If someone I know has good taste tells me, "Fonda Lee's books are really great, you should read them." Then I probably will. I might anyway, she's published by Orbit, one of my favorite publishers. She was nominated for a Nebula and won a World Fantasy Award for best novel. They typically don't hand those …
Why?
Why am I writing this blog? First. It is an exercise for me to meet deadlines. You may have noticed that I've published a short post almost every day for about two months. Accepting that I may have to ship something that is "good enough" maybe not as good as it could be but good …
Trust
Building and maintaining trust is important for a game master. If the players trust you to build a setting, an adventure, a scene that is going to have a satisfying pay off, then they might go along when they aren't sure where your hooks are taking them. If the players trust you then they may …
Just A Game
I hear/read, "It's just a game," from time to time. It is usually meant as a dismissive statement. This "elf game" hobby isn't all that important, not really. Except it is, to me. When I was 19, I was in an emotionally deep dark hole. I was depressed. Horribly depressed. You see, I had joined …
Concept First, Mechanism Second
The conceptual situation or encounter has primacy in the games I run. I describe the scene with no reference to mechanisms of the game what so ever. The players tell me what they want to do. If the character is a thief and they want to climb a garden wall and what I want the …
All About the Combat
Occasionally, I will see a critique of a particular character class in 5E that puzzles me. It will say something like, "Such and such is broken/underpowered/boring because they don't compare favourably to the other classes, during combat.” I never read a complaint that the person playing the barbarian character is bored when the thief is …
Evoking Curiosity In Players
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 …
Grumpy Wizard 
You must be logged in to post a comment.