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How can I smoothly bring in a new player and character with little or no notice? I run a semi-public game shop pathfinder game, and I sometimes have people show up to play I hadn't planned on. Often …

Even in an a written module there can be great variety in experience. Don't let the characters (NPCs) you've got to work with lie flat; breath life in to them. Draw on that acting class from college …

I'm running a Pathfinder campaign with the Eberron 3.5 setting, and I'm often finding that I want my players to be able to use magic in a way that the rules don't allow. For example, a party is in an …

I'm in much the same situation. I run a bi-weekly game of PF that lasts between 2 and 3 hours. I find that sometimes prematurely ending a long slog combat is necessary, and killing the enemies is us …

Occasionally one of my PC's wanders off and gets himself into a battle he simply cannot win. I know the player wants to play out the battle to see if they can somehow pull it out, but it's boring for …

In my current D&D 4e game we have extremely high player churn. Any given night we may have between 2 and 5 players (out of 10 to 12) leave and or join (leaving often takes the form of simply not show …

In a recent game of Diaspora, I pitted three of my "5 cap" player characters against four "3 cap" and one "4 cap" character in physical combat, and was surprised to see that the characters came away w …

It depends on what you can make believable. If you can quickly and believably close the character's loop hole, do so, and continue on with your planned campaign. If you think you can't come up with …

I've gotten into a situation in my Pathfinder game where I will certainly kill my entire party (perhaps excepting one or two who can flee quickly) if I let the situation play out. We arrived in this …

I'm running a game of Diaspora, which is my first FATE based game. The manual talks about playing with everything in the open and I'm all for that, but when should I actually make up a card for an NP …

How can I add some measure of mechanical character advancement in Diaspora without breaking the game? I'm considering using Diaspora to run a game idea I've had for a while. I really like many of …

I started a new Eberron campaign last night, and I quickly ran into the problem of my players not knowing much of anything about the campaign setting. What is the Mournland? Where is the Eldeen Reac …

Description, description, description. Give them a thirty second to three minute description of the travels. Skip the rolls (unless you want one to determine how long it took, etc) and just talk thr …

I had a session this week involving a fairly large battle at sea. The encounter involved a couple of boarders while the enemy ship was still at quite a distance, and the larger group still on the shi …

After reading How much experience should a PC be worth? I was wondering if and how party betrayal can be done successfully, especially since it's a real possibility in my campaign. Criteria for succe …