After two years of writing for The RPGuide, we’ve talked a lot about running and playing role-playing games. So this is a collection of our best and favorite articles from the second year of RPGuide posts. This volume of Loaded Dice has sections on Storytelling, plotting and pacing your game – including romantic arcs – more about non-player characters (NPCs), juggling game rules and mechanics, and advice for players to create characters and then play them in a team sport like RPGs. Whether you’re new to role-playing games or have been gaming for years, come learn from our mistakes and take advantage of our experience. We recommend reading at least the first Loaded Dice, but also consider My Guide to RPG Story­telling, My Storytelling Guide Companion, or From Dream to Dice.

The author describes his experience as a member of a crew of crossroaders who cheated the Las Vegas casinos out of millions of dollars during the sixties

Valentine is in Las Vegas, on the trail of his wayward son, Gerry, who has gone AWOL from card-counting school. Mixing work with parental responsibility, Tony also agrees to help maverick casino owner Nick Nicocropolis prevent two rival owners from putting him out of business.

After three years of writing for The RPGuide, we’ve talked a lot about running and playing role-playing games. Thank you for listening for all these years! This is a collection of our best and favorite articles from all three years of RPGuide posts. It includes three volumes of Loaded Dice, each one covering a year of our ramblings. There are sections on Storytelling, plotting and pacing your game, non-player characters (NPCs), game rules and mechanics, and advice for players to create characters and then play them in a team sport like RPGs. Whether you’re new to role-playing games or have been gaming for years, come learn from our mistakes and take advantage of our experience. Most of the posts included in this boxed set build on the ideas that we set out in our first guidebooks: My Guide to RPG Storytelling, My Storytelling Guide Companion, and From Dream to Dice. You don’t need to read them, but it might help.

I’ve been running role-playing games for thirty years, but am relatively new to playing them. Erica’s rolled up dozens of characters, but has only a few Storytelling experiences under her belt. Together, we’ve written a blog about what we learned, the challenges we have to overcome, and all the solutions we’ve come up with to keep an RPG campaign going – The RPGuide. This is a collection of our best and favorite articles from the first year and a half year of RPGuide posts. We’ve got advice for handling players, building NPCs, and we debate rules and play styles. If you’re an old hand at role-playing, maybe you’ll find a new trick to put up your sleeve, or a fresh way of looking at gaming. And if you’re new to RPGs, then you’re welcome to learn from our mistakes and take advantage of our experience. You’ve probably read My Guide to RPG Story­telling, the Companion, or maybe From Dream to Dice, and that’s what brought you around to this little collection. But if this is your first RPGuidebook, welcome! Don’t worry, you don’t need to read any of the others first – Loaded Dice can be used on its own. We’ll even begin with a “What the heck is a table-top role-playing game?” chapter. So let’s play!