Listening to a number of podcasts of actual play session and talking to a number of people, both on forums and in person, I have come to really see a wide variety of ways that players like to act in their games. Most of these tend to fall into two camps, Proactive and Reactive, but […]

It always amuses me to see how the evolution of an idea happens. I have been working on a new RPG called Whispering Bluff for a little while now (as readers of this Blog should know), but the core mechanics of the game have spawned an idea for something that is not an RPG. I […]

An unfortunate side-effect of having a new job is the amount of energy and work it takes up. Even when it’s not a new job, but your long standing one, it can take up a lot o time and energy. Add the other things in your life that you have to take care, especially if […]

If you consider Story Game in place of Machine and Traditional RPG in place of Man. Playtesting and reworking of Whispering Bluff has further pushed it into the realm of being a “Story Game” than a traditional RPG. I am quickly seeing how scene framing and shared narrative is the way this game needs to […]

It seems as though I had another small lag in posting. The search for a new job and other problems made it harder for me to get the urge to post my usual kind of long post going. This means I need to make a change.
First things first, I need to stop thinking I have […]

After a couple weeks of struggling and false starts, playtesting has started on the new game and it already has shown some good areas to work on. This works to show just how important playtesting is to a new emerging game. Absolutely necessary, in fact, if you plan on releasing something as a fully cooked […]

Yes, it seems that everything in my life right now is all about this new game idea and my blog is going to be no exception. This time I am covering my ideas and some of what I have already done for the setting of the new Whispering Bluff RPG. If you look around on […]

Following up on my post a couple days ago about the Character Creation in the new game, I am now going to dive into the mechanics that run the game. I am still not diving into the setting yet, since that is something I don’t want to flesh it out until I am sure I […]

I wasn’t planning on doing an update on this new idea so soon, but it sort of has taken over my mind over the last week. All my writing has been related to it and nothing else seems to be able to get worked on, so here I sit with an update on the thing […]

Sometimes inspiration for a new game can strike out of nowhere and sometimes it’s directly connected to something you are doing or wanting at the time. No matter where it comes from it can grab hold of your brain and not let go until you get it all out. That’s what happened with Lootin’ Wizards […]

When deciding to run a game that includes languages other than the ones you actually speak (in most cases I will guess my readers use English) you have to decide how those other languages are going to be handled. Are they going to be mostly ignored, have parts created for flavor, or even get completely […]

One of the things that many GMs often complain about the difficulty is making every NPC interesting and original, especially when they have to be created on the spot. Some have a series of internal pregen personalities that show up over and over again in different roles, but that can lead to players recognizing them […]

Most of the time people think of Meta-Gaming and out of character knowledge as something negative to avoid. There are times, however, that it can be used to good effect and for reasons that are very positive. Like most of these things I’ve been bringing up in these blog posts, the use of Mega-Game elements […]

A few posts ago I made a nice list of numerous kinds of goals that can fall into the gaming group situation (GOOOOOOAL!!!: Different Types of Gaming Goals). Some of them were goals of the payers at the table and others were goals held within the game world itself. Very little mention was made of […]

Most RPGs include some kind of growth and change for characters, but these are usually things like skills, attributes, and abilities. What people often overlook are the many other lasting effects that can be used to both enhance and hinder characters, usually to make better stories and often to connect multiple characters together. Many times […]

Although the term “Player versus Player” tends to have a negative connotation with most gamers, the term also tends to cover a larger array of gaming interactions that includes some of the necessities of good role-playing. I am not going to just speak about how wonderful PvP is, as it can have a lot of […]

This could very easily turn out to be another game related or even gaming advice post, but that’s not the intent here. This is supposed to be a post about my own experience right now with the re-launch of my blog. With the return of my drive and inspiration, what some could call my Muse […]

I’ve been having some connection problems recently (like since right after my last posting) and don’t know when it will all be fixed. So I am sitting at my mothers house right now (taking care of things while they are on vacation) and decided to use the connection here to post my next blog a […]

During my short hiatus from the site (due to the whole death in the family thing I spoke about in the re-launch post and still being out of work and needing to find something, without any luck yet) I have been thinking about magic a lot again. I have some ideas from a small, but […]

I never wanted my first real post on the new Dragavan’s Den 2.0 Blog to be another memorial (especially as the last incarnation of it ended with one), but how can I not comment on the news of the day?
As you can see on several forums and dozens of news links (like this one at […]