Archive for the ‘Tools & Techniques’ Category

Mapping Through Logic and Flavor

This is being written more in hope than expectation. Last week (Wednesday night, to be exact), my internet connection became suddenly unreliable. Because it happened late at night, I had the not unreasonable theory that this was because of network upgrades; not only does my ISP not notify customers of such outages in advance, but […]

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Sensory Surprises in Encounters

You may not know it, but it’s possible to be too creative. Last week, as usual, I spent some time thinking about what I would be writing about in this post, and almost immediately, three different ideas came to mind in what felt like a single flash of inspiration. Well, by the time I had […]

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Vectors Of Engagement

I realized, the other day, that it has been a while since I posted a fantasy-dominated article, so I set about thinking of one. In no time at all, in a singular flash, today’s article came to me, inspired by the singular concepts of D&D / Pathfinder character classes. But it didn’t take me long […]

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The Trouble With Ginormous

This article contains material generated as background reference in Mike’s Doctor Who: A Vortex Of War campaign, but it holds relevance to most campaigns including those of the Fantasy genre. Introduction Space is big – really, really, big. I’m sure most readers will have come across that phrase, or something very like it, on numerous […]

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A serving of Humble Pi

I came across a remarkable mathematical fact the other day, which immediately gave me the idea for this post. Yet, while I noted the fact, and roughed out a structure for this article, when the time came to actually write it, the gaming relevance that had been so obvious and self-evident that I had not […]

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Interaction Flows – A Planning Tool

It happens to everyone eventually – you look at your plot and realize that one of your PCs is going to have to interact with an NPC in a one-off scene, an NPC with whom they might never come into contact again. There are many different ways of handling this. Some GMs will use a […]

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On The Priorities Of Graphic Depiction 7: Events & Effects

This entry is part 7 of 8 in the series Priorities Of Graphic Depiction

So this was all ready to post – and then my internet connection went out. Thankfully that was only a problem for a day or two. But it has delayed the series slightly. The story so far… This is the sixth in a set of mini-posts that I’m writing and publishing as quickly as possible, […]

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On The Priorities Of Graphic Depiction 5: Vehicles

This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Priorities Of Graphic Depiction

The story so far… This is the fourth in a set of mini-posts that I’m writing and publishing as quickly as possible, something I’m calling a mini-blitz. My normal publication schedule will resume at the end of the series. Each post examines one of the specific image categories nominated in the first post of the […]

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Selling The Adventure: marketing for GMs

Yesterday, I was browsing around in an online digital music store when I came across an Album that I would most certainly have purchased much sooner if I had known that it existed. This is one of the major problems that has beset the music industry over the last twenty or so years. The Drake […]

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Attitude to Burn: Blog Carnival June 2022

Attitude and Intensity We all have NPCs who are more driven than most, more obsessed or more sassy. This is never as easy as it sounds. We all have to raise our voices a little just to be heard clearly from all parts of the gaming table. Simply employing the “intense whisper” for the dialogue […]

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RPG Quora Answers By Mike – Part 3

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series RPG Quora Answers By Mike

It took so much longer to plan out the article that I intended to publsh today, and it contains so many sections that I hasd grave doubts that I could finish it in time. Rather than risk having nothing to post in what is already shaping up to be a very busy week, I decided […]

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Themes Should Be Like Gravity

I’ve written over 1,800 answers on Quora and for every one, I’ve read 40 or 50 answers (probably more) written by other people in response to a question by someone else again. A surprisingly small amount of what I’ve read has been directly RPG-related. That’s because most of the content that gets offered derives from […]

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