Graph Paper Games

A bit of a benchmark for the blog--500 posts about RPG's and associated topics.  It's good timing, because I'm about to retake the GM screen in my group and kick off a new campaign, namely Champions. It's been a long time since I ran this game, and a big change for the group.  My plan is to commit to doing a six-session "mini-series" as a test run for the game.  At that point I will take stock, talk to the group, and then begin to either plot out a larger campaign or change gears and go with something else. Before that, however, I'm doing a "victory lap" with the 5E campaign by running one more session of that game.  For awhile now it's been run by the other Rob, but when he wrapped up his adventure arc there was still a PC plot thread left dangling.  In the past I haven't sweated those too much, but this was a big deal for this young player (the first PC she's ever made) so I'm coming back to D&D for the sole purpo...

So, in the middle of the RPGaDAY blogathon, a milestone... It crept on me, mostly due to some weird, likely robot-related activity.  I swear half my views are from non-entities thinking I'm a gambling website.  Hey, komradi , I'm not!  I'm a small blog about roleplaying games! Anyways, thanks for all the real people reading this blog. I appreciate it your support, your input, and in many cases your friendship.

As is often the case, my friend Adam mentions something on his own blog which then inspires a lengthy response from me.  In this case, it was this post , entitled "An Inconsistent Truth."  In it he complains about this issues of pacing, and the way that players can slow play to a grind by being overcautious. Unfortunately, they don't know how to police themselves (or so it seems). Many of them forego what would be the most interesting, exciting, or cinematic option, instead looking to the most logical option; often making certain it is the surest, safest plan, devoid of conflict, drama, tension, and sadly, emotional impact, and resonance. Right, because for some players, survival is the ultimate point of participating in roleplaying games.  Live to fight another day, get more stuff, etc.   Now that's not particularly heroic, it reflects a more picaresque style of play whose roots go back to the very beginning of RPG's.  Those were the days of Gygaxian lethal...

I think that Tumblr is the Wild West of the blogosphere, but there's a couple of tumblr blogs I really like, one of which is Superheroes In Full Color .  It's a blog that focuses on superheroes and comic book creators of various ethnicity.  There's been a lot of movement in Marvel to increase diversity among their roster of superheroes, both in terms of race, gender, and culture, and I think it's a good thing even if it is at the expense of some long-established characters (and honestly, it really isn't at their expense, since the original Captain America, Thor, and Captain Marvel are still in circulation). A long time ago I read an article (perhaps in Dragon Magazine in their old Ares section, I'm not sure) about diversifying your superhero campaign.  It mentioned, among other things, that if you had about a 1:1,000,000 of superbeings to normal people, there would be over a hundred superheroes or supervillains from Mexico.  (I have read, believe it or not, th...

It seems like lately all I do is write responses to Adam's posts at Barking Alien , but sometimes he says stuff that begs a response. Like this. Some years back (and I know I mentioned it on this blog before) a friend of mine named Lee had the idea that a game session should only last four hours, or so. Around the same time, Zak Smith, and some other bloggers made mention that their sessions lasted about that long.  Then, as now, I would have to ask HOW? How is that even possible? Why is it so even if it is possible? It takes me about forty-five minutes to my Traveller games now that we run them at one of the player's homes. Round trip I'm spending $5.50, and it's taking me an hour, and a half to travel to, and from (45 minutes each way). If I'm not getting at least six good hours of gaming out of the that, I'm staying home.   Why is it so?  Short answer?  Kids.  Work.  Stuff.  I'm not knocking Adam, I'm really not.  As someone who w...

Aside from posting about gaming sessions, I've been not doing a lot of blogging on this blog lately, so when Adam over at Barking Alien posted his What Are You Good At GM Challenge , I took the bait. So I have to list five games I am great at running, three I am not so hot with, five reasons you consider yourself a good GM, and three things you feel you need to work on. Before I do this, a sidebar.  I've had people tell me I'm a great GM, but some times I just don't see it.  I had a conversation last week where I began to wonder if I do this well at all, in fact.  So I have to overcome my own skepticism to do this list.  Also, I appreciate how Adam thinks that people have run eight different games.  God love that guy.... Without further equivocation... Games I am great at running : Old School Fantasy (the "murderhobo" campaign) Superheroes Picaresque Science Fiction (aka "Free Trader" sci-fi) Post-apocalyptic Pulp/Adventure stories Ga...

Well, my funny little gaming blog hit 30,000 pageviews.  The last time it appears that I kept track was in December 2012, when I hit 5,000.  Looking at the graph, readership has steadily increased, not including the odd outlying spike apparently caused by Russian gambling website robots attracted to words like "games" and "gaming" (and possibly "Russian gambling robots"). "I'll raise you 30 rubles, comrade." Over the last year or so I've noticed that aside from participating in a "answer the daily question for a month" thing my blog posts are largely quick re-caps of my gaming sessions and the odd thought about this, that, or the other when it comes to RPG's.  I think there is some value in being a person who is publicly admitting to not only gaming but gaming often and with a lot of people who are new to the hobby.  But I also realize that there's not a ton of usable content by other GM's. Some of that i...

Spawned from an off-handed comment I made in my own blog, Barking Alien has kicked off The Initiative: Superhero RPG Appendix N Blog Challenge. And since it was my idea, I accept. Background: "Appendix N" is the list of recommended source material from 1st Edition AD&D.  It contained a bunch of fantasy and sci-fi novels that influence the creators of the game and included people like Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance. In BA's original post and follow-up challenge, the issue was how to inform potential players about your own style of GMing when it comes to superhero RPG's.  Are they gritty or light-hearted?  Realistic or fantastic? You need five to ten comic books, and five to ten other sources (movies, TV, video games, etc.) Now the real challenge is that BA is my RPG brother from another mother, so it would be easy to just copy his list whole, but what's the fun of that.  I will say that there are a lot of crossovers. Comic books The Avengers...

Tim Brannon at The Other Side is supporting the Bloghop against Homophobia and Transphobia , and while I didn't sign up to specifically support that bloghop, I will support Tim's efforts.  Prejudice against a person based on their sexual orientation is wrong, and I'm glad that in my own line of work we have made great strides to address that. Tim's doing a cool thing to support the bloghop by first offering a free copy of his RPG sourcebook The Witch in a raffle to those who link to his blog, but also is contributing the proceeds from the sale of this book from May 17 to 27 to The Trevor Project .  So go buy a copy (I'm going to, not the least of which is because I have a player in my gaming group who loves to play witches), support the bloghop, and do what's right! -Robb

I've decided to take a crack at the RPG Blog Carnival this month, especially since the topic is so easy: Campaigns I'd Like to Run , a topic chosen by Lowell at Age of Ravens . Ironically enough, one campaign I've wanted to run for a while--a supers game--I'm doing right now, so I can scratch that one off the list.  So what have I dreamed of doing?  Two answers My Own Version of the West Marches I think most GM's of fantasy games have considered this at least once in their lives.  For those who don't know, the West Marches was a  D&D sandbox campaign run years ago by Ben Robbins over at Ars Ludi .  His reflections on it were immediately absorbed by a lot of OSR people into their canon about what a sandbox campaign should look like.  What's ironic was that a) it wasn't a hexcrawl, and b) it was done using the oft-maligned 3rd Edition rules. In any case, I've often dreamed of doing a fantasy campaign where the focus was on player's de...

Tenkar of Tenkar's Tavern recently suggested that fans of Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game should set aside January 31st as "Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Appreciation Day."  I'm a big fan of BFRPG, and I can why in one sentence: Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game combines the ethos of Old School Dungeons & Dragons without the slavish devotion to antiquated and unhelpful rules, and its free. Retro-clones of D&D often fall along a certain spectrum in terms of where in the D&D chronology they are attempting to emulate.  BFRPG falls somewhere between "Basic/Expert" and "1st Ed. AD&D" but also goes ahead and ditches things like descending Armor Class that regardless of how you might bend over backwards to justify, is counter-intuitive to most people. What does it have?  Four races (human, elf, dwarf, and halfling) and four classes (fighter, magic-user, thief, and cleric).  It has the standard battery of D&D monsters and spell...