With 2022 around the corner, this seems like the time to reflect on the things that helped us or brought us joy in 2021. The following is a list of my favorite apps, books, music, podcasts, TV, and video games from the last year, including many that I would recommend to others. The categories for this list are taken from Jesse J. Anderson’s Extra Focus newsletter, but the selections are my own.

?Apps

• ​FitOn. I’m a strong believer in the idea that staying physically healthy is important to nourishing creativity and focus. FitOn was my favorite app for working out at home throughout the pandemic. It’s got a pretty extensive collection of yoga, strength training, and cardio workouts, and it can build a “routine” for you based on your fitness goals. The paid version adds popular music to the background of the workouts, but you can’t control what tracks play so it’s more like a radio add-on.
• ​Insight Timer. I’ve tried several guided meditations apps, but often the features you want most are behind a paywall or embedded with ads (which makes sense—content and apps take time and money to create). Insight Timer works on a model similar to YouTube: the content is creator-uploaded and users can donate to creators. Whether you’re looking to relax or fall asleep or become more mindful and aware, chances are you’ll find it here.

This year at Origins Game Fair, I experienced one of the best convention one-shot RPG sessions I’d ever played in—as well as the worst—back to back. This gave me a unique opportunity to compare and contrast what went well in the first session and what went awry in the second, especially in light of my experience as a tabletop RPG professional responsible for developing one-shots as well as demoing RPGs for convention play. Over the last ten years, I’ve run open and VIP tables at large flagship conventions like GenCon and Origins, regional cons such as AcadeCon and Con of the North, and local mini-cons on college campuses and at my own home. Over the years, I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes that I hope you can learn from.

Although there are many aspects to consider when planning and running an RPG one-shot at a convention, I think that focusing on three elements of the session will give you a solid foundation and yield the best payoff per hour of prep spent. These three essential ingredients are: 1) exciting and accessible pre-generated character sheets, 2) a scenario that is optimized for one-off play, and 3) excellent player management at the table. In this first part of the three-part series, let’s take a deep dive into the first ingredient: pre-gens.

It’s okay to sometimes want our roleplaying game sessions to be a refuge from the never-ending news cycle. When real life is already bleak, we don’t need our escapes to be equally depressing or hopeless. In trying times, many of us would rather tell stories of justice, empowerment, compassion, and hope. We want our characters to become reflections of the best we have to offer. In this way, the game becomes a welcome respite when we want to take a break from the daily struggle. For writers looking to imbue their stories with a ray of hope, you can adapt this advice to your fiction projects as well.

Although there are many examples of tabletop roleplaying systems and settings that evoke a grimdark flavor, there seem to be fewer examples of games that feel “noblebright.” The following article outlines some tips for game masters who would like to run RPG campaigns that inspire courage and recharge players’ emotional batteries. These guideposts can also be used to fine-tune a setting to be more representative of the one we wish we were living in—one where individuals can make a real difference and stand up for each other.

If you’ve ever played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Dark Heresy, or any of the Witcher games, you know there’s a distinctly grimdark, gritty tone to those games. By concentrating on certain themes, you can evoke some of that depth and despair in your own games—and raise the stakes of the campaign in the process. If you’ve enjoyed grimdark books and are looking to expand into that genre, you can adapt this advice to your fiction projects as well.

But GM beware: it’s a fine line to walk between simply punishing your players and making a game with greater challenges and rewards. The key is to keep the pendulum swinging between light and dark, hope and fear. And to keep your players coming back, they’ll need to have seductive opportunities to succeed or make a positive impact on the world, even if they can’t save all of it.

Whether you’re pulling together a one-shot for a gaming convention or an adventure for your home campaign, sometime between when you wrangle a group and when you start playing, you have to develop the actual adventure! There are many components that go into roleplaying game adventures—encounters and maps, non-player characters and stat blocks, the list goes on—and tackling everything at once can be daunting. If you’re not sure where to start,  The following five steps will help you organize your ideas and make sure you cover all your bases to create an engaging scenario that gives the players agency to determine their characters’ fate.

Step 1: Come up with A Hook or Premise

Start by coming up with the basic idea that forms the underpinning of the scenario and guides the rest of your prep. Ask yourself, what cool thing does this adventure revolve around? What element of the adventure gets you the most excited and helps you differentiate it from the myriad adventures you’ve played in or run before? The cool thing could be a location, a magic item, an NPC, or a specific reveal. Alternatively, you could explore what-if scenarios that interest you. What if a sentient magic item had gone crazy? What if we got to explore the temple shown in Jedha, and why would we go there? What if the pretty soldiers from Sailor Moon were more like a yankii street gang in a post-apocalyptic NeoTokyo?

Feel free to brainstorm ideas surrounding that cool thing and write a half page or so of description to give yourself the down-low on the focus of your adventure. You’ll probably use that information later when you devise the characters, obstacles, and world that are connected to it.

As you’re brainstorming these ideas, don’t forget to consider why you’re creating this adventure and the specific requirements or restraints you’re dealing with: Where will you play? How long do you have to play? Who will be playing? What tone or age rating will the adventure have? What are the conventions or tropes that surround the genre, and how can I play with my audience’s expectations?