Guest Post by Kalzazz The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game has some rather elaborate rules for overland travel, including uses for Survival, Navigation, Weather Sense, and many other skills, oh my. It does not however include particularly convenient rules for the use of spells during said travel, despite including spells such as Quick March, Create Food, and […]
Continue readingTag Archives: gaming advice
Carpe Blogiem: What I Look For In Players as a GM, Part II
As I talked about before, I have criteria for picking players. Avoiding bad players can be just as challenging as finding good player. As discussed in my previous post, I have criteria for finding good players. The reverse of that is also true – I flat out avoid those with certain traits. Spotlight Hog: One of […]
Continue reading
Gamemaster’s Guidepost: The Soul and Your Game
Guest Post by Emily “Bruno” Smirle When designing a game setting with supernatural or mystical elements, it may be necessary to create a firm definition of the “soul” – what is it, who has it, what does it do for (or to) you? Theologists and philosophers have debated the subject endlessly throughout human history; the […]
Continue reading
Gamemaster’s Guidepost: When to Follow, Make, Ignore, Bend, or Break Rules
GURPS is one of those games where if you try to use every rule for every circumstance you’re going to create an unusable pile of crap. It’s like sticking a bunch of magnets on a refrigerator and then expecting to see what color the fridge is. You can do it – but it’s barely recognizable. So how do […]
Continue reading
Gamemaster’s Guidepost: Dungeon Fantasy Boss Battles I
Today I’m going to talk about designing boss battles in Dungeon Fantasy, but to do that let’s chat about what a boss is. Dungeon Fantasy breaks monsters down into three groups and I usually add two more (those familiar with my article “It’s a Threat!” already know about these additional two types but I’ve added them here for ease […]
Continue readingCarpe Blogiem: What I Look For In Players as a GM, Part I
Finding a player for a game you wish to run is hard – finding the right player is even harder. I’ve been pretty lucky for the most part and with my current player pool of 15 or so I’ve been even luckier. That said, I personally have a few criteria that I look for in players: […]
Continue reading
Gamemaster’s Guidepost: How Much Lore Is Hidden?
When building a campaign setting or starting a new campaign one of the things that you must decide as a GM is what skills are important, what skills exist, and what skills don’t exist. For campaigns with magic, psionics, and other “paranormal powers” one of the key jobs a GM has is to decide what […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Organizing Your Gaming Notes
Any gamemaster (or writer) worth his salt always has more ideas than he has time. These ideas may be half-baked, over-cooked, or perfect and fully formed like Athena on paper from your Zeus-like noggin. It’s just a hazard of the mindset – too much stuff floating in our heads and too much “what if” thinking […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: My Rules For Spending Points
Some people let you spend willy nilly. Some (like myself) will only let you spend points at certain times. Some are point nazis (“Ve must spenct zee hours and zee points! SCHNELL”). However you you do them is all gravy with me. But this is how I do it for pretty much every single game […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
Free lunches? I don’t believe in them, well, when it comes to free stuff in a roleplaying game anyways. Now, I’m not talking about one woe for every weal – I’m talking about taking disadvantages and then weaseling out of actually playing them or suffering for them in some way. First, it’s just bad roleplaying […]
Continue reading