When I’m not writing or blogging I like play various tabletop and RPG games and sometimes – as the GM – it is my job begin plotting a game. As I said before, running a game is not so different to writing a story. And it is this idea that …
Click grabbing headline aside, I really am going to talk about the difference between different skill types. I’m going to draw my examples from both S3 and Pathfinder but really these should apply universally. Skills in RPGs can be expressed along a few binary axis: passive vs active constant vs at-will critical …
I’ve been thinking about world building for very small characters or for normal sized characters living with very large peoples (giants). On the whole, we tend to treat races as simply funny looking humans. When the party goes to the bar, they simply order a drink. How do the dwarf, …
I’d like to introduce you to an idea I have been toying with that could, in theory, be used to shape player behaviour in and out of the game – the idea of player karma. “Player karma” is a system that can run on top of almost any other Table Top RPG …
True love’s kiss as a power to break a spell or curse is one of those fairy tale elements that has become engrained in the modern psyche. I thought it might be interesting to explore it as a curse breaker in an RPG setting. True love’s kiss is one of …
The heart of the Story Skills System is storytelling and character skills. It was designed to be a simple system where everything is a skill and, depending on your character and background, you can only be really good at some skills. A task (something to which you are going to apply …
When you think about it, a GM and an author are quite similar. Both are telling a story. The only difference is the medium and the audience. Of the two, running a game as a GM might be the harder option. As a GM you still have to spin a …
I know I said that a GM should be ready to TPK their players but that also means that, as the GM, you should have a plan to save your players. Assuming, of course, that you not playing a game that expects TPKs, you might want a few plans in place to …
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 …
