I am currently running a campaign in Obojima (5e setting) and it is the game I find myself coming back to in my thoughts over and over again. When going through the setting with my players, I had them talk about their backstories and what brought them to this specific part of the world. Then, by encouraging co-creation, we all came up with an inciting incident and area. We are four sessions in and we haven't even had combat yet! I am the one doing the least amount of talking in the room while my players bring themselves to life and I am simply reacting as the world. As a way to learn what to focus on, I have my players do a fun little exercise where they write a small journal entry (A few sentences to up to a paragraph or so) from the perspective of their character so I can see what resonated the most from the session we had. Now that I've started "The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying", I have asked them all to list one overarching, long-term goal and one or two short term goals that supplement it. I'm so excited to finish the book so I can continue to apply its principles to my game! I am currently re-reading the chapter about factions.

Those of you in the Friday morning chat would have heard me talking about the giant battle arena I'm printing. I'm about half way though and this is how it's looking. When it's done it should be about 22" in diameter. For comparison I also posted pictures of the largest I could print it on one plate.

Hi Folks I'm trying to think who it was that brought this up a few weeks ago at a Friday Coffee Morning and have a feeling it was @Mark Petersen . The person was sounding out if any of us liked the idea of collaborating on e-zines or similar for free for members on here. Each zine to have Proactive design principles & techniques for the GMs & players. I remember @Jonah Fishel advising that a proposal for this be posted so we all know what we're working towards. Also, @Jonah Fishel or @Tristan Fishel , if we were to do this, can you suggest particular a template in either of your books? Or pages/chapters from your books if we need to be reading more to get the job done. I know we tentatively settled on 5.5e for this as its the most common system. I saw something cool recently in a daggerheart product I backed on Kickstarter where adversary statblocks had columns per tier of play under each action with appropriately scaled attacks and damage. That way each monster could be easily used at any level of play. I think that would be a good way to go (I know it was an adaptation from one of their 5e publications, just can't remember who it was but I've the free 1 click preview I could screenshot a page if someone needs an example of what I mean.) A useful reference scaling monsters for tiers this way is The Lazy GM's 5e Monster Builder Resource Document which I always keep handy when running a game. That way I can throw whatever I want at players on the fly and call it what I want. (just be sure to quote the bit at the top of its page if using this Monster Builder)

Some of you may have heard me talk about wanting to do a 5 week mini campaign this Halloween. I've got my players and I've come up with the scaffolding. I sent out the following questionnaire to them. What I love about this is that I'm giving them the opportunity to actually share their real fears with me to be used as material for the game, but I have stressed that I DO NOT WANT THEM TELL ME IF THEIR FEARS ARE REALLY THEIRS OR JUST FEARS I GET TO USE FOR THE GAME. If they give me their real fears they will have a more intense experience. Once I get their questionnaires back I'll put together the actual sessions. Each session will focus on a different horror element with the guiding principle being that if they can hit it, its combat, not horror. If anyone is interested in my over all story I'm happy to share it. I just dont want to type it all out if no one is intertested. As a setting, Im loosley using a four session module called One for the Sorrow - Whispers in the Mist as my sand box. Its ideal because its already split into 4 sessions. I need 5 but I already know what my fifth session will be

The gist of what's below: our new RPG, how to get it, and why we made it. This month, instead of our usual Proactive Packet for Gold members, we're releasing a manuscript for our Proactive RPG, The Ordained: a fast-paced, storytelling RPG meant to be run in short campaigns. I'm hoping it creates about as much encouragement as possible for proactive playstyles, with less lecturing and books to read. Those are fun (at least for Jonah and I) but actually playing the game is more fun. The game implements most of the major principles of our books and merges them into a hexcrawl, sandbox-style game with lots of storytelling elements. PCs literally get their hands into the narrative, engaging in collaborative worldbuilding in the fiction by respooling threads of fate as best they can. It's also a punchy 40 pages (counting covers, maps, etc) so it's a pretty quick read to get to the table. How do you get it? It's in the Classroom tab under the Proactive Packets tab, which Gold members have access to. It's just an initial manuscript now (not even a playtesting manuscript) so it's up for our Gold members. When we have a finished draft, I'll run some closed playtests. Once it's through layout and art, it'll be up through DriveThruRPG. Until then, it'll stay in the Classroom tab for our Gold members---while it's a complete game, it's not a finished product, so I don't really want to represent our work with it on DriveThruRPG or something. This is sort of an experiment with marrying proactive principles into game mechanics (something many games already do!) in a controlled environment: it's short and punchy, builds a lot on some other pretty player-driven games, and has a lot of step-by-step setup for the game that uses proactive principles without necessarily giving a powerpoint on them. That's because my other motivation is easier onboarding for our players. Jonah and I's biggest regret about the first book is that we devoted very little space to actually getting players on board with, and indulging in, the principles of a proactive roleplaying game (a pretty big oversight since the game style is, well, player driven). This game doesn't outline those principles in the same way, because in order to create characters and use them effectively, you'll have to follow them (although there is a few snippets of lecture, as condensed as I could get them). We have other onboarding ideas for PARP, like live play and new written projects, but this is the one I got done first.