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I have trouble with evil campaigns. As a PC, how do you successfully convey "I'm a bad dude" without going in for cartoonish puppy-kicking? Any hints or tips from the evil campaign veterans out there?

Half of DMing seems to be interaction design rather than game design. Getting the process of running to fit your group is at least as challenging as actually sitting behind the screen and telling stories.

Well then. I'm nothing if not consistent. I swear to Gygax, I need to run a "three panel" contest at some point and ask folks to make a coherent story out of multiple comics.

That secrecy business is a fair trade-off. You do give up on the anticipation of level-up though, which can bring a fair bit of excitement as players begin to weigh their build options.

Well sure. But you're 15 XP short of leve-up at the end of the session. So you... what? Have a heart-to-heart conversation about your feelings for an other PC? Explore a new hex on the map? Resolve a moral dispute in the town market? I'm all for non-combat XP, but what does that look like in...

For those of you that use XP rather than milestone leveling: How do you deal with the issue of players wanting to earn the final few XP to level up? I have a standing policy to allow "extra credit" projects for bonus XP. Stuff like in-character journaling, painting your mini, and...

The social roles are really tough, especially if you go in assuming that you're going to be "default face" just because you're a Charisma character. Being "the talky one" hits the prima donna issue too, meaning that you've got big personalities who would naturally want to seem preeminent in a...

That works for the old rogue/paladin clash, but what about the mechanical? I remember one of my groups struggling with a pair of summon-focused casters. One was a wizard, the other was an oracle, and it felt a bit like both had come to a party wearing the same dress. One of 'em had to change to...

I'm talking about stuff like a paladin coming up with a justification for partying with a necromancer, or vice versa. Maybe there was already a long-range caster, and the group didn't need another. Or your interesting dhampir PC could straight up not survive in a party with a channel-focused...

I feel like the "cosmic seesaw" is a good solution until you go all reductio ad absurdum with it. Playing a character that "uses the powers of darkness to serve the cause of light" is interesting. I mean, that's Spawn, right? But when you go to the extreme with the system (e.g. "I lit the last...

I know it's an old cliche, but this mess happened to me. I was all set to go with a necromancer. My guy was raising dead, the campaign was running smoothly, and then a buddy joined up at level 6. He wanted to roll a paladin. What's the best way to make the two play nice in the same party? Is...

Got dammit loch ness monster! ... For real though, that feels about right.

We all know that splitting the party is bad. But by the same token, allowing a player to have a "spotlight moment" can be good. These include backstory scenes, solo stealth missions, and dramatic confrontations between a small number of party members. These can be tense and exciting encounters...

One interesting approach is to implement something one of my groups calls "fate of the party." Absent PCs continue to play, and may even act recklessly if the group deems it to be in-character. However, to avoid players coming back to discover that their character died, the PC cannot die unless...

I've seen a lot of ways to handle this mess. The in-universe justification (a sudden stomach bug). The handwave (he's just over there, not participating). The cancelled session. How does your group handle it? Do you employ a mix of strategies, or do you tend to favor some particular option...

Do you still have the die? I'd be curious to hear the results of the saltwater test.

I've got a few of mine listed below the comic over here. More recently, I documented sextuple sixes on Roll 20. That's a one in 46,656 chance. The roll? A between-combats lay on hands in Pathfinder, thus confirming my suspicion that Roll 20 is an elaborate troll. What about the rest of you...

It so weird to think about... We play this game to accumulate wealth and level up our dudes. But we're also supposed to be big damn heroes. Assuming we're going for the basic white-hat power fantasy rather than some kind of antihero story, selfless acts are part of the genre. That goes directly...

That's the thing: I don't think it's supposed to be. Check out that downtime system over in Pathfinder 1e for comparison: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/downtime/ If you run the numbers, you wind up making a pittance compared to the typical work of adventuring. We're...