Apparently, nothing drives traffic like a controversy, and nothing gets Paul von Meersheidt fired up like a blog comment.

In his stalwart defense of the Apathy Stat Block, he describes our design philosophy. He also goes on a amusing rant. Read on for enlightenment, entertainment, and a chance to take part in a flame war.

Each week we answer a question from our loyal audience. Our question for this week is:

Dear Apathy,

My group has started to do a lot of out of character planning and talking in combat, and it is really starting to piss me off! How should I go about trying to reign it in?

–Matthew Edwards from Toboggan Glacier, Alaska

If you read yesterday’s post and took my idea to heart you are probably wondering what to get from the store. In this day and age most people have had a very limited exposure to the wide world of alcohol, typically ordering the same thing over and over or confining themselves to the easily available [...]

Every campaign has them, the bar scenes. The characters are sitting at the bar recovering from their latest adventure when the GM decides to describe the house specials in overly complex detail. The players may try to pay attention, but most will have trouble remembering the detailed descriptions of five different drinks. This can easily [...]

Yesterday we explored how what your players see and hear can be modified to raise your sessions to the next level. Today we will explore the senses of taste, smell and touch. Touch This is the hard one. The first way to address touch ties directly in with sight. Recovering all your seating with identical, [...]

If you’ve been reading our blog for any length of time you have detected a certain enviable snobbishness evident in our writing and general discourse. Dazzled by the possibilities you have decided to follow our model and add some class to your game. Great! While we have given general advice you may have some questions [...]

Once per week we go behind the bar at Apathy Games and discuss gaming in more personal terms and ask you to respond. The best response will be featured the following week. Drink of the day: Rusty Nail As a gamer one of the things I have excelled at is throwing a wrench in the [...]

Rule 2 of encounter building is: Make every encounter unique. Nothing does this better than building an interesting and dynamic environment. A dynamic environment is one that changes. One that provides opportunities and pitfalls for enemies and allies alike. Choosing an Environment The very first thing I do when designing an encounter is to come [...]

Encounter design is what separates a great game from a good one. While encounters can take many different forms, and have even more influences, the basics for making them fun and memorable are actually pretty simple, and can be summed up with the following three rules:

A theme is an idea or concept that pervades throughout a work, and is often central to it, in order to bring certain ideas forward. One of the themes of Batman is to never relent in doing the right thing, even in the face of grave personal sacrifice. It comes up again and again in various Batman stories.