One thing you learn as a GM is that sometimes you need to ensure that rolls are fixed. And that is okay. Here is why. When you transition from player to narrator (or GM), your long-ingrained sense of fair play makes fixing rolls feel like cheating. For a player, it would …
A good GM is a GM that is ready, willing, and able to kill player characters. A bad GM is one that enjoys doing so. I want to explain why a GM needs to be prepared to kill player characters and why it makes a better game for players and GM …
Goblin tactics include dirty fighting and ganging up. Standard goblin tactics for fighting stronger opponents is ambush followed by overwhelming numbers. Scar’s goblins take this one step further and are unusually well organised (for goblins). Goblins do not fight fair Scar’s goblins cheat. They attack in large swarms and will attempt …
What happens when the party face an unexpected ambush in an otherwise tranquil scene? Can they fight off a horde of attackers long enough to survive? Who are these attackers and what do they want? This woodland based encounter can be tuned to the party’s level. Use the form at …
TPK encounters are designed to catch players wrong-footed and expose them to the thrill of encounters that could actually threaten them. Many of these encounters involve goblins. For story purposes, I have crafted a backstory to tie these encounters together. You could run them back to back as the central …
I’m guessing I’ve probably lost about half of you with the headline but I’ve been giving some thought to a different way to do online games as a storytelling medium. Before you look at me and say something that offensive and probably mostly true, hear me out. You see I’m …
TPK is a collection of self-varying, auto-adjusting, curve-ball encounters for evil GMs to throw at their players. This page was generated using a seed of . Examples of saves An easy STR roll would be DC based on a STR Bonus of A moderate Will roll DC A hard Fort …
There is a maxim that when you do a whole load of research about amusing military stuff, you should blog it for other people to read. This is, of course, something I just made up. That doesn’t make it a bad idea though. I’ve been watching a lot of war …
When designing games, we sometimes use the inverse square law. Warning: here be nerd-bate. The inverse square law is a lot easier to understand than the last round of maths geekery I posted. When geeky writers have a little too much time on their hands, they read geeky blogs and …
Normally I like to only write about writing and story related issues here but today I am going to tell you why I think Brexit is a mistake. These three simple reasons why Brexit is a mistake are why I have been so distracted from my chosen life’s work of writing the …
