
Welcome to Crying Is A Free Action, your go-to hub for all things tabletop RPGs! Whether you’re slaying dragons in Dungeons & Dragons, unraveling cosmic mysteries in Call of Cthulhu, or diving into any wild world where dice decide your fate, we’ve got you covered. This site is for everyone who thinks rolling a d20 (or a fistful of d6s) is the ultimate good time — from seasoned dungeon masters to newbies still figuring out which die is which.
We’re here to celebrate the chaos, creativity, and camaraderie of TTRPGs with articles that hit every corner of the hobby. Expect tips on crafting killer campaigns, character builds that’ll make your table cheer (or groan), and deep dives into the mechanics and madness of your favorite systems. Got a critical fail story? We want to hear it — because let’s be real, crying is a free action, and we’ve all been there.
No gatekeeping, no judgment — just a friendly space for dice-rollers of all stripes. Whether you’re a rules-lawyer, a roleplay fiend, or just here for the snacks, you’ll find something to spark your next adventure. So grab your character sheet, shake off that nat 1, and dive in — Crying Is A Free Action is where TTRPG fans come to laugh, learn, and level up together!
A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make.
Gary Gygax

How to Craft Engaging NPCs
Consider the scene, your party having deftly avoided anything resembling a plot for the last three sessions, are in a nice cosy tavern and out of desperation, you pull a quest giver out of thin air to drag them, kicking and screaming if needed, to the next adventure. The problem is that the NPC you created has all the personality and charisma of slightly damp white bread.

The Psychology of Immersion: Tricks to Make Your World Feel Real
Immersion’s the secret sauce of TTRPGs — it’s what turns a dice roll into a ‘holy crap, I’m there’ moment. It’s not the rules, or the dice or even, to a certain extent, how well thought out the setting is. A good immersive game can literally carry you to another time and place, when your game is immersive you can lose track of time, get so deep into character you forget to eat, and the real world feels like it’s someone else’s problem.
Here are a few tips that I have picked up over the years to help really pull your players into the world because with Immersion comes fantastic roleplaying.

Alternatives to the Tavern Cold Open
Stop me if you have heard this one; a bounty hunter, warlock, holy knight and a cat burglar walk into a tavern… when you think about it, there is no way in the name of Gygax that this party would ever accumulate naturally, and that’s before you take into consideration their back stories.
For a game that places such a high value on imagination and creating epic stories, it’s surprising how many times I have heard the phrase: ‘You’re all in a tavern and it’s night…’ (to be fair, I have said it more than a few times as well).
It doesn’t have to be this way; parties can come together in a myriad of ways. Here are ten of my favourite alternatives to a bunch of strangers suddenly deciding to become besties for no other reason than ‘because roleplaying game.’
Coming soon: World Builders Blog

Beyond the Dice: Mastering the Art of Being a Great D&D Player.
Roleplaying games are unique in many ways. One thing that non-role-players often struggle to grasp is that there’s no ‘win state’— “You can’t win at D&D.” That’s the conventional wisdom. I respectfully disagree. If you’re having fun then you are winning. I have had my perfect elven ass handed to me on a platter and still won because I had a lot of fun while it was happening. It follows then that if you ‘re not having fun, then you are losing.
It [love about acting] is all about role playing – the same thing you do when you’re a kid, when you play with dolls or toys and make up stories. I never grew out of it.
Morgan Freeman

Not So Random After All: Designing Encounters That Feel Organic and Engaging
If there is one feature of RPGs, going back to first edition D&D, that is unfairly maligned, it is the humble random encounter. A brief survey of Reddit will reveal many threads, with the consensus being that random encounters suck.
The fact is that if you are rolling up a dozen goblins that mindlessly charge the players then of course they suck! As with every other aspect of roleplaying games, you get out what you put in.

10 Ways to Add Depth to Your Character’s Backstory
Cliched backgrounds are the unspoken curse of TTRPGs. If I had a copper piece for every ‘orphan with a tragic past’ or ‘fighter out for revenge’, I could retire and open a tavern. The first impression you make is with your backstory, and it can elevate a character you might not particularly care about to being the start of something special.
These tips apply to everything from a Rogue in Faerûn to a pilot in The New Republic. It doesn’t matter if you’re new to all this or if you have been at this for years; your background is a much-neglected facet of character creation, and it can be very rewarding.
The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don’t need any rules.
Gary Gygax

📜 About the Rambler
Hey, I’m Rob.
Writer, DM, and recovering rules lawyer. I’m the kind of player who rolls a nat 1 on stealth, but somehow talks my way out of it—and the kind of GM who’ll absolutely let you romance the sentient mimic if the roleplay’s good enough.
Rambles & Whimsy is my little home on the internet where I talk tabletop RPGs—mostly Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, and Call of Cthulhu. I’m all about the weird, the wonderful, and the wildly emotional. You’ll find deep dives, worldbuilding rambles, advice for players and GMs, and the occasional existential crisis about why fantasy worlds are always stuck in feudalism.
I also run a horror blog called The Chop Shop and fix computers over at Rob the Computer Guy.
Current Projects:
🎲 Crying is a Free Action – The blog section you’re reading now. All things tabletop, all feels welcome.
🪓 The Chop Shop – My horror corner, full of dread-soaked fiction, eerie ideas, and things that go squelch in the night.
✨ Rambles & Whimsy – The umbrella site where all my creative chaos lives. Expect whimsy, wonder, and occasional weirdness.
🗡️ Valtheraine – A high-fantasy, high-intrigue world of spies, wild magic, and swashbuckling nonsense.
If you’re into heartfelt character arcs, homebrew chaos, and settings full of personality, grab some dice and stay awhile.