Author Archive

Beyond “Fred”: Anglo-Sax...

Posted on Jul 22 2010 | No Comments
Beyond “Fred”: Anglo-Saxon Names for Characters Finding a good name is sometimes the hardest part of designing an NPC. You want something more exotic than “Fred the Fighter”, but “Frewxyque the Grand Thunder Duke” becomes too hard to say with a straight face... Read More »

Growing the Hobby

Posted on Jul 15 2010 | 2 Comments
Growing the Hobby For this month’s blog carnival Mad Brew Labs has posed the question “Challenge: Growing the Hobby”. Since I started playing in 1980, the hobby has grown exponentially and shows no sign of stopping. Sure,... Read More »

11 GMing Tips I Learned from Being a...

Posted on Jun 25 2010 | 2 Comments
11 GMing Tips I Learned from Being a Parent Sometimes running a game feels like herding a group of toddlers through the glassware department of  a department store while carrying an armload of wet cats. While most of the time players act like the responsible adults... Read More »

What Do You Need Help With?

Posted on Jun 18 2010 | No Comments
In addition to the world setting I’m creating, I’m looking at producing a line of products to help GMs run better and more immersive games. To that end, I’ve created a short survey asking for your input. Please help me out by taking a moment to give me your ideas. I’ll post the results here next week. Click here to take survey

Notable Absence

Posted on Jun 15 2010 | No Comments
Notable Absence As you’ve all noticed by now, my writing has been rather sporadic recently. It’s not because I’ve run out of ideas or developed a sudden allergy to blogging. No, the reason I’ve been rather absent... Read More »

Games…Must Have Games…

Posted on May 28 2010 | 1 Comment
Games…Must Have Games… I hate gaming dry spells. I think the longest period I’ve gone without gaming was two years, if you’re talking about actually sitting at the table, either as GM or player. If you’re counting game preparation... Read More »

27 Surefire Ways to Get Kicked Out o...

Posted on May 21 2010 | 4 Comments
27 Surefire Ways to Get Kicked Out of a Game Awhile back I did a post on 21 Surefire Ways to Loose Players. With this being Player Month here at Evil Machinations, I thought it time to do a post for the players. Even the most die-hard GMs will change sides of the table,... Read More »

What’s My Motivation?

Posted on May 14 2010 | No Comments
What’s My Motivation? Your GM picked out the adventure, did all of the background work, fleshed out the NPCs, balanced treasure and other rewards. Now it’s finally time to run the adventure, it’s up to the GM to find a way to motivate... Read More »

Upgrading Issues

Posted on May 06 2010 | 1 Comment
Please bear with me as I finish upgrading the theme for this site. I had technical difficulties installing the new theme and upgrading to the most recent version of WordPress (which for several reasons on my end, most of which come down to RTFM). I’ll be finishing the set-up on the new theme over the course of the next few days. Everything’s there... Read More »

Top 10 of 100 and One

Posted on Apr 30 2010 | 4 Comments
This month, Evil Machinations celebrated it’s first anniversary. On top of that, this is my 100th post. Because of all that, I want to say thank you to everyone who’s made this blog a success.  Without my readers, there would be no Evil Machinations . Below is a count-down of your top ten favorite posts and pages on this blog since it began in... Read More »


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