Sam Tillis
@stillisgaming.bsky.social
Your friendly neighborhood professional Game Master. https://startplaying.games/gm/stillis-gaming
Almost missed the one day in the history of the world when I can post this story. (Arguably tomorrow would have worked too.)
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
“Today is Mr. Featherstone’s birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita’s marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills.”
libraryofshortstories.com
Figure out what your players want, and give it to them. That's it. That's the whole job of the Game Master.
@waverlysm.bsky.social you're British can you explain [checks notes] Count... Binface...? to me?
This is a super cool game, and the GM Sean (like every Sean I know, somehow) is a super cool guy. Check this out!
Nausica-inspired TTRPG
Cloud Empress is an ecological science fantasy game about being one small part of a vast and mysterious ecosystem. Explore, survive, love, protect.
startplaying.games
Whats the best band with the worst name and why is it the Beatles?
Just an absolutely normal D&D game. Doesn't your game have a mandatory hat policy? (Technically not D&D. Bonus points to whoever can figure out what game we're actually playing.)
My toxic trait is that I secretly hate the word "homebrew" as it relates to D&D/roleplaying games.
It's work, of course. Some days it's hard work. But DANG do I love my job.
My local game store just gifted me this stack of books, so I guess it's officially time to start rebuilding my D&D 3.5 collection...
Me: I should really try to finish playing Baldur's Gate so I understand the past 3 years of nerd culture. Also Me: [reinstalls 2000-era PC classic "Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim]
When your D&D players have 3 options for where to go next: -The place that continues the main plot -The place with a character-driven side-plot -The batshit crazy place they have no earthly reason to visit ...you might as well not even prepare for options 1 and 2. 🙃
Op. Always forgetting to self-advertise. "Midnight in the Garden of Chrome and Fog," my character-limit busting cyberpunk RPG actual-play, starts its second season this evening at 7pm! You better believe things are gonna be **weird** for the holiday... www.twitch.tv/vanalosswen
What a horrifying item to find at the bottom of my to-do list, with no memory of how it got there.
The existence of "Rogue State" as a geopolitical category implies Barbarian State, Bard State, Cleric State, etc., and we haven't spent enough time grappling with this as a community.
I don't know if this stands up to scrutiny, but some quick&easy drinking contest rules for D&D: it's just blackjack, but your character's Constitution score is the limiter (instead of 21). You can stop drinking any time, but whoever has the highest number less than or equal to their Con score wins.
My response to that one specific faction of Star Trek: Lower Decks and Starfleet Academy haters.
Not gonna prepare for D&D adventures ever again; just gonna use this:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the main skill for being a professional DM is not storytelling ability, not understanding rules systems, not doing funny voices or balancing group dynamics. It's a tolerance for sending scheduling emails.
Spending today coming to terms with how my very, very mature gaming group starting their new 1690s pirate campaign is going to handle the word "pinnace."
Every once in a while I feel a pang of D&D 3e/3.5 nostalgia. If you're like me, my friend Ben has just listed a game that I think will appeal to you mightily.
Join Heroes Across Time - Discord / Roll20 - Dungeons & Dragons 3/3.5e | StartPlaying Games
A Viking raider, a weary American Revolutionist, and a scholar from Mars University (2371) wake up in a world that shouldn't exist. Their bodies are altered, their memories are fractured, and they are...
startplaying.games
It was inevitable, perhaps, that my D&D party would start referring to svirfneblin and svirfs, and that that would immediately degrade to smurfs, but what an absolute humiliation for one of my favorite D&D species.
Five Tiers of RPG Publishing Hasbro’s annual earnings came out this week, so I took a look. It is truly staggering how much Wizards of the Coast has changed the company since they were acquired; when looking at unadjusted earnings the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Games division was the only…
Five Tiers of RPG Publishing
Hasbro’s annual earnings came out this week, so I took a look. It is truly staggering how much Wizards of the Coast has changed the company since they were acquired; when looking at unadjusted earnings the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Games division was the only one that turned a profit in the entire company. Not only that, but Wizards is responsible for roughly 47% of the entire company’s revenue and over 90% of all revenue growth over the last year.
cannibalhalflinggaming.com
One of my deficiencies as a DM is that most of my NPCs are mostly reasonable most of the time. I feel as if that's not true of all people in the real world—some people are really quite petty and spiteful in self-defeating ways—but I have a hard time channeling that into my games.
Introduced a loveable robot NPC to my teens game as a potential ally; they immediately called it "clanker" and destroyed it. Interesting cultural shift, there.
Gonna see how long it takes my Spelljammer players to notice that I'm just taking them through a beat-by-beat remake of The Mandalorian.
Wish I'd taken a photo of the new kid's D&D character sheet, where she listed her class as "Rogue" and her subclass as "Goth Baddie." 10/10 A+ no notes.
