I am a game designer with over 15 years worth of game credits and industry experience. My work includes licensed games based on worlds like Star Wars, Star Trek and Firefly, classic game worlds like Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowrun and my own creations like Camelot Trigger and Save Game. I play a wide variety of games as part of Theatre of the Mind Players and have been the guest of honor at several conventions. I live with my family in Wisconsin, born near the heart of RPGs (and just a few short years younger than they are).
As February looms large, the desire to get away from it all presses down. That feeling is more oppressive this year thanks to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s easy to imagine being in a...
Even though Mothership is still technically in beta, it already has a polish and strength that surpass many completely released games. Much of this comes from an open-armed policy of third-party...
It was only a matter of time before actual plays spun off games based on their worlds. Critical Role, the 800-pound gorilla in the room has two books for fans looking to game in their world; the...
Most fantasy RPGs fall somewhere on the spectrum between high fantasy and low fantasy. Different editions of Dungeons & Dragons have been in various spots on this line. There’s a third category...
Curse of Strahd has become one of the most popular campaign books of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. The love of the spooky realms within the mists is still very strong as evidenced by the...
When the time for combat comes in an RPG the Game Master must decide whether they want to run it using the theater of the mind or on the table with a map or battle grid. While I usually use the...
Traps are an iconic part of the Dungeons & Dragons experience. Nearly every table has a story about a time when a trap took someone by surprise or how it was used to the group's benefit when...
Cyberpunk is on a lot of minds right now. The two largest franchises in the genre, Shadowrun and Cyberpunk, recently released new editions to great fanfare. For fans of the genre who aren’t...
Two classic fantasy campaign staples are the local shop and the local inn. Players love to haggle, burgle and peruse the wares of the shopkeeper looking for that great magical item that will make...
Home is where the heart is, but for many fantasy games, it’s where the loot is stored. Coming back to town is an important part of many games’ play cycles but Dungeon Masters often struggle to...
Ever since Indiana Jones outran a boulder in the opening minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, gamers have been chasing a pulp adventure high. Pulp adventure offers a heightened take on a lot of...
This week brings the release of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and with it, the giddy anticipation of Christmas Eve for Dungeons & Dragons fans. Wizards of the Coast has kept a pretty tight grip...
Over the past six years, Free League Publishing has climbed to the top of the tabletop RPG design house ranks. Its games tend toward the darker end of the spectrum, ranging from the Fallout like...
Between retroclones, OSR-inspired games, used copies, PDF copies of earlier D&D editions and the wildly successful 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, there are a lot of options for players who...
I’m not sure why I like dark fantasy the way I do. Maybe it’s because I fell hard for the World of Darkness in the 90s and just can’t shake it. Maybe I wanted to step away from my Tolkien loving...
One of the strengths of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition is how accessible it is to new players. The game mechanics have been simplified. There are a pair of boxed sets in the Starter Set and...
It's time for Confessions of a Game Designer. I didn't know much about the Warhammer games or settings outside of the fact that many of my friends loved them and that they had hundreds of dollars...