Since their humble beginnings in the 1970s, tabletop RPGs have grown from niche hobbies to mainstream hits. Despite their popularity, they still battle a stigma of being for socially awkward nerds—a notion any seasoned GM or player will happily debunk. These games are far more than fantasy escapism. In fact, studies show that RPGs can significantly boost social skills, emotional intelligence, and empathy.

Emotional Growth Through Role-Playing

From an outside perspective, RPGs might seem like a way to lose yourself in a fantasy world of monster-slaying and loot-grabbing. But anyone who’s played knows there’s so much more. These games shine through collaborative storytelling and social interactions, offering a unique platform for personal growth.

When you’re engaged in role-play, you experience a range of emotions, from success to failure, joy to heartbreak. Experiencing this range of emotions helps to build empathy and improve your social awareness. 

A study from the Johns Hopkins therapy group backs up these claims. They found that role-playing leads to increased empathy, better social interactions, and reduced social anxiety. Dr. William Nation, the group’s leader, explains that the game provides a “psychological distance” allowing players to explore real-life problems in a safe environment. One participant shared that testing waters in-game helped them see how actions and dialogues might play out in real life, making it a fun and effective form of group therapy. 

Additionally, in this video on Building Emotional Literacy Through Dungeons & Dragons, the speakers discuss the concept of the “magic circle” which describes the buffer between the game and the real world. This provides a safe space where players can explore different aspects of their personality and emotions without real-world repercussions. It creates a psychological safe zone, allowing for experimentation, risk-taking, and emotional growth.

You also learn practical communication skills that can be used in the real world. Ever tried to convince a stubborn NPC to give you a discount while your party’s rogue is trying to pickpocket him? It’s like negotiating with your toddler while your dog steals dinner off the table—pure chaos, but you learn a lot about patience and quick thinking. By working through in-game scenarios, players gain real-world confidence and ability in conflict resolution.

In essence, D&D is a powerful tool for emotional and social growth. By immersing yourself in another character’s world, you expand your emotional toolkit and become more adept at navigating human relationships. The collaborative nature of RPGs fosters empathy, self-awareness, and social competence, proving that these games are far more than just entertainment—they’re a means of personal development.

Tabletop RPGs in Therapeutic & Educational Settings

Disclaimer: While tabletop RPGs offer many benefits, a normal gaming session should not be viewed as therapy, nor is it a substitute for professional help.

While RPGs offer benefits from regular play, they’ve shown to be useful in clinical and educational settings too. A comprehensive study by Boston University explores the use of D&D in educational and therapeutic contexts. This study emphasized how D&D enhances problem-solving, critical thinking, and social skills.

For instance, the pilot program involving middle-school students focused on promoting social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies like self-management and relationship skills, showing significant improvements in these areas. According to the study, “students demonstrated notable progress in self-awareness and cooperation, essential for both academic and personal success.”

Another study from foundty10 examined the impact of RPGs on socialization and emotional stability. The findings suggest that RPGs significantly reduce social anxiety and enhance communication skills, offering a safe space for individuals to practice social interactions without real-world repercussions. The study reported that “participants who regularly engaged in RPG sessions exhibited lower levels of social anxiety and improved social functioning.”

An article from Dicebreaker highlights the use of RPGs by support workers to manage trauma, addiction, and loss. Support workers found that RPGs provided a safe space for vulnerable individuals to explore emotions and build confidence. One participant recovering from addiction noted that playing a brave character helped them become more confident in real life. According to the article, “RPGs offer a unique therapeutic approach, allowing participants to safely explore and confront their fears and anxieties within the structured framework of the game.”

In educational settings, RPGs have been used to assist in teaching a range of topics. According to a study by Alexandra Carter, D&D was used to teach subjects like mathematics, history, and language arts by embedding educational content into the game’s narrative, resulting in improved engagement and learning outcomes among students. The study found that “students were more motivated to participate and showed higher retention rates when educational material was presented through the engaging medium of an RPG.”

Conclusion

Tabletop RPGs offer far more than just entertainment; they are powerful tools for personal development, fostering empathy, social skills, and emotional intelligence. The studies and examples highlighted in this article show how RPGs can help players navigate real-life challenges, build confidence, and improve social interactions. Whether used in therapeutic settings or as part of educational programs, RPGs provide a unique and engaging way to develop essential life skills. 

It’s amazing how a simple game can impact personal and emotional development. RPGs remind us that play is not just a pastime but a vital tool for growth and self-discovery. For those who regularly play, I’d love to hear how it has impacted your life. Share your stories in the comments below, and let’s celebrate how this game brings people together and helps us grow.

Try all the options

We are all familiar with the trope of a regular gaming group. You know, the one who meets on regular days in the regular gaming location. And while the particularities of the imagined group differ, the factors of time and space stay constant, but so too does the cast. Although we all know how wonderful a regular gaming group can be, I am here to suggest that there’s several benefits of regularly shifting up the cast around your gaming table as well. I will discuss the pros of this, and of course mention some of the cons while suggesting how they can be remedied or at least reduced. I might even suggest that shifting up your regular gaming group will just mean you’ll have a regular gaming circle, but that’s getting ahead of myself. I’ll discuss the benefits of not having a regular group first.

Scheduling

People’s lives change, along with their calendars, interests and priorities, and unfortunately also health and postal codes. Having a steady group is all well and good, but sometimes scheduling games will take a lot of effort. For a lot of us that’s where the real issue of burnout comes from, with a tedious and complicated scheduling matrix, and the accompanying cancellations. I find that it’s much easier to fit people to dates I’m available instead of finding people first and then looking at the calendars. I’d rather play shorter campaigns for six months or so, than risk having campaigns end in scheduling limbo, due to peoples changing lives and priorities. It’s much easier to find a date that works for all if the group is brought together on the same premise and not just out of habit. If everyone assembled for your Weird Western-game is really wanting to play weird western and have all cleared the same date in the week, you are more certain that they will attend game nights than if they’re just your friends, have other hobbies and are really just wanting you all to go back to playing a Fantasy or a Cyberpunk game again. Sure, people will still have emergencies, or just family or work commitments, but if you have a robust group bound together on a mission, you might at least get to finish the campaign together, at the very least experience a somewhat satisfactory ending, even if things keep happening. Oh, and as a bonus, you also have at least one friend who is eagerly awaiting the start of the next Fantasy or Cyberpunk campaign!

Different Experiences

While monogamy has its virtues, I find that gaming with a richer and more varied crowd brings a lot of benefits to myself, the other individuals and the group as a whole, while also benefiting a larger circle of people. We avoid the rut that a steady group will sometimes attain, and variations in cast give different players the chance to try out different roles/functions/classes that some players tend to monopolize. Like the players who will “always” play “The Face” character, but the GM knows that one of the shyer players has talked about playing one for a long time. This might also include the one who will always play the lone magical talent or the baddest of the baddest combatant as well. Also, I believe new blood opens up for new perspectives, ideas and challenges, and that the table dynamics won’t get stale. New players also mean new approaches, new words and maybe something different that people can add to their repertoire. This goes double if your gaming table carousel includes different GMs as well as players, and I’ll add that your great tricks will reach more roleplayers as well.

Polygamery

Not all players will play all types of games and genres, and my experience is that some groups tend to be quite selective in what they enjoy to play. Not only can you finally play that heart-(and other body parts-)wrenching game of Monsterhearts, but you can do it without the sighs of those who would rather rob the Megacorps of Night City or kill the inhabitants of the Caverns of Chaos and take their stuff. Changing up your groups opens up for bringing your Sun Tzus and butt-kickers to one game and your Elisabeth Bennets to another; for optimization of enjoyment. A wrong player might weaken the right game, but the synergies of players who truly “sing” together is a beautiful experience. Playing lots of different games means that you might even get your non-roleplaying friends to attend, because they’re so into the Russian Women’s Piloting World War II efforts or Dinosaur Princesses, bringing more people into our lovely hobby and maybe having even more intimate friendships?

Network

If you treat your table or living room as a carousel, I believe it will in time give you access to more players, multiple GMs for those burnout periods, and, as mentioned, a roster for different play experiences. A larger pool also means that your games will be less vulnerable to people relocating or otherwise becoming unavailable for play, and if you game online you might meet those friends at conventions and maybe even get to do some couch surfing? I recently had a friend lend me a proper bed and feline company for a faraway convention. Since we had experience gaming online together, I was also certain their games would give me some good gaming experiences. While I believe the benefits to yourself are clear, I also believe you’ll be doing other people a favor, introducing them both to other people and other games, and perhaps even other playstyles than they’re used to. Maybe you can help spawn new groups as well as new friendships?

Note: Friendships will endure even if a game is paused! Playing with someone else doesn’t mean you can’t do other stuff or even play one-shots with friends, and I also believe that you don’t need to game with all your gaming friends, especially if your playstyles and game interests don’t really match up that well.

Cons

Changing up the group all the time means regularly (re)establishing group lingo, forming-storming-and-norming-before-performing (optimally) and the flip-side of the new perspectives and shaking up the dynamics-coin. Safety? Not everyone will be comfortable meeting new people at their places or even bringing them home, and just needing to go to another neighbourhood or taking another bus route might be an issue, even if the group is safe itself. There’s also the dreaded FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), which I myself consider an old friend. I can honestly say that not only will it get better, but you’ll learn to be happy when your friends get to play, even when it’s without you. I understand that it can be difficult, especially if you’re not actively gaming yourself at the time. Sometimes it’s really easy to think that you’re being excluded, even though your friends have a full gaming table of people who are much more interested in the particular genre/game than you, but you’ll recognize that the sting of perception isn’t real. If you regularly change up the makeup of your own gaming table, it’s easier to understand that this is the case when you yourself aren’t asked first to that genre you don’t really like. In time you’ll learn to be happy when your friends get to play, even if you yourself are devoid of game time; because you know that soon your big roster of gaming buddies will invite you. Sometimes you and your best friend play parallel games that aren’t for each other, but that doesn’t mean you can’t meet up and talk about the different games and revel in your friend’s happiness of being in a game you wouldn’t have liked anyway.

Conclusion

I truly believe that treating your gaming table as a carousel that regulates its cast to the different experiences, both in number of players and temperament suited to different gaming experiences, will benefit both you and the other players. Maybe someone will even take up the GM mantle, since they can’t rely on you always bringing them along for the ride? Yes, it’s easier to enforce this idea if you’re always the GM, but it’s not like you couldn’t invite different GMs to GM different games either. I guess a lot of GMs would be happy to not have to deal with scheduling, and to be assured of enthusiastic and consenting players for that particular game. I also believe that if it is known that you regularly change up the cast around your table people will make more of an effort when they’re there, and others might even want to pursue a chair around your table, by inviting you to their game first.

Even though I advocate changing the cast around everyone’s gaming tables, I’ll gladly admit that my three current groups are all talking about doing another campaign after our current one ends. So am I hypocritical? Well, probably, but in this case I find it a natural development of having played with a lot of different people. You get the aforementioned roster, and you will naturally gravitate to players who like games you like and want to play more with them, and vice versa. Not only that, but you’ll also get to learn player skills, table habits and GM techniques from a lot of people, enabling yourself to become a really popular and crafty GM or player. Every now and then someone’s other life elements will leave them out of a campaign or two, or their interest just isn’t there for a project, and that’s when you’ll be happy for your big roster.

Pass it along…

Face to face, out in the heat, hanging tough, staying hungry…

                                                                                                                                             — Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”

In a proud GM Dad moment, my eldest daughter just ran her first RPG session as a Game Master! I let her be, but stayed close enough to answer the occasional question, and by all accounts and an enthusiastic reception from her players she did a great job!

While preparing for her first session, she asked me a lot of questions. I answered them as best I could and thought that incorporating that advice into a single primer might help. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to finish this before she started running, but I thought I’d finish it anyway and put it here in the hopes that someone reading this might find it useful.

In terms of background, I’m coming at this from the POV of a Call of Cthulhu Keeper (GM), as that is what my daughter was running. Thus, my headspace was focused on investigative adventures, but I’ve tried to make the advice universally applicable.

So, without further ado…

Trust your group.

This is a big one and I think should be stated first. Unless you are running a convention game, you are probably playing with your friends, friends who understand that this is your first time taking the chair. They know that it’s a big responsibility and they’ll be willing to cut you a lot of slack. They’re happy that you’re willing to run a game for them. So, relax and don’t worry about being judged!

Note that this holds true for convention games, too. Believe it or not, many attendees who join convention games are home GMs who are happy to be players for a while. In any event, most of your players are getting used to playing with each other as much as you, so don’t think that a quiet table is an unhappy table. Everyone needs a little time to feel things out.

Expect to make mistakes.

You’re going to make mistakes, probably lots of them. But that’s okay. As a new GM, you’ve got a lot to keep track of and a responsibility to guide the session. You’re going to get tripped up here and there. Your players know that, and they’ll be fine with it. Again, they’re happy that you’re trying your hand at running!

And here’s a dirty little secret (or not so secret): we veteran GMs make mistakes too! The best advice I can give is not to hide it when you mess up. Nothing eases the stress on you like admitting that you made a mistake. If it’s something that didn’t derail the adventure, then just note the mistake and keep going. If it adversely affected the players, then compensate them and move on.

Be fair in your rulings.

While your players are going to give you their trust, it is up to you to keep it. A good way to do that is to be fair in your rulings. Note that “rulings” aren’t “rules,” they are how you run the game and apply the rules. As long as your decisions feel rational and you apply your rulings fairly, you should maintain the trust of your group.

It’s okay to take advice from your players regarding rules or rulings, but don’t let things get bogged down if a quick ruling keeps things moving. Ultimately, the rules are simply there to help you make decisions. Just make a decision for now and look up the rule after the session. You can apply the rule in the future.

Only appeal to chance when it matters.

Players generally want their characters to be competent. They don’t want to create a martial arts expert that gets easily clubbed unconscious by a purse-wielding senior or a scientist that doesn’t know basic chemistry. An easy way to do this is to simply assume competence when the act ultimately doesn’t matter or when the task seems too easy to fail. On the flip side, you can also say “no” when a character tries to do something that is obviously beyond their capabilities.

This is especially important if you’re running an investigative adventure. If your characters are investigating a crime scene, then they should be able to find any obvious clues as well as clues that they would know to look for. Nothing kills an adventure dead like the players not being able to follow leads because their character missed a skill roll to find a necessary piece of evidence!

There may be times when you’ll want the players to roll but you also need them to succeed. Keep in mind that you don’t have to make the roll a pass-fail test. It may be that if they fail, then they still succeed but draw some sort of complication. For example, if a character fails a roll on an internet search, then you may rule that they found the information only after wasting all night surfing and now they’re exhausted the next day.

Roll in the open.

This one isn’t truly necessary, as there is a long tradition of GMs rolling dice behind screens, but rolling in the open does two things. First, it fosters trust between you and your players that you are keeping things fair. Second, if you know that you’ll be rolling in the open, then you’ll also make sure that you’re only calling for rolls when you can accept the result. If you can’t, then why are you leaving it to chance?

Know the basic beats of your adventure.

Hopefully, you’ve done your prep work on your adventure. If you designed it yourself, then you’ve already internalized it. If you are using an adventure that you didn’t create, then you’ll want to read it at least twice (three is better!).

After reading the adventure, make a quick flowchart that follows the basic beats of the adventure and note where player choice matters. This flowchart doesn’t have to be very detailed, just enough to remind you of where the adventure is heading and how to guide the players back if they take their characters too far afield.

If the players need to meet a key NPC, find a crucial clue, or otherwise need a McGuffin to get to the next part of the adventure, then you’ll want to note that on the flowchart as well. That way, the flowchart will remind you of the important things you need to introduce along the way.

Keep things moving…

One of the worst things that you can do as a GM, new or veteran, is to allow the players to be stumped for too long. Sometimes what is obvious to you isn’t obvious to them, or they’ve simply discarded a clue that’s important because it doesn’t fit their theories. This can lead to unnecessary frustration.

Don’t be afraid to offer guidance. Sometimes, you can simply remind them of what they’ve found or offer suggestions to follow leads. A gentle reminder that they never visited the business on the matchbook they found, or they never thought to check the hills for the goblin encampment may be enough to get them moving without feeling like you handed it to them.

Also, don’t be afraid to end an encounter early if the conclusion is obvious. If the player characters are wiping the floor with kobolds, then you can simply say that they’ve finished them off without having to waste another 15 minutes. If an NPC isn’t going to give the players the information they want, then you don’t need to wait 10 minutes while the players keep asking questions.

…But don’t railroad.

If you’ve played RPGs for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard about the dreaded “railroad.” Simply put, railroading is whenever you take agency away from the players in situations where they believe that they should have agency. If the players are going to follow the adventure, it should be because it feels logical, or at least rational, for them to do so.

A good way to counter this is to always offer an open-ended option whenever you offer suggestions. “So, do you want to go to the business on the matchbook, follow up on Mr. Tanner’s interrogation, or do something else?” reminds the players of leads they haven’t followed but also tells them that you’re willing to go with whatever they decide.

Simplify the rules and internalize them.

Note that while I think most GMs get intimidated by the rules, I’ve made rules the lowest on the list of priorities. That’s because rules are the responsibility of everyone around the table, especially given that most out-of-game arguments during play tend to be about rules.

You don’t need to commit an entire rulebook to memory, but you should internalize the basic mechanic. Don’t worry about side cases. You can always make rulings until you’re more familiar with those rules. Just remember that point above about being fair!

In Dungeons & Dragons, for example, most tests involve rolling a d20 and adding modifiers to meet or exceed a target number. That, along with granting advantage or disadvantage, is enough for you to run a session with little trouble.

You’re supposed to be having fun, too!

This is not so much a guideline but a reminder. As a GM, you aren’t supposed to sacrifice fun; you are simply trading one type of fun for another. You get to see all the behind-the-scenes plotting, enjoy having the players interact with your adventure and make creative (and sometimes bone-headed!) decisions, play a bunch of NPCs, and overall control the flow of the adventure. It can be a blast!

Your players have a responsibility to ensure that you’re having fun, too. While there will certainly be times that a player doesn’t agree with you, they should respect your ultimate decisions. If things become too aggravating or frustrating, then it’s better to take a break or even shut down a campaign until those issues are resolved.

Wrapping Up

While taking the GM Chair can seem intimidating and even overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Hopefully, the advice above is helpful in showing you that it’s possible to ease into GMing and, hopefully, lead to your guiding friends through many new adventures!

And as a final (and most important) reminder, GMing is not something to be tolerated, it is meant to be enjoyed!

Game of the year?

I’ve reviewed so many other things, and I feel like I’ve been missing a fundamental item in all of this. It’s key to understanding all of my other reviews. Today, I’m going to review the process of reviewing.

I’ve literally been reviewing things from the time I was born. I remember my siblings showing me Land of the Lost, and when I saw the Sleestak for the first time, I said nope. My very first review, and a lot more succinct than I would become once I had a better vocabulary.

Disclaimer

I was not given permission to discuss the process of reviewing the review process. I have had many opinions over the years. I have not had the opportunity to see if all of my opinions are correct, although I strongly suspect they are.

Credits

Current Human Beings Varies
Popularized Reviews as Entertainment in and of Themselves Siskel and Ebert
The Internet Al Gore
The QWERTY Keyboard Christopher Latham Sholes
Modern Internet Culture Satan, probably

Popular Review Formats

Human beings review things all the time. One of the newest trends popularized by the internet is Extreme Vibes. In this technique, when you see something you like, especially if someone else doesn’t like it, you can classify it as the Best Thing Ever. Literally, it can’t be the Best Thing Ever if anything else is the Best Thing Ever, but this technique doesn’t really hinge on nuance.

There is an additional aspect to Extreme Vibes, and that is The Absolute Worst. The process goes like this:

• You dislike something
• Someone else likes it
• You realize they are wrong
• You rate it the The Absolute Worst

As with The Best Thing Ever, it is not literally possible to be The Absolute Worst. In addition to the reasons listed for The Best Thing Ever, i.e. if there is another Absolute Worst, there cannot be another Absolute Worst, so previous reviews are immediately invalidated, the Absolute Worst has another reason it remains an imprecise measure. Human beings are extremely talented at coming up with additional things that are worse than the last thing they did.

While this form of review started in the simple format of message board posts and social media responses, it has matured much like more traditional forms of review. In a move reminiscent of the sudden placement of television reviews on every news program in the 1980s, various forms of new media blossom with Extreme Vibes in video format, either in long form, as the most venerable YouTubers work with, or the more succinct micro Extreme Vibes videos that can be seen on Tik Tok.

Shooting Stars

This technique only works within the framework of another review process, specifically sites that allow you to rate a product by using symbols, often stars, but sometimes more esoteric symbols, like cupcakes, circles, or rhombuses. This is an extremely impressionist technique, even when compared to the Extreme Vibes method. The key isn’t that you need to express even your slightest tendencies as extreme antipathy or sympathy.

The real key to the Shooting Stars technique is that you put people in mind of what a review should look like, then you challenge them to engage with the review and it’s connection to the product in question in a process not unlike art appreciation. The product isn’t what’s making you feel something, the review is!

You may want an example of this. Some of the most masterful of these reviews include the following:

• Rating a product with one star, because you love it, but UPS destroyed the box, leaving you to contemplate if an author should have a star rating that incorporates frustration with a shopping company.
• Using absolute language while not engaging with either side of a scale that can measure extremes. Examples include a two star rating that cites a product as the worst thing the reviewer has encountered, or a four out of five star review that is “the best.” This leaves you contemplating the nature of extremes, and the connection between objective math and creativity.
• Writing a review that contains a long anecdote from the reviewer’s personal life, which only near the end tangentially touches on the actual merits of the item in question, or its lack of merits. This is a lesson in understanding that things need to be taken as a whole, rather than in discrete parts.

None of this should be confused with the Transcendent Narrative Review, which utilizes the review space to tell an epic story for which movie rights should be secured. The secret of the Transcendent Narrative Review is that it isn’t actually a review, but a separate artform that uses the review as its form.

Aggressive Aggregating

Probably the easiest genre of reviewing for anyone to get into. This involves logging in to a review aggregation site and clicking on a number. This is technically an advanced version of Extreme Vibes, and some reviewologists, instead of categorizing this as its own type of review, actually consider this Advanced Extreme Vibes.

I would still maintain this is a separate form of review, because in addition to the above, there is an added element of watching the aggregation percentage trending toward the direction you indicated. There is a certain anonymity to this form of reviewing that can really let someone free their inner monster. Because the key is to see the communal percentage go up or down, often reviewers in this genre will multitask by creating multiple logins for the same aggregate site, in order to express their opinions with creative resonance.

Positives

Honestly, reviewing is probably a necessary function of human beings. Without being able to express that we really do or don’t like something, reviewologists have posited that our heads would explode. They even point to some medieval tapestries that indicate peasants with exploding heads, watching the king’s favorite puppet show. It’s easy to extrapolate that their ability to provide reviews was impeded. So the big benefit to various review techniques is to keep our heads from exploding.

Negatives

Long term review work results in an effect similar to the effects that can be observed when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays. Not the cool cosmic rays that grant superpowers, but the cosmic rays that start to melt flesh. Participating in Extreme Vibes for too long, for example, sometimes allows the reviewer’s head to explode anyway, because their opinion is forming faster than the reviewer can form words. There is also the problem of extreme isolation and listlessness for reviewers that operate in these environments and don’t use a more extreme medium like Extreme Vibes or Aggressive Aggregating, because all of the oxygen tends to be sucked out of the conversation as both extreme ends of the spectrum garner all attention.

Not Recommended–There isn’t much in this product gods forsaken process that convinces me to tell others to pick it up.

This quote doesn’t exist anywhere in the article you are reading. On one hand, that may be kind of confusing, but if you look at it this way, you’re getting new content rather than just seeing part of the article again, but bigger.

Never, ever start reviewing things. It slowly, or not so slowly, eats away at your mental health. I was normal before I started this job. Okay, that’s a lie. I never used to lie before I got this job. I’m lying about that. But it definitely changed me.

Every time you read through a product and see the love and care that went into it, and you recognize the craft employed in its creation, and you see someone say, “it’s junk,” you start to wonder if you were reading text that was only visible to you. Then you start to think, maybe it was only visible to me.

Every time you attempt to make a joke about some form of RPG that no one would ever attempt to create, some actual game arrives on the scene, either spectacularly daring the world to deny it’s genius or astounding you with the audacity to string together a mass of concepts, themes, and procedures in some simulationist echo of Frankenstein’s monster, threatening to hunt down and kill your family if you don’t make the perfect review mate for the game.

I watched SEO glitter in the dark near the Google Search Bar. All those reviews will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to join a new social media platform.

End of Line.

Editor’s Note: Jared, our review gnome, was asked to find a way to write a parody of an RPG without referencing any existing RPG properties or citing any similarities with them. Instead of that article, this was sent to us via a burner e-mail account. Jared has not been seen for the last two weeks, although the authorities believe they have a strong lead to his whereabouts.

In a similar manner to my articles in which I break down the articles from Arcadia that I used to write for Tribality, I now present you a series of breakdowns for the Unbound collection. Leon Barillaro has been kind enough to provide me with a copy of the issue for me to check out and review.

In many ways, Unbound is very similar to Arcadia and the Uncaged collections. Leon even mentions it in a Letter from the Editor at the very beginning! However, this collection has another purpose. With the disaster caused by the D&D OGL, many people started to check out other games, and the people in charge of Unbound wanted to make other games known. As Leon says “This zine is […] a collection of articles supporting the systems and genres we enjoy, many of which have nothing to do with heroic medieval fantasy”

The PDF itself is not indexed, nor provides alt text for the images. Additionally, the text cannot be selected, as if every page was a whole image. However, the layout is gorgeous to look at, the images selected are amazing, colorful, and thematic. Additionally, each individual article not only includes the author, but also who did the illustrations, the editors, and even playtesters for the adventures. I really liked seeing all the people involved being well displayed in each article, and having a whole Contributors section for each of them (except for the Playtesters). The contributors, I must also stand out, for being extremely diverse, both as BIMPOC, and part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Skip the Pantheon, Build a Tarot Deck

~ Article ~

Author: Dana Floberg
Artists: Cecelia Nesti
Editors: Ashton Duncan and Steffie Devaan

When worldbuilding there are many things we usually start with: a map, politics, the kingdoms or planets, a pantheon… What if there was another better way to start and give you plenty of ideas on the aspects from your world? That’s right! That is a tarot deck! Through this article Dana takes some time to explain the origin of tarot, what it was created to represent, and how much it says about our world. After that, there is a guide on how to create your own tarot deck for your world, and make it impactful in the setting.

I can’t say I know much about tarot. I have my own set that I got at last Big Bad Con just because I bought a game that requires one, and there was a tarot deck that looked incredible next to it. Upon reading this article I got an urge to think of things from my world that would appear in its own personal deck. I definitely recommend this article to get those inspirational gears turning in your head, and creating a tarot deck your players can pull from in all your games!

Fourteen Blades

~ Resource for Thirsty Sword Lesbians ~

Author: Mathew Campbell
Artists: Margarita Bourkova
Editors: Brock Bergum and Leon Barillaro

In this article, you will find a collection of 14 different Blades for the TTRPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians. If there is supposed to be a connection between them and the tarot cards I really can’t find it (they are supposed to be tarot inspired… maybe it has something to do with the minor arcana cards?). However, the content to be found in this article is incredibly imaginative. It shows that Mathew is either a sword nerd or did a bunch of research on different swords, because half of the types of swords detailed here I have never heard of. The Blind Daab Sŏng, dual blades of justice and truth, and Mora’s Shashka, the sword for good witches possessed by a spirit, are surely my favorites.

Let’s Talk About Boiz!!11!1!

~ Adventure for Mork Borg (Cy_Borg) ~

Author: Isla Lader
Artists: David Markiswsky
Editors: Kai Linder and Steffie Devaan

When an AI destined to collect information from thousands of individual’s fashion, and predict the future of it goes rogue and uses bodies constructed with flesh as its way of being corporeal in the world, you have to do something about it. I wouldn’t call this an adventure per se, but a series of imaginative bits of information about this SINdy AI to create your own series of stories around it. SINdy has a connection with the tarot cards in the sense that she (or her followers) can grant powers to the PCs that are defined through a draw from a major arcana deck. I had not seen Cy_Borg adventures before, but I do own a copy of the game. Now I really want to run a short campaign featuring SINdy, or at least having her be a side character!

Divined Chaos

~ A New Game ~

Author: Karren Loomer
Artists: David Markiswsky
Editors: Dana Floberg and Leon Barillaro

I was surprised to encounter a new game in this issue. I mean, the last one did have a hack of Honey Heist, but this one is not based on anything. It is a very simple game using tarot cards and having all players interpret the cards they draw. You may use the actual meanings of the tarot cards, or the art in them to create your story, meaning that if you have a tarot deck surrounding a certain theme (for example, Lovecraftian), it is very probable your story will follow a direction of that sort. I like that this makes the game extremely easy for beginners, and that there are barely any rules to it. It’s 4 steps you need to follow, distributing the cards in a similar way to how you do it for the Fiasco game. Simple, yet a very cool idea for a boring afternoon, or if you are a tarot cards lover.

Final thoughts

I do find a use for all of these articles in particular. Setting up a world with the first article, creating my own set of tarot cards is something I became really interested in trying out. While I have never played Thirsty Sword Lesbians, I plan to do so someday, and still I find it very easy to adapt the swords from the second article to any other game of my choosing, as swords with lore are always cool. The Cy_Borg article awakened a need to finally play the game instead of only check out its art, which is always great to have, and I really want to roleplay SINdy. Lastly, for Divine Chaos, while I don’t think it is the kind of game I like to play, I believe it is simple enough to be able to be played with any non-TTRPG player. All in all, a very useful issue, with an extremely cool theme!

GET UNBOUND ISSUE 3 FROM DRIVETHRURPG

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Hopefully not a bad moon rising…

In the shadow of night, I see the full moon rise, telling me what’s in store…
                                                                                                — Whitesnake, “Still of the Night”

Being creatures of the modern world, it can be difficult to get into a medieval mindset for our fantasy medieval/renaissance RPG campaigns. Things we take for granted, such as a wide variety of food, a robust nightlife, and indoor heat (absent numerous fireplaces), work their way into our ostensibly medieval settings, often without anyone around the table realizing it.

Of course, indulging in the “fantasy” aspect solves a lot of these problems. Maybe medieval France didn’t have potatoes, but that’s not to say your Western Europe-inspired setting doesn’t have them. Similarly, a city with wide magic may have light globes or enchanted ceiling panels that enable buildings and streets to be adequately lit at night. And maybe your fantasy medieval town watch does act like a modern police force with a dedicated investigative division.

A few months back, in the waning days of 2023, I found myself researching something on the internet when I came across the idea of biphasic sleep. After falling into that rabbit hole for a bit, I decided to incorporate biphasic sleep into my campaign.

What is Biphasic Sleep?

Without going into a lot of scientific jargon that I’d probably be misusing anyway, biphasic sleep is a sleeping pattern where you sleep during two parts of your day. In our modern world, this typically manifests as a normal night’s sleep and a daytime nap (or siesta).

In the past, however, it is thought that, with artificial light being expensive or, in the case of tallow candles, too smelly, most people went to bed with the sunset and rose at dawn. This is a pretty long period, especially in winter months, so people would generally sleep for a few hours, get up in the middle of the night for an hour or two, and then go back to sleep for another few hours until dawn.

This hour or so in the middle was rarely spent staring at the ceiling. People would get up, have a snack, hit the outhouse, do chores (anything that could be performed in the moonlight), say prayers, or, in the case of romantic partners, put on the Barry White album (you know what I mean!).

Once artificial light became more ubiquitous, sleeping schedules shrank as people could stay up longer and wake up earlier. The reduction in sleep time meant that more people, most people, would simply sleep straight through or, if they did wake up, try to get back to sleep as quickly as possible.

Is this actually true? Maybe, maybe not, but it still gave me food for thought!

Thanks for the Lecture, but What Does This Mean for RPGs?

Most roleplaying games assume that player characters must rest for 8 hours or bad things start to happen, whether that be some form of exhaustion check or penalties to actions. I’ve never read a rulebook for a game set in a pre-industrial period that suggested that an 8-hour sleep, or “long rest” in modern Dungeons & Dragons parlance, can be split into two sleep periods with a semi-active period in between.

Having said that, I know that you can easily read biphasic sleep into the long rest, as the definition includes light activity and 2-hour watch periods, but I’ve never played or run in a game where the whole party made a ritual out of getting up in the middle of the night together. It just seems weird because that isn’t how we sleep today.

For me, the idea of biphasic sleep fits comfortably into my OSR campaign, especially considering that the chief lawful deity, Valtar, is represented by the moon. It makes sense that Valtar’s worshippers would pray to him at midnight when the moon is at its highest (my campaign world is Earth-like, with one sun and moon).

Note that, in my campaigns, both OSR and modern, I usually ignore the rule that an interrupted night’s rest prohibits healing or spell memorization, as these only serve to slow the game down. If the group is camped, and they can’t heal or refresh their spells because a couple of hobgoblins wandered into camp and caused trouble, then they’ll probably just stay camped for another night.

So how does implementing biphasic sleep impact my campaign?

Time Matters

Ordinarily, at the end of the game day, my group builds a camp, eats supper, and then hopefully gets a good night’s sleep. During the night, they set watches, but everyone is stuck with the resources they have left as they don’t replenish until morning.

In my campaign, I’ve divided the night into 5 phases. There are two “watches” of about 2 hours each, followed by a 1-hour or so period when everyone is up eating, praying, and studying, followed by another two “watches” before daybreak.

As I’ve ruled that the morning 4-hour “snooze” followed by an evening snooze replenishes everyone at midnight, then when a night encounter takes place matters a lot more. Player characters have diminished resources when facing monsters during the early part of the night, but they’re at full power in the pre-dawn hours. Unfortunately, that also means that the resources they spend in pre-dawn conflicts affect them for the rest of the day.

Even if you want to keep resting as-is, biphasic sleep offers opportunities for roleplay. Wandering NPCs may wait to approach a camp until midnight, and there is always at least part of a night when everyone is up and alert, rather than just the watchers.

Magical Adjustment

Having the player characters refresh at midnight comes with a few adjustments. For example, when in dangerous territory, characters may choose to consume rations rather than cook and risk having a campfire attract danger (unless, of course, the bitter cold is a greater enemy).

Light sources are another problem. One of the reasons for biphasic sleep is the idea that candles and oil are precious and that no one wants to waste them but sleeping for 10-12 hours every night is not practical (although it sounds like paradise to me!). So, how is one expected to regain spells?

For divine casters, this isn’t a problem, as they are usually encouraged to either use rote prayers or speak to their deity directly; the powers that be don’t usually require precise readings that haven’t been committed to memory over time.

Arcane casters are another matter. If you’re playing any flavor of D&D, then arcane casters “fire-and-forget,” requiring study after a good night’s sleep. (In my current campaign, arcane casters don’t so much forget as they need to study astrological charts and fluctuating ley lines to ensure that their spellcasting is effective on any given day).

My solution was to take the need for sight away. In my campaign, arcane script is a semi-magical type of braille. Any arcane caster that runs their fingers over the script can both read the symbols and decode the magical meaning and power within them (so a non-arcane caster can learn to read “Xanish” (my deity of magic is Xanadu), but they still can’t cast it or otherwise access the magical properties).

Midnight Services

As I mentioned above, Valtar is a lunar deity, so it makes sense that my campaign follows the more modern convention of having a day begin at midnight, as opposed to sunrise, sunset, or any other norm. Also, given Valtar’s status, midnight is considered the time when worshipers can best connect with their deities, so most of the powers in my campaign encourage midnight prayers and worship regardless of alignment.

That means that, within a community, it wouldn’t be uncommon for everyone to get up in the middle of the night and attend services. At this hour, the temples would likely be the only buildings in the community fully illuminated (although some may worship privately or even in secret, depending on their deity).

If the community is generally lawful, then everyone would be expected to attend, with innkeepers rousing their guests to make sure they get to the temple on time (and, more importantly, ensure that they don’t remain to rob the inn blind!). Town watches are empowered to skip services to patrol and any crimes committed during this time are harshly punished (also, while it goes unsaid, watchmen are encouraged to root out secret chaotic meetings during this time, so such services are usually well-hidden and constantly changing as to actual time and place).

 Wrapping Up

As I hope you’ve noticed by now, introducing biphasic sleep has had a profound effect on my campaign world. Sleep patterns change, time of night matters, arcane script is affected, and even the daily calendar is a bit different. I also hope that I’ve encouraged you to give it a try. It may or may not be more authentically medieval, but it will certainly help make it seem a bit more fantastic.

Have you tried using biphasic sleep or another alternative to the traditional “sleep for 8 hours, then prep and breakfast?” Let us know in the comments!

Links:

Jared’s Marvel Multiverse RPG Extended Objectives

• Symphony Entertainment
• Sorrow in Tsavo
• Carousel of Fears
• Miskatonic Repository

In our first Gnomecast of 2024, Ang welcomes Josh Storey to the Stew! Links:

• Sarah Gailey’s Stone Soup
• Josh on BlueSky
• Josh on Instagram

Starting the Story after Chapter One

In 1987, I picked up the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, the original boxed set for that setting. I didn’t get a lot of adventures in those days, but I jumped on the bandwagon for getting the Forgotten Realms sourcebooks that came out. Waterdeep and the North was heavy with its density, but it was very much in the same vein as the original boxed set. I liked it, but was still getting comfortable with the idea of running games in a detailed campaign setting.

When The Savage Frontier came out, I was wondering if I was going to enjoy it. Waterdeep and the North already started to touch on a few of these locations, so how much detail did I need? Once I started reading the book, I was floored. This sourcebook was amazing. This wasn’t just “it’s northern Europe but with lots more magic.” It had strange, quirky things nested in all of the corners. Not only did it introduce some very unique material, but there were also several places where these elements were tied into locations, plots, and factions mentioned in other Realms sourcebooks. It introduced some of the deep history of the Realms, not in a dry manner, but in a “here is the heart of a failed god” kind of way. There was a barbarian tribe whose patron spirit was a brontosaurus! The original Forgotten Realms boxed set had alluded to the portals that connected the Realms to other worlds, but several adventures had been retconned to be set in the Forgotten Realms. This sourcebook took the nature of the Realms, and that fact that it touched on multiple other worlds, and said “this NPC from the Egg of the Phoenix adventure is here now . . . the adventure didn’t happen here, but this is where in the multiverse that NPC settled.”

But I think what really hammered all of this home was how the information was presented. Yes, we got the same setting information/NPC commentary/adventure hook format that was established in the campaign setting book, but this time around, our point of view character wasn’t Elminster. Sure, they were sending letters to Elminster to keep him updated, but these were new voices with new perspectives. Our point of view characters were a sage and his sidekick, providing information along with banter, and a definite feeling that these weren’t distant experts with lots of contacts to draw on, but people that learned by doing . . . and getting into trouble.

So not only was the content great, and not only did it give me more of what I wanted from the Realms, it taught me an important lesson. You can learn about the tropes and conventions of a setting, and instead of trying to follow the template established, you could try to iterate in a manner that feels in line with the setting. You can respect the setting without being constrained by what has or hasn’t already appeared. By introducing a different narrator, the sourcebook taught me that the key to having fun with this setting was making it your own, using the details as tools and guidelines, but not a rigid mold to pour your game into.

Right there, my love of the Realms was cemented, and additionally, my idea of what I wanted from the setting was established. I didn’t want the setting to be too close to any historical setting. I wanted weirdness and spectacle. I wanted the Realms to be a place that was actively a place connected to multiple other worlds, not passively as an excuse to add D&D rules elements to the setting. I wanted the people of the Realms to know that they lived in a wondrous place.

And all of that was because of Jennell Jaquays.

Long and Interconnected Shadows

I was a scant 15 years old, and I didn’t know about a lot of the history of D&D at that time. I didn’t know that Jennell Jaquays was one of the first people to contribute to D&D as a third-party developer for Judges Guild. She was the prototype for the era we currently live in, where a lot of what guides our perspective of D&D doesn’t necessarily come from official content that is published by the current owner of D&D.

Jennell’s adventures pioneered the concept of telling stories by introducing elements in the dungeon. Her adventures weren’t just about adding synergistic challenges in an interesting order, but included storytelling elements which could then be fed back into the approach that adventurers employed to navigate the location. In an era when it wasn’t as common for the designers to explain why adventures were built the way they were, Jaquays could communicate intentionality with her descriptions and interconnected elements.

Dark Tower is one of the most acclaimed adventures for D&D’s early era, and it wasn’t produced by TSR. When Paizo compiled their list of the top D&D adventures for the 2004 30th anniversary of the game, Dark Tower was the only adventure to make the list that was not produced by TSR or Wizards of the Coast. Jaquays’ adventure design created a legacy of casual complexity and variety that doesn’t feel overwhelming. It created a number of potential interactions, none of which are “expected,” but none of which break the conceit of the overall adventure.

So obviously, Jaquays’ history of creating detailed and approachable adventure content, and her ability to convey game elements as a means of explaining use cases must be the end of how I was affected, directly, or indirectly by Jaquays’ history, right?

But Wait, There’s More

It took me way too long to realize how much RPG artwork I had encountered that came from Jaquays. The first time I ran across her artwork was in the AD&D Legends and Lore hardcover, illustrating the Nehwon mythos. I can honestly say that that artwork may have been what eventually led me to read Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Dungeon Magazine, Ghostbusters RPG, Spelljammer, Dragon Mountain . . . there is no way I can list all of them, and even trying to find a definitive list of Jaquays’ art is difficult. It’s easy to find more that you never knew about.

While Jennell Jaquays was a legend in the tabletop RPG industry, that’s not the only place she was a legend. It was only in recent years that I realized several video games that I loved were touched by Jaquays’ work as well.

• I loved Donkey Kong, and the port of the game that came out for the Colecovision helped me to realize that home video games didn’t need to be synonymous with Atari–Jennell Jaquays was on that team
• One of the first online multiplayer games that absorbed an inordinate amount of my time was Quake III Arena–Jennell Jaquays was on that team
• When Quake III Arena taught me that maybe my aging reflexes weren’t quite the same as when I made it to level 78 of Ms. Pac-Man or beat Castlevania, one of the games that taught me how much I appreciated real time strategy games was Age of Empires–Jaquays was on that team as well

What Might Have Been

Years ago, Jennell Jaquays created a series of system neutral RPG supplements called Central Casting, which were revolutionary, but didn’t always reflect her current feelings, reflecting attitudes, in some places, which were pervasive and wrong. Jaquays was working on creating a new version of those resources when she was diagnosed with Guillain–Barré syndrome. I am sad that not only will we not get to see her work on this updated product, but we won’t get to see her reaction to the D&D 5e adaptation of Dark Tower being produced by Goodman Games.

When we look at a lot of the people that shaped early D&D, and when we look at those we have lost, it is easy to focus on those that were “on the inside.” It’s really important to realize how much Jennell Jaquays contributed, not only because she was on the outside, but because the “inside” of the established D&D community was so influenced by her “outside” work.

Jennell Jaquays is one of those people who could easily be forgotten by history, and I desperately hope that is not the case, because among those of us that were of a certain age and a certain degree of obsessive in our love of science fiction and fantasy gaming, she was foundational. She is a luminary that I hope is allowed to shine as more histories of gaming are written.