Travis Miller's Blog About Sword & Sorcery Fiction and Classic Fantasy Adventure Gaming
I went to a seminar given by a cozy mystery writer in Cleveland a few years back. She starts writing her books by writing the dialogue scenes as they come to her. They are totally out of order when she writes them. When the shape of the book starts to make sense to her, she …
Continue reading One Way to Use Dungeon Room Ideas that Don’t Fit
I had an enjoyable conversation with Kevin of the Redcaps Podcast earlier this week. One of the questions he asked me was where I would recommend someone looks for conversation about tabletop role-playing games online. I had to work through the question before I found an answer. The question has stuck in my mind for …
A reader named Pete sent me a question about how to manage a group of six players. He is new to DMing and groups of more than five is giving him some trouble. Good question Pete, thanks for asking! I'm going to assume Pete is running a face to face game. Personally, I won't run …
Continue reading How I Referee Large Groups of Players in Old School D&D
Probably the biggest error I made when I started to learn game mastering was trying to do too much too fast. I get excited and, in my ignorance, under appreciate the difficulty or complexity of what I'm attempting. I realize my error once I get under way. My game fails to launch, crashes and burns …
First, a note about how to get Hogwater on DriveThru RPG. DriveThru is not keen on selling books that have adult content. There is some adult material in Hogwater but it's not horribly graphic. There's an encounter in one of the monster lairs that implies there is some bestiality happening. The cover has the slightly …
Continue reading My first self published RPG Product Hogwater: Village of Secrets is now available
A game master can be creative with weirdness. You can create completely new monsters, magic items, and adventure situations. Another way to be creative is to take the things we already have and use them in ways that subvert expectations while fitting within the constraints of the game rules and the typical fantasy setting.
I want players to feel like their characters are in danger the moment they step into the dungeon. Making darkness a danger that players must deal with is one way to do that.
Grumpy Wizard 
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