Join Ang, John, and Senda for a discussion about tips and tricks for keeping your NPCs varied and interesting. Can these gnomes come up with enough interesting NPCs to avoid the stew? Download: Gnomecast #132 – NPC Variety Check out Short Order Heroes from Calico Games. Check out Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game from Engine […]

Since late summer, I have devoted a great deal of craft time to painting miniatures for fantasy roleplaying — getting back one of the hobby’s crafting aspects I so much enjoy. It’s a subject I’ve touched on before. But with new people entering the hobby all the time, I thought it might be nice to […]

Welcome to Monster Combo, a series of articles in which we will create some backstory, encounters, variations, and a bit of lore for monsters from different games and genres. From Lovecraftian horror and medieval fantasy creatures to sci-fi cyborgs and weird entities. This series is to stay system neutral so you can grab these ideas […]

There’s a meme (or three) going around social media about tattooing your spells onto your body as a wizard so you “can never lose your spell book.” I actually like this idea. I don’t think I’d do it as a player, but as a GM, I’m on board. However, there are some limitations. Let’s dive […]

Back in April 2021, Coyote and Crow funded on Kickstarter. This was a roleplaying game that didn’t look much like other games that were funding at the time. The concept behind Coyote and Crow was a future science fiction setting where the Americas were never colonized by Europeans, and the societies being explored are all […]

I grew up in a time where it was unfortunately common to see various real-world cultures added to a fantasy setting, written by white men. In fantasy worlds where reality was formed around the myths and folklore of Europe, there were some unfortunately common tendencies when adding cultures that didn’t share that origin. Often, these […]

The holidays are just around the corner, and with them come the usual festive-themed one-shots or sessions from a campaign. It’s a given and a lot of people do it, especially for Halloween. But why is it that so many people do it? And why should you try it out if you haven’t yet? Running […]

Ever since we started podcasting together, Senda and I have always talked about doing a one-on-one campaign. We even tried doing it as part of Panda’s Talking Games, but it did not work out. I have for some time been curious about GMing a one-on-one campaign, as it is one of the few things I […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this. I like monster hunting media. I like the idea of following clues and finding lairs. I like finding specific weaknesses and exploiting them to stop a supernatural threat. In addition to all of this, I like seeing this same process with different backdrops. In my never-ending quest to find […]

For games with deeper, more involved rulesets, it can be difficult to teach new players the intricacies of how the various rules interact, stack, offset, or play with one another. A method that I’ve used to teach new players (either new to the system or new to role playing in general), is to railroad them […]