Tag Archives: popular posts

Top 11 for 2011

Posted on 31 December 2011 | Leave a comment

I can’t believe the end of the year is on us already. It’s been a good year for me and I hope for you, too.

Here’s the eleven most popular posts this year:

  1. Character Questionnaire: Just what the name says–it’s a character questionnaire to help GMs and players alike flesh out important characters. This has been the number one favorite page since Evil Machinations began in 2009.
  2. “Where are we again?” Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns: List of on-line resources that can help you create cities and towns for your game world.
  3. February Blog Carnival: Worldbuilding: Check out the comments of this post for great links to blog articles about worldbuilding. This was the introductory post for when I hosted the RPG Bloggers blog carnival in February of this year.
  4. Building Better NPCs III: Character Webs: What are character webs and how can you use them to help bring your NPCs to life. Also a perennial favorite post.
  5. X Marks the Spot: 11 Map Making Tutorials: Another list of on-line resources, this one on making great maps for your game.
  6. And *Then* What Happened?: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas: Ever come across an adventure seed you really wanted to use, but you couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a full adventure? This post is the first in a series that can help.
  7. Creating the Adventure Outline: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 9: Another post in the above series, this one on how to develop you idea into game outline or flowchart to make running that adventure a little easier.
  8. Handling Problem Players: A list of web resources with great ideas on how to handle problem players.
  9. Finding Events: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas,  pt. 8: How to come up with the encounters and challenges that make up an adventure.
  10. Campaign Worksheet: The campaign worksheet I use when creating a new campaign.
  11. Beyond ‘Fred’: Russian Names for Characters: A list of Russian names for PCs and NPCs.

There they are: the top eleven posts for 2011. Thanks to all my readers–you’re the reason I’m still here and looking forward to a great 2012.

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Top Ten of 2010 and a Look to 2011

Posted on 9 January 2011 | Leave a comment

New Year’s is a time to look back and to look forward. In that spirit, here’s a list of the top 10 posts and pages at Evil Machinations for the last year:

  1. Character Questionnaire
  2. 20 Unusual City Encounters: From Beg, Borrow & Steal
  3. “Where are we again”?: Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns
  4. X Marks the Spot: 11 Map Making Tutorials
  5. 27 Surefire Ways to Get Kicked Out of  a Game
  6. Building Better NPCs III: Character Webs
  7. Your Teacher Was Right: Creating Adventures Using the 6 W’s
  8. Teaching the Game: August Blog Carnival
  9. Want to Be a Better GM? Ask Your Players
  10. Evil Does Not Equal Stupid: 8 Tips for Playing Evil Characters

And stay with me through 2011. I’ve got a ton of new ideas and some new products underway. First off, rpgGM.com will be releasing its first official product — the Adventure Creation Handbook — sometime in February. The plan from there is to follow that up with the Campaign Creation Handbook and the City Creation Handbook. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to post ideas to this blog and to the rpgGM’s company site. Topics I plan to cover include more on creating fantasy game cities and world building, as well as NPC creation and campaign construction.

Wishing you all the best in the new year.

[Photo courtesy of Eustaquio Santimano via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

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Post Round-Up: EM’s 10 Most Popular Posts

Posted on 21 October 2009 | Leave a comment

I haven’t done a round-up in a while, so here’s a list of Evil Machinations’ ten most popular posts:

  1. “Where Are We Again?”: Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns. A list of web resources to help you build a city of your own.
  2. What GMs Really Want. A survey about what type of articles you want to see more of. This is it’s last week; Sunday, October 25th, I close it.
  3. What’s Good About 4th Edition? Readers speak up about what they like about the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
  4. Handling Problem Players. A list of web resources to help you deal with those players who seem to enjoy ruining everyone else’s fun.
  5. An A-to-Z List of Lesser-Known Roleplaying Games: Part 1. An alphabetical list of less well-played games with a brief description for each one. Covers letters A-F.
  6. Character Questionnaire. Not actually a blog post itself, but one of my static pages listing questions to help round out a character.
  7. How Do You Describe Combat? My plea for help in narrating combat beyond “You hit, he takes 12pts of damage.” These guys came up with some great ideas.
  8. An A-to-Z List of Lesser-Known Roleplaying Games: Part 4. An alphabetical list of less well-played games with a brief description for each one. Covers letters Q-U.
  9. An A-to-Z List of Lesser-Known Roleplaying Games: Part 2. An alphabetical list of less well-played games with a brief description for each one. Covers letters G-K.
  10. What’s Good About 4th ed. Contest Results. The winner of the contest I described in the What’s Good About 4th Edition? post.

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