Last week featured minis tips on the cheap. This week, the series continues with ideas for doing terrain without breaking your budget. For scenery, keep some rocks, pebbles, lichen and large chips of bark in a shoebox. You can increase the atmosphere a lot with simple terrain. Junked tire. Cut an old tire from a [...]
I Smell Props
A discussion recently popped up in the GM Mastery Yahoo group when group member Randal asked about using smells in games: “Have you ever noticed that when you smell a familiar smell it brings back all these memories? Just curious if any of you have tried to set the mood by burning incense or doing [...]
Riddleport Session 19 – Power Struggle
This ended up being a tricky session to GM. Just four of six players were present. In addition, instead of continuing further into the cavern complex discovered last session, the PCs unexpectedly decided to return to town and take care of some business. Finally, the PCs triggered an investigation-pursuit mini-plot, and it was interesting playing [...]
Speeding Up Combat
From Len Henderson One of the most enjoyable parts of roleplaying for many gamers is combat. However, especially in large groups, players can wait for a considerable amount of time between turns. This sort of wait leads to boredom and cross chatter, annoying the GM and the player whose turn it is. Here are things [...]
A Trick For Easier In-Game Communication
From Joseph Rapoport Johnn, In regards to creating simple communications in games, I play in two campaigns and DM one in which we have all arrived at the same solution for communication. The solution is an item, a small hollow metal tube, which acts like a Message spell. The item comes in two forms: An [...]
When You Need To Cast In Secret
From Morgan Joeck One thing that bothered me when I first started gaming was identifying the spell I was casting when those around me would not have known what it was. My solution to that was to print out colorful fractals or other designs on index cards and fold them into little envelopes containing the [...]
Three Ways To Game With Casual Players
From Mark of the Pixie Johnn, I agree with your epiphany that we should play more. One way I am looking at to help facilitate this (as work, children, and other responsibilities reduce our time) is the logistics of how we play. Most of my games are fortnightly three hour face-to-face table top sessions in [...]
Organize Your Information With Evernote
From Jared Hunt http://www.jaredhunt.ca Evernote is a free service that I’ve used on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. There are versions for other mobiles and for Windows as well. It is a simple word processing program that incorporates online storage so you can share your notes across any number of your computers and devices. http://www.evernote.com One [...]