When I started playing D&D in 1982, we were young, naive, and enthusiastic. We took on every dungeon with glee and even fought a few major figures like Orcus and Tiamat as I recall. But… Read More »Revisiting the Past: The Old School Mindset and Roll-Playing
As I get more familiar with Mazes & Perils, I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to get “New School” players thinking of things in the “Old School” way. Last time we talked… Read More »Revisiting the Past: Knowledge Checks in OSR
As the recent publisher of Mazes & Perils, I’ve been working on getting more experience with playing the system at the game table. I have to admit that a) I don’t GM a ton these days… Read More »Revisiting the Past: Perception Checks in OSR
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had the opportunity to play with not one, but two different groups of kids at the game table and it proved to be quite interesting. This is a bit of… Read More »The GM’s Corner: Lessons Relearned Gaming with Kids
In this post I want to switch hats for a bit and think like a GM for a few minutes. So let’s say you have a Holy Knight in your campaign… what kinds of adventures… Read More »Some Thoughts About Holy Knights for GMs
Today we’re taking a little break from the magical worlds we’ve been visiting and instead talking about the real world of the game table – which can be virtual or physical, funny enough. But what… Read More »Battling Complacency or Unhappiness at the Game Table
We’ve talked a bit about the physical properties of dungeons, but what happens when we need to populate those structures with inhabitants? Last week I brought up the idea of the original “purpose” for the… Read More »Denizens in the Dark
As I wrote up the “Wolves in the Walls” article about crafting dungeons, I realized I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about next. I’d covered ceilings, floors, and walls. A year ago… Read More »Exploring a Dungeon’s Atmosphere
By now we’ve covered ceilings and floors, I think it’s about time to focus on the walls of our dungeon and see how we might view them differently. If you search the collective consciousness (and… Read More »The Wolves in the Walls
Every item in a game world has a story. Sure, it might not be an exciting story, but it has a story. And when you go to a blacksmith or a “general store” you have… Read More »Where did that come from? (Item ownership)
