Why GMs Love Products of Their Culture
Making a character truly belong to his or her culture isn’t just a way to give her depth, color and a distinctive style. For the RPG player, it’s also a way to score points with the GM. What’s so great...
View ArticlePlayers on the Boundary
When we think about the line between GM and PC blurring, usually what we think of is the infamous GMPC, apparent center of the universe. And certainly, that is a prime example of too little difference...
View ArticleWays to Learn a World
I talk a lot about characters fitting into their worlds, but I know it’s not always easy. Most of the time, there really isn’t time—or in some cases, there isn’t much motivation, or enough...
View ArticleCulture Acclimation: Five Ways to Not Give Offense
It’s good to know what we need to know before we turn our characters loose on a new culture, and how to find it out, but sometimes knowledge just isn’t enough to keep our character’s feet safely out of...
View ArticleThe Art of the Cross-Backstory
We don’t have to work alone when we’re coming up with our PCs’ histories—and a lot of us don’t want to! GMs like cross-backstories because it means they can circumvent the getting the group together...
View ArticleSome Things I Love About Shared Backstories
I recently talked about the process I’ve found most successful when concocting a shared backstory between two or more PCs. As you’ve probably guessed from the collection of cross-backstoried characters...
View ArticleWhy a GM Might Not Fight
In the spirit of RPG Blog Carnival, I spent the last week suggesting ways for GMs whose players are averse to combat to address the problems that cause that aversion and mitigate them. This week,...
View ArticleMeta-Fight Rewards: GMs vs. Players
“As a GM I often feel too much like I’m trying not to win, but to fail with style.” –my regular GM, during a discussion of his tendency to flit between systems. In yesterday’s RPG Blog Carnival post,...
View ArticleMore Meta-Fight Rewards for GMs
Yesterday, I continued my stream of RPG Blog Carnival posts by talking about about why many of the player rewards for participating in a fight didn’t apply quite as well when on the GM’s side of the...
View ArticleTalking to the Combat-Reluctant GM
I’ve spent this week talking about the reasons why a GM might be prone to combat evasion, as a continuation of RPG Blog Carnival. No amount of knowledge, however, does any good without putting it to...
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