I haven’t been posting as much, partly because I’ve been engaging in bad behavior for a good cause. As some of your know, I spent about 12 years as a community organizer before realizing that I missed school. So after getting my doctorate, what did I do? I went back to community organizing – with… Continue reading That’s me, Mr. Organizer
On the OD&D Forum someone once asked, “What should be on a character sheet?” to which I replied, “Lines to write on :)” Seriously, the only thing that has grown more in size over time than the typical RPG character sheet is the software used to create it. I used to think that extensive multi-page… Continue reading In praise of the 3×5 card
I got together with some friends of mine – both of them experienced gamers – as they wanted to talk to me about possibly playing in my new campaign. We had gotten to a discussion of different styles of play, and what people want to do in a game and what makes a game good. … Continue reading What Players Want
Madison Games Day 2 was a success for TARGA events. Some logistics to churn: The total turn-out for this one-day free game-a-thon was somewhere around 40-50 people, with no pre-registration and a request from the event organizers asking for referees to submit events. Event listings were just one-line announcements (see blog), so it was a… Continue reading Madison Games Day 2
It was Dave Arneson’s birthday about a week ago. Unfortunately, Dave wasn’t here to celebrate it; he passed away earlier this year. In the midst of everything else, I took a moment to think about Dave and what he brought into the world with his marvelous creation of fantasy role-playing. It reminded me that I… Continue reading Half Year Mark
One of the more difficult things to admit as a referee is when you make a mistake. We like to think that mistakes are mostly of the “oops, didn’t quite mean it that way” variety, but sometimes mistakes can be much bigger than that. Probably my earliest big mistake came when I was running a… Continue reading “Mistakes were made, Senator….”
Yes, this photo – taken at a Starbucks in south Minneapolis – reveals the sinister dark underside of the Old School Renaissance. Gathered for nefarious purposes are (from left to right): Aaron Kesher, of Sandbox Empire (AKA Kesher on the Original D&D Discussion Board), then myself, and then Tom Juntunen, one of the contributors to… Continue reading Proof of a Conspiracy
Jones Soda has developed a new limited edition of soda pop geared for D&D players. And while this news has probably bounced off the far boundaries of the internet a couple of times already, I’ve just heard about it. It reminds me of the very early days of gaming, when a potions of healing were… Continue reading It’s not Dr. Pepper, but it looks tasty
Rob Conley has some interesting ideas about a kind of Living OD&D that might be something TARGA might eventually run. (Is that enough “might”s? It’s very exploratory in nature, or so it would seem to me.) What I find fascinating about this is that in matches what people did oh-so-long-ago, where characters and campaigns were… Continue reading Campaigns and Living OD&D
“Five dollars an hour.” “For a table?” “Yep.” “…And that’s if the game is out of print or unavailable from your distributor?” “Yep.” I stood, slightly dumbfounded. The gaming tables were in a next-door store front, at that moment completely empty of gamers. The Not-So-FLGS manager smiled that “I’m with a customer but I don’t… Continue reading Table Fees
