roleplaying game
One distinction for roleplaying games I don’t hear discussed is toolbox games vs. focused games. There is so little discussion that I had to invent the terms to discuss them with my friends. Most games are focused games. They have one setting detailed in the rule book where the game’s Read more
Problems with Alignment & Mystic Destiny There’s no way to be in fantasy roleplaying and avoid discussions of alignment. Some fans are fascinated by matching popular characters from fiction up with the nine alignments that first showed up in the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons but others (me included) Read more
Like many fans of fantasy roleplaying I’ve been hearing about Wizards of the Coast’s latest controversy (will they ever run out of them?). In the ramp up for the release of Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes for D&D 5th edition they’ve announced sex changing elves to stand in solidarity with the Read more
Taking a book off of Tolkien’s bookshelf, I read The Poetic Edda. This rendition was first published in 1908 and edited and translated by Olive Bray. Some nice illustrations from W. G. Collingwood grace the pages. It covered some of the same ground as Kevin Crossley-Holland’s The Norse Myths which Read more
Alexander Macris wrote “Every campaign is a law unto itself”. This isn’t a gamer version of “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”. It means that every RPG campaign should establish its own setting, house rules and style. Lethality is one of the knobs you fiddle with when setting up Read more
The tabletop roleplaying hobby has been around since the early 70s and involved a lot of people over the years. That’s why it’s only natural that factions would develop. These opinionated groups disparage each other online and wonder what state of affairs could have resulted in such wayward gamers. Their Read more
Fantasy roleplaying has a tradition of being executed by a party of adventurers whose skills complement each other. Warriors use traditional weapons and armor to handle physical threats, wizards use spells to either give the party an advantage or deal with arcane threats, roguish types sneak into places and disarm Read more
People new to roleplaying read the section in the rule book they’re using about awarding experience to players and simply follow it. Those who have been in the hobby a while know they can award experience different ways and each of those ways affects the campaign. It is always surprising Read more
In this post I hope to bring attention to a topic that is poorly understood by many RPG fans yet important to our games. Whether intentional or not most people in a roleplaying session are trying to adhere to a set of guidelines that will bring about a desired direction Read more
I was going to title this post How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the OSR but before posting I checked to see if the title was taken. Jesse Goldshear beat me to it with a thoughtful post that expresses points in line with mine. I’m certainly not the Read more