A Spectrum of Character in RPGs
Posted by Runeslinger on November 1, 2025 · 1 Comment
In a significant percentage of roleplaying games, playing a character is a core activity. From the start of the hobby, this has been one of those things we expect to find in an RPG. Once the hobby began to broaden with more titles and with more approaches to play, that notion of character and how one actually goes about playing one have broadened as well. What it means to play a character is a question that can be answered very differently now than in 1974, 1984, 1994, 2004, 2014, and so on. Sadly, although our ability to observe and communicate what goes on across the hobby as a whole has improved, our ability to describe it and so further share and discover it has not commensurately grown.
Returning to Pendragon… again
Posted by Runeslinger on September 29, 2025 · Leave a Comment
What is Pendragon, really? Can we come to terms with it without first finding and naming our Arthur as King?
Category Casting the Shadows, Mythic Britain, Pendragon, Preparation and Preparedness, The Blog, Themes and Intentions · Tagged with Fantasy, gaming, Pendragon, Reviews, roleplaying, roleplaying games, RPG, ttrpg
#RPGaDAY2025 – My approach and Day 1: Patron
Posted by Runeslinger on August 1, 2025 · Leave a Comment
#RPGaDAY2025 begins! Today’s prompt is Patron and I will be taking the option of linking all 31 prompts into a continuous flow to make a campaign pitch for Leagues of Cthulhu~
The Accidental “Lie” in RPGs
Posted by Runeslinger on May 31, 2025 · 5 Comments
What if a friend of yours never found roleplaying games not because they didn’t like them, but because they had been misrepresented to them?
Category Actual Play, Casting the Shadows, Playing in Games, Running Games, Technical Questions, The Blog, Themes and Intentions · Tagged with Role-playing game, roleplaying, RPG, RPG Theory
Lucifer’s Lexicon: On RPG Concepts and Terms~
Posted by Runeslinger on April 28, 2025 · 6 Comments
No Ambrose Bierces were harmed in the making of this post.
The bones of this post actually date back to the launch of this blog in May of 2010 though the content is much older. I had a few conflicting ideas about the blog in those days as it was inspired by the loss of my friend Tom (a genius) and the sense of dismay it sparked to know that there would be no more talks about games, life, or onion soup with him, and to know that a person like that was gone from the world. Worse, all the conversations we had had about gaming were now only the version in my memory – and of the two of us, he liked and got along with people much better than I do.
Category Actual Play, Casting the Shadows, Playing in Games, Preparation and Preparedness, Running Games, Technical Questions, The Blog, Themes and Intentions · Tagged with Games, gaming, roleplaying, roleplaying games, RPG, running games, ttrpg







