be inhabitants of other worlds wandering into the character's realm with goals, searching or exploring, or even just lost. It could be natural elements that don't exist making their way through, such as a massive, but isolated rainstorm that occupies a 100' radius around a strange key. Or it could be something that is supposed to be bound to a plane that escapes into the character's path. Alternately, I send the characters to another plane and have them deal with whatever they find there. This can involve figuring out the rules of a plane to...

  Volk the Scribe, by Steve Stark Mages write spellbooks. Storekeepers maintain records of their purchases and sales. Spies send secret correspondence between themselves and other people. Lovers send letters to each other. Travelers maintain a log of where they've been, and what and who they've seen. In a fantasy RPG setting, virtually everybody that players come across is writing. As my Trinity co-creator and I were discussing dwarves a few months ago we realized that there was an inherent problem and an opportunity. Dwarves are a very lawful and organized people with a strong sense of the community, and we realized that any old dwarven merchants probably have an obscene amount of writing that they've maintained over their career. Assuming they track every purchase, sale, inventory change, piece of correspondence and so on associated with the business, at the end of their 200+ year lives they must have chests full of dusty books, old scrolls and maybe even randomly scribbl...

Cover art for Grimtooth's Traps  by Flying Buffalo   Despite being a certified Evil GM (tm) I've never really been a fan of traps. I throw them in occasionally, but just mundane ones designed to keep people out, not the subtle ones that people have concocted over the years. Grimtooth's Traps is the grandfather of all trap books, and in it, and its many sequels, it brings the art of trap making to new heights. They are not just examples of how the traps look to players, but show the implementation of them and what it would take to create  (and possibly defeat) them. Traps like these are designed to be encounters on their own, with significant resources put into their creation and with a goal of not just deferring intruders, but often ending them. Still, they have just never been something I wanted to put into my dungeons--which makes it all the more surprising for my players when I do. Today, I'm going to be talking a few of my standard traps, and the innovations I'v...

  The Strongest Enemy Ever by Ry Spirit Nothing spices up a game like a good villain. They motivate the party, give the GM a legitimate way to annoy his friends and create story arcs that are memorable. For this essay, I'm going to go a little bit different than usual: I'm going to list some characteristics of a good villain, with some examples, but I'm also going to provide some examples of villains who were lessened because they didn't have these qualities. Personality The first, and most important characteristic of a villain is a personality. They can be arrogant, aloof, obsessed, deranged or even cheerful--but they have be something that makes them memorable when the party meets them, especially early on. There are so many wonderful examples of this, but I'm going to point to Joker in The Dark Knight as played by Heath Ledger. To me, that character comes into his own with the infamous "pencil trick" which cements him as dangerous and totally in charg...

  GURPS Complete Collection (with joke titles) - Uncredited Supplements are the backbone of the RPG industry. They not only offer more opportunities to build out a game system, but provide incremental revenue sources for the publisher and/or secondary creators. Today, I'm going to be talking about what I look for (or don't) in supplements. For purposes of this, I'm going to assume that there is a core book (or two core books) for the game. D&D has the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide as separate core books. Numenera split their one core book into Discovery and Destiny. Dungeon Crawl Classics has one book with everything. The Critical Few After I've read a new game's core book, the first supplement I reach for is its "Monster Manual" equivalent. After 40 years of gaming, I can bring up all the fantasy creatures I want for a game, but if  the game is Cthulhu horror, Science Fiction, Steampunk, Cyberpunk or surreal, I really want a...

  "Safety" by Griffstuff My pinned Tweet has been unchanged since I put it up last November, and I have no intention of changing it anytime soon. Its message is simple, and I'm reposting it and my response comment below: I just commented about safe-space gaming to someone. And I just want to reiterate: Every game I run is a safe table, regardless of race, gender, LGBTQ status, being an introvert or anything else. And if I don't know the players, I tell them that explicitly.   I have to add two things: 1. My table is also welcoming. I really appreciate people being there. 2. It also includes being welcoming to people who are new to the game we're playing. Everybody was new once.   Nobody should ever feel they made a mistake sitting at my #TTRPG table.   To carry these ideas forward, I'm going to describe a topic that is very dear to me: how I ensure that players always feel safe, comfortable and welcome at my table as a GM. I'll also touch on how I do that...