Critical Success

James discusses the art of voicing characters. This episode has improv techniques for developing character voices, advice on how to fudge certain voices you can’t do, and the secret to good voice work.

This week live from CODcon James invites Kat Murphy and Jim Hepplewhite on the show to discuss customizing monsters thanks to a question from Jeff Chaffe @infocorn on twitter.

What separates basic play from role-playing art? For game masters it is almost always a question of atmosphere. In this episode James teaches aspiring DMs how to create and maintain atmosphere. He also gives some tips for hardened grognards looking for ways to better describe their locations.

Parting with the usual format, James sits down with Senior Editor of Forbes Magazine and author of "Of Dice and Men" David M. Ewalt to discuss David experience running his very first campaign. Their conversations spans world building, session prep, improvisation, and how to incorporate lessons learned in other systems into your main campaign.

A couple years ago I DM'd for the first time for a game with my girlfriend (now wife) my friend Matt and his wife and a couple of our female friends. Other than myself and Matt, no one else had ever played D&D. Though I think they kind of liked it, it was very difficult to get them to attempt to role play (my wife later said she just didn't know what to do.

James answers a listener's question - "Over the past year I have gotten back into DMing for a group of players, after an almost 10 year hiatus from tabletop rpgs I have come to realize that I am not as skilled as I once thought. I have found that I tend to not give the players quite enough information. How should I go about giving the players enough information to act on but not so much that it either overwhelms them or removes the goal? Where do I draw that line?"

This week James continues his thoughts on how to approach picking a system to run your game. Lots of players have preferences for rules heavy systems or abstract rules light systems. What sort of effect does this have on the game? And why do we have rules to begin with?

This week, James discusses how one should go about picking a roleplaying system that works best for your story, players, and schedule.

In this episode James gives us some techniques to build strong party dynamics starting with the first session. He also shows us how to make it easier for players to live out their original character concepts.

James continues his walk-through for making your first game. In this episode you'll learn about accounting for player strengths, using differences in scale and differences in kind, and the ever important maintaining flexibility while knowing what is going to happen in the story.

This is a big one folks. This is the first installment of a series where James walks you through the steps to setting up your very first game. In this part he breaks down a game into three essential components and he lays out the first two steps of session design.

This week James tackles the subject of rules lawyers and how to talk them out of slowing down your game. Players can be difficult but sometimes all you need to do is choose your words carefully to make everyone at the table happy. If you have a question for James please send it to jamesdamatoismagic@gmail.com

If you are running your first game, chances are you are stressed out. If you have just run your fist session and nothing wen right you are probably completely overwhelmed. The first step to running a great game is understanding who your party is and what they are after. On this episode of Crit Success we discuss understanding and categorizing player types with improv terms to help you get to know your party.