We’ve been there before – two skills both alike in utility…GM, do I really have to purchase both? Yes, that’s RAW of course…although… So that was my thought a couple of hours ago, well that in anthropomorphizing Shakespeare characters as GURPS traits. In this post I’m going to do something weird and radical and not something […]
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Gamemaster’s Guidepost: Avoiding the Avatar of GM Fiat
Running a roleplaying as the GM can be simultaneously invigorating, ego-destroying, fun, and make you hate yourself. If it wasn’t so fun I doubt people would do it. Running a game is like trying to fix the engine on your car while you’re driving it or laying down the tracks of a train while it’s […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: What I Think a Good Gamemaster Is
I am forever a GM by choice. I have very high standards when it comes to the sorts of games I’ll play in for protracted periods of time. If I’m in your game more than four sessions it means you met my standards and are continuing to meet them. Now that doesn’t mean a hill of […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Ten Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Out as a Gamemaster
There are things that I wish someone had told me when I first started out being a gamemaster. Stuff you only get told by someone who knows (assuming you listen) or things which you learn at the school of hard knocks. Occasionally, you can read about them if some wise and learned master (*cough*) writes […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: On The Care And Feeding of Players
GMs can’t run games without players and players can’t play games without GMs. It’s a paradox of collaborative storytelling. But players can be finicky creatures and not all GMs know how to heard cats. Here’s a few tips to keep your players happy without giving into them all the time. Agency of Choices Players do […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Flying Solo
Guest Post by Scott Rochat Sam Spade. Wonder Woman. Lara Croft. James Bond. What do all these famous fictional heroes have in common? Simple: they’re nearly impossible to play in the typical RPG campaign. Oh, they’re easy enough to build mechanically. But each of them is typically a solo act (Justice League notwithstanding). They star […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: The Plague City
Guest Post by S. A. Fisher Most people fled from cities infected with the bubonic plague. For instance, Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron revolves around the storytelling of survivors who fled Florence, Italy during its plague years. Player characters, however, may have business inside a plague city. How do you handle that? Mashup GURPS Bio-Tech and […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: What I Think a Good Player Is
Because I have such high standards for myself as a gamemaster I also have high standards for my prospective players. I’ve talked about this before but I feel it bears another post to look over what I consider the bare minimum for me to invest in a player as a GM. And I do invest. […]
Continue readingGURPS101: Deconstructing Size Modifier
Guest Post by Sean “Dr. Kromm” Punch First off, this one isn’t by me. It’s been a bit edited by me to fit in my blog, but is otherwise Sean’s words. This entire post stems from a conversation that was had in the GURPS Discord where Greyman asked: “Is there any way to make your […]
Continue readingCarpe Blogiem: Rules I Don’t Use, Replace, or Revise
GURPS 4th edition is a very well put together system and one that I deeply enjoy using and writing for… but there are things about it that I rather don’t like and have either ignored or houseruled away. Now, as any of my players can tell you I really don’t have a lot of after-character creation […]
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