Spider Queen

Alright, I said a while ago that I'd post some tips for keeping up the pace of a game. This is something I know can be a struggle for GMs - even if you know you want to change up the pace, you can be left at a loss as to what to do to actually implement that intention, both in terms of how to actually alter the speed at which the game proceeds, and what to change it to . So here, contributed to the internet's memory banks, are a few things that I do to keep things moving. Practical tips ahoy. 🕷 Set the scope / Discern purpose:  I already talked about how D&D works on a turn structure in the previous part of this two-parter. In summary, make sure you get a declaration of action from everyone involved in the scene before  you start adjudicating actions. You'd be amazed at how much time this saves, and how it keeps players engaged. See, if you follow up a single player's action instantly, and keep following up their subsequent responses to the consequences, the other

Excuse the title, I couldn't resist. I read an old post on a blog recently that talked about Frank Frazetta 's art style. It was interesting - the author seemed to regard Frazetta as sort of a proto punk artist. That is, they noted his technique as lacking, even sloppy, with little regard for contrast and shading/highlighting, or other such arty things. That, they argued, was what gave the paintings their rawness and immediacy. Now Frazetta paintings undeniably do have this quality of immediacy. And I'll get this out of the way right now: I'm not an artist or an art critic. I do paint miniatures, but that's about it. But what I am is a part-time phenomenologist. The phenomenologists are (were?) a specific breed of philosopher, whose main idea was to analyse how the structures of experience create meaning. And I think we can do a bit of amateur phenomenology on the experience of viewing Frank's paintings to explain why they're so compelling, especially to rol

This isn't the post of tips that I promised at the end of my last post - I still intend to write that up, but thinking about the tips and techniques themselves got me thinking about how we think about games. That is, how the people who homebrew and tinker and obsess and write blog posts about how to run good games think about games. Because I think there's what you might call a "rationalist streak" in the internet ttrpg community. Consider this: This hobby, though surging to headier heights of popularity than ever before attained, is still extremely niche. I'd say the majority of people on the street probably couldn't tell you even the basics of how "D&D" is supposed to work, much less a "(tabletop) roleplaying game" (unless guessing from the title). Yet the sheer amount of material generated that gets devoted to how  to play the game well is staggering. Forum traffic and GMing blogs abound that are dedicated to honing your game, figuri

I'm going to talk about pacing, and why it's important in ways you might not think. I'm also going to offer an idea of what should be done to remedy potential pacing problems, and keep them in check, drawing from old school D&D (got to keep up that old school appreciation). And that's going to involve diving deep into how, even, the whole rpg thing works - because you know by now how I do things. 🕸 Pacing is important in ttrpgs. I've talked about pacing before, but mainly to note how the pace of my game was kind of running away from me. But I want to talk a little bit about how keeping the pace up isn't just a gloss or polish on your game. Speaking as a player, I prefer games that move along at a fair clip (I have a limited attention span), but I want to stress that a quick pace isn't a preference either - it's a necessity. That is, there is a lot of depth - depth of play, depth of involvement and immersion of the players in the world that you, the