Category: GM advice
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House Rules
A game should be alive. It should breathe. Like a recipe, it offers a baseline which can be adjusted to suit one’s taste. And thus was born the house rules. Here are the house rules frequently used at my table.
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Monster Encounters That Flopped
It is the fate of a game master that, on occasion, you plan an encounter which in your head will be immersive and dramatic, requiring the player characters to fight desperately for their lives. And then when it is played out, it is over in twenty minutes and the players…
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When Players Make Bad Decisions
The GM rolled a die, informed me that there was a spider crawling on my character’s arm, and asked what I wanted to do. I said that I yelled in horror and tried to fling it off, and the veteran players all sighed and rolled their eyes…
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Making Monster Fights Cool
In a game that is about fighting monsters, it is surprisingly easy to have monster fights that are, well, boring. I would like to focus on making monster fights exciting, suspenseful, and memorable.
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GM As A Leader
I remember my first session as Game Master. Everyone turned and looked at me. They were waiting. Because until I started speaking, there was no place and no game. Nothing happened until I spoke it into existence…
The Nature Game Master 