To the personal site of Jeff Werner
A common experience in many RPGs, but one that is perhaps most acutely felt by west marchers and sandboxers, is level disparity. Inevitably some characters are going to progress faster than others, usually because their associated players can play more regularly than others. While there are games that can continue to function with a multi-level […]
One of the potential difficulties of running a sandbox game is that it can be a lot of work to build a fictional world and populate it with interesting things to see and do. A common pit-fall is that GMs create vast worlds with nothing in them, or alternately, worlds in which all the interesting […]
The LTRPG is designed to be played as a series of loosely associated one-shot sessions. The structure is similar to a show like Star Trek: The Next Generation (and others). Each episode focusses on one or two issues that are largely resolved by the end of the hour. Despite the self-contained nature of episodes, the […]
I spend a lot of time GMing, and I have found that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less patient with systems that place a high demand on players and GMs. These days the loose standard that I use to evaluate game complexity is whether I can run it without referencing the manual during play. […]
While the game includes uncertainty, the players are empowered to make difficult choices on behalf of their characters. It is usually possible to purchase success on a check but doing so has implications that will impact your character for the rest of the session and beyond. The mechanics continually prompt players to ask: is this […]
What is a sandbox game? There is a lot of variation in how gamers define a sandbox game. In general, a sandbox is a type of non-linear campaign in which players are granted significant agency to direct the narrative. As the name implies, the role of the GM is to create a “sandbox”, a fictional […]
The race that I will be analyzing in this article is the elves. I’ve done a lot of thinking about elves, and the conclusion that I’ve come to is that they are freakin’ weird! Let’s consider a few elven traits. One, they have a very unusual life history. They can live for nearly a thousand […]
The D&D race that I will be looking at in this article is halflings. Halflings are small in stature – roughly the size of a human child. And unlike dwarves, halflings are not only shorter than humans, but considerably lighter as well. They live mostly in small tightly-knit agricultural communities. While most halflings tend to […]
The fantasy race that I will be exploring in this post is the dwarves. Dwarves are a short, hardy, and (usually) heavily bearded people. They are resistant to toxins, including alcohol, of which they seem to be very fond, and can see exceptionally well in the dark. They have large projecting faces with robust features […]
The fantasy race that want to tackle in this article is orcs. Orcs are a perennial bane of low-level adventuring parties. They are immensely strong and physically tough. Culturally, they are brutish and cruel. Their social systems are flexible complex and often involve briefly forming into large bands under a strong leader. The eventual failure […]