Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Guest Posts: Genre Advice for GMs

Wed. August 30, 2006 

I’d like to put out a call for guest posts on how to run games in each of several iconic genres. Specifically:

Update: Man, I can’t believe I forgot pulp! Let’s add that to the list, too.

If you’re interesting in sharing your knowledge about running RPGs in any of these genres, I’d love to hear from you! Read on for the details.

These genres are deliberately very broad — too broad, really. How do you write a definitive post on running fantasy RPGs? Without a bit more focus, you couldn’t. Is it high fantasy, with the PCs riding around on dragons, or gritty low fantasy, where they’re stabbing each other over a few coppers?

I’d rather not narrow things down for you, though, because I’m almost certain to miss something! There are plenty of sub-genres within each broader genre, some with wider appeal than others. Nothing is off-limits except for the agonizingly specific — “super-powered spies in Dark Ages Europe,” for example, which sounds awesome but isn’t likely to be useful to too many GMs.

There are only two other criteria: You need to have experience running games in that genre, and the advice needs to be relatively system-neutral. You’re welcome to mention specific RPGs, but I’m not looking for rules-oriented posts — that’s just not TT’s focus. Posts can be any length between a paragraph or two (enough to get across one or two great points) and about 1,000 words (enough to cover a lot of ground).

In exchange, I can offer my thanks and a link to your personal site (apart from the, ahem, fame and glory, of course). This can also be a good way to stretch your writing muscles, and of course it’s a great way to help out your fellow GMs.

As with all TT guest posts, I ask for the unlimited, non-exclusive right to post them here, and to include them in PDFs. That means I can leave them up forever, but you’re free to sell them to a magazine, post them on your own site, and so forth.

If all of that sounds good to you, drop me a line. Give me a brief idea of what you’d like to write about, and we’ll go from there. I look forward to hearing from you!

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Comments

3 Responses to “Guest Posts: Genre Advice for GMs”

  1. John Arcadian on August 30th, 2006 8:33 am

    Oddly enough, “super-powered spies in Dark Ages Europe,” actually sound pretty close to what they are doing with Four Colors Alfresco.

  2. Martin on August 30th, 2006 2:43 pm

    A quick update: After today’s emails (so far), guests posts are on the way for horror (twice), supers (twice), sci-fi and espionage, for a total of 6 posts.

    Based on the approaches detailed so far, there might be room for as many as 3 posts per genre. If you’d like to write a genre guest post, there’s still time. :)

    John: Cool! That was off the top of my head, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

  3. Making Magic in Fantasy RPGs - Treasure Tables on September 5th, 2006 7:31 am

    [...] This is the first guest post in our Genre Advice for GMs series. In this post, tsuyoshikentsu tackles an important (and sometimes controversial) topic for fantasy GMs: magic. - - - - - Magic is the essential component of fantasy. Even if it doesn’t go by that name, no true fantasy setting is completely without it. It follows, then, that magic is the essential component of the fantasy genre — but how to deal with it? [...]