Games

Influential RPGs I’ve Run

These are the role-playing games that have influenced me the most that I've run!
Ian O'Rourke
6 min read

Executing A Short Campaign

Executing a short campaign isn't an exercise in imagining a long campaign hacked down to size.
Ian O'Rourke
11 min read

Playing A Different Gender

You can play a character of a different gender in a tabletop role-playing game if you can empathise with the story as this brings...
Ian O'Rourke
5 min read

The Importance of Premise

A character with a premise has a story to tell. The character exists to tell that story. The character exists with a clear and...
Ian O'Rourke
6 min read

Your Character Isn’t A Normal Person

It’s important to recognise that your character is not a normal person. No matter what type of game you’re playing, what political or physical...
Ian O'Rourke
3 min read

Rolling To Decide The Fiction

The fiction should decide what happens in the game, not being overly constrained by the rules on the page.
Ian O'Rourke
4 min read

Planning My Campaign

The theme of all this is not being prescriptive, late loading and in many ways treating it like quantum physics.
Ian O'Rourke
8 min read

Setting Stakes When You Roll

One of the most most important choices you have at the gaming table when it comes to maximising your chances of a dramatic story...
Ian O'Rourke
3 min read

Metagaming Isn’t Always Bad

The story becomes something that is being written in the moment with a level of explicit intent, rather than just being something that happens...
Ian O'Rourke
3 min read

Author Focused Play

The mistake being made, and the secret to your games having as a dramatic focus as Critical Role, is to not try and compete...
Ian O'Rourke
2 min read