Good GM blogs?

[ValhallaStreet]

I'm interested in getting serious about GMing, especially since my eldest will be old enough to start playing in a year or two.

Are there any good GM blogs out there? I'm looking for a few things: plot hooks, things to avoid, how to (for example) get your players to work out your mystery without having to drop a ton of clues, how to write a good mystery, and general adventure writing tips.

I'm mostly interested in White Wolf stuff right now, but as long as it has things that can be used for any system/setting, I don't even mind, say, a blog about D&D.

I'd prefer on Blogspot or something like that where it's easy to follow a number of different blogs, but I don't really mind if it's somebody's site or the like, so post those anyway.

[Kol Korran]

I found quite a few advices from The Alexandrian to be quite invaluable. One of the best "GMing theory/ techniques/ tips" out there, I highly recommend his site.

[Totally Guy]

My entry is a "good but I don't particularly like it". Gnome Stew. Their best writer I'd say is Martin Rayla but he produces the least actual GMing content and the most meta posts.

[Tyndmyr]

I found quite a few advices from The Alexandrian to be quite invaluable. One of the best "GMing theory/ techniques/ tips" out there, I highly recommend his site.

On the flip side, I find that blog to be very overrated. A lot of the stuff is either terribly obvious, or subtly wrong.

Instead, I would reccomend the following:

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/ -Home to the West Marshes Experiment, for instance. It's nice to be able to read up on truly unique ideas.

Wampus Country - More of an oldschool gaming blog, with less of a focus on any given system, and more of an emphasis on using odd or unique elements.

[valadil]

In no particular order, I subscribe to

http://dungeonsmaster.com/
http://travislerol.com/wordpress/
http://angrydm.com/
http://slyflourish.com/
http://www.sarahdarkmagic.com/
http://rpgdiehard.blogspot.com/
http://www.gnomestew.com/

I don't read every single post because it gets pretty repetitive, but I like having my eyes out for anything I haven't seen before.

I also keep my own GMing blog (see signature). I haven't been upating much these days because I have a toddler and he doesn't let me game anymore.

[Grod_The_Giant]

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/ -Home to the West Marshes Experiment, for instance. It's nice to be able to read up on truly unique ideas.

I second this one. I read through most of the archives this summer and felt like I learned a lot.

[Totally Guy]

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/ -Home to the West Marshes Experiment, for instance. It's nice to be able to read up on truly unique ideas.

I'd not seen that one before but after a few articles I'm really digging what he's got to say!

[Tyndmyr]

In no particular order, I subscribe to
http://travislerol.com/wordpress/

Heh, I forgot my own blog. =)

In fairness, while I'm pretty happy with the material I do put up there, I update it quite seldomly.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Almost forgot; I'd bookmarked an article specifically about your OP on mysteries: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/...hree-clue-rule

[Dsurion]

I follow...

http://gmgeldar.wordpress.com/

and

http://trollsmyth.blogspot.com/

The first one started off as chronicling experience with Star Wars SAGA, and the other is a bit of an "old-school gamer"-type blog.

[Totally Guy]

Almost forgot; I'd bookmarked an article specifically about your OP on mysteries: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/...hree-clue-rule

I remember playing in a game where the GM was using this technique. I didn't enjoy it because I could identify this technique and realised that my input into the game didn't actually matter.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I remember playing in a game where the GM was using this technique. I didn't enjoy it because I could identify this technique and realised that my input into the game didn't actually matter.

Really? How'd that work? Did the guy just do a bad job running it?

[Totally Guy]

Really? How'd that work? Did the guy just do a bad job running it?

I'm familiar with the article so when I spotted things aligning with it.

I could tell I was being railroaded to the solution of the mystery. We were just going through the motions.

The way it'd been mechanically framed by the system told me that failure would be a frustrating waste of time so the GM chose the follow those rules in the blog post.

The rules of the game we were playing advertised themselves as being capable of facilitating a mystery game but lacked those features as written. It was just Dungeons and Dragons style skill rolls with a different probability structure.

[Tyndmyr]

I'm familiar with the article so when I spotted things aligning with it.

I could tell I was being railroaded to the solution of the mystery. We were just going through the motions.

The way it'd been mechanically framed by the system told me that failure would be a frustrating waste of time so the GM chose the follow those rules in the blog post.

Dungeons and Dragons does not lend itself particularly well to mystery or investigation based games. I mean, sure...you can have a theme of either of these things, but actually doing these things will never be the challenging bits. A LOT of the rules are focused on combat, with these topics being brushed over lightly, when covered at all. Rolling a dozen search checks in a row is not particularly fun.

Now, there's nothing wrong with having differing paths and clues...but the point of this should be to AVOID railroading. Yes, having three different ways to guess to get to the end point the GM pre-determined is better than only having one...but it's a marginal improvement. Having multiple outcomes instead is vastly superior.

[Malimar]

The Alexandrian

This.

Also, "Playing D&D With Porn Stars" (the NSFW content is quite rare, but even so, I don't know that I can link to it by forum rules, so Google it) sometimes has useful advice, though there's a lot of weird stuff to slog through to find the gems.

Since you specify good blogs, I'll refrain from linking to my own.

[Tyndmyr]

Also, "Playing D&D With Porn Stars" (the NSFW content is quite rare, but even so, I don't know that I can link to it by forum rules, so Google it) sometimes has useful advice, though there's a lot of weird stuff to slog through to find the gems.

I've also read this blog, and I can vouch for the accuracy of this statement. Occasional nuggets of interesting surrounded by random other stuff. Not really bad, per se...just a bit unusual for the whole Gming blog genre.