ZwodderZA

I’m a white South African who grew up gay and nerdy in a small town; today I find nerdy shit to obsess about all the time. I joined my first tabletop roleplaying game in my 20s and I’ve been hooked ever since. I write and edit for a living, but in my free time I blog about boardgames, RPGs, crafting, the creative or gaming-related projects my friends and I are involved in, cool shit that’s happening, various things that I think are great, and things that piss me off. My pet project is a series of posts filled with GMing advice for new players and GMs – people who, like me, came into the hobby late and did not always feel welcome. I also run and play as many RPGs as I possibly can. Social justice iop.

Gather Your Party

When it comes to regularly playing TTRPGs, one of the biggest hurdles is getting enough people together to make it worthwhile. At least, that’s what I always thought – until I realised that you can make it much easier on yourself...

Dragonfire 2019 in Review

Dragonfire is done! I’m really happy with how everything went. I have lots of ideas and plans for next year (like starting to prep WAY in advance). Fortunately, I’ll be sharing some of that right here on the blog, so...

Learning a new TTRPG system

Choosing the system for your group is only the beginning of your adventures as a GM. Once you’ve chosen one or more systems to try, you need to figure out how each system works. This post suggests some tricks for...

TTRPG Review: Maschine Zeit

When I mention tabletop role-playing games, you might think of corporate behemoths like Dungeons and Dragons, and long, sprawling campaigns lasting many sessions – in some cases, years and even decades. If that sounds too expensive or time-consuming, I’d like to introduce...

A few practical considerations

This week’s blog was going to be about preparing to run a module at a convention, but then the most marvellous thing happened. Someone asked me for advice about running a module – specifically Death House, which I’ve run several...