"The players arrive to the session, and you narrate that they see in front of them a portal (perhaps created by an imp, or pixie, or wh

Hey Reader! Welcome back to the Zurn blog! After a hiatus due to popping a question and planning a wedding which will take place in two weeks, we are returning to tackle the topic of Mission 1. In today's post we jump into our world for the first time, and this means that how we present the world to them matters immensely. "Mission 1" refers to the first task that the party will have in your campaign. This may be completed in the first session, or it may span multiple session

"Mission Zero is designed to bring the party together."

"Just as you want to case your leads well for a film, you want the player characters to be a good fit for the campaign as well. So spen

"Just as each player character should fulfill a role in the party, so also all of your NPCs should fulfill a role in the encounter.&quo

"Good stories have varieties of villains, each filling a different role to display and develop the abilities of the protagonists. Rolep

"In the vast majority of campaigns, you don't need a lot of allied NPCs...but the allies we require are integral to a successful ca

"A roleplay mission should be like a man's kilt: long enough to serve its purpose, short enough to be functional."

Regardless of the model you use, a rightly paced campaign should be cohesive and dynamic.

"Not all roleplay campaigns are created equal, in part because of design, structure, etc., but also because of genre: some genres reson

"There are a lot of ways that a story can go wrong from a plot perspective....This post will give you thoughts on how to craft a good s

"If you approach the building of the campaign from start to finish as a case study in seeing characters grow, and how they deal with a

Hey Reader! Welcome back to the Zurn Blog! I wrapped up my teaching engagements (though I gained another one in May - more on that in our next post), and that means that we're back to the blog. Over the past few weeks I've been teaching high school students across the country about the beauty of storycraft, using Beauty and the Beast as one of my core texts. And now that I've seen the movie three times (and the 1991 cartoon myriad times), I'm excited to start sharing some of

Hey Reader! As I prepare to teach on Beauty and the Beast, Star Wars, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe this weekend, one of the questions that commonly comes up is whether Belle suffers from Stockholm Syndrome in the tale as old as time. Others have covered the ins and outs of how this is not Stockholm Syndrome, so I won't go through the medical definition and myriad reasons in the original fairy tale (and the cartoon movie from 1991) that show that Belle is not a captive wh

Hey Internet! As of this morning, the Zurn July Writers Month has begun! For those who are participating in the #ZuJuWriMo, we look forward to writing alongside you over the next month! As a recap, the following rules are in play for the #ZuJuWriMo: 1) The piece must be your original work: others may help you edit it, but you must be the primary author. 2) The piece must not exceed 5000 words of prose (so title pages, citations, footnotes, etc. do not count - none of these ar

Hey Reader! As we prepare for the start of the Zurn July Writers Month tomorrow, we thought we'd check in one last time before the official kick-off announcement tomorrow to let you know one of the things we will be doing throughout the competition to encourage you. For the next month as you all are competing for a chance to win the grand prize of the competition, I'm excited to join with you (though we can't win), and I'll be giving some encouragement on the way in the form

Hey Reader! As I was doing some research on player styles (for a series that I'll be starting in May, probably), and I came across a fascinating article on player archetypes on Mythcreants, a blog for fantasy storytellers generally, but with lots of good thoughts for roleplayers. Now naturally you may disagree with some of their content (I disagree with some of the things they write on the blog, just as others may), but they have good ideas, ideas that game masters and storyt

Hey reader! Welcome back to the Zurn blog! Today we're featuring a video by Rhykker, a DM who has played several gaming systems, and has his own channel on YouTube (which you should subscribe to; he has some really good advice for game masters and players). In today's post, we will be featuring his video on how to roleplay engaging conversations. You can find a link to his video here (and to his playlist of roleplay videos here, if you're interested). To quickly summarize,

Dear Reader, Welcome to Zurn Central! Over the past few years we've been slowly building up the mechanics of both the Warriors of Zurn series and this blog, and we're excited to start rolling out our generic game master and player-based content here on our dedicated blog. Perhaps the first question we should answer upfront is, "Why another blog?" I mean, really: there are dozens of blogs out there for game masters, roleplayers, and people completely new to the realm of role