Bard of Valiant

Last night our party faced a god. This was the whole goal of the current adventure, something everyone knew was coming for several weeks and was looking forward to last night.
Well, I thought everyone was looking forward to it. It turned out there was a huge discrepancy between how I, as the Game Master, viewed [...]

Trollsmyth requested I post a synopsis of the games along with the pictures each week. So that the story doesn’t begin in the middle, I said I’d write up something on prior games over the next few days. I’m not much of a fiction writer, I haven’t the patience for it so this will be [...]

kaeosdad at Symptoms of Madness asked,
As much as I love the social aspect of tabletop gaming sometimes all the catching up, joking around and enjoyment of meals can slow a game session down to a grind. The question I keep asking myself is how can I keep the game rolling and entertaining without being a [...]

Click pics for large size.
We just started the game so the table is still pretty neat. I give out experience points for snacks so we never lack for munchies and soda.
We’re still using the default character sheet although I’ve considered making a custom version. There’s so much wasted space on these.
We use 2 skills [...]

Jade at Evil Machinations asks, “What are the best and worst things about being a GM?” First, let me say I love this blog’s tagline “…No scenario survives contact with the PCs … No system survives contact with the GM“. So true!
However, the question itself reminded me of a Twitter conversation I had recently. theFreeRPGblog [...]

I’m doing something a little different this time. None of these excerpts are from blogs by gamers. Not one. Ideas can come from interesting places.
ISO Quality Planning, a company specializing in helping insurance companies identify risk, has compiled a list of the most heavily ticketed vehicles on the road, and lead feet everywhere can check [...]

Image via Wikipedia

Part 1 of this series was an introduction.
The first step to creating any system for a game is to break it up into pieces so the first thing I asked is what is it about the Oblivion system that makes Alchemy so much fun to use? The first answer I thought of was [...]

Huge Quote Block© incoming:
what RPGs out there have strong, detailed, functional rules sets for “Alchemy” or at least the creation of Potions? And by this I mean, not just “The GM decides what components you need as a means of sending you out into the wild in search of them so you can blunder into [...]

Things I’ve used lately:

Previous Installments:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
No one leads a party or a game like the Game Master will. His influence is by far the most pervasive on any gaming table. – Bard of Valiant
And one of the things the Game Master has a huge influence in is who is playing [...]