Roleplaying Tips Blog

A Fantastic Encounter Building Tool

The Inexhaustive List of Questions is an amazing RPG encounter building tool. Use it combined with the Encounter Pyramid to create awesome encounters.

Monster Challenge

Had a great game of Out of the Abyss on Friday. Lots of funny gameplay stories came out of it. Here’s two, plus a monster challenge for you.

RPT#198 – The Session Checklist: Ingredients To A Successful Game Session, Part I

A Brief Word From Johnn A very brief word this week. Hope you enjoy today’s tips and use the session checklist idea as a quality assurance tool. Sometimes, as real life encroaches on our RPG time, and also during games when things get hectic, we put our heads down and charge straight ahead. A session […]

5 Epic Monster Villains From My Campaigns – What Are Yours?

The other day I read a blog about the GM’s Top 10 mastermind monster villains. I love this idea! It’s great inspiration. So today for fun I’m sharing my favourite monster villains with you. The requirements for my list are I can only list monsters I have GM’d or made adventures for. In some cases I […]

Trick Question For You – All Players Count

Here’s a trick question for you. If you have Bob, Yuan, Amy, Bjorn, and Alejandro in your group, how many players do you need to design for to have more fun at every game? The answer is…

Prophecies & Omens – January 2017 RPG Blog Carnival

A new month is upon us, and it’s time for another RPG Blog Carnival. Sewers & Garbage But first, thanks to 6d6 for hosting December’s carnival, Sewers & Garbage. Here’s the round-up post. Prophecies & Omens Tales of the GM takes us into the New Year with a theme you might have augured: Prophecies & […]

A campaign reboot view in snowy Salmon Arm, B.C.

Rebooting My Murder Hobos Campaign (And Yours) in Three Easy Steps

Here’s how I’m rebooting my Murder Hobos campaign in three easy steps, using new GMing techniques I learned in 2016 plus a few of my own design.

RPT#618: How to Get Your Players to Care

I don’t care what my players think about an NPC as long as there is some kind of emotion – funny, sad, irritated, or a good hate. Here’s how to do that.

RPG Adventure Themes tie the whole room together

Use Themes to Tie Your RPG Adventure’s Room Together

RPG adventure themes are the rug that ties the whole room together, man. Get theme right, and you intensify your adventures, players’ experience, and stories. Here’s an example: the hanged man.

Explosive Session Starts, Part II: Stakes and Consequences

Last Musings I spoke of explosive sessions starts. After social time, inject energy right away so the session feeds off that the rest of the night. And, it turns out, the quality of how your session starts depends a lot on how your last session ended. Who knew? If you can’t end on a cliffhanger, […]

Explosive Session Starts, Part I: The Cajun Spice List

Here’s how to take an existing planned encounter and ensure it has spice for an explosive session start.

Why do you love dungeons?

Dungeons: dark holes in the ground. What’s the attraction? Is it the loving community of hungry monsters? The helpful pits, poison needles, and crushing ceiling tiles? Maybe it’s the pleasant aromas of necrotic flesh, well-groomed creatures, and fresh flowers? I urge you to think about the big picture of each dungeon for a moment during […]

My powerfully-human way of getting players off the Kill-For-XP Track

A Roleplaying Tips GM wrote in with this problem: Johnn. My players are all about the XP! “If I can’t get XP for it, there’s no point.” Short of “I’ll give you XP if you can tell me what this quest is about” I haven’t figured out a way to get them off the “XP […]

Campaign Logger game master organization app for RPG

Create Your Own Generator Using Campaign Logger’s Engine

The Campaign Logger RPG app includes a generic engine you can use to create your own generators for the app. It works by defining how the result should look and then providing tables from which to pick elements for the desired result. It’s a bit like making Mad Libs. Here’s a tutorial.

Creating My First 5 Room Dungeon in Campaign Logger

For my recently started MMO (moderately multi-player offline) campaign I have been looking for a format which eases on my GM workload and still provides an entertaining experience for my potentially changing player and character audience. Luckily, Johnn Four shot me a link to his 5 Room Dungeons which was exactly what I have been looking for.

On top of the format, managing a changing audience that potentially crawls the same dungeon more or less concurrently asked for a tool that allowed fast, easy and effective note-taking while I am moderating the table at the same time. Enter Campaign Logger…

Encounter Triangles – A New Design Tool For Your Gm Toolbox

What I like now are encounters with more than one interesting aspect. Used to be I was satisfied with a monster and some treasure. But not these days. I want my cheese and pickles too.

So I’ve come up with a draft of a technique I’m calling Encounter Triangles. Here’s the gist of it. Let me know what you think.

You Are What Your Dice Eat

Did you know we lose fat by breathing it out? It’s true. I discovered this on my quest to losing 18 pounds (and counting) this year.

The myth is we “burn” fat, or fat lost through diet and exercise breaks up and gets excreted. But scientists discovered awhile ago that’s not how it works.

The Potion Factory for Fun Faction Finagling

On theme with this month’s RPG Blog Carnival, here’s an idea for arming your next faction without destroying campaign balance: create a Factory.

The Next Action Method – Small Moments of Game Prep

When I have the major elements of my Loopy Plots figured out, I need to dig into certain details to get gameplay going and plug holes.

A tool I use to do this is my Next Action Method.

Campaign Logger New Updates

New Campaign Logger updates and bug fixes are now available for Web app users. Next time you login you should be updated instantly. Updates include new dice roller codes, enter key now does line breaks, and more.

GM Tools Carnival Wrap-Up

September’s RPG Blog Carnival was all about Game Master Tools, Aids, Apps & Hacks.

How can we be better, more efficient, more effective game masters?

Several GMs stepped up to the plate and wrote about their favourite tools and approaches…

Hello, are you listening?

Upon reflection, one of my biggest challenges is listening to the game. I’m not paying enough attention to my players. For example, how many plot hooks did I pick up from my players last session? Zero. The trick to being a happy game master is being present during games. Being in the present. If I’m […]

Campaign Logger Just Replaced My Paper Notebook

Starting a new campaign is like the last strip of Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes: “full of possibilities!” It’s a blank piece of paper, a fresh field of snow, or whatever analogy is most appropriate for the area you live in. The only thing standing between you and the epic plans you have for your players’ characters is penning them all down.

The pain of GMing a perfectionist player

An RPT Reader asked for tips on how to deal with a perfectionist player. Someone who “enjoys really thinking out moves and plays to make sure they picked the right one.” The player also has the “classic new player fear of doing it wrong.” “The new player part is not what I’m worried about. I […]

My players are crazy! They’re destroying treasure

Last night I could only stand there and shake my head in disbelief.

I saw them destroy not one, but two unique, custom treasures I had made for specific players….

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