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I remember this kind of thing cropping up in stories & rumors back in the '80s. I was appalled by it then (even as a brash & clueless 20-year-old), and my opinion has not changed. That GM should simply be blacklisted from all RPG events. I'd never sit at the same table with him in any case.

I once adapted the basic structure of the 4e Skill Challenge to put the PCs through a long diplomatic-reception ceremony (somewhat inspired by the knighting ceremony in The Court Jester). If they failed, they would lose any chance at getting the help/permission of the emperor and possibly be...

As a player, my dice are okay, not far off from average, allowing for occasional hot and cold runs. As a GM, however... my NPC's have become a trope in my regular group. No matter what system, no matter which dice, behind the screen or on the open table, My NPCs have uniformly bad luck. They...

I've arrived at the place where I can't even roll my eyes over things like that any more. It just got too tiring; there are so many things 'wrong' about so many aspects of nearly every fantasy setting that if I let myself get bothered about it, I'd have either given up on it entirely, or...

I can't say this is making too much out of nothing important. I will offer the amazingly bland (or trite) observation that different things trigger this kind of response in different people. For example, my brother the astrophysicist has a problem with Star Wars because of its egregious...

What game did I leave D&D for? A lot of them... Started back with the three little booklets in the '70s, but by the time I could afford any of the following editions, I got into all kinds of other things, helping set the pattern of my regular group (yes, there's a couple of folks from that...

A rule of thumb I've been using for years now is that "players want to do cool stuff." Whether that means raw combat power, special tricks, or other things, it pretty much always includes opportunities to use all those special powers and abilities they have built into their characters...

This is pretty much my impression from reading Wick's stuff (mostly games, but a few articles and such). I (and my group) loved 7th Sea 1 (though even then I wanted to metaphorically slap Wick silly for his irrational hatred of maps!); we're running 7th Sea 2, and it's fun. But I almost regret...

Starting PC experience level? Expected advancement rate?

Hehe, this is what jumps to my mind whenever I see an article or clickbait about any of our games. A song from 1957 (from a musical set in 1912) is still a marvelous lesson in alarmist propaganda: Friend, either you're closing your eyes To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge Or you are...

We were inspired by the Adventure! RPG as well as the Dresden Files RPG, and have been doing a 'session zero' for every campaign since. Doing some kind of shared backstory has helped nail down character details including skillsets, party role and personality, in addition to individual history...

I remember having that issue - it eventually had an unfortunate encounter with a high-level dog and was destroyed. All our other issues from those early years were destroyed in an apartment fire. Curse real-life random encounter tables!

I remember having that issue - it eventually had an unfortunate encounter with a high-level dog and was destroyed. All our other issues from those early years were destroyed in an apartment fire. Curse real-life random encounter tables!

Impressive! My own group has been around about as long, with a couple of us having been together since the early '80's, when we were fresh out of college (whether graduates or dropouts, hehe). Unlike you, though, we've played more different systems than we can easily recall (though almost no D&D...

I think the curling analogy is not far off the mark. The fact is, everyone who matters has gotten over the '80's scare, and enough people have been around D&D enough that it's not nearly as weird or subcultural as we self-proclaimed 'geeks' like to think. What with various major motion pictures...

never mind...ignore this post

For years I've been scanning the business section for gems I can bring into my GMing. Presentation skills, teamwork, yeah, all that stuff - especially books on how to run/facilitate meetings. I've never figured out how to boil it down into a coherent article for a magazine or anything, but I've...

The egg could likely do the trick. Good luck, keep us posted on how it goes. I GM for a very large home group (typically 8-9 people at the table), and run at conventions. I'll roll with a lot of crosstalk/overtalk, but I always try to be alert for a problem like this, where a player seems...

As a GM, it's been years - real-life years - since I killed a PC in any of my games. I've had PCs knocked out, captured, retired (by player choice), demoted, ripped off, cursed, etc., etc. I guess to me, even as GM I typically have a lot invested in most of the PCs, in terms of subplot and...

A couple more gripes... --GMs who interrupt their own game to tell 'totally awesome' stories of their own characters - or even their other campaigns - completely breaking any immersion or continuity of thought. I admit to doing this occasionally to some extent (and probably most of us do), but...