Recently, I proudly wrote about trying to run an analog campaign. After years of adding more and more digital tools, I dropped all of that for paper. I thought that restriction was good enough. However, last week, surprise constraints pushed me even further. On the day of my weekly game, I took my car in […]
The first few weeks of having a newborn were wild. Previously, I had gradually been moving my life to more routines and habits, and all of those instantly disappeared. My daughter’s schedule became my schedule, and she had no schedule–only needs to be addressed. Fortunately, things settled in surprisingly quickly. I occasionally skim through the […]
Common advice on the internet about starting a campaign is to hold a Session Zero. Rather than starting with the game itself, GMs instead are told to first gather information and set expectations about what will happen in the rest of the campaign. In principle, it sounds like a good idea. A playgroup can get […]
I promise I have more thoughts on parenting than just watching TV and movies, but Old Enough! is a big enough that I have to stay topical. Old Enough! has apparently been on Japanese TV for awhile, but it just made a big splash on Netflix a few weeks ago. Children go on errands all […]
When I was running games for my adult friends, I didn’t worry about phones or laptops at the table. Sure, they checked social media and texts during most sessions, but they were mostly attentive, and I didn’t want to be “that GM” with them. However, when I started this campaign with teens, I wanted to […]
Like many others, I grew up on Disney movies. My family had an extensive collection of VHS tapes, from Snow White & the Seven Dwarves to The Lion King. And when we weren’t watching the movies themselves, we also had the singalong tapes to annoy my parents. My sisters and I loved those movies as […]
D&D takes a long time. Movies are around two hours long. MLB has been shortening baseball games because three hours was too long. The average commute (during the before times of 2019) was about a half-hour. And yet, when you ask people about their weekly games, it sounds like sessions commonly go on for around […]
In 2019, I set a goal to retain more of what I learned. I enjoy consuming a variety of educational media in books, newsletters, podcasts, and more, but I had difficulty retaining it much of it. By the end of that year, I called it a mixed success with a few takeaways: Mental reviews immediately […]
Twice a year, we all ask ourselves, “So what was the point of this in the first place?” Well, I thought I knew why we change our clocks, but apparently I was wrong. Here’s assorted list of Daylight Saving Time facts. Some of these are easily picked out of the Wikipedia article, but a few […]
I always find it interesting when I change my mind about something. It can happen at any time for any reason, and I might not become conscious of it for awhile. However, when I actually realize it, it’s an interesting moment. It’s hard to remember my previous mindset and reconcile why it happened. Some amount […]