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Use of stratagems goes back at least as far as Odysseus and the Trojan Horse. Fans of Glen Cook's "Black Company" series about a fantasy mercenary company will recognize their preference for stratagems over a straight-up battle. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Direct vs. Indirect Warfare In...

Making a Tolkien-like history for a game can be self-indulgent if you let it get in the way of the game. Making it for written stories is something else entirely. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Stories require some kind of setting. J. R. R. Tolkien made his history and setting as a place for...

I’ve always thought that combat-oriented Dungeons & Dragons-style tabletop role-playing games become less fun to play as characters reach double-figure levels of power. Here’s why, and how to fix it. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. The “Who Shoots First” Problem A major reason is the “who...

Fantasy role-playing games, like the Star Trek television series, can sometimes suffer from a lack of differentiation between humanoid species with only slight tweaks to their appearance. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. From Go to Risk Fantasy role-playing games can suffer from a plague of the...

We've been talking about active versus passive players. But how do you tell which style works for your group? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Consider Computer RPGs There are lots of activities in video games, certainly, and often there's lots of opposition. Though frequently it's not human...

Given that RPGs are, in essence, negotiations between players and GM, I don't see someone who relies primarily on the mechanics as active, because that gives him or her less control than if other activities were involved.

Ovinomancer, while I see your point, you're not talking about what I was trying to describe. Engaged vs unengaged is what you're talking about, or perhaps about desire to participate? I'm talking about a desire to control what happens aalong with a desire to energetically participate.

Some games need active players, others passive. There are many implications for game design. Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Active and Passive Play Styles You can in general divide game players into two types (with many somewhere in between, of course), Active and Passive. Definitions from a...

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...