Roleplaying Tips Blog

The Quarantine

Here’s a great campaign seed from Danish Roleplaying Tips GM Alexander Aubert: A quarantined city where a magical disease is turning everyone, including the PCs, slowly into monsters. These days, when I come across ideas for adventures I do something new. It’s a quick action borrowed from Dungeon World. And it’s part of this bigger […]

Get Off the Reverse Railroad

Do you create detailed backgrounds? Kingdoms, villains, magic items. These days I avoid them like the plague. They’re like reverse railroads. I only want a paragraph — two at most — about each game piece. Here’s why. You flesh out your campaign in two ways: either you play the game, or you talk about it. […]

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 […]

Shout The Name of Your Enemy and He Will Be Punished

I had a D&D dream last night. I love it when I dream about games, but it happens so rarely. This dream was about a magic tome. It’s a cool enough idea I will be using with modification on the Murder Hobos. As always, the dream was weird and scattered. I’ll spare you the details. […]

My Table Rules

“The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don’t need any rules.” – Gary Gygax, Born Jul. 27, 1938. This quote was called out to me by my buddy Colin Theriot. And it came in handy last Murder Hobos game. The party is fighting a group of elemental cultists doing a […]

GMing Your First Game Session – d12 Tips

What advice would you give to a GM prepping their first session? A reader emailed me and shared their nervousness at sitting behind the screen for the first time. So I asked this question over at the Game Master Tips community (almost 9,000 members woot!) and received some great advice. Here’s d12 excellent pieces of […]

Panicked Prep for Next Session

We start at 6:30 pm. We finish at 11 pm. Four and a half hours or 270 minutes. That’s five 60 minute encounters, or nine half-hour encounters. Let’s combo and say 3×60 + 3×30. My goal is now creating just six encounters. Next, I brainstorm encounter seeds. The key here is to start with one […]

The Next Action Method – Small Moments of Game Prep

Hola %FIRSTNAME% 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. I grabbed this technique from Dave Allen’s productivity book, Getting Things Done. Planning stuff out […]

When Players Stop Talking, You Start. But What Do You Say?

What’s the problem: Work backwards from product referral, from GM doctor’s symptom prescription When players stop talking, you start. But what do you say? What’s the remedy: How does the GM doctor recommend solving this? Do they need more information? Do they need refocus? (Hints, prods, change thinking) Do they need a kick in the […]

Better Storytelling With Two-Sided Characterization, Part II

Last Musing we chatted about the importance of characterizing details you bring into gameplay. As you provide encounter descriptions, introduce NPCs, offer treasures, tell secrets, and convey the world to your friends, you can think about both variables of the equation. The first variable is about how you inject physical and emotional energy into your […]

Better Storytelling With Two-Sided Characterization, Part I

Better Storytelling With Two-Sided Characterization Characterization is how you roleplay the people, places, and things in your adventures. Here’s how to add panache, style, and zing via characterization to engage your players more and become a better storyteller. To me, it’s all roleplaying. But in the literary world, they call it characterization. When the PCs […]

More City Flavours

Ciao %FIRSTNAME% Last week, I shared a list of flavourful things the PCs might see happen each day in your city. I received some great comments from readers I’d like to share with you today. Here’s a great campaign kick-off “birds eye view” approach from Tom Ganz: I started my Curse if the Crimson Throne […]

What’s Night Life Like In A Fantasy City Like?

New Roleplaying Tips reader Nathan M. sent me a nice list of city details. In his words, “Here are a few of the things adventurers might come to expect as they return or leave the bustling cities. After all, you do not want to be caught out after dark scuffling with some drunk bandits.” Sunrise […]

Use Setting Questions To Avoid A Tossed Salad

Last Musing we explored the idea of Setting Questions. Getting your players to help you flesh out your world with new details from their imaginations and character perspectives. We talked about making sure you add adventure details into your questions so players will care more about their characters, the adventure, and your world. Another ingredient […]

Stories Within Stories

Roleplaying Tips GM Michael Downey has this great tip for us about finding story opportunities in NPC reactions. Hey Johnn, Just thought I would share a new trick I found for adding some variety and depth to NPC reactions. When I create an NPC, I roll a d10 to determine their initial reaction to the […]

Mad Lib 5 Room Dungeon Idea Generator For You

Use this Mad Lib to create a ton of 5 Room Dungeon seeds for your campaigns: [A GROUP] [IS DOING SOMETHING] with [AN ITEM] at [THE LOCATION] in order to [MOTIVE]. The location is the site or setting of your 5 Room Dungeon. The group is an NPC or faction from your campaign. The item […]

Pcs Versus Everything

The picture above is hex biscuits my wife Alana made last night to go with chilli. A pretty awesome surprise. Thanks wife! The daily writing continues to go well. Even better, I’m getting positive feedback on the shorter emails I’ve been testing out. It’s a joy writing them, and so far readers have been enjoying […]

A Village Name That’s a Funny Puzzle

Here’s a funny, simple puzzle for your game. My mom is reading a book called The Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman. In it there’s a place called Saint Ophere. Turns out the place was named because someone long ago misread a sign. The sign read: Stop here Stop here with some punctuation becomes […]

Emotions Before the Game

I’m reading an interesting GMing book right now called How to Run by Alexis D. Smolensk. And Alexis has a pre-game welcoming stage I think is brilliant: “…I must motivate [the players], provoking their attention and creating the shared experience that is game play. “At the start of the session, the players enter the theatre, […]

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 […]

Encounters Seeds Formula Part II

In a recent Musings email [Panicked Prep For Next Session] I talked about a formula to create encounter seeds fast: What if? + one source of inspiration = one encounter seed. I also provided three example sources of inspiration: The Monster Manual The News Random Page Finally, I offered bonus points if you connect encounter […]

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. The first was a quartz horse. Chipped and scarred from abuse, the item does not look like much. But press a button on its base […]

d10 Things You Hear In Town

I often stumble over thinking up rumours on-the-fly. Especially in my sandbox games where there are so many possibilities. I end up just slandering a character or bad-mouthing the establishment. While good for a laugh, that doesn’t drive the campaign forward. So Jochen and I just added a new generator to Campaign Logger called Town […]

Tarrasque vs. Dracolich

Got this great email from Martin Lavallee in response to my ghost story [The Craziest Jerk I’ve Been Yet] the other day: “I am using a red dragon from time to time [to harass the group] and the PCs are about to become strong enough to engage her directly. “They’re racing against time to find […]

The Craziest Jerk I’ve Been Yet

I’ve done something terribly good and amazingly evil in my campaign. I don’t know whether to cackle in glee or hang my head in shame. Here’s what’s happening. The Murder Hobos early in Season I killed the Townmaster of Phandelver and buried his body in his back yard. The Townmaster provoked the fight, and Roscoe […]

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