Behind the Screens – To My Players, Coming to My Table

Happy Thursday, August 4th, everyone! Otherwise known as the First Day of GenCon 2016! Sadly, I won’t be making it to the show this year. Soon the Know Direction feed will be flooded with exciting industry announcements that we’ve been waiting all year to hear about.

But until then, I can only offer this piece of verse in solidarity with my fellow GMs working in the trenches at in the Sagamore Ballroom. May you never fail to crit. And to those of you on the other side of the screen. May Pharasma hold you close.

 

To My Players, Coming to My Table

Tell me not, friends, I am too cruel,
That from the fastness
Behind my screen of tabled rules
With charts and dice I roll.

True, a new challenge in this place,
At least twice your APL;
And what stat line shall you face,
Claw/Claw/Bite or Spells?

Yet this sinking dread is such
As you too shall abhor;
I could not love mastering games so much,
Loved I not TPKs more.

Anthony Li

Anthony Li has been pretending to be someone or something else for about as long as he can remember, which some people might consider a problem. He cut his teeth on 2nd Edition AD&D when he was 14 years old and his only regret is that he didn’t start rolling dice sooner. Due to an unhealthy addiction to Magic: the Gathering he missed the entire cultural phenomenon that was the 3.X era of D&D. After a brief stint with 4E, he was dragged kicking and screaming into the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game where he has since acclimated, adapted, and thrived. Most of his roleplaying experience has been behind in the GM screen where he has trained his dice to confirm crits on command. He always roots for the bad guys.

We Con When You Can't