Just a Goth Girl, a Game Controller, and a Set of Polyhedral Dice
Let's step back from the heavy topics like race, culture, and sex/gender for a bit and talk about the always exciting world of economics! I'm not going to get into the sexy topics of trade wars among nations or rival guilds assassinating each other's leaders to gain control of a particular region's apple production (though those … Continue reading World Building 6 – Economics and You(r World)
One of the goals for my new homebrew world that I'm most passionate about is to remove many of the old fantasy tropes that bring all their baggage with them to any new edition. I've talked about these in my last two World Building columns on Race and Culture. Now, I'm going to turn away … Continue reading World Building 5 – Mythology and Culture
I know that I touched on Race and Racism in my last World Building post, but as I've thought about the issue more, I think that we, as gamers, can go beyond these basic descriptions in our manuals to create living, breathing, realistic worlds in which to tell our stories. We can create worlds that … Continue reading World Building 4: From Races to Cultures
This is more of a thought piece on how to incorporate real-world issues realistically into the fantasy worlds of our tabletop RPGs. Scholars of popular culture from Henry Jenkins to the present have long noted that we can use such conflicts in fictional worlds to discuss similar issues in our own world. Heck, we all … Continue reading World Building 3 – Race and Racism in Tabletop RPGs
This post has been delayed a few weeks due to my hectic schedule over the past few weeks, but what I've been doing has helped me refine this post. For those not following my personal Twitter, I've been participating in RPG Lab's Women in Tabletop Gaming Month event. I've participated in three panels and DMed … Continue reading Hit Me with Your One-Shot!
In my first World Building post I talked about starting small - giving your world a name, a brief history, a cosmological sketch, and then mapping out a single country. In this example, I mapped the island nation of Kalibor, home of the Elves. Now, we're going to reduce the scale even more so that … Continue reading World Building 2: Just a Small Town Tale
Let's talk about gender identity and play in a tabletop RPG setting. Now, I'm sure some of you are cringing at the thought. Some of you may be certain that I'm going to bash "white men" or the hobby store as a "boys club". Neither of those is my goal for this post. I'm going … Continue reading Gender Identity, Play, and the Tabletop RPG
For this Tabletop RPG post, I want to focus on tips for DMs/GMs who want to build their own fantasy worlds. I've built my own fantasy worlds since the mid-1990s, and I've learned from my mistakes as well as from the successes of others. So, as I work to create a new homebrew setting for D … Continue reading World Building 1: Start Small
I've been stewing over this piece for some time now, and it's something that has been prompted by the backlash Matthew Mercer has gotten for the death of the beloved character, Mollymauk Tealeaf. Oh, yeah, spoilers if you're way behind on the show, sorry. So, yeah, I'm going to talk today about handling character death … Continue reading Character Death in D&D
Today, I'm going to share something that's a bit different. I'm not going to talk about world building or advice for Dungeon Masters/Game Masters or even social issues in tabletop gaming. Instead, I'm going to give players tips on something that has helped me be a better player and more engaged with the story and … Continue reading My “Player’s Notebook”
Goth Girl Gaming 