Chris Perkins DM Experience Part II

More of the Chris Perkins column summaries.

• Real Complicated — on planning pre-arranged complications, as well as taking advantage of opportunities for unplanned complications, that make the campaign more interesting.
• Slave to the Rules — on rewarding PCs for making bold decisions, even if the rules "should" make such bold decisions tactically or strategically unsound.  This is less an issue with a rules lite game as I prefer.
• Unfinished Business  — on PCs leaving behind certain plot hooks unresolved to pursue something else, and what to do to make that work out.
• Shiny New Thing — when another idea crowds out your love for your current campaign and tempts you to divorce it, or have an RPG affair.
• The Circus Is In Town — on having a bizarre collection of characters that look nothing like the population of the setting in which they are adventuring.
• Stephen King's Third Eye — advice from a popular writer on descriptions
• The Storytelling King — lots of DMing advice borrowed from the literary advice of Stephen King (and I will note: although Perkins is obviously a big fan of King; I am not.  But the advice is still mostly sound.)
• I Am Devastatorz Megabomb, Destroyer of Worlds! — when the PCs have a powerful artifact that changes their interaction with the campaign in potentially unpredictable (or at least unpredicted) ways.
• A Lesson in Mediocrity — on those sessions when you're just not on your A-game for whatever reason as GM.
• Waxing Gygaxian — dungeons for a campaign and GM that doesn't normally use dungeons (interesting for me, at least, since I absolutely fit that description.)
• Never Surrender — when PCs fight to the death... and die.  A lot of advice around GM/player trust as well.
• Cuts and Splinters — when the party splits, and a technique to manage without losing the attention of the guys not in play at the moment.
• Acererak's Apprentice — some dungeon concept ideas submitted by readers
• Kitchen Sinks and Frying Pans — encounter balance, and how it's been bad for the game
• Ice Capades — on structuring a session for best entertainment value to the players
• Know-It-All — on the value of an NPC that the PCs can trust to give them good information that helps the game progress when needed.
• Triple Threat — on GM skills, but especially the importance of improvisation
• Demigenius — on borrowing and kitbashing ideas to create something that feels fresh and original—without necessarily being really cleverly innovative or truly new.
• Extra Ordinary — on the uses of truly ordinary NPCs as "extras" to flesh out the campaign setting as one populated by things other than antagonists, patrons, treasures and monsters.
• Stan! Down — guest post by a player who died after getting himself into an implausible pickle, but how it was an organic and predictable (and predicted) outcome from choices that his player made over the course of many, many sessions of play, and how it's not good for GM's to save PCs from themselves (or their players.)
• The Moral Compass — on dealing with a group of anti-heroes, or even outright villainous player characters.
• Whedonism — (I also consider Joss Whedon to be vastly over-rated as a "geek icon."  Plus, he's a sexual predator and psychopath, as has been recently revealed.  But the advice is good, regardless of how it comes to us.) On challenging the players' expectations and surprising them.
• A Suite Alternative — a detailed rules-related article that only applies if you're using highly complex and complicated game systems (like 4e, in this case) but your style isn't really suited to that type of game.  I don't know why he wouldn't just change systems instead, but it is what it is.
• Die, DM, Die! — more complicated rules specific advice—this is all completely irrelevant for a player of old skool, OD&D or B/X level complexity games.
• What's My Motivation? — on working with the players to flesh out their characters and their connection to the setting.
• The Well — on dealing with long-campaign fatigue, on dealing with interesting (and unexpected) PC choices, etc.  Maybe a bit all over, but this one is really interesting to me.
• The End Is Nigh — on wrapping up long-running, complicated campaigns.  Highly recommended column!
• From Jose Chung — using pacing and structural elements from TV shows to improve the development of the session; treating a session as something equivalent to an episode of a complicated show (in this case, The X-Files.)
• Old School — an interesting discussion on the exact same sentiment that I express about myself as "I'm not old school, but I am old-fashioned."  Plus, some cringey name-dropped of perennial geek culture Fake Celebrities and all-around shameless betas Wil Wheaton and Ed Greenwood.  Luckily, that's a minor part of the column.  Blech.
• I Got Your Back — using history to inspire NPCs and plot hooks.  Coupled with a spectacularly misinformed and "spun" narrative about Sir Richard Owen as a devious supervillain and Gideon Mantell as a poor, downtrodden tragedy.  Nobody who's ever read a dinosaur book or seen a dinosaur documentary in the last thirty years should say that they've never heard of Gideon Mantell, fer cryin' out loud!
• Trust Gnome One — on player vs. player conflict (or more accurately, on PC vs. PC conflict, and how to make sure that it isn't actually player vs. player conflict.) Recommended.
• Leap Year — an experiment in advancing time one year after an extended period (4-5 weeks) of being unable to meet.  Advantages and disadvantages of doing something like this.