Someone asked me what was one thing that I wished I had done twenty years ago. Weirdly, twenty years ago (almost exactly) was when I left Games Workshop and had to find my way towards a new career. It was a huge shift in my experience of life and it took four years to find […]

I’m writing this post to record my confession about the fact that, for about a year now, I’ve been experimenting with using so-called AI in my TTRPG game prep. I realise that in certain parts of the internet, this will get me branded a heretic and my GM Screen burned at the stake. Perhaps I’ll […]

Back in the early Nineties, I remember buying ‘The Forgotten Realms’ campaign boxed set. I was curious about the setting and, when I opened it, I remember being drawn in by the colour maps. Fast-forward to 1998 and I was arriving in Nottingham, meeting a new friend who was to form the bedrock of the […]

What happens when you mash up an old-favourite Traveller adventure with the Cypher system to build an open-table experience for high-schoolers curious about D&D? In my last post, I was musing over what exactly to offer the school club members as a beginner’s game in September. In my mind at the time was the idea […]

Two weeks, no blog. Sometimes I wonder why I even have this place. But the summer holiday has begun. It’s that four and a half week break from work that we British teachers get to enjoy from the tail of July until just prior to September. Historically, I always enter the break exhausted and full […]

Ever since I first read Mage: The Ascension sometime back around the end of 1993, I’ve had a strong desire to play in that specific iteration of the World of Darkness published by White Wolf and now Onyx Path. This weekend, being in a state of detachment induced by illness, I decided to bring three […]

Yesterday was an indulgence but the kind of rich treat that is its own delight: I found myself writing up and developing some ideas for an Otherworld. Some ideas tend to linger in my subconscious and surface periodically, over and over. Left alone, they prick at the edges of my attention and then sink back […]

Yesterday was a marker: we played the 15th session of our fantasy RP campaign set in the magical realm of Mystara, down in the mountains and forests of Karameikos. The six-player table, while always in flux due to the vagaries of life, has been running bi-weekly and consistently for more than six months. In my […]

As I’ve discussed many times, one of the delights of my role as a school teacher is being permitted to offer a weekly roleplaying games club generally known as “the D&D Club” by the students because, you know, brand identity is a thing. It runs on Tuesdays after school for about 90 minutes, giving us […]

Here’s my GM notes which present the emergent story from our Karameikos campaign session #14, from last night. We had three players present after the climatic events of the previous session and, with three players missing, I decided to offer some roleplaying opportunities in the village of Vander’s Hollow. It felt good and I trust […]

In my hobby room, there’s a strange stack of books that has built up over the past year or so. It’s a collection of recent purchases or arrivals from kickstarts and backed projects. It’s also an accumulation of the books that I keep nearest to my computer desk whereat I will play online. Across the […]

I live way up in my head. This seems obvious to me but over the years I have become reasonably convinced that a significant proportion of other people do not experience the kind of busy-ness of mind that I do. They seem far more decisive and clear about what they are doing. It feels like […]

Wow – been a while, even after I promised myself I’d post something every week. Ah, well. Experimental mindset. You live and learn. This week has seen a significant shift away from the head of the table. I’ve stepped back from running Cyfaraun at school, taking a quiet spot on the sidelines, and almost simultaneously […]

If you’ve been following the recent episodes of Roleplay Rescue, you’ll know I’ve been spending a lot of time testing my ‘Priors‘ and exploring the architecture needed to sustain a high-fidelity, long-form campaign. Traveller was my very first roleplaying game back in 1977, and the sheer gravity of the Official Traveller Universe (OTU)—particularly the Third Imperium—has always held […]

This is a narrative summary of our Karameikos campaign’s first eleven sessions, crafted as an engaging “Story So Far” chronicle to bring readers right up to speed. It captures the party’s journey from their initial clash with the Iron Ring in the town of Threshold, through their perilous trek into the Black Peak Mountains, and […]

Why is it that, even when we have done the prep and know our Otherworld inside out, stepping into the shoes of the people who live there can sometimes feel like pulling teeth? We sit at the table, notes in hand, yet the moment we have to speak for the starport official or the local […]

One of the things that I noticed from my last Karameikos session was the way in which my descriptive mindset – what I’ve recently discussed on the podcast as being the deployment of the Scout – has slipped and become less focused at the table. The mindset of the Scout is one wherein I am […]

I have spent a significant portion of the last few years trying to repatriate a ghost. I suspect many of you are doing the same. We look back to that first spark—for me, it was 1980, aged nine—when the world suddenly became larger than the suburban streets of my youth. We remember a feeling of […]

For many of us, the greatest hurdle to a successful long-form campaign isn’t the rules or the world-building, but the relentless, anxious chatter of the GM’s own mind. We need a way to quiet the noise, and for me, that begins with invoking the Sentinel, the Scout, and the Sojourner. While these names might feel […]

In Cyfaraun, the Empire is rotting from the inside out, and the only thing keeping the city from drowning in its own filth is you. As desperate ‘Gutter Runners’ for the Curia’s Deep Watch, you’ll dive into a labyrinth of ancient sewers and forgotten ruins to troubleshoot the city’s deadliest problems. Down in the sunless […]

I am developing a somewhat unexpected love of the Cypher System for reasons that tend to push against my usual roleplaying game preferences. The ongoing experiment with Ariadne’s Thread, while very much a lumbering effort on my part, has proven very enjoyable and intriguing. The premise was to mash-up 1977 Traveller with the vibe of […]

One area of reflection has been the idea that I enjoy several variations of game play that are often lumped together into the category of “roleplaying games”. While many folk tend to assume that the term “roleplaying game” (RPG) is a firm one, the reality is nuanced. Being able to “attempt any action” is perhaps […]

The past three months have felt like wading through treacle. Work has been… intense. No mental energy at the end of the day. Weekends have been busy. This past week of half-term has been a slow exit from the treacle bath. Not sure I am totally out of it but… The games continue. Karameikos tomorrow. […]

I’ve been working on some Wilderness Travel rules for Karameikos powered by GURPS. This has become necessary as the party prepares to leave Threshold and travel to the village of Vander’s Hollow some 16 miles northeast. Why do I need such rules? Two reasons: 1) the Hiking rules on B351 seem ridiculous and one of […]

Two experiences within the last 24 hours have reinforced the belief that I have found my tribe: the fourth session of Karameikos and editing the seventeenth episode of GURPStalk. Taken together, there’s a palpable sense of the joy that can arise from role-playing games. Sitting at the PC last night, running the Karameikos game for […]

Today was Session #3 of Ariadne’s Thread – our SF game powered by Cypher – and once again the player-directed goals and relationships established during character creation have yielded an excellent experience at the table. For those who’ve not been listening to RPR, I’ve focused on trialling Jamison’s methodology outlined in his book, “Gamemastering” (2011). […]

Last week I ran my first session with The Fantasy Trip by Steve Jackson Games as part of my most recent hobby pact. This weekend, after a positive session of something completely different, I found myself designing a simple TFT dungeon called, “The Lost Lair”. “Run a TFT open table megadungeon at the school club […]

Listeners to the podcast will know that I recently began running a couple of new role-playing game campaigns. One of those was (eventually) named by the group Ariadne’s Thread, the title coming from the name of their starship. Today was Session #2 and, although very different in feel and tone to the previous one, a […]

The pact was that I will run a TFT open table megadungeon at the school club for 6 weekly sessions. Today was session one and… we played The Fantasy Trip but not in a dungeon. This is fine because the heart of this is keeping an experimental mindset. Remember the Hypothesis: the School RP Club […]

Men will die on average 4.9 years earlier than women and for reasons that are largely preventable, which means that it doesn’t have to be that way. Once again, I am supporting the Movember Foundation and trying to raise (at least) £100 by shaving off the beard and growing a dodgy moustache. I’ve faced my […]

In The Labyrinth is the point at which Melee and Wizard grow into a role-playing game. If you’ve been following my delve into The Fantasy Trip, this is where the game transcends the battlefield. This book covers roleplaying, character creation and experience, and advanced magic and combat rules… I’ve been reading through it for a […]

Having not given Wizard a play, this is the part of the experiment with The Fantasy Trip where it all gets a little more strange. As we go forward, I’m going to assume that you’ve been following along and already read Part I. Step One: Creating a Figure Wizard is a game of magical combat, […]

Continuing my path towards running an Open Table megadungeon game powered by The Fantasy Trip, I’ve cracked open the big box to dig out the little box named Melee. The whole system is modular, starting with “Man-to-Man Combat With Archaic Weapons”. Melee is a free .PDF download on Warehouse23 for those who are curious and […]

Last week, after a particularly disappointing D&D Club session at school, wherein none of the players for my game showed up, I noticed that there were quite a few students drifting between games as observers. They were happy enough but… Hypothesis: the School RP Club needs an Open Table as per The Alexandrian’s manifesto. Why […]

For years, fans of so-called ‘rules lite’ games have been telling us that the big benefit of such systems is that the “rules get out of the way during play”. The claim is that by having fewer rules to learn, we can be free to improvise the results as we make rulings during the game. […]

I started this roleplaying games thing when I was pre-teen, during Middle School in the days when RPGs were finding their identity. Before going to Secondary School, I liked to imagine and explore. I would play games and I would hang out with friends. It was an innocent time. As we transitioned into Secondary School, […]

Two months ago I asked: What if we were to set up a campaign within the lands of Karameikos as inspired by that old supplement but run it with the much more grounded GURPS game system? Today, we begin Session #1 of the Karameikos campaign powered by GURPS. The journey began with that post in […]

The blog and the podcast were always a means by which I could work out my thinking around the roleplaying games hobby that I have enjoyed so much throughout my life. This post is no different, being a reflection on what I would seek in my play. To say that you “need” something when we […]

This morning I woke up with the crazy idea of running a 100-points Dungeon Fantasy game set in the realm of Karameikos and starting in the town of Threshold. The thought of a low-powered classical adventure campaign powered by GURPS but inspired by my favourite edition of Dungeons & Dragons seems exciting. Let me tell […]

After waking in the night with a panic attack, I wrote something on the RPR Discord that was somewhat of a revelation. In the pre-dawn light of the hobby room, there was a sense that I needed to get back to something simpler: I’m starting to realise that while I might feel drawn to a […]

This week we launched the GURPStalk podcast, a collaboration between myself and Patrick Mullen who is a long-time GURPS Game Master and newfound friend. The show is where we talk about GURPS – the Generic Universal Role-Playing System published by Steve Jackson Games – and using it to run long-form roleplaying campaigns. Both Pat and myself are interested in […]

Being a long-term fan of Star Trek, I’ve been drawn back to watching episodes of the various TV shows. Doing so reminded me of the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game from which, back at Christmas, my good friend Derek bought me a copy of the Starter Set for the second edition. I’ve taken things a […]

Two more days at work and then it’s the holidays and, frankly, I have no idea what to do with myself and the hobby. Ideally, I would be digging in to develop the After Ruin fantasy campaign that’s running with the Nottingham Dice Cup crew and working up a fresh online RPG offer. In reality, […]

Why do people feel an incessant need to criticize and tear down the work of others? For sure, some things are objectively crap – the machine that simply doesn’t work. When it comes to works of creativity and imagination, however, we enter into the realm of the personal and subjective. As Monte Cook has observed, […]

Lots I could talk about this week, but the most enjoyable and memorable stuff happened today during the latest session of After Ruin, our dark fantasy campaign in the realm of Mystamyr. Fittingly, the player characters found their way to one of the more iconic locations in my personal canon: Moonspike Tower. Back in 2016, […]

This week has offered a journey back into the realm of Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically, I’ve begun to read the 2024 edition of the game which I will refer to simply as 5.5e because, frankly, that’s exactly what it is: an update of the core Fifth Edition rules with significant changes but still recognisably rooted […]

As a person who introduces lots of new players to Dungeons & Dragons, and to other RPGs too, the biggest thing I have come to value as a tool is a nice simple character sheet. The Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game starter set from 2000 has just the kind of sheets that I love to […]

Every time I think that I am done with Dungeons & Dragons, it comes back into my life with force. There has been a weird confluence of experiences over the past 24 hours that have brought me back to the question of what exactly lies unresolved in my experience with D&D. I’m not quite sure […]

Confession: I like the GURPS Magic system as presented in both introductory chapter in Basic Set and the full treatment in GURPS Magic. Over the past four years, I’ve run several fantasy genre games and never needed anything more. Here’s three reasons why. 1. Pick Up and Play GURPS is a pretty easy game system […]

There must be a point at which one stops theorising and moves towards action. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been running games in a manner which has proven more satisfying to me as Game Master and given great enjoyment to the players. The philosophy of role-play that I am using is assembled from […]