GM Techniques Archives - Roleplaying Tips

How to Create Cool Magic Item Backgrounds in 60 Seconds

Give your magic item a quick history. Then use the history to tie a whole bunch of things together that will make you look like a genius. To flesh out your item’s lore fast, follow these four simple steps.

Kill GM Procrastination With Your First Move

When game master procrastination hits, I do what I call my First Move. Nail your first move, and prep instantly gets a lot easier.

What Are Seeds And Hooks?

Anon GM wrote in with this request about seeds and hooks: I need your help with something embarrassing. I have been DMing for years now and realized there is something that seems to be foundational to game play and I kind of don’t know anything about it.

I have read your tips and have read in multiple places about seeds and hooks. What are they and how do I use them?

How to Avoid a TPK When GMing Intense Encounters

With the Encounter Intensify Technique you increase the stakes during an encounter to give your players a jolt of adrenaline. Just when you think it can’t get worse or more desperate, it does.

A reader asked me how to avoid wiping the party, because I advised picking a moment when encounter outcome seems dubious. Pick a low moment for the PCs to ramp up that intensity.

It’s just like in the movies. Something bad happens to the hero. As the hero struggles, something even worse happens, putting the audience on the edge of its seat.

How to Make Your Encounters More Intense

Static RPG encounters become predictable. We roll initiative. PCs choose their targets. Grind until the last hit point. However, there’s a concept I’ve penned in my upcoming 5 Room Dungeons book called Intensify. Use this technique to make encounters come alive, surprise the PCs, and keep your players thoroughly entertained.

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

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0738 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 […]

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.

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…

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.

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 […]

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 […]

Encounters Seeds formula part II

In a recent Musing 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 seeds to each other so your plot […]

Panicked Prep For Next Session

Writer’s block. Bleh. You can’t figure out what to craft for next session. No encounter ideas come to mind. Zilch. Panic sets in as you hear the clock tick.

Here’s how I talk myself off the ledge.

Boy walking through magic portal into space

They Can Sleep When They’re Dead

What do you do when your players rest after every encounter? Crikey! That upsets game balance and makes you reconfig encounters on the fly because the PCs are fully healed, buffed, and spelled. Here are several ways to beat one-encounter days.

The First 15 Minutes – How to Kickoff Great Game Sessions

From Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0581 The First 15 Minutes – How to Kickoff Great Game Sessions RPT GM Juaquine Silveira offers this great tip and tip request: I am a fairly new GM, and while I have some skill I still have a lot of questions. We all know people have short attention […]

Reader Tip Request: How do you handle split parties?

Today, I’d like your advice and tips on how to handle split parties. Daniel S. writes: “How can I make everyone happy when groups are split in their decisions for destinations and plans?” One tip I have is to go around the table and give each split-off player or sub-group a bit of spotlight time. […]

Reader Tip Request: Fantasy Chase Scenes

RPT Reader Devon Creamer asks: I was wondering how I could do a chase scene in one of my campaigns. My dilemma is that chase scenes are supposed to be fast and action packed, no dull parts or slow parts. But with Pathfinder’s usual movement rules, it’s too boring and my players lose interest. Thanks […]

How to Think Faster On Your Feet While You GM

A couple weeks ago I sent out a Reader Tip Request for the spouse of a GM in need. The game master was having problems reacting to in-game events. He needed to think faster – or different – on his feet so he could handle unexpected player decisions and actions better. Here’s the request from […]

Top 5 Soul-Draining Mistakes of Game Prep

Martin Ralya at Engine Publishing sent me a preview of his latest book, Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep. (Thanks Martin – the book looks great!) Written by Phil Vecchione, the 127 page book is carved into three main sections: Understanding Prep Prep Toolbox Evolving Your Style There are also meta […]

D&D GMs: How to Solve Problem Players Once And For All – Without Messy Confrontations

One of the most frequent help requests I get is from GMs frustrated with problem players. If there is conflict in your group, your games will suck. And that’s a shame because role-playing games can be so rich and enjoyable when everyone is working together, on the same wavelength, creating amazing moments. Danny Iny of […]

Remedies For GM Burn-Out

by The Roleplaying Tips Community Lots of great tips from subscribers in this Flash Back Friday submission,covering everything from being sick of gaming to having writer’s block. I hope the cure for you lies herein! Note on Navigation: To quickly move between readers’ emails, use your application’s Find or Search feature and look for @@@@@@. I have purposely […]

Preparation of Material for a Roleplaying Adventure

by Heather Grove When you create your own campaign there’s so much you could spend your time on. Should you write up non-player characters (NPCs) with rich backgrounds? What about scenes you expect will take place in game, and speeches spoken by NPCs? Should you detail the background of a plot, or the things you think […]

150 Benign Urban Fantasy Encounters

From Chris Buono Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0299 Chris polled members of the GMMastery Yahoo group for benign urban encounter ideas and then added a few of his own to come up with this awesome list you might find useful for your own campaigns. Editor Isaac and I added a few more as well. Thanks Chris, […]

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