Hey all. I’m back. Hopefully it will stick this time. There’s still a lot going on in my world outside of gaming, and I haven’t played D&D since September, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope it’s not coming from a Will O’ The Wisp. To get my gaming [...]
Archive for the ‘Managing Up’ Category
What Did I Just Get Myself Into?
Posted in Managing Up, Strategy, tagged conventions, gming, leverage on November 14, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Deepest, Darkest Fears
Posted in Gathering Inspiration, Managing Up, tagged 4e, characters, d&d, player v dm, rp on August 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Sarah Darkmagic just got back from Gen Con with a crate of swag. When your DM gets new material, it is an occasion of concern for any player. This event combined dangerously with a simple innocuous email she sent out my fellow players: “Can you please send me your characters worst nightmares?” Now I’m suspicious [...]
They Were In Our Back Pocket the Whole Time
Posted in Managing Up, Strategy, tagged 4e, blogs, characters, d&d, gnome stew, rituals, sarahdarkmagic, skill challenges, the party on July 16, 2010 | 4 Comments »
This week in our a game an important plot incident lead to a pretty funny conclusion. My party is tasked with stopping an shadow army from opening a gate to the shadowfell and taking over the world. To open this gate, a magic key is needed. We thought that if we found the key first, [...]
Dealing With a Full House
Posted in Managing Up, Personalities, tagged d&d, dm, philosophy, player v dm, player v player, rp, the party on June 11, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I don’t envy my DM. This week she hosted six players. My preferred GM to group ratio is 1:4. Our group and the standard 4e rule book handles five players. And, in my experience, the organized play events fit 6 players to a game. This week our group had to deal with just about every [...]
How To Cheat in D&D
Posted in House Rules, Managing Up, Personalities, tagged 4e, philosophy, player v dm on June 2, 2010 | 7 Comments »
One of the great things about tabletop roleplaying is that for most groups winning and cheating are irrelevant concepts. D&D is about group storytelling; by negating the game mechanic through cheating you loose the ability to build memorable scenes out of failure and you won’t allow room for characters to grow. Why should experience (and [...]
How to Bring Suggestions to Your GM
Posted in Managing Up, tagged bloggers, blogs, continuous improvement, d&d, philosophy, player v dm, rants on May 19, 2010 |
I almost didn’t post this today because I’m in the middle of reading Difficult Conversations book. So far seems to advocate treating other people like they’re human beings in their own right, deserving of respect and understanding. If the advice in it turns out to be good, I’ll try to distill some of it down [...]
How to Tell When You’re Being Escalated
Posted in Managing Up, tagged 4e, d&d, dm, DMG, DMG2, escalation, player v dm, Review on April 28, 2010 |
As part of my preparations for DMing a one-shot, I’m re-reading the DMG and DMG 2. There’s a section in DMG2 describing three different types of adventure pacing: Balanced, Spike, and Escalation. Balanced means the DM has decided to balance action and roleplaying, and balance easy encounters with complex/difficult encounters. Spike pacing concentrates the session/adventure [...]
More on Bad GMs : When it goes on too long
Posted in Managing Up, Personalities, tagged 4e, Combat, d&d, dm, player v dm, Skill Challenge, time, time management on April 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »
I want to continue my thoughts on managing your GM. Today I want to focus specifically on when you’re stuck at the game table too long. I find that in 4e, the two biggest users of time are combat and debating what to do. In our games we also spend a lot of time chit-chatting, [...]
8 Ways to die in D&D
Posted in Managing Up, Personalities, philosophy, tagged blogs, d&d, player v dm, player v player, the party on April 7, 2010 | 3 Comments »
I wanted to take a break between PAX-inspired posts to share a blog article forwarded to me by reader and friend Paras. It’s called The 8 Most Common Ways D&D Characters Die from the Topless Robot blog. I have characters killed off for all 8 of the mentioned reasons, although of the 8 only #8 [...]
Archives
Categories
RPG BLoggers Network
-
Recent Comments
Character ideers … on 5 Cards to a Deeper Chara… Rachel Pond on Halflings Are Not Hobbits Spring on Time To Chuck Alignment BrandonLeon on Getting Your D&D Fix … Mike on Getting Your D&D Fix …
