Welcome to the first installment of my new column Experience Points.  This series of articles will focus on the trials and tribulations of running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign using my Friday night game, Dark Legacy as an example.  I won’t be writing this column in the “campaign journal�...

Whenever I start a new campaign I like to kick things off with a bang.  I’ve always felt that a great campaign needs to have a great start.  The starting session of any new campaign needs to accomplish several things right away.  It should grab the players’ attention, invoke a sense of curios...

Ideas are the root of creation. –Ernest Dimnet   One of the things I’ve incorporated into my current Dungeons & Dragons game is the use of a campaign theme.  A theme is the underlying motif played out across the various aspects of the campaign.  The theme itself can manifest in a vari...

I consider myself a lucky individual. When I grew up, I had the benefit of playing both roleplaying video games and tabletop roleplaying games each week. My mom and dad bought me video games that I played at home during the week, then every Saturday I got to go to our local gaming shop and play t...

As 2009 begins I realize that I am approaching the 27th anniversary of my introduction to role-playing games (I received my first D&D box set for my birthday in ‘82). In retrospect I can see how much of who I am has been shaped by my love for gaming and an unhealthy addition to polyhedral shap...