Natural 7

GLÅUGUST 2026 - 1

Loch Eil of the Nothic's Eye hosts a set of challenges, called GLÅUGUST, over the summer to celebrate roleplaying games (particularly old school style games). This year, I decided it would be fun to participate and record my results. If you want to check out the challenges, or follow along, read the 2026 post here.

By the way, these challenges were originally based off of Glogtober (example glogtober post), and they are the exact same thing. It's a set of things to write about across an entire month, related to roleplaying games (not necessarily about the GLOG, but any RPG).

What is the GLOG? The Goblin Laws of Gaming. Originally drafted by Goblin Punch in this post. It's an old school game.

I'll be playing in Speedrun mode, which means my answers will (hopefully) be short and digestible.

Challenge the First

2 - Review Another's Blogpost

A week or two ago I read The Do's of Dm'ing from Joe the Lawyer, and I linked to it in my post on Connections. This is one of my favorite posts that I've seen in the past six months; it resonates with a lot of my own opinions.

Joe summarizes his core premise as such: "the first Do is to make sure everyone is having fun at the table." This is in the first sentence, so yes, of course it's important. The rest of the Do's really add up to this first, ever important, rule. It's part of our job as GMs to ensure our game nights are enjoyable for every single person who's there.

It's important to mention here that the GM isn't the only person with responsibilities at the table. They aren't the only person who needs to make sure folks are having fun. I think it's everyone's responsibility to be aware of the gamestate and what is making things fun vs. not-so-fun. I really notice when people aren't paying attention to the emotions of the table when I'm playing a group board game. Sure, there are folks who sit down for a competitive game night, but there are also folks who just wanted to play a game and end up getting screwed out of any sort of fun because of the actions of another player.

As a GM we have the ability to draw all the attention back to ourselves at any moment (or at least, you should). This let's us pull the table into focus and bring up concerns about whether folks are still having fun or not. "Should we veil this scene?" and "Can we try not to disrupt the table with so much cross-talk?" and "I'm not sure that new feature is working for me, is it possible we could adjust it in a way that won't hurt your character but doesn't overshadow other abilities?"

Utilize the trust and confidence your players have in you to help foster a friendly game table. If you aren't having fun, or if you notice someone else not having fun, bring it up! Say something! One of my teachers has a quote I like to think about whenever I get stressed about a situation that came up during play: "If nothing changes, nothing changes." In other words: things won't improve if there is no catalyst of improvement.

Beyond specifically ensuring a fun game table, Joe goes on to talk about explaining game system house-rules before actually playing with them. I've been in games where, all of a sudden, I learn that my GM has changed the rules from what I was told to read when I made my character. The rule of cool can be similarly harmful if GMs decide to ignore sections of a game that their players had intended to use.

Joe continues with emphasizing the importance of communication, specific notes to take before and after sessions (not dissimilar to the 8 Steps of the Lazy GM), and remembering to pace yourself if real-life issues make playing games difficult. These are all ways to ensure that you understand what you need to do in order to make game nights as fun as possible for your group, returning right back to the core premise.

Final Thoughts

I started GLÅUGUST for the first time ever. I've never even tried Glogtober before, so we'll see how this goes. I had a lot of fun returning to Joe the Lawyer's post on DMing. Sometimes GM advice is good, and sometimes it's bad (shocker!), so I think it's useful to get a second voice on these kinds of things.

This is certainly a new type of post for me. I'm not sure if it'll be routine or not, but it's fun, so that's a win. I'm looking forward to writing up the next four challenges over the next two weeks. We should get a good look at my opinions on various RPG design strategies.

Thanks for reading! I'll see you next week!

Things on my radar: