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D&D tabletop games

The Minimum Acceptable Session Length

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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tabletop games video games

Comparing Baldur’s Gate 3 and Tabletop D&D

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.

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tabletop games

I finished a D&D campaign!

I estimate that I have run between 200 and 300 sessions, and despite having spent over 1000 hours prepping and running games, I just finished a campaign for the first time. It took 7 years and 53 sessions, but I took players from level 1 to 18. They started out fighting zombies and ended fighting […]

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personal projects tabletop games video games

Some Recent Failed Side Projects

I have been incredibly fortunate to have developed some cool and valuable side projects. Most notably, Spawning Tool went from an all-nighter hack to a much beloved and very significant resource in the StarCraft 2 community. However, most side projects don’t work out that way, and I too have a litany of failures. I usually […]

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New Year's Goals tabletop games

Play Tabletop Games in the Community

Prior to last year, I reviewed my goals in the same post as I shared my new goals in. Last year, I had too much to say about my past goals that I had to split it a review post and a goal declaration post. This year, I have so much to say about each […]

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tabletop games

7 Simple Rules for DMing my Teenage Players

I’m currently DMing 4 campaigns right now, and although the games are different, the groups are pretty similar. They are all biweekly or monthly for between 3 to 5 players who are mostly in their 20s and 30s with some roleplaying experience. I love running for all of them, but because I’m hooked on tabletop […]

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tabletop games

Running Pugmire’s “The Great Cat Conspiracy” as a One-Shot

I run a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, and although I enjoy high fantasy with elves and dwarves, it’s nice to play in other worlds as well. One easy alternative for D&D 5th Edition (5E) players is Pugmire, a 5E hack where everyone plays as dogs. Set on a future Earth, humans disappeared centuries ago […]

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tabletop games

Old School D&D

Earlier this week, Dungeons & Dragons fans got a real treat when professed D&D and Tolkien geek Stephen Colbert sat down to play D&D with DM Matthew Mercer from Critical Role.

Categories
tabletop games

GM Tip: 5 Adventure Structures for GMs

Let me describe how adventure preparation usually goes for me. Immediately after the last session, I have seemingly endless ideas of how the next adventure could go. Over the next week, I keep having great ideas while I’m eating breakfast, biking, showering, and everywhere else in life. Then, it is night before the next session, […]

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board games food games reading tabletop games television video games

My 2018 Recommendations

Many bloggers write a “Books I Read Last Year” or “Recommended Movies” post at the end of the year. Frankly, I think most people do it because other people do it and because they’re really easy to write. It’s a total cop-out for generating content. In fact, it’s such a good cop-out that I’m going […]