Soviet Buildings That Never Were

Unrealised Moscow offers up 13 images of Soviet architectural projects from the 1930s-50s that never left the drawing board. How are they related to GMing? Because looking at pictures like this one, of the towering Palace of Soviets, makes me want to play a pulp or steampunk game — they’d fit right into an Etherscope campaign, for instance.

Ptolus Player’s Guide Mini-Review: It Rocks

In preparation for the release of Ptolus, his upcoming d20 mega-setting (almost 700 pages long!), Monte Cook has just released A Player’s Guide to Ptolus.

Monte has said that Ptolus is going to be very GM-friendly, and he had some interesting things to say about it in his interview with TT, as well.

Based on the Player’s Guide, it looks like Ptolus is going to be very GM-friendly. In short, every campaign setting should offer a player’s guide like this one.

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Efficient Planning = More Fun, Sooner

In his latest See Page XX column, When Planning Turns to Wrangling, Robin Laws talks about the perils of taking a hands-off approach when your players start to plan. It often feels like the right thing to do, and in many cases it’s exactly the wrong thing to do — nudging is good.

He also praises focused GMing Q&A seminars, which is exactly what Mastering Your GM-Fu — offered free at GenCon Indy 2006 — is going to be.

Re-using NPCs for Fun and Profit

Over on the 20′ by 20′ Room, Neel Krishnaswami recently posted about one of his GMing strategies: the law of conservation of NPCs.

It boils down to “re-use NPCs whenever possible, because it enriches the game and gives you a smaller cast to keep track of,” and it’s good advice.

Treasure Tables in Knights of the Dinner Table #113

Back in March of 2006, Treasure Tables was mentioned in Knights of the Dinner Table #113, which rocks on toast — I love KoDT! (Why didn’t I post about it sooner? I only found out a couple of weeks ago, and my gaming store didn’t get the issue back in stock until this week.)

Specifically, Ken Newquist — the one-man army behind the sci-fi/RPG site Nuketown — wrote about TT in his regular column, “Summon Web Scryer” (p. 63) — thanks, Ken! TT was in excellent company, too, as Ken also covered Zachary Houghton’s RPG Blog and Vincent Baker’s anyway (among others).

This is the first time that TT has been mentioned in a major print publication. First, KoDT — next…the world! Mwahahaha!

The GM’s Side Table

How you set up your gaming area can be a very personal affair, and there are lots of great ways to go about it.

For the past few years, though, I’ve found one element of my GMing setup that’s consistently been my favorite: The side table. It’s simple and versatile, if you’ve never tried it, I think you’ll like it.

Dig up a little coffee table, end table or even something that’s not quite a table, but works like one (last time around, I used a folding chair), and park it right next to your GMing chair.

If you use a GM’s screen, this saves real estate behind the screen — you can just stack your most-referenced books on the table next to you. If you have a few things to hide but don’t want your view of the players obstructed by a screen, you can even move your screen to the side table.

The space under the table can also come in handy: After putting the books I know I’ll need on my side table, I put the ones I think I’ll need, but that might never come up, underneath it. That way they’re near at hand, but not in my way.

This simple extension of my GMing space has made my life as a GM a lot easier, and if you haven’t tried this approach I encourage you to give it a shot — it might work very well for you, too!

Bring in the Replacement Adventurers

Catching up on Jeff’s Gameblog , I found this post about introducing new PCs during dungeon crawls.

Jeff offers 4 suggestions, all of them sound — and if you run a fantasy campaign (especially D&D), you’ve probably run into this situation before.

Convention GMing on the Mind: Linear or Loose?

With GenCon 2006 on the horizon, it’s time for TT to start covering convention GMing — and what better way to do that than with this guest post by Dr. Nik (who goes by the same name on the TT forums)?
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Howdy, everybody! I’m Dr. Nik. This is the first of a short series of articles with some points to keep in mind when designing or prepping for a conventon game. In this case, which format to use: linear, forked or open ended.

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