The third free Treasure Tables PDF, GMing Dos and Don’ts: Ours Go to Eleven, is now available from our PDF Downloads page!
This is our first PDF featuring all-new material. It contains 4 pages of GMing advice that has never appeared on TT, and the only way to get it is to download the PDF.
Did I mention that it was free?
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Nice set of tips there. I especially like the one about focusing on the players. That’s the way that i’ve always played. It’s never about what goes on, but about what the players are doing. That’s where we’ve tried to focus silvervine as well. The rest of the advice is just good, but I take that one to heart as my GMing style.
That can be an easy one to forget, too, kind of like skyscrapers — when you walk by them often enough, you don’t think about how big they are. (If that makes any sense.)
I’m glad you liked the PDF. 🙂 It was odd not putting the dos and don’ts up on TT as a post, and I’m curious to see how people respond to that aspect of it.
This is sort of off-topic (sorry…)
Are the PDF Downloads arranged in alphabetical order by title? No offense, but that’s pretty dumb. Ordered by date, most recent at the top, would be /much/ better (in my ever-so-humble opinion.)
Otherwise, everything is fantastic!
Roger: Yep, they’re alpha by title. I figured that’d make it easier to find one if you knew the name, just like posts.
The downside is that, like you pointed out, if you’re downloading them all as they come out (which is certainly the goal!) you have to poke around to find the newest one.
What about a hybrid: List them in alpha order, but above the first one also list the most recent one. How does that sound?
Hmmm. Maybe two pages — one alphabetical, the other by date — would keep everyone happy. It’s not really a /big/ deal, so don’t bend over backwards or anything on this. Anyway, it’s just a thought.
To address Roger’s point, how about an index, sorted by date, at the top of the page, with links to the downloads below? Not sure if this is even possible in a blog format.
Roger: My experience is that chronological archives aren’t very useful. After the first couple of entries — usually the newest — there’s no advantage to that setup, as it gets increasingly difficult to remember when something came out.
I’ll give the “new one on top, followed by an alpha list
DMN: My only hesitation about an index is that indexes are kind of boring, and after a couple more PDFs it might get unwieldy. Seeing a (hopefully sexy) title and a thumbnail is more likely to draw a first-time visitor down the page than an index, IMO.
On the flipside, if/when there are a lot of PDFs there, the current setup will be unwieldy — some kind of index will be a must.
There are no technical limitations that’d prevent me from going that route, though. The downloads page is just a web page — it’s not a regular blog post, so it doesn’t play by the same rules.
Martin, I was actually thinking as I was downloading: “I wish there was a zip file i could download with everythin in it.”
Granted, that SO not an issue with three downloads, but as the number continues to grow, please consider zipping up a file with all PDFs so that first time downloaders can snag a single file and unzip it rather than download a dozen of them.
Of course, eventually that won’t be any good either. Once the zip file hits a certain size, it’ll start getting too big for modem users to download in a reasonable amount of time (poor dears) so you’ll have to start a new zip rather than adding to the old one, rinse, and repeat.
Okay, a comment on the actual PDF now (I like the change to the download page, by the by)…
Don’t: Break the Momentum. Fair enough. But DO Schedule Breaks. Expecting people to pay rapt attention to a game for three or four hours straight is a pretty tall order. So, right from the beginning, agree to take a 5 minute break every hour or so. I’ve found this really helps everyone maintain their focus and enjoy the game more.
Rick: I’ve thought about doing a ZIP file, but haven’t decided whether or not to go forward with it yet.
To get around the humongo ZIP file problem you mentioned, there could be a couple of them — perhaps themed by the topics of the PDFs that they include.
Roger: I’m glad the DL page change did the trick for you. 🙂
Your point about breaks is well-taken, especially coming up with a loose schedule for taking them. Perhaps a subject for a future PDF. 😉