Sugar
is as addicting as cocaine. It is as harmful as cocaine; it just takes decades to kill you. I might be exaggerating, but this is the mindset you need to over...
This is where I try to record my best thoughts. I welcome all comments or inquiries through e-mail!
is as addicting as cocaine. It is as harmful as cocaine; it just takes decades to kill you. I might be exaggerating, but this is the mindset you need to over...
Getting enough, and getting only enough, is the key to the “balanced” diet. To do this, we need to understand what our bodies actually need.
To cut down on eating, we’re going to back off slowly, hour by hour, with “one easy trick”: Serve yourself your normal portions. Drink a huge glass of w...
We want to get away from the Standard American Diet (SAD) of nutrient-robbed grains, artery-clogging meat, and fat-building drinks. Don’t be SAD.
The only way this is going to work is if you form good habits. This means making exercise a part of your life. You don’t have to be a fitness buff, you just ...
Get strong.
How exactly do you lose fat? Through your sweat and breath! The more you sweat, the more you breathe hard, and the faster your heart pumps, the more weight y...
If you’re looking for real medical information, please don’t just google your symptoms. Speak with a real doctor, if possible. Otherwise, visit familydoctor....
Head over to ahealthiermichigan.org to get started on your new vitality education. These folks are doing a great job, and have more honest material than I co...
Sometime within the last few years, while playing with Hostargo’s Inverse Dice Mechanic, I realized it wasn’t working as intended. Players were having troubl...
A role playing game (RPG) is a scenario of drama, and a mechanic for acting in that drama. RPGs are an exploration of what it’s like to be somewhere, someone...
Poorly written rules are frustrating. Ambiguity can lead to disagreements or confusion. But the meaning of specific terms or abilities isn’t always a detrime...
“Something’s come up.”
Building characters is sometimes one of the best parts of a game. You get to explore the game’s mechanics, prepare your best for what is to come, and set off...
There’s nothing like a good nail-biting story. The excitement one feels in the pit of their stomach keeps them on the edge of their seat, anxious to know mor...
Knowing is half the battle. Knowledge of where your objective is simplifies getting to it by eliminating any possible false paths. But hidden information is ...
It can be difficult to convince an older RPG player to try any other game than the one they’ve been playing for the past 20 years. And it’s really no surpris...
Competition has been a part of human civilization since the earliest days of man. Whether struggling over food, wrestling for ruling power, or just participa...
“Will they solve the puzzle?” can be a great dramatic question for a roleplaying scene. The party might uncover a secret clue, find hidden treasures, or save...
A “hardcore” game might be described as one with only a single source of uncertainty: player performance. No random factors. Complete information. Only how w...
One of the most important uncertainties for role playing games is randomness. That might seem obvious, but randomness is only one of the eleven sources of un...
The unknown, unsolved, and unpredictable nature of games is exactly what makes them intriguing. As soon as you know that tic-tac-toe or Candy Land are determ...
Advancements in video game technology have given us unlimited possibilities for high quality entertainment. The drive of the AAA tech giants and the hearts o...
Getting excited to work on your project shouldn’t be hard, but sometimes it’s not at the forefront of what you want to do. For professional game designers, I...
A swing-and-a-miss just doesn’t cut it anymore. Every roll in a tabletop RPG should be interesting. Our hobby now has more mature systems, like FF’s Genesys,...
Using your character’s powerful spells now may solve your current problem, but what future challenges will you then be missing that magic for? Resource manag...
When you actively seek out to do the dishes instead of sitting down to work on your game, you know you’ve lost a little bit of something. But that something ...
Sitting down at a table with some of your friends, bullshitting around with a story, and making badass characters thrive is only a shallow perspective on wha...
Game Masters do a lot of work. They are the ones doing the prep, adjudicating fairness, and roleplaying a whole world, while players show up to game day wit...
Over the New Year holiday I got a chance to run a couple games that I’ve grown to love: Dr. Magnet Hands and All Out of Bubblegum. These are excellent party ...
Despite the experience of running D&D for over ten years, there are still simple things about the game that trip me up. This has been especially true as ...
I love the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic in D&D 5e. It's so simple and elegant, and it works perfectly with how the players interact with the ...
In my last post about armor, I discussed the possibility of a system where we introduce different types of attack damage, and therefore different types of a...
Even the chainmail bikini usually gives an RPG hero a boost in “armor”: that generic value of how protected a character is. In a lot of games, there’s no re...
When gamers mesh well with each other, it’s not just because they’re gamers. On the contrary, a lot of us can get on each other’s nerves, simply because we ...
Your friends have all gathered to play a game. There are five of you, but the game is only 4 players. Someone has to sit out, and it’s randomly dec...
“We’re starting at level one for my campaign.” - GM There is a low grumble from the group of players, who reluctantly start to fill in their character sheet...
The first step to creating a role playing game, for me, was to get a dice mechanic that I was happy with. Ignoring the actual ‘game’, you have to start with...
Games like D&D have the game master (GM) secretly think of a target number (TN) for the player to roll against. In traditional RPGs, the hidden informati...