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Category: Role-Playing Games

You Need A GM Sheet

Published by MichelV69 on April 21, 2021

Post Views: 462 So, a while ago on my Twitch Channel, I made the assertion that you need a “GM Sheet“. If you’re a Games Master / Story Teller for a Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG) group, and you don’t have a GM Sheet passed out to your players, and then periodically reviewed for currency, you aren’t just lazy. You’re straight-up doing it wrong. I’ve been told, both directly and indirectly, that an awful lot of LGTBQA+ and BIPOC / WOC folx hear alarm bells ringing if a GM/ST doesn’t have or, even worse, doesn’t know what a GM Sheet is for. This is something that’s been in the TTRPG community for about five years now. As a DAWG GM/ST, it was only something I found out…

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How Big is the World?TTRPG Map - The Duchy of the Mists - My Homebrew Setting

How Big is the World?

Published by MichelV69 on January 11, 2021

Post Views: 628 Hi, am after a little help from #DungeonMasters. Looking to run an online game for friends during lockdown and wondered how many of you created your own world, and how deep did you go creating it? #ttrpg #DnD #dungeonsanddragons #RPG #DnD5e @Chinn3rsTV on Twitter That is an excellent question, and it comes up often from new GMs watching my live-stream. The short answer for Twitter is cruxxed around a primary question; what is the fastest that power and news can move? The speed of military power and regional news is what restricts the speed of decision making and governance. In a very broad sense, everything else exists within that framework. If you put a map of Europe & the USA side by side, you’re going…

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An Impossible Dream, NowSpellbinder Nightfall Dice - Diehard Dice

An Impossible Dream, Now

Published by MichelV69 on December 5, 2020

Post Views: 651 So, one of those things that’s been on my “bucket list”, since I was a teen, was the idea of being a table-top role-playing “Games Master” for a “game on TV”. Back in the 80s and 90s, it was just absurd to think that idea would or could ever be a thing. First off, “Nerd Culture” or “Geek Culture” was universally scorned. Games like Dungeons & Dragons were reviled by mainstream culture, subject to crazy-killer movie mythology, and the like. A quarter century or more later, and a lot has changed. “Critical Role” took the cultural world by storm, “Which Alignment Are You” memes are passed by board-room execs, and eSports have multi-million dollar prize purses available. Two-story TV stations fit in the space of…

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Thoughts Against Gas-Pedal Pacing in TTRPGs

Published by MichelV69 on March 3, 2020

Post Views: 1,533 “It is a fast [plot]? // It’s fast enough for you, old man.” “Pacing” is one of those nebulous issues in story-telling.  Generally, it refers to how fast a story progresses through the arc of events of the plot.  In an era of non-stop-action movies, it’s easy as a GM to feel that things need be a rolling boil at all times in our Table-Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs).  I personally think that’s a mistake. “Just Write” on YouTube does an interesting talk-about “Rise of Skywalker” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD5mLw0A8vI) .  One of the remarks he makes is that the director’s trademark style is to push the plot ahead at a frenetic pace by virtue of exposition sequences that drive action sequences.  There are no scenes as a common…

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Failing to Meta-Game Causes Problems

Published by MichelV69 on February 25, 2020

Post Views: 689 Wait, what? Isn’t “meta-gaming” bad? Not usually. Firstly, we need to pin down what I mean by “meta-gaming”. The way I see it commonly used, it means “cheating”. But cheating doesn’t mean meta-gaming. Meta (from the Greek meta- μετά- meaning “after” or “beyond”) is a prefix meaning more comprehensive or transcending — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta So, “meta-gaming” then, is “actions or knowledge which are more comprehensive or transcend the game space“. It’s on that second qualifier, that I want to focus. Transcend (verb) “to rise above or go beyond the limits of” — https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transcend Imagine what you might know if your full time job involved climbing a hill twice a day, hunting for glowing mushrooms of energy that, under the right conditions, cured a nasty and fatal…

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What’s To Be Done About TTRPG “Murder Hobos”?

Published by MichelV69 on February 18, 2020

Post Views: 644 One of those questions I see go by on Twitter from time to time is a new Game Master (GM) asking for help in reining in their players whose characters are operating under the “Murder Hobo” trope.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, no, I don’t mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_with_a_Shotgun .  Essentially, the reference comes from the fact that most Adventuring Groups / Teams, irrespective of genre / game system, are constantly on the move.  If they use that rootlessness to be a “why not” rationale for killing random bystanders, or anyone who annoys the group, or the merchant that wants to haggle, etc … that’s being a “Murder Hobo”. Firstly, this is a problem at the meta-game level.  I’ll talk more in detail about…

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Puzzles and Points of Failure

Published by MichelV69 on May 16, 2019

Post Views: 611 How not to stall your game with stuff other than hitting monsters I was asked recently on my Discord server how I handle puzzles in my games.  Do I use them, how do I make sure they aren’t too hard, and what do I do if they party gets stumped?  A fellow Game Master (GM) dropped the following snark: “You want to put a puzzle for your players to solve?  Easy, just look up ‘puzzles for toddlers’ on the Internet, and then spend the evening tearing your hair out as they fail to solve it.” — Annon GM This perception, while funny, is at the heart of why so many GMs do not use puzzles or tricks in their table-top role-playing game (TTRPG) sessions.  The…

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MCDM’s Strongholds & Followers Warfare, At Scale, Part 2.

Published by MichelV69 on May 7, 2019

Post Views: 4,319 The battle rages on for the fate of Ravenskull Valley.  In my previous post about MCDM’s “Strongholds & Followers” Warfare rules being used at scale, we had just reached the end of Round 3 when I reported in about how things were going. We’ve now reached the end of Turn 6. As a reminder, each round of S&F Warfare is 1 minute, or 10 rounds of D&D5e-scale “Encounter Battle” time under my house rules.  So, the combined forces of the Human Castle-Town of Crierton and the Ravenskull Elves have been fighting the fearsome Sundered Mountain Legion of Hobgoblins for six minutes. Using the “reaction / intercept” mechanic I introduced in my last blog post, the Heroes have attacked and defeated one of the two Seige…

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