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Gencon 2012: Cosplay Abuse
There are two different forms of cosplay abuse. Abuse of the term, the ideal, and the activity is the one that I think is a bit more personal to me. The second is abuse of the people themselves. I...
View ArticleThree Questions a GM Should Ask Before “Fudging” a Die Roll
When a GM uses a screen, the only one watching over him is his own conscience, and there are times when we, for the good of the game, decide to ignore or modify a secret die roll. Perhaps we don’t want...
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Problems With Canon
**SPOILER ALERT** If you have not read the Dresden Files series, and you car about having things spoiled, STOP READING NOW. This is a spoiler — get it? I’ve been reading through Dresden Files RPG: Your...
View ArticleWhy I Don’t Believe in Wizards Anymore
I’ll admit that I didn’t really care all that much when Wizards of the Coast announced the 5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game back in January of this year. I’d already fallen in love with...
View ArticleExpect the potential for another D&D Next rant…
All righty then. I know I promised an article about adapting the three tier result mechanic of Apocalypse World style games to the Savage Worlds system, but that’ll just have to wait. It’s time for...
View ArticleThe Rogue’s Share
In the second half of my last article I explained why giving the rogue “weaponized ability checks” would be a bad idea. Basically you’re forcing the DM to choose between allowing all characters to...
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Making an Existing Setting Your Own
I’ve started running an L5R game (you can hear recordings of the session at HappyJacks.org), and some of the things I’ve done with this well-established, long running setting are likely to make some...
View ArticleWhy I Like Sex in RPGs
In a recent episode of the Happy Jacks RPG podcast (Season 09 Episode 08), the hosts discussed romance, seduction, and sex in roleplaying games. I was really looking forward to this discussion as I am...
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What RPGs are NOT
We have a tendency in this hobby to borrow a lot of terms from other creative endeavors. We borrow terms from creative writing, film, television, The problem is, sometimes we start equating our hobby...
View ArticleI’m Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore!
Editor’s note: While I seemingly rail against Kickstarter creators in this post, I am well aware that many good people are conducting good business on Kickstarter. I also acknowledge that many projects...
View ArticleThe Doom That Came to Kickstarter
The Kickstarter for a Monopoly-style Lovecraftian mashup board game is dead. Lots of kickstarters die, but in this case it’s notable because the publisher, the Forking Path, raised more than $122,000 —...
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What Can We Learn from #GamerGate?
Since August, the internet has been in an uproar about the #gamergate controversy. It seems that everyone has a different opinion about the point of the movement and its impact on the industry....
View ArticleReturn of the Open Gaming License!
So! Wizards of the Coast has released Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition under the Open Gaming License. They’ve also created the Dungeon Masters Guild so that creators can use WotC’s non-OGLed...
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