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I don't play GAMES while worrying much about how they relate to the real world: Separating Games from Reality, Part 1 Separating games from reality, Part 2 "Games are the epitome of separation from reality, as we set up 'the magic circle' and agree to follow a set of rules. Yet some people...

Ah, I also see that the editor changed my question. Mine was: "Your Turn: Does colonization play a part in your campaign, or in the history of your campaign?" No wonder it has been misleading.

clearstream: "It seems to me a mistake or whitewashing to suppose that trading and military colonies are not projects of harmful colonisation. @Ixal I feel there is moral hazard in any presumption of terra nullius. There are peoples today deeply harmed - rich cultures disintegrated and made...

"It happens more than we probably know, and seems to happen to Lew fairly often. I guess even this site is not immune to using click-bait titles." I tend to use longer titles that are precise but not always mellifluous; the changes tend to be shorter titles more likely to attract attention, I...

Ixal: Yes, the title (from the editor) is misleading. My title was "World-building: Colonies." I had no intention of discussing all kinds of expansion. But perhaps someday I will.

When considering how nations expand beyond their borders in your fantasy campaign, there are several options to choose from. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Trading Colonies We can go back to very ancient times, when the Assyrians had a trading colony in Hittite territory, far from the heartland...

Many tabletop RPGs besides D&D have multiple editions. How many people stick with older editions rather than move to the new one? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Flipping & Turning Through New Rules I was reading an issue of Flipping & Turning (an online magazine for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons...

Picking up where we left off in the first article in this series, we review how games differ from novels in points of view, climax and denouement, multiple related stories, "story machines," and the vagaries of chance. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. We previously discussed how opposed-game RPGs...

There’s a big difference between novels and role-playing games. If you want to to make the RPG much like a novel, you remove it from the realm of “game”: that is, something that you can fail at/lose, something where the opposition is dangerous. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Not the Obvious...

The older I get, the more battles I study, the more I recognize how important leadership is to success, whether of a nation, an army, a business concern, or an adventuring group. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. The Importance of Leadership I was once again reading Xanathar’s Guide to...

There never seems to be enough game masters to go around, a problem that’s been around for as long as the hobby has existed. So what do we do about it? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Game Mastering is Work There’s a long-term trend to reduce the burdens of game mastering so that there are more...

The second season of The Mandalorian helped me realize that functional versus emotional modeling applies to both Star Wars and tabletop role-playing games. Photo by Michael Marais on Unsplash Functional vs. Emotional Modeling in RPGs When you want to model a particular character (in Dungeons...

Plagues have made a big difference in world history, and may in your fantasy world. In the course of studying military and diplomatic history over most eras I’ve encountered a lot about this frighteningly frequent occurrence. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Absent widespread healing or...

I’m going to describe an analogy between Dungeons & Dragons character classes and American football positions (for the basics, check out this article). I've done this just for fun, though it's also useful if players think this way because it will encourage them to cooperate. Picture courtesy...

The science fiction default setting is less clear than the “Late Medieval plus some Tolkien” fantasy default, but let’s talk about it. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Months ago I discussed the fantasy default setting in "Baseline Assumptions of Fantasy RPGs.” A default may not exist at all in...

Should you create an elaborate backstory for a character or should the character’s adventures tell their own story? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. I was reading part of the Xanathar’s Guide to Everything for Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons the other day, specifically the tables intended to...

We often see in fantasy (such as Game of Thrones) ground-based attacks hitting flying objects. Those are fantasies. It is in practice VERY HARD to hit a flying object, even with a gun, let alone with a torsion-based machine such as ballista or bow. I'd think a good use of magic would be to...

Introducing flight to your fantasy battles? There are serious consequences for how it will affect your world. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Why It Matters When you change something in your world from how it is in a “real” world, there ought to be consequences for how it affects play. Here I’m...

Good advice when the software won't take care of it. Some programs (such as Info Select) can date the original note, and Windows has a hidden "date created" column as well as the date modified.

Hector Berlioz, the 19th century French composer, said “every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.” Just as Abraham Lincoln thought “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar,” no one has a good enough memory to...