Tom Van Winkle's Return to Gaming

I saw a query recently about modifications to the simple Maze Rats rules by Ben Milton.

This post gives a name to a very fast method of using dice that is already found in several games.

If you are a parent of a kid who plays D&D or another role-playing game with friends, you may have a new play group to recruit right in front of you: the parents of the other kids.

There are arguments that D&D should, or should not be, “racially diverse,” because it was, or wasn’t, like that in the world “back then.”

But you aren't composing a novel or reading a script.

Fifty years ago this month, the first 1000 copies of the original Dungeons & Dragons were printed and then boxed up at Gary Gygax's house.

Millions of people have had a chuckle at the short YouTube video about the guy outraged on the internet that other people like the thing he doesn't like.

People enjoy being impressed by multilingualism.

D&D and Indie RPG YouTubers!

Sometimes, GMs, you could trust the dice more to work for your game's fiction.

Sometimes players of adventure games stop and ask, "Wait, why am I risking my life in this dangerous adventure?"

I picked up on a conversation about whether you (the GM) should tell your players the title of the adventure they are entering.

My last post (yesterday) stated that the earliest known "rumor table" in a role-playing game module was the one in Mike Carr's B1 In Search of the Unknown, which featured the dungeon known as The Caverns of Quasqueton.

Role-playing game modules that emulate a putative "old school" often include tables of rumors that the referee can give out to the players.

Hex maps for boardgames apparently began with Agon, London 1842.

Two and a half years ago, when I was still getting reoriented to what was going on with table-top role-playing games, I wrote a post on the history of the concepts of "sandboxes" and "railroads" in RPGs.

The hard-working Hit Point remains one of those aspects of D&D that its players continually debate.

When new D&D characters are created, you know how the players can be stuck for a long time shopping for starting gear.

Commodification Signifies Value My son recently introduced me to some card games that he learned from friends this summer.

In April 2021, a fruitful essay appeared called "Six Cultures of Play," by blogger Retired Adventurer, receiving a lot of deserved attention.

There was a period of years early in the hobby’s history when there were no adventure modules at all.

Do you enjoy acting out your character’s words, even adopting a different voice for your character?

Should you be acting out a part, telling a story, or playing a game?

Every D&D adventurer is a coin collector.

I have come across a number of discussions among those who seek to discover and recapture an original, "natural," unbounded, or otherwise pristine form of role-playing game.