Tag Archives: Traditional Gaming

Tabletop Tales: A Sad, Sad Exalted Game

February 19, 2018 · by · in Role Playing Games, Story, Tabletop Tales · 1 Comment

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 […]

My Top Five Tabletop Game Mechanics

May 28, 2015 · by · in Games, Top 5, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

Anyone who reads my blog knows that I’m really, REALLY into the mechanical part of gaming.  What qualifies something as a mechanic, though?  When I say “mechanics” I’m referring to the little rules bits, the pieces of the system that separate playing Dungeons and Dragons from just a game of make-believe.  I’m going to try […]

Bad Habits in Gaming: Assuming the Players Were Stupid

May 12, 2015 · by · in Bad Habits, RPGs, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

This is a relatively short article, but one that touches kind of close to my heart for a couple of reasons.  I think the first point I should make is that I’m not saying to assume that you’re players ARE stupid.  Players are occasionally actively pretty dumb, but the important word is “actively.”   GMs […]

Talkin’ ‘bout Dragons Part 1

April 3, 2015 · by · in Fantasy, Pathfinder, Talkin' 'bout Monsters, Traditional Gaming · 1 Comment

You know who I don’t think gets enough love?  Well, you do if you read the title. I’ve been playing games like Dungeons and Dragons for nearly half of my life.  Now while that statement comes with many implications, most of which are probably unfortunate, I say it to give you perspective when I point […]

The Five RPG Player Archetypes

March 22, 2015 · by · in Analysis, RPGs, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

Last week I talked about the five types of game masters and how they behave.  I’m always writing from a game master perspective because that’s the role I seem to always find myself in, but it was nice to think about things from a player perspective for a while.  I realized that I kind of […]

The Five Major Game Master Archetypes

March 15, 2015 · by · in Discussion, Game Mastering, Gaming, Role Playing, RPGs · Leave a comment

Every experienced RPG gamer is familiar with certain Game Master stereotypes: the killer GM who wants to win at D&D, and the railroader who gives the players no free will, for example.  I’m not here to talk about those specific behaviors, but rather more broad trends that I feel are very common among game masters. […]

Tabletop Tales: Love and Roleplaying

February 16, 2015 · by · in Gaming, Love, Romance, Story, Valentine's Day · Leave a comment

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. […]

Gaming Habits: Weaknesses and Dump Stats in RPGs.

February 1, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Discussion, Games, Gaming · 1 Comment

“Gaming Habits” will hopefully be a semi-regular series that I do from now on that talks about common habits and behaviors that I’ve seen show up in games over the years. Hopefully it will be really fun. Today we’re talking about the tendency of players to give their characters what should be crippling weaknesses, but […]

Big Fights Make for Long Nights 2: That Fateful Battle

January 20, 2015 · by · in Analysis, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Pathfinder, RPGs, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

So in my last entry I promised to tell everyone about a lengthy battle scene that a friend of mine ran recently. I was an observer, as I had recently dropped from the game due to a combination of an extremely busy schedule and already feeling like there were too many people at the table. […]

The Trouble with One-Shots: A Brief Look at Brief Gaming

January 12, 2015 · by · in D&D, Fantasy, Gaming, Pathfinder, RPGs, Traditional Gaming · Leave a comment

Recently, in celebration of a friend’s birthday, I ran a one-shot Pathfinder adventure. Now, I’ve run one-shot adventures in a lot of systems from Call of Cthulhu to Exalted, but I’ve never really thought about all of the ways that they differ from normal campaigns. For those who don’t know, a “one-shot” refers to a […]

← Older posts