Role-playing games are unique for their capacity to evoke a wide range of emotions, profoundly influencing players' decisions. This emotional aspect makes role-playing games memorable and engaging. The most successful game designers focus heavily on triggering these emotional responses.
Category: game mastering advice
Podcast Recommendation: Into the Megadungeon
'Into the Megadungeon' by Ben Laurence provides valuable insights into running megadungeon campaigns, through conversations with experienced referees.
Game State, Story, and The Truth
Games answer questions. Stories answer questions. Games and stories answer questions in different ways. The game state taught me how they are different.
What is the Game State?
Putting my focus on the current "Game State" refined the way I think about and run role-playing games.
Experience Points are a Proxy for What Players Want
“People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole in the wall.” Theodore Levitt XP is far less of an incentive than many game masters and designers think it is. Experience points are a proxy for what players want not the thing that players actually want. The myth of Experience Points as primary …
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Subtleties of “Rulings, not Rules”
Most of the time, old school referees use the rules and not all the rules are written.
Make Good Rulings
In this essay, I'm going to clear up why good rulings are not arbitrary and offer you some suggestions about how to make a good ruling.
Grumpy Wizard 
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