Posts Tagged ‘At-The-Table’

October Blog Carnival Wrap-up: A cavalcade of posts about goodies

Well, it’s that time of the month when, following a Blog Carnival, the hosting site compiles a list of the blogs posted on their chosen subject and officially passes the baton on to the next host. Hold on a minute – this month the person that has to do that is me! I guess I […]

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Making The Loot Part Of The Plot: Loot as a plot mechanic

From everything I’ve read – starting with early issues of The Dungeon, continuing with “Through Dungeons Deep”, and running all the way through to numerous blog posts – a lot of GMs have trouble connecting the desire to “make the loot part of the plot” with techniques for actually achieving this goal. It’s my impression […]

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We All Have Our Roles To Play: Personality Archetypes, Part 4

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series We All Have Our Roles

Reintroduction If there is one thing I hate, it’s interrupting a task, especially a creative one, before it’s finished. That includes interrupting a series. At the same time, doing the same thing for week after week can be enough to drive me around the bend, and after a while, I need to take a break […]

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When Good Dice Turn Bad: A Lesson In The Improbable

Have you ever had such a string of improbable events in a game session that you wondered if you would have been better off buying a lottery ticket? Something so unlikely that you thought witness testimony might be required every time you told the tale? I have! What do you do when your dice turn […]

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Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence

In the last issue of Roleplaying Tips (Issue #522) Johnn passed on a request for advice from an RPT reader and new GM: Hi Johnn, I am new to being a GM and have only been running a D&D campaign for about 6 weeks now (one day a week). I’m a high schooler and have […]

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Starting In The Middle

I have a friend, with whom I have gamed for many, many years, who has never read The Lord Of The Rings; he found the slow pace of The Fellowship Of The Ring so completely off-putting that he was never able to gather enough interest to finish the trilogy. I never had that problem – […]

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The Nth Level Of Abstraction

During the last week, the RPG Bloggers Network brought an interesting post to my attention: “Discussion: Time Gaps” at Reality Refracted. This got me to thinking about the hierarchy of abstraction, and how often we (GMs) move from one level to another in the course of a typical game session, and how we can use […]

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Experience for the ordinary person

Johnn’s recent mention of the Ostrich-GM approach he sometimes takes to the question of how Administrators and Nobles get their character levels (comments, City Government Power Bases – Class and Level) struck a chord. There are really only two answers besides the close-you-eyes-and-hope-it-goes-away approach, and adopting one of them has some interesting implications for the […]

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We All Have Our Roles To Play: Personality Archetypes, Part 3

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series We All Have Our Roles

The Premise Archetypes for RPGs are usually defined either by the psychology of the character or the abilities of the character, but other classifications systems are possible. These can yield a different perspective, which can be invaluable. This series’ approach is based not so much on what the characters could do as a team, but […]

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We All Have Our Roles To Play: Personality Archetypes, Part 2

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series We All Have Our Roles

The Premise Everything that I’ve ever read on the subject has defined archetypes for RPGs either in terms of the psychology of the character or the abilities of the character, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But there are other classifications that are possible, and these yield a different perspective that can be invaluable. This […]

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“How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope

Fans will recognise the quote used as the title of this article as something often said by Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear when the trio of presenters are about to attempt a challenge posed by the show’s producers. Since it inevitably turns out that the correct answer is “Very!”, it is usually followed by one […]

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We All Have Our Roles To Play: A Functional Perspective on Personality Archetypes, Part 1

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series We All Have Our Roles

Everything that I’ve ever read on the subject has defined archetypes for RPGs either in terms of the psychology of the character or the abilities of the character. Filling out a team roster is often a case of players selecting from a chinese menu – “let’s see, we need a fighter, a mage, a rogue, […]

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