Conflicted Beliefs: Fluffy Story Bulls$&%
You asked for it. You wanted the fluffy, story bulls$&% to go along with the useful, systematic mythology-building thing I already posted. Here it is.
Conflicted Beliefs: Building a Perfect Five God Mythology for D&D
A well-build mythology can drive stories and create a fantastic world. Unfortunately, D&D doesn’t provide such a mythology. But you can make your own if you understand thematic conflict.
An Angry Guide to Practical Cartography
People keep asking me how to draw good maps. Well, I can’t teach you how to draw pretty maps, but I can teach you how to draw useful maps. The trick is to stop trying to draw maps and start presenting information instead.
Ideological Wars: Themes, Conflict, and RPG Settings
You can get a lot of mileage out of themes. Especially when you set up some thematic conflicts. You just have to know what themes are and how to set up their conflicts. And why “good versus evil” doesn’t count as a conflict.
Narrative Structure for Advanced Morons
Having developed a nice list of story turning points in previous articles, it’s time to turn our attention to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and see what additional turning points he’s got to offer. And to see if there’s anything MORE IMPORTANT people overlook when talking about Campbell. Hint: there is.
Narrative Structure for REAL Morons
This article EVENTUALLY builds a basic narrative structure for gamers. But first, it has to spend a time on some remedial lessons. Apparently, some things didn’t sink in the first time I discussed narrative structure.
Narrative Structure for Morons
The only thing worse than a GM with no sense of narrative structure is one who just learned some new form of narrative structure in school. This is an open letter to GMs obsessed with the three-act structure, the five-room dungeon, and Joseph Motherf$%&ing Campbell to PLEASE STOP E-MAILING ME.
Parfaits Ain’t Easy: Peeling the Onion Campaigns
Mysteries are like pancakes: solving one is satisfying, but solving a whole stack is even better. But when it comes to stacking mysteries into a delicious mystery campaign, it’s easy to f$&% it up.
Don’t Bring Me Solutions, Bring Me Problems
There’s a difference between a puzzle and a problem. And most GMs don’t understand the difference. That’s a shame because most GMs who think they want puzzles in their game actually want problems. And problems work better.
Puzzles Suck
I’m sick of dealing with questions about how to implement puzzles properly from GMs who insist that puzzles just suck. So, it’s time for me to act. By writing 5,000 words about it and then walking away.
These Are the Voyages: Adventure of the Week Campaigns
Sometimes, you just get tired of taking notes and you just want to show up and have a fun adventure. And then another. And another. Enter: The Adventure of the Week Campaign. Which has nothing to do with meatballs. Except when it does.
We Gotta Save; We Gotta Save the World: Epic Quest Campaigns
No type of campaign is more iconic than the Epic Quest Campaign, especially the Save the World Campaign. Well, unless you count Dungeon Delve Campaigns. And Adventure of the Week Campaigns. But shut up. We’re talking about Epic Quest and Save the World Campaigns.
From Zero to Pitch in 24 Hours
It’s time to look ahead to new beginnings. Specifically, the beginning of my new campaign. And since I went through all of the trouble of running a Session Zero and writing a Pitch, I thought I’d let you see exactly how I developed MY upcoming campaign. Merry F$%&ing Christmas or whatever.
False Starts and Dirty Lies: Starting a Campaign Wrong
Start as you mean to go on. It’s good advice for writers and it’s good advice for GMs. Except when it isn’t. But it is. But it might not be.
How NOT to Teach Newbies D&D
If you give a newbie a game, he’s going to want to a campaign. If you give the newbie a campaign, you’ll be stuck with a terrible player for life. Don’t make that mistake.
It’s Not The Size of Your Campaign: Scope and Scale and Safe Havens
There are infinite ways to fill that blank piece of paper that is your campaign plan. Here’s about four of them. We’ll cover the other infinity-minus-four in future articles.
How to XP Good
Why don’t people understand why character advancement is important? Why don’t people see the value of point-based character advancement? Why is it so hard to handle XP right? Well, when even Mike Mearls can’t get it right, there’s no hope for you. At least, there wasn’t. Until I came along to tell you How to XP Good.
Training Bra Plotting: How to Plan a Campaign (Or Adventure)
Encounters, adventures, and campaigns all start off life the same way. How do you turn one into the other and back again? Well, it’s like putting it in a good training bra.
Running Your Most Horrible D&D Adventure Ever
Running a horror adventure in D&D is a terrible idea. But if you absolutely MUST and I can’t stop you, at least I can keep you from f$&%ing it up too badly.
This, That, or Other (Part 1): Why Design the Problem and the Solutions?
It’s not enough to create open-ended obstacles in your game and hope your players will come up with some clever way to defeat them. Never create a problem without creating several solutions.
The Session Zero Blitz (Part One of One): How to Even Session Zero
A good campaign starts with a good Session Zero. But how do you even Session Zero? In the third part of this one-part series, I’ll tell you.
The Session Zero Blitz (Part Preface): Engage!
The secret goal of every Session Zero is to evaluate the players at your table and figure out what the hell they actually want from you. Fortunately, players aren’t that complicated and there’s an easy way to classify them. But it’s not the system you think.
Wishing and S$%&ing: Campaign Startup Dilemmas
Starting a new campaign isn’t just about building a world, coming up with some story details, and telling the players what characters to make. It involves resolving dilemmas and making hard choices.
Hide and Seek: Traps
There’s lots of things GMs might hide in their adventures. For example, traps. But how does D&D handle traps? Why does D&D suck at handling traps? And how should it handle traps?
Angry Information Management (Part 2): Facts, Implications, and Distractions
Information in your game can take many forms. Any by many, I mean three. It can three forms. And this article is all about them. And a whole bunch of other stuff.
Angry Information Management (Part 1): The Role of Information
As a GM, apart from not killing idiot players who deserve it, your primary job is to communicate information. And that means you have to be able to manage information.
Through a Glass Darkly: IC, OOC, and the Myth of Player/Character Seperation
Let’s talk about the mythical distinction between players and characters. Players are characters. Characters are players. And once you accept that, it’s a lot easier to run a fun game. Warning: this gets ranty.
Plotty Plot Plotting (For Adventures)
If you get over the bulls$&% notion that planning a plot is somehow railroading, you’ll discover just how powerful plot threads are as tools for designing adventures and campaigns. In this article, we’ll discuss the basics of plot points and how to build simple and complex adventures around them.
How to Start Starting a Campaign: Preplanning the Premise
How do you start a campaign? Well, that all depends on what you mean by “start.” There’s lots of ways to start a campaign. Let’s start by talking about how you start starting a campaign. Preplanning and premises.
Glue: The Binds that Tie Your Campaign Together
Every campaign needs something to hold the players together. That’s because players are constantly trying to blast apart. It’s like nuclear physics. Which is why you need gluons. Or glue. Or tortured, mixed metaphors. Whatever.