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A while ago I wrote about the reasons you should make maps as player handouts. Here are some suggestions for using authentic-looking materials: You might be familiar with the process of "tea aging": Take your printed paper and soak it for some time (the duration being, basically, "until it looks...

What if Lemony Snicket were a punctilious old woman whose parlor game collection comprised exclusively indie RPG zines? Well, her name was Dahlia, and she apparently bequeathed her "best of" collection to Steve some years ago . . . I found it while exploring the Deep Archives, and somehow wound...

As longtime readers of the Daily Illuminator might have noticed, I enjoy a number of daily games, including Raddle and Align. In the past few months, I've also started mixing up one of the other games I've been playing . . . by combining it with another. The New York...

In my last post, I talked about enhancing your RPG campaign by using maps for props. Here are some more ideas: If your campaign is set in a recent era and in an actual city, find a map of that city and add a few captions, like "BBEG Building." With...

I recently recommended a daily online game called Raddle. Now I have another one that's pretty fun. It's from the Boston Globe, and it's called Align. Envision a five-by-five square of letters. Each "line" of that square reading across or down forms a word (so there are 10 words total)....

Reading Steven Marsh's Daily Illuminator about making fake podcasts for game props got me thinking. I love using props. I'm the one who'll make fake newspaper articles or produce torn scraps of secret messages – you name it. I even cooked a meal for my gaming group once. But some...

Dragons and drawing and dungeons, oh my! Deadly Doodles returns with a Second Edition, and it has more dungeon-crawling fun than ever before! This family-friendly Draw 'n' Draw game for one to four competitors challenges players of all ages to make their way through a dungeon. Flip over the path...

I admit that sometimes I feel like I'm not doing enough with my life. Well, that fear just got amped up to 11 by learning that experimental composer Alvin Lucier is still creating new music . . . despite the fact that he died in 2021. According to an article...