Musings from Fanterland

 Last week I ran the Wildsea. Next week I'll run Mythic Bastionland. The week after I'll run The Electrum Archive. A week ago I hadn't read any of the games' books, and some weeks I only have an hour's worth of reading time. Here's how to get a game to the table quickly, with a twist at the end. Illustration by Hairic under CC4.0 1. Don't read the book cover-to-cover. Go straight to the index, glossary and play sheets (such as character sheets, GM sheets and a quick rules reference). The more RPGs you've played, the more you'll already be familiar with the concepts of a new one. Ignore sections you're already familiar with, and ignore sections that you can avoid during your first session. 2. Ignore sections that you can avoid during your first session. D&D5e has separate 'play modes': exploration, travel, downtime and combat. If you're in a pinch, you could skip the sections on travel and downtime and start your session by locking...

As a starting RPG player with a diagnosis of severe ADHD, I wanted to give GMing a shot. But once I invited my friends to play, I struggled with a lot of guilt whenever I wasn't fully prepared. I remember wanting to stop GMing completely. But it turned out that there are lots of tools to find a GM-style that suits your needs. Here are the 10 things I wish I knew as a starting game master with ADHD. Illustration by Emiel Boven   (CC BY 4.0) 1. Remember that the GM is a player too As a GM we want to make sure players have a good time. Sometimes we are willing to go so far to make sure of this, that we lose sight of what makes the game fun for us. This is when we need to remind ourselves that we are a player too. Having fun while engaging with the game is non-negotiable. If the game starts feeling like work, that's a red flag. Just take a step back, and look for a way to go back to a place where the game can be enjoyed again or take a break. If unsure, ask a friend or one of the ...

Some players are in it for the game choices, some are in it for the world immersion, and some are in it for the character story. If the last one applies to you. and you've played anything like D&D, you'll be used to being frustrated with sessions that felt like the story went nowhere. Story is not a given if your game's goal is to simulate a battle step-by-step. What if we set up our session in a way that you can't help but have a complete story? Let's do it. From dungeon lingo to story lingo First up, we need some story vocabulary. We'll use that throughout this blog. Fortunately, if you know D&D lingo, we can easily think of a mapping from one to the other using the three-act plot structure (check the image below). MAIN QUESTS, SUB QUESTS and SIDE QUESTS ➡ Main Plots, Sub Plots and Side Plots. A full story contains at least one full plot. ACCEPTING A QUEST and ENTERING THE DUNGEON  ➡ Act I: ‘the Setup’. DUNGEONCRAWLING  ➡ Act II: ‘the Confrontatio...