Category: Gamemastering

  • Review Part 2: Savage Core Rules Changes

    Review Part 2: Savage Core Rules Changes

    In yesterday’s post, I talked about the content of the Savage World of Flash Gordon as it relates to the actual setting. Today, I’m talking about core rule changes.One of the major shifts is in the skills list. Climbing, Swimming, and Throwing have been combined into one skill, Athletics, which is Agility-based; Lockpicking is generalized to…

  • Christmas Wish List – Savage Settings

    OK, Santa – I’ve been hoping for some of my favorite properties to be Savaged, and here’s my wish list. The Vorkosigan Saga: Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga is probably my all-time favorite book series; I’ve been reading it since my days of part-time high school work in the local bookstore. It’s classic space opera, complete with…

  • Arisia Schedule Update

    Arisia Schedule Update

    At this year’s Arisia convention in Boston, I’ll be running Children of the Apocalypse on Saturday at 5:30 and my upcoming setting, Legion of Liberty, at 4:00 on Sunday. If you’re in the area, Arisia is definitely worth a visit – it’s a great all-purpose geekery convention.

  • Firing into Melee

    Savage Worlds has very little to say on the subject of firing into melee. The only rule is the Innocent Bystander rule – if you roll a 1 (or a 1 or 2 when firing full-auto), you hit someone other than the target. With Bennies in play, this doesn’t happen very often, which means that…

  • Character “Same-y-Ness”

    Character “Same-y-Ness”

    I like podcasts to make my commute more entertaining, and one of my favorites is the Secret Cabal Gaming podcast. On a recent episode of their Lords of the Dungeon RPG podcast, they talked about having become tired of Savage Worlds because a combat-optimized character was basically always the same. This is not an original criticism…

  • Arisia Plans

    Arisia Plans

    We’re one month out from my favorite local convention, Arisia! This year, I’ll be running Savage Worlds: Children of the Apocalypse and debuting my upcoming superhero setting, Legion of Liberty. No word on scheduling yet, but I plan to be in-con Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. If you’re in Boston and free on MLK weekend, come…

  • Superfight – Round 2

    Last night the Roll20 gang and I ran the first playtest of my forthcoming supers setting. As I thought might be the case, the No Power Points rule resulted in a lot of “squib” superpowers, with the players often invoking their abilities and failing completely to achieve anything. One idea I had to mitigate this…

  • Meeting Management for the GM

    As noted in my biography, I do have a day job in addition to my role as Chief Monster Officer. As a result, I’ve learned a lot about a lot of different topics, including how to run a meeting. For a maximally productive meeting, it helps to have certain roles filled, and filling these roles around…

  • Shelfie- RPG Shelf

    Shelfie- RPG Shelf

    I’ve mainly shifted over to digital books for my RPG needs. I was an early adopter of eBooks – I had an electronic ink eReader before the Kindle was a thing. So shifting over to PDF form game books was a natural extension, except for that one company that just doesn’t want to publish in that format. However, I…

  • Obligatory Year in Review Post

    2017 has been an… interesting year for a lot of folks, but it has been a big year for Happy Monster Press – this is our founding year, and the run up to our January 2018 Kickstarter. On the gaming front, this year saw me running ETU and Savage Rifts, improving my Roll20 GM skills,…