Characters. Worldbuilding. Story.
We recently released a new edition of Game Group Management. It’s been unavailable for a while, because the original edition was met with a lot of scorn. Sure, a lot of people liked it, and thanked us for publishing it. The more vocal, and active, responses didn’t feel they needed a book to tell them…
A collection of short fiction, plot hooks, and adventure seeds for you to remix and reimagine for your tabletop campaign. Supernatural Horror breaks down works of short fiction into plot hooks and story goals usable in your tabletop roleplaying game. Using stories recommended by H. P. Lovecraft in his seminal essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, these elements…
Lately I’ve been trying to put my finger on what my disconnect from the general tabletop roleplaying community is. My conclusion is that it’s about escapism vs power fantasy. It’s about what roleplaying promises, and how that’s often at odd with what it delivers. Escapism is supposed to allow us to get away from the…
Several years ago my wife Katie and I had a conversation about superheroes as modern mythology. Instead of the pantheons of gods and demigods, we have the Avengers and the Justice League, basically. It became a starting point for looking at fandom as religion. Both are metaphorical or allegorical, commenting on human nature as much…
John Dewey famously said that a work of art is not complete until it is experienced by someone other than the artist. This implies that the observer or, depending upon the medium, the reader, viewer, or listener, brings something unique and valuable to the experience. This connects directly to my assertion that a roleplaying game…
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Available for a limited time, this special bundle offer provides a wealth of tools and information to help you get ready for National Novel Writing Month! You’ll find volumes on story structure, developing characters, worldbuilding, and working with genre elements! Act now! This deal will go by as quickly as NaNoWrimo itself! Download your NaNoWriMo…
When I first started roleplaying, the rule book showed me all about using the game mechanics. I learned how to create incredible characters, balance challenging encounters, and put together fantastic adventures. In spite of the fact that roleplaying is social in nature, it didn’t tell me how to organize a game group. There was no…
In a game centered on mechanics, alignment can be a confusingly abstract concept. It’s a quick-and-dirty way to tell the heroes from the villains, and to provide a vague idea of how characters can be roleplayed, but a lot is left open to interpretation. This Mayday Manual was written to offer up some practical options…
A collection of short fiction, plot hooks, and adventure seeds for you to remix and reimagine for your tabletop campaign. A Study in Storytelling breaks down works of short fiction into plot hooks and story goals usable in your tabletop roleplaying game. Using classic Sherlock Holmes tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, these elements can be…
Orthodoxy in a New Art Form originally appeared in a slightly different form in HUBRIS: A Commonplace Zine volume 2 issue 1. There is no place for orthodoxy in a creative field. Once you have erected barriers as to what is or isn’t allowable, or decreed that things must be done in a certain way,…