Ideally players can make a world more real by helping to build it. Whether it’s creating organizations as background material for their characters or building out the finer aspects of an existing religion for use in the game, having players contribute to the campaign can be a tremendous boon. It distributes the creative responsibilities, easing … Read more
Calvin Cloudmore. He started off as an inept bandit who’s gang was wiped out by the adventurers that went on to form the Blackrazor Guild. With the party in need of a cleric (and Cal in need of redemption) he became a cleric of St. Cuthbert (albiet with a wisdom so low he had a … Read more
Damocles Everton, the upstart master of the Blackrazor Guild and agent of the Dark Circle tops my list. Hated by the player characters after he stole control of their guild from them, the appearance of Damocles kicked off an epic story arc that culminated with the Fall of Obsidian Bay, the hero’s home city. Everton … Read more
Imagination + good rules + group buy-in. Those are the elements that fueled our longest running games, even if the campaigns the RPGs were powering jumped from ruleset to ruleset. Our Blackrazor Guild campaign, now in its second decade, has seen numerous prequels, sequels, and spin-offs. It’s been run using Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, … Read more
My answer today is very different from my answer 20 years ago. There was a time when I loved a good, crunchy RPG, with a ton of splat books and optional rules (in short, Dungeons & Dragons 3.x). Implicit in the crunchiness was a love of customization and the flexibility that came with it. Now … Read more
The thing I love most about role-playing games is how they force my brain into creative, collaborative, and improvisational modes. RPGs in all of their forms are dynamic. The constantly changing circumstances forces players to think on their feet. While this is true for everyone at the table, it’s particularly true for game masters. As … Read more
RPG-a-Day is an annual event in which bloggers spend a month talking about different aspects of role-playing games. I enjoyed participating in the event in 2017 and decided to do it again in 2018. Keep track of what other bloggers are writing for the event at the official Facebook page. Last year I wrote my entries … Read more
It’s summertime. And things are getting weird. The slipcase two-volume edition of Delta Green arrived in early June after two years of waiting for the Kickstarter to make its production run. After reading lots of positive reviews, I picked up the Tales for the Loop RPG, which features kids on bikes investigating mysteries in a … Read more
The Kickstarter for Freedom Squadron, a Savage Worlds-powered homage to 1980s cartoon action heroes, is in its final days. Inspired by G.I. Joe, Transformers, and their 80s brethren, Freedom Squadron‘s campaign looks to fund two setting books: the Commando’s Manual, which is the character-building book, and the Freedom Squadron Plans & Operations Manual, which is … Read more
Many years ago I used Google Reader to keep up with my various blog feeds. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave me a snapshot of the blogosphere while drinking my morning coffee and helped me feel connected to the larger gaming community. Over time, Google killed Reader and I relied more on social media to … Read more