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Setup for Success: Starting your Campaign on the Right Foot
There are few moments worse for a game master than, when running a lengthy campaign exploring the innate darkness of the human soul, one of the players announces that he has purchased chicken suits for...
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Setup for Success: The Case for Round-Robin GMing
Typical games have one game master, huddled behind a screen, forcing the players to dance to his tune. At first, this is great, because he has absolute power. After a while, though, the lone GM begins...
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Setup for Success: How to Conduct a Round-robin Campaign
So, you’ve decided to run a round-robin campaign. You’re tired of being the only GM, or of another GM hogging the head of the table, and you’re ready to tell a cooperative story with your friends....
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Setup for Success: How to Make Your Game Table Absolutely Miserable
There are plenty of articles about how to improve relationships at your game table, and to make things fun. What about when you want to take things in the other direction? Not everyone wants a fun...
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Setup for Success: Crafting dynamic battles and set piece encounters
Plenty has been written about why a GM should take greater care in arranging the battlefield. When it comes to how, though, ideas can be a bit thin on the ground. I, myself, often struggle to come up...
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Setup for Success: The case for binding characters together
Every real campaign starts out with four or five complete strangers meeting in a bar. Suddenly, they decide to band together for the rest of their lives. They now trust each other completely. Or, they...
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Setup for Success: Varying Session Types
Many GMs view game sessions as having a standard format. Whatever works for the GM, they follow a typical equation: Some plot exposition, a certain number of combat encounters, one social encounter for...
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Setup for Success: Picturing the game field
Close your eyes and picture a meadow. Got it? Okay, now, see that troll ten feet away from you? Oh, didn’t I mention him, or how close he was? Well, anyway, he’s about to be eaten by the dragon to your...
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Setup for Success: Should I Keep This Group or Player?
Much is made on forums about “Is this group right for me?” and “What should I do about this player?” These questions are not at all unique to the field of roleplay gaming. These are questions which...
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Setup for Success: How to be a Wonderful Player
This hobby sees individuals from all walks of life, with all sorts of social skills. Some people are decent players, seat fillers. Some players are fun individuals but fairly mediocre at the table....
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Setup for Success: What do you do with your downtime?
The point of roleplaying is to vicariously experience incredible events and fantastic moments. Few people want to spend hours playing Cubicles and Deadlines, the game where you play as tax assessors...
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Setup for Success: Failure Through Experience
When you’ve been roleplaying for decades, it’s understandable that you may not be able to remember what it’s like to start out. It’s also understandable that you’ve got a plethora of habits you’ve...
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Setup for Success: It’s okay not to play – Dealing with roleplay burnout
Hobbies are meant to be fun. Roleplaying is a hobby. Ergo, roleplaying is meant to be fun. This is important to remember, because so often, roleplaying ceases to be fun. Our schedules become so...
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More Than Set Dressing: A System for Every Story
I have almost played Shadowrun four or five times. Like most of my initial exposure to RPGs, I was introduced to Shadowrun through its video game adaptation “Shadowrun Returns.” As I played the game...
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Setup for Success: Forget the Rules
Roleplay games are built around ideas and concepts. These ideas and concepts are solidified by rules and mechanics. Over time, people forget that they’re telling stories, and get bogged down in the...
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Setup for Success: Good Roleplay Habits
Habits happen. Sometimes they’re unintentional, and impact our tablemates like nails on a chalkboard. Other times, they’re carefully crafted to make sure we create enduring groups which function...
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Setup for Success: How to Set an Appropriate Horror Atmosphere
It’s the end of October, and that means that people are thinking about how to be spooky. Many of us who play RPGs are trying to think up scary stories or settings to use as part of a Halloween...
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Setup for Success: In Praise of the Monstrous
Monsters aren’t born; they’re made. No, that’s not right. Monsters ARE born. Orcs, goblins, kobolds, and the like are monsters because that’s specifically what we call their races. We even have books...
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Setup for Success: The Hero’s Journey, why we use it, and alternatives
When we think about a roleplay campaign story, many of us picture an epic quest which spans a great distance and amount of time. Often we imagine interacting with many people and enemies, perhaps...
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Setup for Success: Using the Calendar
No matter what day it is, it’s always a normal day. Roleplaying tends to take place mostly in environments where there’s nothing unusual going on… except for the horrible trauma. What I mean is that we...
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