About a year ago an interesting post on Reddit promised a way to “make your character complex, realistic, and three dimensional, simply by writing down two things that they want.” This was posted in /r/rpg and was intended for people making characters in games like Dungeons and Dragons. The idea was interesting and struck me […]
Role Playing
Wacky Writing Idea #14: Satanic Dungeons and Dragons
For this, and any other Wacky Writing Ideas, I happily release them into the wild for anyone to use. If you like the idea and want to write it up, do so with my blessing! If you want to change it or use it for something else, have at it! If you really want to do […]
Reflections on the Completion of a Dungeon World Campaign
My online role-playing group and I recently wrapped up a dozen or so session campaign of Dungeon World. Dungeon World is considered a “Powered By The Apocalypse” RPG, which has been a popular style of game over the last decade. This post is an attempt to summarize my thoughts on the system, comparing it and […]
Professional Dungeon Masters
There’s been a new trend in role-playing games (RPG): professional dungeon masters, who are people that run role-playing games for money. With RPGs, the dungeon master (DM) does quite a bit more work than the other players. They need to understand the system better than anyone else playing, design the adventure, keep track of the […]
Styles of Role-Playing Games
Role playing games are interesting for many reasons, one of which is how difficult it is to actually explain the game and how it’s played. Often it’s easier to just play a session with someone and let them experience it, rather than trying to describe what can be a somewhat unusual activity / past-time. In […]
Players “Topping From The Bottom” in Role-Playing Games
I’ve been role-playing (with some large breaks) for decades. Often when I start a game, I’m introducing brand new people to the hobby, so I tend to set the tone and have found things run smoothly. A while back, I started talking to people about playing online (via Roll20 or Discord) and have found a […]
Dogma in Role-Playing Games
I’ve long been fascinated by the role of dogma in RPGs. As a child in the 80’s, role-playing was going through the Satanic panic, but was also quite a trend. Somehow my brother and I got a copy of the basic D&D box set and tried to have our babysitter play it with us – […]
Playing Dungeons And Dragons With Perverts
The following is a true story. Not in a, “hey, nudge, nudge, this really happened!” way, but in a “this is my best attempt at capturing the truth of these events” way. About six months ago, as the Covid-19 pandemic was dragging on longer than expected, I had the idea of running an online role-playing […]
First Reactions To Thousand Year Old Vampire
Like anything, role playing games (RPG) have their “trendy” releases. The currently trending product seems to be “Thousand Year Old Vampire” by Tim Hutchings. Rather than a review, since I haven’t even played the game, this is my first reaction to flipping through it and getting a general sense what it’s about. My reaction is […]
Role Playing Games as Inherently Game Design
I was recently watching a video “Why did TSR Hobbies publish Advanced Dungeons and Dragons?” by Nicholas Bielik and one of the things he claimed coalesced a bunch of different ideas about role-playing games that I’ve had over the decades that I’ve played them. Role-playing games are not, were not, and never will be complete […]