Shores of Night

As I said in the last post Eve, my wife, is rather keen on me doing another ten lessons I've learned, I think this is purely because this is my 20th year of gaming, which is I guess I should have kept my mouth shut about. Having had a think about it I came up with the following: 1. Keep the Game Moving: Pace is a difficult thing to get right, and it is also something that varies from group to group. One set of players will lovingly linger on a combat, relishing every bit of damage dealt out and every NPC death. Others will breeze through to try and get past the fracas as quickly as possible in order to get to the plot. The same can be seen in all aspects of a game, some players want action, action, action whilst others want to take their time and get an idea of place, shape and character. There are even players who will happily roleplay mundane things like shopping or going to the pub (one GM I had would happily let us sit our characters in the pub for a game session, talking in...

 As I'm pondering about gaming and what's referred to as 'best practice' in the hellish circles of administration in which I labour in my real life, I've started to realise that I've actually learnt some stuff about running games over the past 20 or so years where I've been a roleplayer. I've started to try and gather some of it together into one place and put it to use.  Given how many games I've run that have failed (most of them since you ask), I do feel a bit of a fraud but at the same time, I believe that we exist in a 'try, fail, try again, fail better' situation even within the hobby and that if you don't stop to think about your mistakes then you're going to repeat them ad nauseum. Below, I've put down ten things I've learned, with some collaboration from my friend Bert via email. They are a  mixture of 'game hacks' to help things move more smoothly and general things that really need to said from time to ti...

As I ponder dipping my toe back into roleplaying, coming to the realisation that this means looking for an entirely new group from top to bottom (with the exception of my wife), I find myself stopping in wonderment at what a strange thing the roleplaying game is. Strange too is the role of the Games Master, Storyteller, Referee, whatever you want to call the person who tries to put it all together and make the thing work. Please note that this blog does have examples, which are entirely fictional (and yes I made the games up too). There are no intentional references to persons living or dead within this blog post. Gaming sits in a peculiar confluence between story, game system, action and acting, all ruled by that most subjective of values; fun. The perfect roleplaying experience balances on the peak of a pyramid, each side of which is one of these four elements. If it slips down one side too far the experience runs the risk of becoming 'unfun' for someone in a group, som...