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Often times I hate being an adult. It is not nearly as fun as movies made it out to be as a child. First of all I am a busy person by nature. Some background, I work a full time job as a professional googler (of toys, collectibles and books), I am trying to get my photography business up and running with regular clients and lastly I am planning a very DIY intensive wedding. Life is hectic, I try to write blogs, make wedding crafts and eat but eventually no matter how hard I plan and grid out, life gets in the way.

As you might have noticed if you are a reoccurring visitor of The Dragon...

A lot of people talk about what it means to be a good Game Master and how to make your players happy. Well, I'm going to tell you players that it's not all about you. If your GM is not happy with the party, then he is going to make things difficult, if not downright impossible, for you. When the game breaks down to one side trying to make the other more pissed off than they are, things can quickly spiral into the fifth circle of Hell. Maybe even the Seventh. So just as a GM has certain criteria...

Often times people think that being a Game Master means simply having a story that you want to tell, writing some names down, and then throwing some monsters in for the players to fight. While this is true for the game side of things, what people (and many players) don't realize is what a GM must be in addition to this: A host, psychologist, diplomat, teacher, judge and executioner. Each one of these roles is an integral part in keeping the players happy, the game running smoothly, and everybody getting along for just enough time to get a session completed.

Even if the games are not...

The eternal struggle – The chicken or the egg, time travel or the traveler, Han or Greedo, you or your significant other – but for my purposes I propose this: What comes first, story or system?

Currently, I have an easy job in that I only use one system in my campaigns; D&D gives me everything that I need to craft my worlds. I have learned the system and mechanics well enough to know how and when to bend the rules, and which ones I can just outright break, without breaking the game entirely. Therefore I just need to match my campaign to elves and trolls and we...

My fiancé (Pepper) and I have found a new type of “side effect” of spending a lot of naked time with each other: Sexually Transmitted Traits (or STT’s for short). These are things that really shouldn’t be able to be transmitted through sexual activity, but through some miracle of the human body, they definitely are.

The first is a favorite of mine, simply because so many women claim that they don’t do it, ever. An activity that every guy knows that you really do, so you should just admit it (and stop blaming it on the: dog, cat, baby etc). The activity: farting. Neither of us knows how...

“The WoW Killer”. Anyone who has ever played an MMO, especially World of Warcraft, has heard this phrase at one point or another. The game that will strike down Blizzard’s giant and will bring about a day when WoW no longer sits in the #1 position of the most popular MMO on the market. For some, it even means the end of WoW altogether. Many games were predicted to be the WoW Killer: Aion, Rift, Star Trek Online, and even Star Wars The Old Republic is believed by some to be the newest WoW Killer. Yet, none of the games have been able to do the job. SWTOR seems to be the most favorable, in that a...

When you are young you play games such as Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders, and Don't Break the Ice. As you grow older and are able to grasp more complex environments you graduate to Monopoly, Risk, and Clue. However, often times this is where most peoples experience of board games ends. At this point in a person's life they either give up playing board games in favor of working, drinking, and generally haberdashery with friends or they trade in the dice and figures for controllers and keyboards. Why do most people find it so hard to continue evolving their tabletop lifestyle?

I...

While reading various blogs on the internets I was led to this wonderful web series called the Feminist Frequency. It is a vlog run by a feminist as you can guess by the title, and she discusses different ways women are used and presented in pop culture today. One bit struck me the most, and that was how much easier it is to rely on violence to solve problems over critical thinking. It made me re-evaluate my approach to how I will play and even roll up my next character.

A little background, I am abrasive; I have been told I am as cuddly as a brillo pad. It happens, I come from a larger...

First things first. If you drink and drive, then you're an idiot. If you were hanging out with friends and they let you drive away drunk, then they are also idiots. My uncle once rolled his truck five times because he was drunk driving, and to this day we have no idea how he didn't hurt himself or anyone else. If your friends are real friends then they will gladly drive you home. Also, taxis aren't that expensive. So if you do decide to drink, be smart about it. /e Rainbow “The More You Know”

Ok, now that I’m done with the Public Service Announcement, I can move on to the true purpose...

Movies based on video games have to be the bane of any gamer’s existence. They can never seem to get them right for some reason. Seriously, how hard can it be? I honestly believe that the people who write the scripts for the movies have never even touched the game. When people can post fake movie 3-minute trailers on YouTube that impress me more than a full-length Hollywood, that’s when a little red flag should go up that says “something is very wrong here”. Thankfully, it seems like our troubles might finally be over, but that remains to be seen. I’ll get to that point later. First, I want to...

Have you ever not killed your party because you were only half way through your campaign and they hadn't even met the Big Bad yet? Maybe you fudged a couple of DC rolls just to make sure that a player got the information he needed? Or how about when you didn't use that special ability that hampers movement for everyone with 20 feet just because you don't think the players wouldn't know how to avoid it? Of course you have. We all have. As a GM, our goal is not to just tell a story, but to make sure that the players are having a fun time while they're playing. And dead characters don't make...

As a group we have known each other for roughly 7-8 years depending. This has led to more inside jokes and stories then one can care to recount or share. Through my blog I intend to shed light on most of these stories, inside jokes and any nicknames, for when our podcasts are up and running (be on the look out for our kickstarter). First things first, or actually third since this is my third blog, is who are we?

I am commonly known as Pepper. I remember things, places, people, and dates. I remind the boys of anniversaries and parties. We are going to Pax East this year, as we went last...

ADD (or ADHD) has become as much a common phrase in the gaming community as AFK, LFG and BRB BIO. But the question that I have to ask is: Should it? If a gamer can sit there and play the same game for hours on end, does he/she really have a deficient attention span? I’ve seen a person diagnosed with ADHD wait around for over an hour while a 40 person raid group is organized and then successfully played through a 5+ hour raid with only minimal bathroom breaks and plenty of sugar running through their body. Now I’m no doctor, but I think that diagnosis may have been incorrect.

Don’t get...

I’ve been involved in numerous MMO Beta tests in the past, ranging from major titles like World of Warcraft to many of the little known F2P MMOs on the internet today. No matter where I go or what game I’m testing for, I always come across people in the Beta who consider it nothing more than an excuse to “play the game” early. This really aggravates me. The purpose of a Beta test is to make sure the game works. You’re supposed to be checking for glitches and reporting them to the Devs as they come along, especially if the glitch is repeatable and not just a one time fluke. It’s not meant to allow...

It seems like every few years now there is a new version of Dungeons & Dragons being released; while there were twelve years between AD&D and AD&D 2nd Edition, and then another eleven until 3rd Edition was released. A mere 3 years later 3.5 hit the shelves only to be suseeded by 4.0 before the body was even cold, just under five years later. And now, we already have rumors and musing of 5th Edition in serious production. Now this may sound like a familiar arguement against the advancement of the game, but fair thee well avid gamers – My qualms lay with those who are stuck 33 years...