This post is a followup to Part 1 where I reflect specifically on cases where I have learned, grown up, or adapted to new circumstances. Physical Books This one is a cop-out because I still actually prefer reading ebooks for myself. However, I have a new reason to want to have physical books around. I […]
Category: games
Players love to be rewarded just in the course of playing. I won’t wade into the argument between “participation trophy” versus ”90% of success is just showing up.” However, there is a narrow middle path that should make your player happy. I worry about giving players too much good stuff: that Potion of Invisibility sounds […]
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GMing Without… Anything
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 […]
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How to Start Without Session Zero
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 […]
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GMing Without Devices
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 […]
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 […]
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Board Games Best Played Online
Over the past 2 years, I have played 267 games on Board Game Arena. I have both learned many new games as well as gotten deeper into many of my past favorites. Although I have played a few games live, I mostly play turn-based games over the course of days or weeks. Rather than needing […]
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: the most time-consuming and best thing I did this year was parenting. I hope that continues to be true for many years. However, that doesn’t seem like something I should be generally recommending to everyone, so I still have the rest of this list. TV: Ted Lasso
Before writing my new recommendations, I reviewed my past recommendations and noticed mostly games and long-form content. I usually like those, but that’s not what I found this year. This year, it was mostly shorter, non-interactive online content. That fits with my 2020. I also have written about several of these recommendations already, so I […]
When I was in middle school, a friend’s older brother showed me Baldur’s Gate, a computer game where you controlled a party of warriors and wizard exploring a fantasy world so big that the game came on five CDs. On my following birthday, my friend gifted a copy to me, and my RPG obsession began.