Set up questions. Questions demand answers. Adventures lead to answers. An adventure location in one of my old campaigns. A dwarf is looking for some adventurers to rescue or recover the remains of his brother in law. The two of them were prospecting in an old mine when they were attacked by a pack of …
Category: game mastering advice
Learning/Teaching Game Mastering: Efficient Skill Acquisition
This is my way of response to a couple of posts by Noisms about whether or not game mastering can be taught. I agree in part with him. You have to put in the work. You can read them here here and here Let's start by saying very clearly: There are no short cuts. You have to …
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Charcteristics Of Good Gamemasters: Active Curiosity
A lot of the best game masters are curious. Curious about people. Curious about history. Curious about the way stuff works. They read, a lot. History, biography sometimes philosophy or psychology. They watch documentaries, old TV shows, classic movies and bad movies. The other part is that they are active in their curiosity. It isn't just …
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If You Want a Great Campaign, The Players Must Care About Your NPC’s
If you want a great campaign, the kind you and your friends talk about for decades afterword, then your players must care about your NPC's. They must think of them almost as real people. What do I mean by this? Do your players say, "I hate that guy." And mean it? Do your players say, "We must …
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Building Non-Player Characters
Role playing games, properly understood, are not stories. They are imaginary events resolved by game mechanics which stories emerge from afterward. However, role playing games have a lot in common with stories. One of the most obvious commonalities is characters. I've talked a little bit about player characters here on the blog before but I …
Non-Gaming Resources For Game Masters: Resources on Screen Writing
You are going to get tired of me writing it, saying it, dancing about it but here it comes; RPG's are not stories. They are games that have many story-like pieces. Often they have many commonalities with stories and story telling but they aren't quite the same. We would do well to figure out where …
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Tools Not Rules
There's a phrase that'scliche in old school D&D circles. "Rulings not rules." The basic idea is that role playing games cannot contain a rule for every possible situation and it is better for the game master to simply make a common sense ruling and keeping the game running than to look up an esoteric rule. …
Grumpy Wizard 
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