NPCs & Roleplaying Archives - Roleplaying Tips

8 Things Worth Starting a Dungeon War Over

Just picked up Level Up by Courtney Campbell. It’s a small book of tables on random topics. And the first table I started reading spawned an article idea. The table is titled “Top Ten Dungeon Resources” and has this description: Well, you’ve got a dungeon. And you’ve got all these factions. Apparently they all live […]

How to Make Haggling Fun

“I despise haggling. I’d much rather have a bot handle it.” – A GM on the RPT Discord I hear that. Yelling numbers at players isn’t fun. I’m not sure when, but I stopped haggling for transaction purposes. Now my merchants want information instead of gold. It’s partly how I make villains seem three steps […]

3 Tips For Roleplaying Multiple NPCs In The Same Scene

Welcome back to our series diving into Game Master V’s tricky session! Last time, we tackled the problem of Passive Players. Today, we’re looking at a big cognitive load pit trap, which I think of as the Multiball problem. This is when too many things are moving at once and we lets things drop. “…the […]

Instant Puzzles: Give NPCs Secret Codes

We got to talking about living graffiti on the Discord and @ØCÇÜL? STOÒL shared this great idea: If you can’t see the image above, the message in part reads: I always pictured Druidic hobo signs to be a thing, like most folks that saw branches growing in a strange pattern might notice but someone proficient in Druidic […]

The Skull In The Tree

I was chatting with @Kodia Tomekeeper in the #tiny-prep-daily channel. She’s embedding a skull in a tree in her campaign. That reminded me of faces carved into certain trees in some campgrounds around here. They look amazing. Faces are powerful. They symbolize and communicate. My favourite example would be the Magic Mouth spell. A friend […]

How To Get Players To Like Your NPCs

How do you make an NPC likable so you can predictably say “The players will latch onto this one”? Right now, for many of us, it feels like a roll of the dice. RPT GM @Harebrained Tom asks this great question, and the top tip comes from @saket._.: I think overall my view is that […]

Battle of the Organs: The Gallbladder Strikes Back

I was working on a campaign faction last night called The Choir and my wife gave me a gruesome idea. But the idea didn’t mesh with what I had in mind for The Choir, so I used it to homebrew a horrific monster instead. Choir Culture: Death, Music, and Bone Organs The Choir ruled as […]

The Meta Characters Method: Factions With Brains, Brawn & Betrayal

ExileInParadise made a great comment to a series I’m writing about villains. The method he calls out creates immediate campaign drama with built-in adventure hooks and tactical inspiration for play. Each role can act independently or together, keeping your faction scenes spicy. Take it away Exile…. I really like Mike Pondsmith’s “Meta Characters” from Cyberpunk […]

Two Villains That Shape Your Campaign

I’m back. Thank you for the emails and well-wishes. I had some unscheduled downtime, but all is well. More news on that another time. Been thinking lately about villains. They’re actually the topic of a writing challenge I started a few days ago to get me back into rolling up some words. There are two […]

The Woes of Rulership

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0110 A Guest Article By Jared Hunt To those on the outside, being the boss may seem like the best job around. Seen from the top, however, the sacrifices, responsibilities, and woes involved make being in charge a little less glamorous than it might appear. Here are just a few of the […]

Kill An NPC Every Session

Let me clear up some potential misconceptions about, and make some amendments to, my kill an NPC every session rule. For example, from the RPT Discord: Hey all, I have been working to bring a new npc each session and then to also kill off one npc per session as Johnn has suggested. I find […]

Use Charisma as an NPC Personality Generator

There’s a great article in Dragon #243 about using charisma to determine personality. It supplied a small seven row table with examples. I love this idea. While definitions of charisma vary, it makes sense that it will affect an NPC’s personality, or at least, their surface personality. Further, tying a few personality traits to charisma […]

Roleplaying the Villain Xancrown

The grand finale of The Demonplague has the party facing off against the mighty demon, Xancrown, in his dungeon prison within the heart of Luna Valley. Today, I’d like to share a summary of his stats and then some tips on how to roleplay him. Before I dig into that, a reminder that the price […]

To Boldly Go Where NPCs Should Not

Why would you find people in the treacherous places where characters go? RPT GM Michael asks: One of my bigger challenges is to come up with friendly NPCs in hostile environments. Mostly why are they there and how is it conceivable and not an obvious plot device for lack of better words. Places adventurers go […]

d20 Noble Obligations

Privilege & Power: Using Nobility in Your World-Building and Plots. Read Part I here. And happy Wednesday. Yesterday, we looked at the rights and privileges nobles may get in your world. This helps flesh out noble PC backgrounds, aids in world-building, and inspires plot and encounter ideas. A fantastic way to balance out some of […]

Privilege & Power: Using Nobility in Your World-Building and Plots

Privilege & Power: Using Nobility in Your World-Building and Plots. Read Part II here. The idea of nobility comes up often in our campaigns. Villains, character backgrounds, NPC classes, settlements, and intrigue and politics, for example, can make nobility important in your milieu. Noble NPCs are special because they have special privileges and responsibilities most […]

Mastering the Dark Side

Tonight, I’m engaging in a deeper level discussion about villains in my GM coaching program. All too often, villains become corny, one-dimensional NPCs. All we know is that they want to destroy the world and the PCs. However, this becomes repetitive over time. Players: What’s the villain doing now? Johnn: Trying to destroy the world. […]

An Essential Ingredient for EVERY Villain Encounter

A GM on Reddit the other day was lamenting about a classic villain disaster. They introduced the BBEG at the start of their campaign to sew hints, hooks, hatred, and all that. But then the players unexpectedly attacked. Crits were rolled. The villain died. The GM’s now prepping a new campaign. Before you put villains […]

From King To Pawn: A Simple Way To Scope Your NPCs

My business partner in crime, Jochen Linnemann, shared this great tip with me yesterday about a cool method for managing your NPCs…. Jochen: Just now, I read about an NPC classification scheme The Dark Eye uses for its publications: King: Cornerstone NPC, important for the living world and future campaigns and adventures. Knight: Important NPC […]

Why Your Villains Should Be Making Moves

Why Your Villains Should Be Making Moves Today’s tip is inspired by a question about villains from RPT GM Gerald Lock. You can catch his full question, his one-shot Halloween adventure, and my video reply here. So, you’ve crafted an awesome villain, complete with a dark past and malevolent goals, but when game night comes […]

5 Tips To Creating A Truly Evil Villain

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1216 A Brief Word From Johnn Alas, the week got away from me, so this is a rare weekend edition of Roleplaying Tips. I’d like to give you one piece of advice and then move on to today’s villainous tips. The advice comes from a great Zoom consultation meeting I had last […]

17 More Tips To Help Your NPCs Survive

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1192 Ask Players to Create Them For You From RPT GM Tiago Before I start the campaign I am currently running, I asked my players to create NPCs for the town. I think it was great, because now they really care for the NPCs they created, so they wouldn’t kill them without […]

How Can NPCs Survive Contact With Your Players?

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1170 You pour yourself into crafting the perfect ensemble of NPCs. Smith, soldier, spy. Cooper, captain, King. Game day arrives and with relish you walk them onto the stage. And guess what happens next? That’s right: Player 1: I attack the King! Player 2: I charge the spy! Player 3: How much […]

Outsmart Your Players With 3-Step Villain Plans

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1167 How do we outsmart our players? It’s all their brains against ours. Surely the odds are against us. However, here’s a neat trick we can perform to make our villains smarter and our adventures more cunning. We look at the possible plots and actions our poor villain might take and group […]

Roleplaying Tips Round-Up February 2021

February was another great month, but it sure went by fast. There was a big Campaign Logger feature added plus a new add-on. The new feature is Charts & Diagrams. Perfect for plotting, faction pyramids, and other organizational uses. And we launched a dice room to help GMs who run virtual, async, or distance gaming. […]

1 2 3 4 Next »