Plucking the Stars from Distant Systems - Stealing Rules for Fading Suns Pt. 1 Icons and Bonds

One of the things I’ve learned about myself and GM’ing is I that as much as I enjoy running D&D, I enjoy running D&D more when it’s not the only thing I’m running. Strangely, running a non-D&D game concurrently with a D&D game or two helps keep me from getting bored with my D&D game(s) and strangling them in a bathtub or otherwise abruptly ending them. Earlier this year I ran a three session mini-campaign of Apocalypse World and not only did it change the way I ran D&D by letting me see how another system handles issues in games, but it also provided at outlook for ideas and energies that would not have had a place in either of the two D&D Next campaigns I’m running.

GM Confession: XP

One of my least favorite GM chores, aside from player wrangling aka game scheduling, is keeping track of XP.  I can recall many of the sessions of the 3.5 game I co-DM'ed starting out with the players and DM discussing exactly how many XP we each had and trying to keep track of it all as some players would have less due to missing sessions or the DM would have forgotten to announce the earned XP at the end of the last session or the players would forgotten to have written down said XP...