by Lisa Padol When I first started running the Dracula Dossier, setting up the 1894 group, one of my players wanted a special relationship with Dracula. They wanted to have had their character have met Dracula as a child and for Dracula to have taken a liking to them. After all, the player argued, just […]
Tag Archives: gm advice
At our GenCon panel on horror, we got asked about the risk of breaking atmosphere in Trail of Cthulhu games by asking for Stability tests. You describe whatever horrific or disturbing sight the investigator encounters in ghastly detail – and then go “now, roll Stability”, dragging the player out of the story and soiling everything […]
This article about the Dying Earth RPG originally appeared on DyingEarth.com. The Dying Earth RPG as an alternative roleplaying game system by Lynne Hardy If you don’t know what a roleplaying game is, read this article about the Dying Earth RPG instead. Fantasy was the inspiration for the first roleplaying games, and amongst the inspirations for the […]
This article on the Dying Earth RPG originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. What is the Dying Earth RPG? by Lynne Hardy The Dying Earth is a rich fantasy world, full of complex characters and detailed environs. Thus it presents itself as a perfect setting for a roleplaying game and indeed one has […]
This article originally appeared on DyingEarth.com, between 2004 and 2007. You can find part one here. A column about roleplaying By Robin D. Laws Last month we plundered the gilded halls of improv theory, appropriating for our own roleplaying purposes the “Yes, but” technique. GMs using this technique avoid answering player requests with a categorical […]
Are you a new GM looking to dip your toes into the horror genre? Are you hoping to nudge someone into running a scary game for you? As part of their Adventure Goddess program, which encourages women to take the GM’s chair, Carolyn Noe of Superheroines Etc organized this virtual panel featuring Kenneth Hite, Robin […]
One of the Things I Always Say is that a GUMSHOE investigative ability list is basically a list of questions the players can ask the GM – but it’s also a useful list of questions to ask yourself when writing an adventure. Certainly, when I initially conceive of an adventure, I’ll come up with three […]
By Conrad Kinch I was a seven year old Kinch when I got my first gaming book. It was “Redcoats & Minutemen: The American War of Independence” by Jon Sutherland, a choose-your-own adventure book from a little-known series called Real Life Gamebooks. My parents thought fantasy was a bit frivolous, but the 18th century was alright, […]
by Elina Gouliou The “Play to Lift” Technique There are some game sessions where all the characters shine and the action is awesome and cinematic. I thought it was a matter of luck or circumstance, until I encountered the Play to Lift technique and realised that it is often the result of all the players […]