Here’s a great tip for speeding up combats from RPT GM Gary Martin: I’ve found one of the huge culprits at our table is the player zoning out while waiting for their turn. Even if turns are slow, it makes them five times slower when you have re-explain what’s going on. What I started doing […]
Continue readingHola %FIRSTNAME% Roleplaying Tips Patron Jeffrey asks how to create five room horror adventures: Johnn, been reading for a long time, and always figured that I would one day have a question worthy of asking… I guess that day is today. How would you use a five-room dungeon to run a horror game? For readers […]
Continue readingIt’s better to give players lots of good information instead of keeping it all behind your screen. RPT GM Leigh wrote me and said, “The tricky bit is breaking the bad habit of keeping info secret.” How true. I remember often thinking, “Wow, it’s going to be so cool when I reveal this info. My […]
Continue readingI rarely play. I almost always GM because I like that role best. But at IntrigueCon I got to log 14 hours on the art-side of the GM screen and I made notes based on my observations and learnings. In a past Musing I discussed how GM details can derail the game. Right details, in […]
Continue readingReward players with treasure that enhances their skills. Sometimes we get focused just on just combat-related rewards, or treasures that grant cool powers like invisibility. Mix things up by offering skill items. Here’s how. Step 1: Make A List Run through the skill list of your game system and make a list. I’m a spreadsheet […]
Continue readingI started a new campaign last Friday with the Murder Hobos group. I’ve put my Hobos of the Apocalypse campaign on hold while I do some additional prep for it. The campaign is going full sandbox, and I’m currently thinking through the faction stuff. To fend off GM rust, I picked up Tales of the […]
Continue readingGame Master catty_big shared with me this wonderful medieval fantasy city map generator. [Black Crossing] As you know, drawing or consulting a map is my First Move. [Kill GM Procrastination With Your First Move] If I needed to whip up a city or town for my campaign then, I’d go to a tool like this […]
Continue readingA bit of fun inspiration for your campaign today. RPT GM Tony shares a random quest generator in Mad Libs format. What I like most about his plot generator is it creates a named and enumerated quest purpose. You could use this template to create legends, world wonders, artefacts, Spikes of Danger, and other nifty […]
Continue readingHere’s a fun reader tip from GM Barky on how to build your encounters. It’s definitely food for thought. Johnn, Here’s my recipe for encounter creation using a food metaphor: Meat Meat is the protein, the basic building block of life. In an encounter, it’s the enemy leader. Example: my players have to pay a […]
Continue readingI got my first taste of sandbox play in B2: Keep on the Borderlands. The PCs based themselves in The Keep and forayed into the Wild. A crazy hermit shared the location of several caves nearby, confirmed dangerous, rumoured with riches. As the party crested a hill, a horseshoe valley stretched before them, rings of […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #703 I’m building an adventure series with James Introcaso called The Demonplague Dungeon. It’s going to be four parts long and will take PCs from first level to 20th. There are dozens of sites, ruins, and dungeons filled with factions, secrets, and treasures. There’s a village called Tomar’s Crossing that’s the last […]
Continue readingFrom Aesma Daeva Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #704 I was recently reading some of Johnn’s articles and other sources about creating villains and realized that, in many gaming tables, little focus is placed on the villain’s secrets, flaws, and weaknesses. Maybe that’s because when we think of villains, the first thing that comes to mind is […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #702 Loopy Planning Meets Dungeon World Fronts From Johnn Four This summer I spent time reading Dungeon World again and exploring blogs and articles about the game. On first perusal, Dungeon World felt weird and stilted. The terminology was odd and it seemed like the rules made GMing this awkward recipe of […]
Continue readingFrom Phil Nicholls Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #701 [Comment from Johnn: You’ve heard of the 3 Act Structure? Or the Hollywood Formula? Or the Hero’s Journey and Monomyth? Well there’s a Russian version different than those. And Phil is taking us through its highlights. Today he digs into villains! It’s great to learn new storytelling structures, […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #699 Five PC Home Base Tips From Anson Brehmer Heroes are often shiftless wanderers, wandering from town to town looking for the biggest problem to tackle, the biggest monster to kill, and the biggest haul to score for a night of ale, wenches, and a shopping spree. This is a fine way […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #698 Schrödinger’s Characters A Way To Game Around Player Absences From Craig Judd “Sorry guys, I can’t make it to the game this time.” Getting a group of people together for a few hours can be challenging. Doing it regularly every week or month, doubly so! How often have scheduling conflicts and […]
Continue readingFrom R. James Gauvreau Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #697 Hi, this is Johnn here. In today’s newsletter, RPG Designer James Gauvreau kicks off a short series on culture building for you. As a bit of background, James ran a Kickstarter last year and one of his backer tiers was to build a custom culture. I emailed […]
Continue readingFrom James Introcaso Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #696 Roleplaying NPC Mannerisms Part II It is time to put on your acting hat. Roleplaying NPC Mannerisms Part I revealed the importance of distinct, specific non-player character mannerisms. When a great game master inhabits an NPC, the character’s physical and verbal mannerisms help set it apart from the […]
Continue readingFrom John Large Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #695 A guild is a group of artisans or merchants who joined together in an association to protect their members and control their trade in a specific area. Non-guild members attempting to ply their trade would either find themselves persuaded to sign up or be quickly run out of […]
Continue readingFrom Phil Nicholls Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #694 In RPT#692 I introduced you to the work of Vladimir Propp and his underlying story structure of 31 Scenes. While his sequence is too linear to use as a campaign framework, you can use several of the individual scenes as encounter design tips. Today I’ll dig into scene […]
Continue readingFrom James Introcaso Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #693 Memorable non-player characters are distinct. Whether you created an NPC or it came out of a published adventure, it is up to you as game master to make each quest giver, tavern goer, and orc slaver different from the rest. The key to creating a believable, distinct cast […]
Continue readingFrom Anson Brehmer Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #692 Getting the PCs to do things is like herding cats. It’s hard to get them all pointed in a single direction, and sometimes they get lost and confused about what it is they should be doing. If you’re trying to give guidance to the group, but don’t want […]
Continue readingFrom Christopher Sniezak Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #691 I love space opera, laser swords, and ray guns, jet bikes in space swooping around ships bigger than they are and winning. These epic stories in vast galaxies sometimes take place a long time ago, far far away, and sometimes they’re in our own time and space, but […]
Continue readingFrom Phil Nicholls Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #690 Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel builds upon the ground breaking Apocalypse World by Vincent D Baker. Along with bringing a real OSR feel to indie gaming, Dungeon World includes fantastic advice for the GM. The first Dungeon World principle is to draw maps but leave […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #689 After awhile you don’t want to get ready for and run games anymore. You get writer’s block. You dread game day and find any reason to postpone. You feel uncreative and stressed out before each looming game day deadline. It’s a tough spot to be in. And I’ve been there. Maybe […]
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