Travis Miller's Blog About Sword & Sorcery Fiction and Classic Fantasy Adventure Gaming
An "adventure", in roleplaying game lingo, is a situation or scenario intended for play with a particular roleplaying game within an implied or specific setting. An adventure, as a product class, has a few characteristics that make it different from most forms of written entertainment. What is an adventure for? An adventure scenario is a …
Continue reading What I Look For When I Shop For Published Adventures
Starting game masters often build too much of their world before their campaign starts. Too much world building can produce a lot of stuff that players never engage with in play. It can make it hard to use material I find after the campaign starts because I'll have to revise elements of my world or …
Continue reading How I Do Worldbuilding For My Sandbox Campaigns
One of the debates I see pop up on social media from time to time is "Low Prep Vs. High Prep." Some say you should do as little as possible and improvise because players are going to do things you don't expect anyway. Others say you should do as much as possible so that you …
Continue reading Where Do I Fall in the Low Prep Vs High Prep Debate?
How much backstory and history do I make for my sandbox campaigns?
There are some basic elements of story that are helpful for a game master to know. This post is about those elements and why games and stories share them.
In last week's post I wrote about how random generation tables have some uses but they also have some drawbacks. The biggest drawback I find is that the tables created by other GMs or designers often have assumptions and contexts that don't fit whatever campaign setting I'm running. The major drawback of random generation tables. …
Continue reading How Do I Create Random Generation Tables for a Sandbox Campaign?
2024 is the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why D&D has lasted so long, been so successful, and continued to gather new fans throughout that time. The answer I've come up with is that it is not just one thing. The reason D&D is such a …
Grumpy Wizard 
You must be logged in to post a comment.