The end of the year is nigh and it is up to me to close the door on the 2016 Know Direction blogs. I’m up for the challenge! The only way to close out the year is with something...
In light of news that Paizo has semi-retired their RPG Superstar contest, I wanted to share a story of hope with you from a holiday years gone by – GenCon 2013. Pull up a chair and your favorite warm...
This week I’m going to give you a selection (often weird) of background concepts as a companion to last week’s article about Writing Effective Character Backgrounds. For many, it’s the holiday season and I’m going to take this week…well...
Last Christmas (which was literally yesterday), I did a lot of thinking on the nature of gifts—specifically, why we give them. What I came up with is simple: usually, we gift people to show our appreciation, to show someone...
It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then a Pathfinder RPG option is released that I go absolutely ga-ga for, and this month it happened. In a book I wrote for, no less! But before you start worrying...
Happy 2nd official day of Winter! We’ve short days and long nights complete with sub-zero temperatures here in the northeastern United States. With this being the last Behind the Screens of 2016, I thought it might be a good time...
Companies like Paizo have done a really good job of including a variety of people in their products. In non-Earth RPGs you don’t have the same ethnicities that you do on Earth, but often the people in those non-Earth...
Money—it literally makes worlds go round, be they the real world or fantasy worlds. When you get right to it, money as a societal construct is what allows us as a species to barter with one another on a...
With the holidays coming soon, ever do they loom, I bring to life a man from that beloved cartoon. The Nightmare Before Christmas from Mr. Tim Burton, a movie you’ve heard of, I’m ever so certain. It’s a movie filled...
Helping new GMs gain confidence and feel comfortable running games is one of my goals for this blog. The last few months has been a social minefield though and our community has needed some support that I felt I...