Category Archives: Advice

Chris Crawford’s Game Design & Creativity Lecture

By Patrick Benson | Published: December 2, 2011

If you want to do creative work, any type of creative work, watch this video: Wax on! Wax off! Write code!!!   Yes, it is dated from way back in 1989 before humanity had discovered the Pluto was not a planet, and that what we all really wanted was instant access to porn from the [...]

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Do Not Turn Every Passion Into Work

By Patrick Benson | Published: November 16, 2011

Barbara Sher makes a point of telling people that you should do what you love even if you cannot make a living doing it. You just have to do something else that earns a paycheck. You do not need to turn your hobby into a job. Some hobbies cannot be turned into jobs, yet you can [...]

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Networking: The Most Powerful Tool of the Passionate Person

By Patrick Benson | Published: August 16, 2011

I have been working hard to establish myself as someone who is passionate about RPGs. I do not want to be known just as a great writer, or blogger. I want to be known as a guy who has a great passion for RPGs! Why? Because if people know that you are passionate about something [...]

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Burned Out? Admit to It and Push Yourself

By Patrick Benson | Published: July 19, 2011

I am burned out. My vacation was not very restful. That is okay, because a family vacation with young kids does not give the parents a chance to truly rest. You still have to care for your children. Luckily I also plan vacations for just my wife and I as well as ones where I [...]

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Fire Your Inner Micromanager

By Patrick Benson | Published: July 6, 2011

I recently watched an episode of the Food Network series Restaurant Impossible, and I really enjoyed it. The episode focused on a restaurant called Dodge City where the problems seemed to stem mainly from the owner’s reluctance to let anyone else do their job without his micromanaging every detail. By refusing to allow his team [...]

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An Aged Wine Can Still Taste Like Shit

By Patrick Benson | Published: May 5, 2011

I once went to an associate’s home for a dinner party that was really more about his showing off than either dinner or the party. One of those “The Joneses have to keep up with me!” types. Whatever. The host bragged about his wine collection, and made a big deal about opening a bottle that [...]

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Cooking for the Gaming Group? Get a Pressure Cooker!

By Patrick Benson | Published: April 20, 2011

Not much to say today except that if you are the type of person who likes to cook a big meal for your gaming group you want to invest in a pressure cooker. There are many simple recipes for pressure cookers that taste great, are easy on the budget, and that make excellent meals for [...]

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Show Don’t Tell–How Playing Fudge Online Is Better Than Talking About Fudge In Any Format

By Patrick Benson | Published: April 19, 2011

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of seeing social networking in action in order to help a game master new to Fudge prepare for running this person’s first Fudge game for the “Day of Fudge”. I won’t name names, but it was just great to see members of the Fudge community helping a person new [...]

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Success & Failure In Fudge: Relative, Not Binary

By Patrick Benson | Published: February 10, 2011

In many games a roll of the dice is used to determine a binary outcome. The result can only be a one or a zero. The player rolls for the PC to hit a target with an attack. The only results possible are either the PC hit or the PC missed. That is it.

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What Do Gamers Mean By “Cinematic”?

By Patrick Benson | Published: January 14, 2011

In response to the feedback I got from the article Why RPG Adventures That Emulate a Movie Are a Bad Idea I want to address what we gamers means when we say that we want a “cinematic” game, as well as what we can use from movies to make our games better. First things first, [...]

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