Write a Backup Adventure

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a fallback scenario for those weeks when you just don’t have time to prep a new adventure for your group?

I’ve never tried this myself, but it seems sound in principle. The goal would be to write a light, quick adventure that you can easily slot into your campaign — but how do you do that when you don’t know in advance when you’ll need it?

Here are three ideas for ways to come up with backup adventures.

Read more

Free RPG Day: Free Comic Day for Gamers

Via Gaming Report, I just heard about Free RPG Day.

Along the lines of Free Comic Book Day, Free RPG Day is a promotional effort that involves giving away 1,000 free copies of adventures and quickstart RPG rules at hobby stores. Publishers provide the material, and the organizers handle distribution to retailers.

Free Comic Book Day is awesome — you walk into the store, you get free comics — and I’d love to see Free RPG Day work out for gamers. It sounds like a good way to get more folks into stores, and more new players into the hobby — both very good things.

The website needs some work — it’s pretty cheesy, and there’s at least one important mistake: the site lists Bronze sponsorship at $100, and the PDF fact sheet puts the price at $150. Several larger publishers have already signed up, though (White Wolf, Goodman Games, Mongoose Publishing), and with a bit more work I think Free RPG Day could attract many more.

I wonder if gaming stores will be looking for GMs to run some of those free adventures?

Half-Players: At the Table, But Not There to Game

The Wiki-to-PDF project, one half of which deals with problem players, got me to thinking about this story.

Not long after I moved to Salt Lake, I ran a D&D game for several players and one half-player. Our half-player made the evening memorable, but she was pretty forgettable — we wound up referring to her as Wife Unit, and the nickname stuck. (I know, I’m a bad person.)

I suspect you’ll recognize Wife Unit — she was a perfect example of a half-player: a player — of either sex — who isn’t really there for the game, and thereby makes everything weird.

Read more

Feedback is Multi-Directional

Over on GameCraft, Levi Kornelson pointed out something I’ve never thought of in concrete terms: feedback at the gaming table is multi-directional. Feedback isn’t just players -> GM, it’s also GM -> players and players -> players — and fun is tied into each of those loops.

It’s one of those things where now that I’ve read it, it seems totally intuitive — and it makes past games where this process took place pop into sharp relief, because as a player and as a GM, I like all three types of feedback.

I’ve covered getting feedback from your players in depth, but I’ve never considered giving feedback to your players, or players giving each other feedback. As GMs, what are the best ways to approach giving our players feedback, and encouraging players to give each other feedback?

Want to Write about Finding Players and Problem Players?

After testing the waters yesterday, I decided to kick off the Wiki-to-PDF project.

From the project page over on our GMing Wiki:

“The Wiki-to-PDF project (WTP for short) is a collaborative writing project aimed at publishing free, professional-quality PDFs for the GMing community.

We’re using the GMing Wiki as a content management system — a way to handle this collaboration seamlessly and with a minimum of fuss. That leaves more time to focus on the fun stuff: sharing your tips, tricks and knowledge with fellow GMs.”

Between today and February 14th, we’ll be tackling two topics: Finding Players and Problem Players.

If you’re interested in collaborating with fellow GMs, and in having your work published in these two Treasure Tables PDFs, head on over to the project page for details!

← Previous Page