I got into role-playing games (RPGs) when I was 10 years old. In the years since, they’ve served me both as a hobby and a part-time profession. No other form of entertainment has the same capacity for joy, camaraderie, and creativity. This section features rants, reminisces, and some rules material for various RPGs. Most of the material is focused around Dungeons & Dragons and its offshoot Pathfinder, as those are my two favorite games.

• Gaming Stories: In which I recount some of the more unusual events in my games.
  • A Contract with Mind Flayers
  • Curse Your Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal!
  • Escape from Zanzer’s Dungeon
  • The Evil Tree Spirit
  • The Evolution of Claude the Clydesdale
  • Hubris and the Deck of Many Things
  • The Ignominious Death of Machiavelli
  • I Put the Dragon in a Sack
  • Pirates of the Astral Sea
  • Plastic Explosives in the Mattress
  • Pick a Card
  • Revenge of the Deck of Many Things
  • Ride of the SS Stupid
  • The SS Stupid Rides Again
  • Rise and Fall of the Red Mage
• Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures: Details about my initial attempt at using Pathfinder as an educational tool.
  • Day One
  • Day Two
  • Day Three
  • Day Four
  • Day Five
  • Pathfinder Fantasy Adventures Revisited
• The Pathfinder Playtest: Some thoughts on the Pathfinder RPG‘s first edition change.
  • Character Creation
  • Where Did These Changes Come From?
  • Changes to Come
• Troubled Times, Troubled Adventures: Examining the Avatar Trilogy, my least favorite set of D&D adventures ever.
  • Shadowdale, part one
  • Shadowdale, part two
  • Shadowdale, part three
  • Shadowdale, part four
  • Shadowdale, part five
  • Shadowdale, part six
  • Tantras, part one
  • Tantras, part two
  • Tantras, part three
  • Tantras, part four
  • Tantras, part five
  • Tantras, part six
  • Waterdeep, part one
  • Waterdeep, part two
  • Waterdeep, part three
  • Waterdeep, part four
  • Waterdeep, part five
  • Waterdeep, part six
  • Making the Avatar Trilogy Work
• AD&D’s Freedom and the Curse of the Media Tie-In: If you run the adventure Freedom, your players will experience anything but.
• AD&D’s Planescape: The Good, the Bad, and the Mixed Bags: A look into the classic 2nd edition setting and the way it pushed D&D, for better and worse.
• The Bride-to-Be: A template for 1st edition Pathfinder that is a spoof and nothing more, I swear.
• Delving into the Book of Erotic Fantasy: Wear Protection: A look at one of the weirdest d20 products ever created.
• In Defense of Good-Aligned Drow: Seriously, they can be pretty cool characters.
• D&D and Pathfinder: What’s the Difference?: An examination of what separates these two popular but similar games.
• The Editions of Dungeons & Dragons: Can’t tell one edition from another without a scorecard!
• The History of Dungeons & Dragons: What goes around comes around.
• A History of Superheroes: A sample alternate history to help start a superhero RPG setting.
• Hit Points and Armor Class: A deep dive into what those numbers on your character sheet really mean.
• The Many Faces of Elminster: Alternate takes to give the well-known Elminster the Sage some new life.
• The Many Immortals of the Forgotten Realms: Humans seem to have a pretty easy time becoming immortal in the world of Toril.
• The Most Head-Scratching Demon Lords in D&D: Some demon lords ooze evil. Others are just evil ooze.
• On Character Death: There are many ways to create a compelling game without relying on total party kills as a threat.
• Paizo’s Controversy, Bad Behavior, and the Dilemma of Ethical Consumption: What do customers do when a gaming company clearly doesn’t care about its employees?
• The Return of TSR: What the Hell Just Happened?!: That time in 2021 when somebody tried to resurrect TSR and wound up poisoning the brand so badly that two separate companies had to drop the trademark.
• The Room of Death: You walk into a room. It kills you.
• Three Editions Later: Baldur’s Gate and the Development of D&D: How does a decades-long gap in a series reflect the way gaming has changed?
• Super Mario Pathfinder: In which I re-skin the Pathfinder RPG for adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom.
• Weird Magic Items I Wish I’d Used: From the crab mecha to the mayonnaise jar, a look at some of the weird magical oddities in D&D.
• What is the Most Important RPG Rule?: My two cents on what rules matter most.

_{Image: Jeff Easley}