If you want to run better RPG sessions, you need to gather feedback about the good and the bad. The positive feedback helps you realize your strengths and what makes the players happy. The negative feedback helps you grow as a GM (and sometimes as a person).
I’m a campaign-style GM. I enjoying building a rich and evocative world with layers of a story over the course of years. I treasure callbacks and references to events and NPCs previously encountered. The lives and passions of NPCs are known to the players of my games. I usually spend a fair amount of time …
When you’ve played tabletop RPGs for long enough, you see your fair share of problems at the gaming table. Arguing over rules. Feelings getting hurt. Failed expectations. No one brought pizza for the GM. These problems arise when people’s expectations don’t get met. There are many different kinds of gamers. Some people like to focus …
Your tabletop RPG group needs a Gaming Charter. Here is how to do it. Read More »
Having a process for adding a new person to our group helps make sure we’re adding people who will make our gaming sessions better!
I’ve been reflected on the difference between D&D-style RPGs and Fate. It is a question that comes up a lot when talking about Fate. Yesterday the right phrase popped up in a conversation about something else. “Everyone is Crew, Not Passengers.” As a player in D&D you are a passenger. You have full control over …
“Crew, not Passengers”, the core difference between Fate and D&D Read More »
FoundryVTT is a new-to-market virtual tabletop for playing RPGs. It has been in production for a long time now, over in Patreon. It will get out of beta this month, releasing on May 22, 2020. Foundry is open to modification from users. The community has contributed many modules, gaming systems, and quality-of-life of improvements. If …
Using FoundryVTT to run a Fate Game (Secrets of Cats) Read More »
Streamline getting people playing the game faster. Both Monster of the Week and Blades in the Dark do this well. The players select playbooks, make some selections, and I spend five minutes explaining dice rolling and the game has started. The creative writing part of Fate—making aspects—is IMO the biggest barrier for play, especially for …
From Reddit: What would you change for a hypothetical new edition of Fate? Read More »
It has been more than I decade since I used paper notes—everything is on the wiki now—but my system is pretty sound. I hope that you find this useful. Requirements: Manilla folders, stapler, paper clips, writing utensils, post-it notes, loose unruled paper. Generally: If there are multiple note papers on a topic, they are paper-clipped …
I’d like to share an encounter I wrote in the hopes that it helps to inspire other Fate RPG GMs. Thematically this encounter is about the PCs taking out a trapped sniper; mechanically this is an encounter that consumes resources that the PCs could walk away from. What is a Sniper? In the scenario that …
I’m always balancing at least a dozen spinning plates at a time, running from project to project, keeping them all spinning. The only projects that finish are the ones that I do for other people. My own personal projects fall by the wayside as time gets crunched or I find new inspiration for another project. …
