Tag Archives: Tabletop RPG
Tabletop Tales: A Sad, Sad Exalted Game
One of the best parts about RPGs is that you get to feel like a badass and some games, like Exalted, let you be a badass on a world-shaking scale. For those who don’t know, Exalted is a game by White Wolf where you play as literal demigods having adventuress in an extremely high fantasy […]
Playing with a First Time GM
When it’s your first time running a game, you’re very likely to have no idea what the hell you’re doing. Everything looks different from the other side of the screen, and there are a lot of things to worry about that used to be someone else’s problem. I’ve talked before about ways a fresh GM […]
Turning the Gears: System Shock and Severe Injury
Welcome back to Grinding the Gears, where I put my attempts at game design up on display. Last time I talked about the lingering effects that death can have, even after resurrection. Today I’m going to be talking about a rule for things like severe injury and dismemberment in the Pathfinder RPG. Now, I know […]
Tabletop Tales: Love and Roleplaying
Tabletop Tales is another part of my attempt to create thematically connected segments on here. Rather than talk about mechanics, or worldbuilding, in this segment I’ll share some stories of games that I think are worth sharing with people. This one talks, in detail, about some of my successes at introducing romance into an RPG. […]
Entry 15a: Alignment and Personality (Another mini-series, YAY!)
WARNING: I’m talking about alignment. I’ve decided to make it a multiparter because it was getting long, so if it seems like I haven’t presented any conclusions yet that’s why. Alright! Time to talk about one of the most argued about aspects of gaming: the alignment chart. Now, this isn’t a situation where I argue […]
The Importance of Communication (A discussion of discussions)
Here’s something that a lot of people may not realize, even if they deal with it regularly. Game Mastering is hard. You have to keep up with your players’ wants, needs, abilities and plans. You have to craft situations that challenge them or that let them feel powerful, and sometimes you have to craft a […]
End of a Series: Lessons Learned
ATTENTION: This is the last part in a four part series. Hopefully it stands on its own, but you may find yourself wanting to go back to the introduction a few articles back. There are a lot of things that I got better at in video game RPGs since I started playing the tabletop variety. […]
Narratives in Videogame RPGs Compared to Tabletop RPGs.
ATTENTION: This is the second part of a multipart series, if you find yourself wanting a setup for how we got here, please read the previous article. As I said before, I started my RPG career with videogame RPGs. For the longest time I didn’t know what the letters “RPG” stood for and I didn’t […]
The Game Detective 