Some of you may be excited that today marks the premiere of the seventh and final installment of the “Harry Potter” movie franchise. To be quite honest, I’m pretty excited myself. This disclosure may be surprising to regular readers, who may recall that last week about this time I kind of let “Harry Potter” have…
Monthly Archives: July 2011
In my last post, I talked about the many benefits of the mighty cabin trip. Check out that one before reading further. In this post, I go over some ways to apply the advantages of such a game to your regular one. Admittedly, our games can’t all be weekend long extravaganzas run within isolated gamer…
Have you ever had a game session that just clicked? The players were all into their characters. Everybody was paying attention, and were involved in the story. The GM remembered the names and mannerisms of all the NPCs. On the other hand, have you had a session that seemed to be over before it started?…
I admit, one of my bad habits at the gaming table is dice stacking. Still, my best efforts at these towers of randomness don’t even come close to these sculptures by an artist named Kim Hyun (via Geekosystem). Admittedly, it looks like there may have been glue involved, but I certainly couldn’t come up with…
What if… rituals were long, drawn-out feats of magic that could produce effects that rivaled magic items? rituals were so long, and required so much of the caster, that casting them became the stuff that a whole arc of a campaign might be based around? the arcane rites carried out in a ritual had some…
In 2001, my cousin and I made a lengthy drive from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to see Neil Gaiman read from and sign copies of his new novel American Gods. Given our immense admiration for Mr. Gaiman’s work on the Sandman comic book series, perhaps “pilgrimage” would be a better word than “drive.” It was an…
Did that catch your eye? This post isn’t about the mechanics of intercourse or reproduction–this is the Internet, after all, and there are other sources to learn about that. This is also not about intercourse in role-playing games, because talking about that would inevitably lead to a discussion of F.A.T.A.L.–the game that serves as a…
Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Or at least that’s what I hear from the theme song to “Cheers”… But it’s possible for today’s adventurer (in any incarnation of D&D) to get by with just enough tools to carve out their niche in the dark and looming wilderness. In the…
As any amateur handyman (or handywoman) knows, everything is easier when you have the right tool for the job. Luckily for us gamers, we tend to be a pretty creative bunch. For any game you play, the chances are that somebody’s created some tools you can use. This series pulls together the stuff that makes…
When it comes to matters of religion, I tend to see things a lot like that flaxen-haired fantasy heroine Goldilocks : There’s too much, not enough, and juuuuust right. Faith and the divine can be a very powerful and positive force, when approached healthily. However, it also has an almost proportionate potential to injure and divide. While…