Johnn Four, Author at Roleplaying Tips

Johnn Four

Author Archives: Johnn Four

3 Easy Ways to Generate Instant Adventure Ideas

Plot Factory Tutorial – Part II Last week we talked about Plot Factories as a tool in your GM Toolbox. Think of them like spawn points in a video game. Foes keep emerging to assault your character until you destroy the spawn point. In our adventures and sandboxes, we do the same via Plot Factories […]

Visual Aid Session Prep with the Five Room Dungeon

Hello Sojourner! The goal of Visual Game Session Prep is to have a quick glance reference that reminds me of notes and plans I made before the session. This keeps paperwork to a minimum. Rather than referencing your notes within a large document during the game, you can simply look at a simple visual diagram […]

9 Ways to Prep For Sessions Faster

In a recent Zoom call with Platinum Wizards of Adventure I read this in the chat log: My biggest pain point: Prep Time vs. Game Time – I like preparing but I often don’t have the time. I understand this dilemma. While some GMs can improvise entire campaigns with just a packet of salt, a […]

Troubles With Green Box Text

RPT Platinum Patron Lee asks: I still struggle with “green box text” vs. map building. Do I spend my time providing 3 sentences of description, or do I spend an hour drawing a great map? I find writing those 3 sentences very intimidating for some reason, like I am not giving enough information. Green text […]

Outsmart Your Players With 3-Step Villain Plans

How do we outsmart our players? It’s all their brains against ours. Surely the odds are against us. However, here’s a neat trick we can perform to make our villains smarter and our adventures more cunning. We look at the possible plots and actions our poor villain might take and group them into three buckets. […]

My 7 Keys to a Great Sandbox Game

New RPT GM Eddie asked for advice on homebrewing adventures: I love that a campaign can be going strong that long. The one I’m running is like 6 months old. Even though I’m pretty new to the game (less than a year) I’ve been looking more into old school revival and alternative materials because although […]

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part I

In Faster Combat, a Three Round Combat Plan is how your combat will end after your side has had three licks against the other side. Why would we make something like that? If your fights finish after the third bell, think how much faster they’ll be than melees that just grind on to the last […]

Fast 5 Room Dungeons, Clue Tip, Instant Idea Generator, Different Combats – Mail Bag Edition

Ahn-nyong-ha-se-yo Johnn, It’s a Mail Bag issue and today I’ve got four helpful GMing tips for you. First is about alternative combat outcomes. Second is how to instantly generate ideas. Third is about adding clues. Fourth is a fantastic 5 question formula for fast 5 Room Dungeon ideation. Before we dive in, you might be […]

Cunning Combat Strategy – 3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats Part II

How do you make your next combat fast and exciting effective 3 Round Combat Plans? And what are we supposed to do in each round? What is our strategy here? That’s what I show you in today’s tips, which are taken from my brand new Faster Combat 5E course launching this spring. Today, I’ll go […]

How to Master Your Craft

Sain bainuu Johnn, There’s something they neglect to tell you about writing. Understand this “plot twist” and the whole job changes. Here’s the really cool part. We can apply this new way of looking at things to GMing, as well! And my hope is, it’ll change how to approach mastering your craft, which I call […]

How Can You Make Combat Flow?

Recently, I’ve been talking about crummy combats. They kill entire campaigns if you let them. And the remedies I’m seeing out there don’t really make a dent. You can shave a few seconds by rolling attack and damage at once, but we want to cut our combat length by at least half so we can […]

Do You Get Bored Of Your Campaigns?

What’s the purpose of a campaign? My answer: To finish it. No joke. Other factors rank high too: Tell a long-form story Keep the adventure going with beloved characters Have more fun at every game! My apex, though, is to finish the dang thing. Else, feelings of a story unfinished. An open loop that nags. […]

3-Step GM PiXiE Kaizen

There’s a myth about game master time management. Or even about time management in general. Folks think it’s about time. But in my experience that’s not true. It’s about energy. Doing campaign prep for 15 minutes a day will get more prep done over the long haul than doing it once in a while in […]

How to Create Situations With 5 Room Dungeons

We want to cue up situations, not outcomes. By that, I mean we don’t dictate the actions of the characters. That’s the players’ job. But as storytellers, we have a job to do too. We need to weave good tales from our setting, adventure plans, and gameplay as it happens. How can we do this […]

Weaponize Your Villain’s Secret

RPT GM Dale S asked me for help with his adventure’s bad guy and plot: Hi Johnn, Would you mind wading in with any thoughts on my villain’s objective? The local gnoll clan and their unusual allies are attacking a small walled human frontier settlement. This is a nighttime ‘storming the barricades’ kind of assault […]

7 Tips On Crafting Dynamic Relationships For NPCs

From Ria Kennedy Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #287 NPCs are an essential game device, and it’s important to figure out how to get the most out of them. Following are a few quick tips to help you build dynamic NPC relationships. Give Every NPC A Purpose Every existent NPC should have a purpose. You have better […]

Keep Players Intensely Engaged With the 3 Conflicts

Character arcs tell the story of how characters develop by overcoming foes and challenges in pursuit of their goals. This is the ambition of campaign play: to develop cool character story arcs. Such arcs keep players intensely engaged in your games. Why? Thinking about armour, health points, personality scores, and other character sheet elements are […]

a-divine-way-to-manage-your-meddling-gods-3

A Divine Way to Manage Your Meddling Gods – a 3 Part Framework

This is a guest post by Jonathan Hardin based on his original article at Sojourners Awake. How can you have gods walk your realm without whacking campaign balance? How can you turn deities into Plot Factories? And how can you roleplay divine beings in interesting ways that do not spell immediate doom for belligerent characters? […]

Roleplaying Tips Round-Up February 2021

February was another great month, but it sure went by fast. There was a big Campaign Logger feature added plus a new add-on. The new feature is Charts & Diagrams. Perfect for plotting, faction pyramids, and other organizational uses. And we launched a dice room to help GMs who run virtual, async, or distance gaming. […]

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part I

The Chaotic Good Game Room

From Carl Ross

The Organized Game Room

From Jeffrey G. Table & Shelf This is a picture from the entrance to the gaming room. I use two 2′ 6″ x 6′ tables, and then put a 3′ x 4′ map table 12″ above the tables itself. There is a light underneath the top table along with a circuit breaker for anyone that […]

Villain Roleplay Tips – A Trio of Detestable Traits

Salaam Johnn, How can we get players to chase our villains like frothing lunatics brandishing cleavers overhead? It’s starts with someone they want to punch. Someone who isn’t normal but has turned their difference into something cringey. A monster on the inside, at the least. We can achieve all these things for our villain in […]

3 Things To Do When You Get Bored With Your Campaign

Are you bored with GMing? RPT GM Michael asks: I’m a beginning DM that has DMed two dozen sessions of a campaign in the setting of Mystara (Known World) using the B.E.C.M.I. version of Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve taken the group through one and a half of the 1980s’ B series Basic D&D modules – […]

My 7 Keys to a Great Sandbox Game

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