Thoughtful and Excellent GMing Advice

Tips for Game Masters, by Alan De Smet, is an extensive collection of tips that can be applied to most games.

This is some of the best, most thoughtful and most thorough GMing advice I’ve ever read.

If you’ve run into a new GMing situation, see if Alan has covered it here. And if you’re looking for an overview of GMing techniques — or a refresher — it’s a great place to start. (Via DM Haven.)

Prepping for a Campaign

Campaign Pre-Production, by Michael Zenke, offers a range of good general advice about campaign prep.

The format is a bit frustrating (large blocks of text), but the tips are worth it — particularly as an overview for a new GM. (Via DM Haven.)

Mother of All Treasure Tables PDF

The Mother of All Treasure Tables PDF just landed on DriveThruRPG.com.

What is it?

I wrote a substantial chunk of it, so I’m biased, but in a nutshell it’s the largest, niftiest collection of non-magical fantasy treasure ever assembled.

Read more

Don’t Sell Your Gaming Books

Back in college, I sold gaming books that I didn’t want (and sometimes, that I did want) to my local gaming store. And you know what? I really wish I hadn’t.

There are three good reasons not to sell off your RPG books:

  1. You never know when you’ll want to run (or play) something again.
  2. Old books — even games you don’t play — are a great source of ideas.
  3. For purely sentimental reasons, you’ll miss some of them.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time and money re-buying gaming books I sold in college to raise a quick buck. If you can help it, don’t go down that road — you never know when you might want them again!

Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em

How do you give GMing advice to a friend without upsetting them? is an entertaining RPGnet thread about the age-old dilemma of giving criticism to your friends.

There’s some good advice in there, and I’d have linked to it solely on that basis — but the clincher was that the GM in question (who needs the criticism) smokes pot while he GMs.

Eeeenteresting. Is it just me, or is that a spectacularly bad idea?

Spaces Open at Our Free GMing Seminar

Just a quick reminder that pre-registration for GenCon Indy 2006 is almost over, and that there’s still time to sign up for the free GMing seminar that I’ll be taking part in.

Mastering Your GM-Fu is event SEM00041, and takes place on Saturday, August 12th at 1:00 PM.

You’re welcome to register at the con, or even just show up (and I hope you will!), but pre-registering is the only way to ensure that you’ll be able to get in. We’ve filled around 50 out of 75 seats at present, and we’re hoping to pack the house.

Storing Your Gaming Counters

I’m a big fan of counters as an alternative to miniatures, and I’ve gone through a number of storage and organizational options before settling on this one.

It’s a plastic craft cabinet, and I paid less than $30 for it at Target. (You can find similar cabinets at hardware/home improvement stores, too.)

It holds over 4,000 counters, with plenty of room for more.

I bought a pack of sticky labels to go with it, and then spent the better part of a day sorting them into categories and labelling the drawers. I left a few drawers empty to give myself some wiggle room.

Here’s a larger image that shows my categories. They’re not the most logical, but they fit the counters that I have.

It doesn’t travel well (the counters fall out of the drawers), but that’s the only downside — I love this thing.

How do you store your counters?

Revitalizing a Fading Campaign

Pete Sears (of The World Famous Crank Report) discusses one of the pitfalls of long-running games in Jumping the bear holding the shark.

He offers up four ways to revitalize a fading campaign, all of them solid. Number three lines up nicely with Lead With the Cool Stuff here on TT.

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