Last game session the party faced the Big Bad, and he got away. More accurately, I set him up to be able to escape (see more details below). Setting up a big fight with a big bad and then engineering their escape is guaranteed to drive players crazy. We play for fun (my experience anyway). […]

You know how as the GM you think you know what the players are going to do – and then you’re so wrong that you need a short break right at the beginning of play to figure out what the heck you are going to do next? Well that was me. Honestly, I should have […]

The last session was all about two things, getting the party together and then preparing for the next session. There was some good role playing and some combat, but what I remember is more time was spent prepping for the next session. Of course see spoilers below. So that got me thinking, how much prep […]

Weekly game happened last night (hooray, see below for “spoilers”) and I had a new player and a missing player. Traditionally when this happens I’ll let the new player take control of the missing players PC. There are a lot of circumstantial issues around this; are the PCs in a spot were it’s OK to […]

After a three week break, I am back in the GM chair (I have my favorite chair). When I left the game, it was in a little bit of a suspenseful situation (the PCs don’t know it – the players do). In my head I have a good idea of where we are, but I […]

No gaming this past week. Work combined with family commitments took over my normal evening for dice rolling. So what to do when no gaming? It’s time to recharge the batteries. I like to envision how to turn all the random media I see in a week into a Role Playing game. Here’s what the […]

Kid activities and work activities are sending me on at least a 3 week break from GMing and Playing. So what to do with a paused campaign? For myself, I prefer a cliffhanger if it fits in with the story and time. Cliffhangers, or any pause while in the midst of play, can be difficult […]

In last nights game the PCs finally got into a limited amount of combat. Their first combat after leveling up to 8th. Welcome to the hell that is GMing a monk. Already the speediest character (50 feet!) he can now manipulate large areas of ice or water as an action up to 8 times (refreshed […]

Another week with everyone in person, just arriving at different times. It’s common for folks to all arrive within about 30 minutes. Our group eats dinner before playing so there’s always time for talking and catching up before we play. However, for the next few months there is one player that can’t arrive until we […]

It doesn’t really matter how much you prepare, the party will do something else. -Every GM Ever I over prepared. My fault for thinking that folks would make decisions and move things forward. Regardless, much fun was had. Very interesting having players around the table versus over Google Hangouts. We had nearly the same type […]