RPGnet Wiki’s GM Resources

The RPGnet Wiki features a range material for GMs in its GM Resources section, ranging from free adventures to a list of character archetypes. (The free adventure section is excellent.)

Identifying the Tough Stuff

A while back, I started a thread on the TT forums entitled Treasure Tables GMing Profiles. It was an invitation to write a little bit about yourself as a GM (the invitation is still open), and the initial flurry generated 36 profiles.

Apart from being interesting to read in their own right, I found the answers to one question in particular to be fascinating: What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do as a GM?

The intriguing thing is that so many of the answers to that question were the same. Let’s look at the breakdown.

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Email Updates and FeedBurner

I’ve just set up a new email update service for TT that lets you receive free, daily emails containing snippets of the day’s post(s).

The main feed (Daily Blog Posts) has also been switched over to FeedBurner, which — if everything went well — should have no impact on your RSS subscription. (If it did have an impact, please let me know!)

You can subscribe to TT’s daily email updates on the new subscription page.

(And if you’re really bored at work, I’ve also overhauled the About page.)

GMing Advice in The Sharp End

The Sharp End is a minimalist webzine that features a range of articles on GMing advice, ideas for games and general RPG discussion.

Convention vs Campaign and Watching the Detectives: GMing Investigative Adventures are both quite good.

Social Contracts for RPG Groups

This is a guest post by Chris Chinn, who writes the excellent RPG blog Deep in the Game. I asked Chris if he’d be willing to write up a post on social contracts — a big, important topic that can sound intimidating and theory-heavy (but actually isn’t) — and he graciously agreed.

I knew Chris would be able to make this topic very accessible without talking down to anyone, and he delivered in spades. If you’ve seen the term “social contract” on various RPG sites (including TT) and not been sure quite what it’s all about, look no further.

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Monster Tiles Review: A Hybrid of Counter and Miniature

Not long ago, I linked to Monster Tiles, a nifty little product from Ocho Games. They’re 1″ (and 2″) ceramic tiles with pictures of monsters on them — essentially, scaled-up counters or scaled-down miniatures, depending on your perspective.

I liked the idea, but not the price ($1.10 per tile), and some TT readers had some concerns about their durability. This came up in the comments to my original post, and David DeHart from Ocho Games dropped by to address some of those concerns.

I offered to review Monster Tiles, and David was kind enough to send me a sample. They’re an interesting hybrid of miniature and counter, and they combine some of the best and worst features of both.

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Glossary of GMing Terms (Draft)

Update: The finished glossary is available here: RPG Glossary.

This is a first pass at a glossary of GMing terms. This glossary attempts to cover every gaming term that is both related to GMing and common to most RPGs.

A lot of these terms originated with D&D, but they’re so widely used they’ve have effectively become the default terms (even though many other RPGs call them different things).

Because I want this glossary to be useful to GMs of all skill levels, it includes some very basic terms. (Even veteran GMs might find some surprises here, though.)

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Use Your Town in Your Next Game

I’ve never tried this as a GM, but back when I lived in Michigan I played in a game that was set in the city the whole group lived in, Ann Arbor.

It was a Mage: The Ascension chronicle run by my friend Matt, and it sits at #4 in my top 10 campaigns list.

Having the game set in our town was part of the reason that it rocked. As you might expect, it gave us an excellent frame of reference for in-game locations — but the unexpected benefit was even better.

After playing in Matt’s campaign, I never looked at certain places around town in the same way again.

For example, there was a huge Technocracy complex beneath Ann Arbor in-game, and I thought about it every time I saw one of the steam vents that dotted the university campus in real life.

Thinking about that made me smile, but it also creeped me out a bit (in a good way). That game took root in my mind in a way that few others ever have.

Part of that can be chalked up to my vivid imagination, but it also speaks volumes about how effective this simple technique can be.

There are lots of ways to put a twist on this technique, too. You could replace all of the modern locations with their medieval equivalents for a fantasy game, update everything for a sci-fi game — or blow half of the town up for a post-apocalyptic game.

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