For those interested in RPGs in the classroom, incidentally, here’s an interesting resource full of all kinds of role-playing games.
Classroom RPG Resource

For those interested in RPGs in the classroom, incidentally, here’s an interesting resource full of all kinds of role-playing games.
Last year, I checked out Troika: Numinous Edition and ran a couple of one-shots (well, three-shots) for groups from both of the gaming Discords I socialize on. I wrote up an entire post about it, only to… entirely forget to publish it. So anyway, here it is, many months late.
A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to participate in a playthrough session of Joanna Piancastelli’s Before the Storm, which is the final final game in Pelgrane Press’s storygame collection Seven Wonders. I should have written up the session at the time, because now some of the details of the session have slipped away from my memory, but I’ll focus on my impressions of the game as a system and an experience, rather than the plotline that unfolded during our particular session.
The Isle of Joy Kickstarter concluded last night, after a couple of really stellar days. I was impressed with how many people decided to back the project in those last days and hours, and I’m grateful to them all. People managed to unlock a lot of nice stretch goals—including colour maps!—and as was announced in the last announcement for the campaign, I’ll be making a collection of tracks titled Songs from Isle of Joy to release as a special bonus for all backers. (More about that below.) Anyway, I’m really excited for our backers to get their copies and I …
This post is, yes, me trying to convince you to check out my latest RPG project, the Isle of Joy over on Kickstarter right now. However, since I’m not used to selling my stuff, I am going wrap the sales pitch in bacon some short essays on actionable related to RPGs. Maybe they’ll be things most GMs have figured out for themselves, maybe not, but I’d like to share what I got from the experience of designing and playtesting the book. Today, I’m going to talk a little about backstory, especially the difficulties in establishing a mysterious backstory.