As I consider restarting my Shattered Lands campaign and starting a new campaign (possibly Planescape, possibly not) as well as determining if I'm running a second Sunday game, I've been thinking more about how best to capture what the players want and if I could ever get a group to agree to a charter. These two links are all about that, though the second link is part of a longer series on Dungeon Design that is also excellent.
Mostly right now, my hesitance is that many of my players tend to treat surveys and questions as busy work and I'm not sure that many of the casual players would see a charter as necessary and/or agree to some of what I'd like in a charter, namely that phones are put away for the majority of the game.
Since I'm playing a lot more (currently 13th Age Game, AD&D/OSRIC, Dungeon World and Shadowrun) the 11 Ways to Be a Better Roleplayer is a good reminder of things to focus on. And since having players roleplay more increases my enjoyment, the 11 Things to Help Your Players be Better Roleplayers will be something I keep in mind and strive for as I start running again.
On the non-article side, I recently read Odyssey, The Complete Game Master's Guide to Campaign Management, which gives a good framework for starting and organizing a RPG campaign. While I'll probably never read it straight through from cover to cover again, I'll probably pull it out and re-read several chapters and use it as reference material as I start building and re-building campaigns.
I've been reading the Drama Systems SRD and I'm really intrigued by the
character creation and especially its approach to PC Desires and
building relationships fraught with tension. I probably just need to
give in and pick up a copy of Hillfolk
For non-RPG stuff, I just finished William Gibson's The Peripheral, which was incredible and I'll definitely need to re-read another time or two as it is wonderfully intricate. Though first I've got Glen Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night to read. For comics/graphic novels, Warren Ellis and Jason Howar'ds TREES continues to draw me in, the first volume of Kelly Sue DeConnick's Pretty Deadly hit all the right spots to be a great Weird Western and wishing I'd started reading Fraction's run on Hawkeye earlier as Clint as a "mere" mortal superhero is fantastic and funny ("This looks bad"). And of course, Saga and Sex Criminals both continue to obsess me in their own ways.
And of course, my musical obsessions are meticulously cataloged on my Last.fm page.
