Recent content by J.M

Indeed, reminds me a bit of the classic Call of Cthulhu scenario "Grace Under Pressure."

Good article. I think a super important and underappreciated GM skill is spotlight management. That means allocating time to all the players of course. But it starts with the GM not hogging all the spotlight for themselves. One thing I see too often among GMs, including myself on an off day...

Great article! In a perfect world, you need the following ingredients: a motivated GM, a GM with ideas, a GM with energy, motivated players, players who contribute to everyone's fun at the table (including the GM) and sync well with each other and the game. But the world ain't perfect, so we...

Small publisher here, our DriveThruRPG business has been a bit sluggish these past couple of weeks, so you may be onto something.

I'm a fan of monster books that reimagine with what a monster book can contain. This one sounds like it provides a lot of gameable content that doesn't just tell you about the monster, it shows you how to use it in your game.

As a fan of the source material, I have to say this looks great. Unlike many sword and sorcery inspired games, it understands that the characters and their antics are more important than the setting. So yes, the PCs should be more competent than typical first-levels, and no I don't need hundreds...

It's clearly aimed at people who aren't already into D&D or RPGs. But if I was a newcomer, I'd be curious about how RPGs actually work, and the video never demystifies that (basic stuff like what are the dice for, what are the participants supposed to do...?). After watching that, I'd probably...

For anyone curious about Elemental: It's the Deal of the Day today on DriveThru.

100%. In the case of one recent title (D100 City Hooks maybe?), he ran a stretch goal experiment that involved adding more pages to a product each time it achieved a new medal ranking on DriveThruRPG. I thought that was brilliant (wish I'd thought of it!), and in fact it inspired us to do...

Me too, and I'd take it even further and say it would be cool to have adventures that have everything you need including the rules, so you'd literally only need one book to play.

Thanks Tim, I'm not familiar with your examples so I'll check them out. As I was reading your post I thought of another one: the 13th Age bestiaries. But it should be standard practice, really. Here's another idea: a short read-aloud paragraph to describe the monster to your players. Adventures...

Thanks for the review. When done well, the flash fiction (as you call it) can make for a fun read and maybe get the GM excited to run the monster. But it would be better to also list a few adventure hooks for each monster to help me figure out how to include it in my game. Actually I can’t...

Welcome, @Chappy Thoughts and thanks for the rundown. I think a good starter set not only teaches people the game, it "sells" the complete version. One way we did this in our quickstart was to provide an index of all the skills, spells and monsters in the core book, to give people an idea of...

I agree, that is a fantastic idea, kudos to Phil. I'm taking notes!

For me it was "prep situations, not plots".