Blogging for GMs, Day 6

For day 6 of the Blogging for GMs project, we have a guest post written by Mike Barker (Judas, in the comments). Mike doesn’t have a blog, so I suggested that he email me his post — an offer I’m happy to extend to others in the same situation, for the duration of the project. Thanks for for writing this, Mike!

Here’s Mike’s guest post, “The Horrors of NPC Combat and How to Mitigate Them.”

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Blogging for GMs, Day 5

Day 5 of the Blogging for GMs project is our best so far, with 4 posts from RPG bloggers.

Things are starting to heat up — which is great! Here are today’s Blogging for GMs links.

• Jukka Koskelin makes a second contribution with If characters have shared history, create it.
• Shane Garvey has also written his second post for the project, 20 Memorable Dungeons.
• Jonas Karlsson contributed Trust your players.
• Scott M. offered up D&D die rolls: When and why.

I quite liked Jukka’s and Shane’s first entries for this project, and I’m glad they decided to contribute again. Jukka’s post makes some interesting suggestions about enriching PCs through shared background elements, while Shane’s presents 20 dungeon traits/concepts to get your creative juices flowing.

In his post, Jonas offers an important piece of advice — trust your players — and discusses railroading in the process. And Scott offers some useful timesaving advice about rolling dice (and when to skip die rolls entirely) for D&D GMs. Thanks, Jonas and Scott!

Do you know someone who might be interested in writing a post for the Blogging for GMs project? If so, point them to the guidelines — the more people that we can get involved, the better this project will be!

Blogging for GMs, Day 4

We’re on day 4 of the Blogging for GMs project, with another post:

• Jukka Koskelin wrote up a tip entitled Run with what you know.

Jukka learned about the project from Jonas (a TT regular), and his post discusses using places that you know well as setting material for modern RPGs. This is a great tip — thanks, Jukka!

Jukka’s tip reminds me of a technique that my friend Matt Simmons has employed in his games, and I’d like to get a bit of dicussion started on this topic: using digital photos for your game.

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Why You Should Think About Game Design

When you sit down to run a game, you don’t need to give a whole lot of thought to how that game was designed. Doing so has no practical payoff for that game session, at least not in the same way that an extra ten minutes statting NPCs or reviewing your notes has a practical payoff.

So why think about game design at all, if you’re not designing an RPG?

Because thinking about game design can make you a better GM.

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Blogging for GMs, Day 2

On the second day of the Blogging for GMs project, we have another post:

• Shane Garvey has written 20 Memorable Settlements.

Shane is a TT regular (commenting here as Eternalknight), and his post presents a table of 20 settlement features for use in your game. Thanks, Shane!

Blogging for GMs, Day 1

For day 1 of the Blogging for GMs project, we have our first post:

• Frank Filz has posted Idea for making more effective use of game books in a campaign.

Frank is regular commenter here on TT (his post was inspired by “More Books, or Fewer Books?“), and he recently started his own gaming blog. Frank’s post centers around an interesting proposal to limit the number of supplements that are used in play, and it’s a neat idea. Thanks for contributing to the Blogging for GMs project, Frank!

There are still 30 days left in the project — plenty of time for you to contribute a post or two of your own!

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