This is RPG-ology #83: Tactics, for October 2024. Our thanks to Regis Pannier and the team at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition for locating a copy of this and a number of other lost Game Ideas Unlimited articles. This was originally Game Ideas Unlimited: Tactics, and is reposted here with minor … [Read more…]
This is RPG-ology #58: Random Encounters, for September 2022. Someone somewhere asked a group of people for tips on running games, rather generically, and it struck me that there were probably several lessons I’ve learned over the decades that have made my games run more smoothly. Two months ago I happened to share one (using … [Read more…]
When I started to DM with regularity, I began keeping bulleted summary notes on each gaming session. By my current standards, those first notes were barely adequate. In time, I made some improvements. I also began to incorporate into my summary notes some short lines of text that I used during the session itself. They … [Read more…]
Another tale in the saga of the Beckett Family’s adventures in Northumbria! These events follow Trial by Combat. Background The session began with the PCs at the foot of Heinrich’s Horn, a steep and rocky hill about two leagues east of Blackwater Lake. Lord Balin Blackwater had just awarded the Beckett family the whole of … [Read more…]
Two months ago we began considering character Archetypes and how they reflected our values, for better or for worse. Last month we considered Warriors in that connection, and this month we are going to expand on that notion by looking at the knight. To grasp this as an archetype, it is important that we agree … [Read more…]
Last month we introduced the notion of Archetypes as collections not so much of skills and traits as of values and beliefs, character concepts which inform us about ourselves and our views of the world. This month that notion meets its first test, as we consider our first archetype. We start with one that is … [Read more…]
Trickles of sweat stung his eyes and slowly worked down his back. This jungle wasn’t anything like the New Jersey Pine Barrens he grew up in. He viewed the dark with the special night vision goggles that made everything look like some bizarre green seascape. Ten years as a city cop had not prepared him for humping through a tropical rain forest. “Pepsi, … [Read more…]
This article by Charles Franklin originally appeared in The Way, the Truth & the Dice issue 1 in the spring of 1999. It is reposted here with permission from the author. I was watching a classic science fiction film this weekend with my four-year-old son and one scene in particular emphasized the way combat is portrayed … [Read more…]
Role playing games have been criticized for many things that are easily explained. Readers of this magazine don’t need to hear why the involvement of magic, false gods, or demons and devils isn’t a real objection to role playing per se. Or hear why it doesn’t matter if we play with non-Christians whose characters may reject God and His morality even more … [Read more…]
It happens that as I write this the world again stands on the brink of war, although as you read it that war probably will have been resolved. I’m old enough to know that this happens with alarming frequency, and that whenever it does happen there will be people arguing about whether the pending or … [Read more…]