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Was That The Line Way Back There? Unfortunately in my game, I generally have to point out the line loud and clear to the players before they step over it. Sometimes, they realize they're about to ruin their own lives, but some of my players have a real knack for coming up with things to do...

Dimension Hopping In college, I ran a dimension hopping game that sounds somewhat similar. It was based around the idea that just like in "Sliders", they always seem to drop in at just the right/wrong moment. To prevent the party from jumping out any old time they wanted, I had the gem which...

The Fighter Class I've seen several posts badmouthing the fighter class as being boring. I believe you may be missing one of the main points of playing the fighter. This class is all about flexibility and being very good at combat. It is not about flavor or specializing. Those are the things...

How To Kill A Pack of Undead I have had two different players independently use gravity to kill a group of undead. The first was in a home game a number of years ago back in the days of 2nd Ed. A rogue-type encountered a group of skeletons. He knew they were to much for him, so he went...

No, not exactly. Several of them are old school, they hate riddles, and they tend to become either smart-alec or just plain uncooperative when they face a puzzle they can't solve in 30 seconds. Of course, that just means that the younger, less cynical players end up getting all the experience...

How's Your Players' Sense of Humor? Sadly, I guessed the whole sticking the pieces together in about 30 seconds. I've also had jobs where I dealt with large amounts of editing, so that probably makes me a slanted opinion. The "remove without taking" stumped me, unless the party had a source of...

Pricing Depends On Campaign The true value of this ring will vary with how you use skills in your campaign. If skills, especially the ones you cannot use untrained, come up on a regular basis, this ring is worth more. If you don't use skill much, then this ring becomes a little less valuable...

Family Adventuring Groups I ran one campaign where every member of the party was from a village on a small island. They could play humans, elves, and half-elves only. No one was closely related like brother and sister, but they had all grown up together and all knew each other well. The idea...

Commuting Generally, I can get anywhere in town in 20 minutes or less. (Assuming it's not 5:00 traffic.) So, as far as being a player, I figure that's a reasonable commute. While I know people who commute an hour or more (to a different city) for their games, I've never had a game as a player...

Players Can Make Homebrew More Work I generally homebrew. I have been talked into running an established world once or twice over the years, and I always end up with problems where the players know something about the world that I don't or THINK they know something about the world that I don't...

Storing/Displaying Miniatures I can't take credit for this idea, becuase I read it online. However, it seems a very effective way to store minatures. It takes a bit of construction skill, but not a lot. Get yourself some fairly sturdy baking sheets. You want something with a raised edge so the...

Things Found In Gaming Books When I bought a large stack of HERO books from Sue Cook on E-Bay, I found one of Monte Cook's old business cards from when he was working as an editor of that line. It was clearly one of his first business cards at the company, because while all of the company...

Close Friends As Players I have to answer both "yes" and "no". A majority of the players I have gamed with over the years have been friends. There have been a number of campaigns where people who were my good friends really added to the fun of the game, and that was at least partially due to...

"Real World" Use of the Term 'Buff' Interestingly enough, after reading this thread yesterday, I heard a use of the word "buff" in a more pseudo real world situation. I was watching a re-run of the show "E.R." and they were talking about "buffing" someone up by giving them fluids and medicine...

In a 30 person live action Vampire game I got talked into playing in, I decided I wanted to get one of the other characters out of my House when I took over as its leader. I convined the player/character that in order to become a full member of the House he had to prove both his dedication to...

You want to mess with your players and want to give their characters a real goal for further saving the world: What if the souls don't actually go anywhere? What if bashing the brains in just makes the body stop working, but the soul is still trapped there in the remains of the corpse? Do you...

It sounds a little odd, but a good way to get better at NPCs is to play them talking to each other. When you've got some time, sit down and have two NPCs have a conversation with each other. This can also help you work on your "voice" for the NPCs. (Having each have a different style of speaking...

"Oh, come on, the DM wouldn't put it in if we couldn't take it. Now charge!"

Trust Issues This is one of those fun areas of player and DM trust. The players have to trust the DM to come up with a good campaign and the DM has to trust the players to actually go along with the general theme. The problem is, if you don't give them the general theme, they don't know what...

I think your wizard player has the same problem that a number of players I've dealt with lately have -- they get totally focused on certain spells and never work with anything outside of that "optimized" toolset. I count acid splash, color spray, magic missle, ray of enfeeblement, and...