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 […]
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Gamemaster’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 readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Slow Lane Sessions
They happen to everyone eventually. The game you’re running or playing in bogs down. Whether this is because the players (or GM) don’t know what to do next or the players (or GM) runs on a “tangent” (non-gaming related talk at the table) or something else. It happens. It’s not something you can really stop […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Building a Mystery
Adding a mystery angle to your campaign is not something that’s particularly hard – doing it well on the other hand can be tricky. GURPS Mysteries by L. J. Steele is a fantastic, must-have resource for GMs running a mystery campaign for any system, but especially useful for those running GURPS campaigns as it contains notes on just […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: The Worthiness or Unworthiness of Complex Mechanics
Today is a fine GURPSday and today I’m going to ramble on about a topic near and die to every gamer’s heart: How can the complexity of mechanics affect the actual roleplaying of a game? First, a few things. To play a roleplaying game is to have some measure of mechanical institutions within the game […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost – Framing Your Preferences, Part III
Wrapping up my posts on framing a campaign, today I talk about putting it all together. Know that you know what your players want for their characters and the campaign itself it’s time for the linchpin: What the GM wants. I see so many campaigns flame out fast because the GM and players were simply […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost – Framing Your Preferences, Part II
Continuing my previous post in this three part series. Previously, we talked about framing their preferences as concerns their characters (e.g., how much combat they wanted in the campaign on a per session basis). Basically, how the players expect their characters to react to the campaign world Today I talk about framing the player’s preferences concerning the campaign world. That […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost – Framing Your Preferences, Part I
One of the many things I learned running my Aeon supers campaign was how to improve my skills when it came to framing a campaign toward the player’s expectations. I say the players and not the characters because when it gets down to it each player has things they truly enjoy doing within the structure of […]
Continue readingCarpe Blogiem: Why GURPS?
In all the roleplaying games in all the world, you have to roleplay in mine… Someone asked me a while back: “Why GURPS?” Well, there are a couple of reasons I use GURPS pretty much exclusively, but let’s ignore me for a bit. Let’s assume that you’ve just stumbled onto my blog: “What is this GURPS thing you […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Shut up and Roll!
Player: “Okay, this is a -4 to my roll because of posture, another -2 for attacking a side hex…”GM: “Shouldn’t I be doing this?”Player: “Oh, I was just helping…okay, and another -4 to range…”GM: “No. Stop. Just roll.”Player: “But…but the modifiers.”GM: “I know the modifiers – you make the rolls.” Even in realistic GURPS games (of […]
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