Delta wrote a nice little post about who keeps the character sheets in different game groups. My practice has been for the last three or four campaigns is to encourage players to let me keep their character sheets. I carry my books and games notes in file folder box. I keep the character sheets in …
Category: game mastering advice
Not Every Session Will Be Good
And that's OK. If you want to be good at anything, you have to suck at it first. This include game mastering. The unfortunate situation with game mastering is that you have to suck in front of your friends and they have sacrificed some part of their precious time to experience the suck. Therefore, there …
GM Advice: Steal From Everywhere
I use , mechanics, technique, concepts, art, non-player characters from anywhere I can find them. History, screen writing books, other games, TV, people I work with, business podcasts, documentaries... everywhere. GMing well is difficult. Make it easier by stealing good ideas and combining them. This camouflages where they come from and the combo may even …
Not All Metagaming Is Bad
I roll almost everything out in the open for my Swords And Wizardry game. That includes monster hit points, monster to hit rolls, monster saves and random encounter rolls. The random encounter roll is one that my players metagame all the time. If they make noise trying to break down a door in a monster infested …
Embedded Story Through Magic Items
You can tell the story of your campaign milieu through the embedded stories of the magic items your characters encounter. One of the magic items in my campaign is known as The Sword of Osmund. At first, the players only knew about its most basic mechanical benefits in combat. It is a +3 sword. It …
I Don’t Know. I Don’t Care.
Here's how I run my Swords and Wizardry campaign. I don't know how any of it turns out. I don't care what direction the players decide to go. In practical terms, here's how that works. I created a map. I created a rough history of the setting, a Yes/No list of what was in it, …
The Dichotomy of “World” Focus and Character Focus
All the WoTC versions of the world's greatest adventure role-playing game have put the player character into the foreground. Their character are supposed to be the most interesting thing to your players. I admit, at one time, I think I would have agreed with that. Why shouldn't the player be more excited and more emotionally …
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Grumpy Wizard 
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