For me, determining NPC reactions in pivotal moments is one of the hardest things about running an RPG.  Putting me on the spot like this fe...

I find the way factions are talked about in RPGs a bit odd.  In normal usage, a faction is a small, dissenting group.   Sometimes, the hobby...

Module B4 The Lost City contains a distinctive version of faction play. Here, the idea of “class conflict” takes on a peculiarly RPG connot...

This is a summary of a play test of my adventure Blood in the Cracks , using my hack of the Cairn RPG Beggar’s Choice . The adventure tries...

In recent posts, I’ve looked at orientating an RPG setting around a dominant social process, such as imperialist expansion or economic crisi...

This is a report on a recent adventure I played in run by Panic Pillow, based on an empire toolkit The 2nd Age we created together. I’m ca...

My last post looked at historical materialism as an aid to campaign creation . It suggested orientating a campaign around a dominant social...

Jon Peterson’s book The Elusive Shift captures some of the discussions around campaign creation that took place in the early days of the ho...

The Gygax ’75 challenge is a quick-start method to get a campaign running from scratch, based on Gary Gygax’s famous 1975 article . The ch...

Travis Miller at Grumpy Wizard recently posted a summary of his article for the Gary’s Appendix II zine on Gary Gygax's principles for...

A recent Questing Beast video has drawn a line in sand with respect to WOTC’s One Game Licence. A colloquial folk conception of D&D is...

I’ve been catching up online with the early 2000s UK TV series The Worst Jobs in History . It’s been useful inspiration for coming up with ...

It seems a good idea for the first step of character creation to set the tone for what an RPG is about. In my game, I’ve made this a weird ...