People wrongly think "railroading" means "giving the PCs a plot hook or adventure". That's completely wrong. THIS is railroading (courtesy of Knights of the Dinner Table):

So… I’ve gotten into playing this @RedCross Blood Donor app and I’ve unlocked several badges, but I really want to platinum it. Does anyone else play it? Anyone have a strategy for unlocking the *AB Elite Donor* badge because I rolled blood type O during character generation. The only thing I can think of is donating someone else’s blood in my name, but I don’t know if that will work and I don’t want to lose my account by cheating. It doesn’t look like there’s a TOS forbidding, but you know how game servers are these days. Also curious from anyone who has tried it whether donating blood from someone else can help circumvent the eight week turn timer.

Challenge Or Goal? New General Access Feature Time for an informal little digression from the main True Scenario Designery lessons. I need to help all y'all help you suss out the difference between goals and challenges. Because, as some of my unnamed supporters are about to learn, they're easy to confuse. Read the whole article on my site. You know where to find it.

Just Shut Up About Min-Maxing (Part II): No, Seriously, Shut Up New General Access Feature This is the rant about why Game Masters need to shut up about Min-Maxing I didn't publish two weeks ago. Now available at The Angry GM's main site.

Ask Angry: Too Many Players and Meaningful Apocalypse Games New General Access Feature It's mailbag time. Two questions this month: how to run an open-world game for too many people with too-short sessions and whether PbtA games can provided meaningful experiences. Now available at TheAngryGM site.

Big announcement - please spread far and wide! I am seeking external play-testers for One Hour English Civil War, the next game in the One Hour series. Please DM me your email if interested and I will send you all files needed to play-test. Thank you!

Checkout the latest quick view for my 4X project! Still a lot to do, like make a decent dev log.... But it's starting to look like something 🎉 #gamedev #GodotEngine youtu.be/s-y7_NaNG3k

I realized what I was typing was really stupid… so never mind.

Without a robust means of dealing with specific injuries built into the system, traps are basically pointless in modern-style fantasy adventure tabletop roleplaying games like D&D.

Without a robust means of dealing with specific injuries built into the system, traps are basically pointless in modern-style fantasy adventure tabletop roleplaying games.

Unfortunately for you, one of the secrets is not wasting time responding to random questions on social media. I guess I could also say “unfortunately for me” given that I’m responding to this right now. You probably shouldn’t listen to me.

*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, thats me. You’re probably wondering how I got here…

On average, gamers play their characters about 15% of the way. What if you could go 50%, 80%, or all-in? Venger's new KS just dropped... kickstarter.com/projects/ven…

Outside of the minimum assumption inherent to all human social endeavors that you not mistreat other people, a tabletop roleplaying game player's only job — their only responsibility — is to show up and play the game. If you demand any more than that as a Game Master, you are bad and you are wrong and you should feel bad.

Creative work isn't about being clever or having great ideas. It's all about hitting deadlines, nailing the content, and revising on a tight schedule to hit quality. Constitution is your most important stat.

Over the last few weeks, I've been very inconsistent about posting my Features to Early Access and then moving them to General Access. So a bunch of stuff just got dumped onto my site for all to see and I really didn't share it out very well outside my own supporter community. So if you aren't one of my supporters but you enjoy my work, you might want to check my site to see what you might have missed in the last month or so. A lot hit right on the cusp between March and April. I am getting my workflow back under control and this shouldn't be much of an issue going forward once I've got things running more smoothly. I'm sorry for the inconsistency. I'm still putting out four regular Features, they're just coming at very odd times and often clumped up toward the end of the month. That's not great for you, my readers, or for me, as the writer. Sorry about that.

Player and character skill exist in synergy. The player chooses what to say, but the character says it. A high CHA character will say the wrong thing eloquently. A low CHA character will say the right thing badly.