Roleplaying Tips Blog

Tips For New GMs Creating Campaign Outlines For The First Time — RPT#680

In RPT#676 I posted this tip request from your fellow reader From: Kristin Hello! I am a newbie GM trying to create a campaign for Pathfinder for the first time. I am completely at a loss for what to do. I have been working on my own world since I was about 16. I’m coming up […]

10 Easy Ways To Think On Your Feet Better

Contents: This Week’s Tips Summarized A Brief Word From Johnn 10 Easy Ways To Think On Your Feet Better Readers’ Tips Of The Week This Week’s Tips Summarized 10 Easy Ways To Think On Your Feet Better Answer Questions With A Question Plan, Scan, Action Make Puns Highlight Your Notes Breathe Build On Ideas, Don’t […]

Spy Missions: Covert Considerations for the Whole Party — RPT#641

Spy missions will challenge you to create a world of espionage, high stakes, and stealth where your spy PCs shine while their less stealthy PC allies ruin everything!

Horde-ing => Creating Factions the Fast and Easy Way — RPT#643

Quick Navigation The WarningWhat A CrocThundertreeThe Order of the DragonWrap UpDecide On The Goal Of The GroupDecide On Resources The Group Has At Their DisposalDetail One Or Two People Who Are The Faces Of The GroupPick An Additional Secret About The GroupDecide On The Competency Level Of The GroupWrapping UpBrief Word From JohnnSession 7: Torm’s […]

67 Questions To Make Your Players Roleplay More

Here’s a great technique to get your players roleplaying more. Have NPCs ask them questions. But not just any questions. Yes/No questions, for example, don’t get players talking or thinking much. Good NPC questions provide another boon: they give you ideas to steal for later use. While the players answer the NPC, you log their […]

Campaign’s Pillars: How To Pacing Your Game’s Exciting Moments

Manage pace during sessions instead of scripting it. This lets you react to your game as it unfolds and is one less strict plan you must track. But, leaving pace to encounter-level decisions burdens you with yet another thing. Until you’ve made pacing a habit and can spot opportunities to switch energy up mid-session, it […]

d6 Ways To Spice Up Next Session

Next session, let’s mix it up. Let’s make things more fun for ourselves and our players using these d6 tables of dangers, goals, and plot twists for ideas.

Should You Run Easy Combats?

I posted something on Reddit and got a great tangential comment from user/ChristopherDornan. He advocates for occasional easy combats, which I agree with. Here’s his excellent comment: Don’t underestimate the value of an easy combat. It does two things, both are incredibly important. It drives home that PCs are heroes, and much stronger than your […]

Get Into Gamespace Faster With A Good Session Warm-Up

Sometimes you have a rough transition between everyone arriving for a game and the game starting. Everyone catching up on news, one player looking everywhere for missing dice, another player bugging you with min/max ploys. It’s raucous. When you do finally catch everyone’s attention, it still takes awhile for players to ease into character and […]

Use This 10 Idea Checklist To Fix Your Pacing

How to manage your Session Pacing better with this cool “midpoint” checklist. Use this tool halfway through sessions to crank up table energy again.

Is Running Two Game Masters A Disaster?

I’ve had mixed success with co-GMing. First, let’s talk perils.

This GM Is Burned Out On The Grid

It is amazing how RPGs can flex to accommodate our GMing preferences and style. A game like Monopoly allows little difference each play. But our beloved RPGs are marvellous in how many ways we can tweak and adapt them to match our individual and changing notions of what’s fun. For example, RPT GM Jorge Gonzalez […]

Drawing Maps Based On Cultures

RPT GM Mike G sent me this tip about treasure, and a comment about building an alien culture: Regarding PCs getting anxious for treasure — if they are far from home, throw a big box of treasure in their lap. It need not be a giant statue — just something they cannot easily pocket. It […]

GMing Gods, Demons And Immortals

How do you GM over-powered beings like demons and gods, and still give the players the sense of accomplishment and great memories that such encounters create?

Factions Done Blades In The Dark Style

I’ve become a big fan of the way that Blades in the Dark handles world-building. Assign basic stats and create agendas tracked with progress clocks.

What Do I Do When My Players Try To Rob A House?

I’ve got a DM question for you. What do I do when my players try to rob a house?

Try A Sheet-Switch Event For Better Roleplay

Loooong-time Roleplaying Tips GM Lord Skudley replied to my recent musing of blank character sheet campaigns with this neat idea about PC swaps.

6 Examples Of Published Sandbox Campaigns You Might Run

What are some different configurations of sandbox campaigns you might run? Here are a half-dozen approaches based on what I’ve GM’d or have put on my bucket list to game master someday.

Unlockable Reward Items

Been getting many emails where frustrated game masters want roleplay and storybuilding but players just wanna hurt stuff.

How Long Does Forever Take? A GM Pit Trap To Avoid

That’s how it might feel waiting for the player on your left to finally wrap up their turn. “Whew. Whose initiative is it now?”

My Phases of GMing

My friend Eric got the Red Box for Christmas and gave it to me to figure out. A couple days later I was GMing his new PCs through B1: In Search Of The Unknown.

How The Stars Could Inspire Your Games

A friend at work just got a deluxe telescope. Always interested in astronomy, he contacted a local club and a member approached him with a used one for sale.

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy – What’s the Adventuring Difference?

RPT GM Sky Slayton asks, “Sci Fi adventure ideas — how are they different from traditional fantasy?”

Quick & Cool Magic Item Backgrounds In 60 Seconds

Today’s Musing is a longer piece about how to create great background stories for your magic items. It’s something I wrote for Strolen.com in 2011 and I thought you might find it useful now for romancing your treasure.

What Do You Wish Players Asked You?

You find a Ring of Gather Player Information. It makes each of your players ask you any question you want about your game. What questions would you want them to ask?

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