Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #32 Tips 1-5 can be found here:RPT#31 – How To Create Powerful Plot Hooks, Part I Plan the Hook’s Basics & Leave the Details Open Players enjoy feeling they are in control of the story and their character’s actions. If you need to have the PCs do something specific or go to […]
Continue readingEffective RPG plot hooks grab the characters’ attention right away. They get players to stop what they’re currently doing and pay attention. If you try to make your plot hooks too subtle your players might not notice. Then your hook may need a hook of its own!
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #30 Villains Plan Ahead & Learn From Their Mistakes From Django Dunn Something that always made me scratch my head was the GI Joe cartoon. In just about every show, Cobra basically had the world by the short and curlies. GI Joe saved the day only by some fluke discovery of a […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #29 Let The Flunkies Do All The Work Until The Final Scene It is a good idea to keep the PCs and the major villain separated until the final, climactic scene. Let the flunkies do all the work in the mean time. Let them serve as the hands, eyes, ears and mouth […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #28 Make the Final Scene an Interesting Place Create a dramatic setting and situation for the final conflict. For example, let’s say ‘Tanglebeard the Cruel’ is our pirate villain. He has slain relatives of the PCs during his raids, started a war between two countries through trickery, mercilessly robbed the PCs on […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #27 Seize Control With Questions To help a villain gain the advantage in any parley have them ask the questions. He who asks the questions controls the conversation and what comes from it. If possible, the villain should try to begin conversations with a question, which should lead to another question and […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #26 Overview: STEP 1. Assign Your Villain a General Power & Success LevelSTEP 2. Give Your Villain Some Strengths & WeaknessesSTEP 3. Give Your Villain an Objective & a Point Form Plan STEP 1. Assign Your Villain a General Power & Success Level Don’t go through your character creation process and try […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #25 Do Not Use Contractions In Greg’s article [see my comments above for the URL] he advises not to use contractions when “speaking in NPC”. It’s more dramatic to say “it is your misfortune”, “do not think to presume” and “you cannot understand my woe” than “it’s”, “don’t” and “can’t”. Great tip! […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #24 Here’s The Original Question From Lythurienne SunHawk: “Okay, this is probably a little bit of an odd question to come up, but how would you deal with an unlucky GM? Basically, here it is. As a player, my luck seems to be perfectly normal. If I have a 75% chance of […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #23 Tape Recorder Tape recording sessions is not recommended: the recorder often dampens play with its presence, changing tapes is annoying and the playback is b-o-r-i-n-g.However, I’ve found it extremely helpful to sit around before or after a game session and record the group’s thoughts. I’ve only done this a few times […]
Continue readingFrom Guardian Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #22 Dice Rolling dice is your enemy. The more time you spend dealing with dice, the less time you can spend planning the critters’ moves, top bad guy’s plans, and dealing with the PCs’ actions. It’s not that you want to roll fewer dice (nothing scares hack’n’slashers like picking up […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #21 For The Players Give them each a chocolate bar or homemade cookies halfway through the session. Buy each player a toy that costs under two bucks. Recently I gave my players silly putty, crayons, balloons, pick-up sticks, a mini-lego set and modelling clay. I’m not sure who had more fun: the […]
Continue readingFrom Kevin Davies Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #20 Like many gamers, when I first entered the hobby, I thought that it was desirable and even necessary to have rules to account for the outcome of every possible Character action or environmental condition. Thick rulebooks were the norm, although roleplay games were typically thin on descriptive and […]
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Here’s what to put in your portable game master kit so you never forget to bring anything to a session again. Start with…
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #18 Make them cunning Help the players make overconfident mistakes by playing up ogres as dumb and slow Attacking ogres focus on spell casters first–with ogre-size rocks hurled at them if needed Employ pits and traps to defend lairs pile rocks on high ground and trigger them to fall create a fake […]
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Although journals are their own reward in the long run, an immediate incentive from the game master can help a player get over the short term hump for keeping a campaign journal until it becomes a habit.
Continue readingFrom: Peter Maranci, This is the second in a two-part series on campaign structure. Read Campaign Structure Part I. The Meta-Cycle Also known as an “arc”, the meta-cycle is a long-duration story form that has a beginning, middle, and end. This type can be divided into two sub-forms: “Padded” and “Expanded”. Padded: A to a1; […]
Continue readingFrom: Peter Maranci This is the first in a two-part series on campaign structure. Read Campaign Structure Part II. Fundamental to any roleplaying campaign is the conceptual structure which controls it. That structure is the basic frame upon which the gamemaster creates the framework of the campaign, like a tapestry on a loom; as the […]
Continue readingNumerous, Non-Lethal Attacks My new villain does not have the resources to completely wipe out the character party and still keep her other plots and plans going. So, like the mosquito, she is going to use many non-lethal attacks upon exposed areas to drive the characters as far away as possible. Examples of her intended […]
Continue readingOne of my biggest challenges as a game master today is time management. There’s just too much to do in my professional and personal life to devote as much time as I really want towards my #1 hobby: Roleplaying. Wizards Of The Coast just released the following information*, as part of an overall gaming industry […]
Continue readingEncounters are like pieces of a grand jigsaw puzzle that you build with your players over time into a story. Imagine then, if some of the pieces didn’t fit? What if some of the pieces were missing entirely? How would your puzzle turn out if all the pieces were round? Or how strong would the […]
Continue readingI believe encounters (some roleplayers also call them “scenes”) are the workhorses of roleplaying. Campaigns are simply the sum total of all the individual encounters that you plan for and play out. So, the theory is, if you make every encounter an exciting, memorable event, you will have a stellar campaign. Here are several ways […]
Continue readingI had the opportunity to have a very enjoyable roleplaying discussion with a few Roleplaying Tips Weekly subscribers this past weekend. And the topic of character romance in games came up. I put in my 2 cents worth and absorbed all I could. Here is a brief review of what was said and some tips […]
Continue readingThe voice is your most powerful means of communication. How you hear yourself is not necessarily how others hear you. Successful professionals have voices that command attention and move people to action. The following tips will help you to develop the voice of authority. Breathe from the diaphragm — the foundation of effective speech. It […]
Continue readingContents Imaginary Languages Excite the Brain and Add Depth to Your Campaign Help Request: Campaign Journals Imaginary Languages Excite the Brain and Add Depth to Your Campaign I remember the first time I played using the “local tongue” of my gaming group. What a great experience. Using foreign and fictional words made me feel like […]
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