Players & Characters Archives

Keep Players Intensely Engaged With the 3 Conflicts

Character arcs tell the story of how characters develop by overcoming foes and challenges in pursuit of their goals. This is the ambition of campaign play: to develop cool character story arcs. Such arcs keep players intensely engaged in your games. Why? Thinking about armour, health points, personality scores, and other character sheet elements are […]

Players “Checked Out” When Campaign Switched To Virtual Online

RPT GM Hornick switched his game to virtual and now has trouble getting his players to roleplay: My players have started to outgame-play the sessions with little ingame interactions. Maybe this is due to the medium of Roll20 and Discord. Do you have any ideas on this besides talking to them about this? They lately […]

The Unification Event — How To Get The Party Together

Character backgrounds are key tools in your GM Toolbox. Mine them for plots, NPCs, and character motivation. However, it’s a struggle to get useful and game-full backgrounds from players. Often, you just get a couple paragraphs explaining how the PC became an orphan. Or, you might get the inverse. Pages of narcissistic background explaining why […]

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How To Help New Players Have A Blast With Their First Session

With so many new players (and GMs) joining our beloved hobby, there’s a lot of confusion out there about how to make sessions enjoyable and accessible for newbies. Sometimes your entire group is new. They don’t even have trope or game references to draw upon from different mediums such as video games. That’s what happens […]

Do You Plot Stories Or Dungeon Crawlers?

I just came back from vacation. We camped out in beautiful British Columbia. We have a camping trailer, so we were able to be self-sufficient and remain in isolation while enjoying nature and recouping our energy. I read a bunch and otherwise just tried to sit around and resist the impulse to be productive. While […]

Monday Inspiration: Character Perks – Several Interesting PC Development Ideas

Today I have a few interesting character development ideas for you as a follow-up to the A Cool Twist For One Of Your Players Musing I published in February, 2017. The idea is to make each character special in some way to not only create great player engagement but to give you more adventure hooks […]

A Cool Twist For One Of Your Players

Was chatting with the paladin before a game the other day and he gave me an idea. A core theme of fantasy is discovering you are amazing. Bullied boy or girl in small community learns they have magical powers or are gifted with sword-fighting or some other skill. This resonates with readers because we all […]

Resonance Part I: How Do You Get Players to Care About Their Characters and Your Plot?

How do you get players to care about their characters and your plot? This is in the top 10 questions I get asked all the time. It’s tough to do. Today I’ll share one approach to encounter building that’s part of the 5 Room Dungeon product I’m working on that helps you solve this tricky […]

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 […]

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 […]

My #1 Learning from Last Game

Last week I talked about listening to my players better. It turns out listening is HARD. I GM’d last Friday and here’s how it turned out. First, a recap of my GM Quests for the session: Hooks: Get at least one hook from each player from something they mention during the game Excitement: Note at […]

My Experiences With Milestone XP

A while ago I switched my campaigns to milestone XP. You can take this approach with non-D&D games too, if it’s not already baked in. And today I wanted to give you an update on how that’s going. Whether you realize it or not, the reward systems you use have heavy impact on player and […]

Let Players Relive Their Finest Moments

Hola %FIRSTNAME% Nick V. wrote in with this great tip about session pacing and letting players revel in their own glory: Studying for TV writing taught me a lot about narrative structure. I learned that balancing fast-paced, action-packed scenes with more relaxed, role or plot-oriented ones is critical in maintaining a good flow. The rhythm […]

Dealing With High Level Characters

My Demonplague campaign has been on hiatus over the summer. I’ve now resumed prepping Season III and am giving thought to how I’ll challenge the PCs, who are now at level 10. Here’s three ideas on how I can challenge the Hobos that might work in your campaign too. Add More NPCs High level is […]

Coming Home Empty Handed After A Raid

RPT GM K. asked me a question about rewards in sandbox games: Hi Johnn, I’ve been running an (in my opinion) fairly successful West Marches/Open Table game for several months now. I’ve accumulated a dedicated set of players and run at least one game per week, and so far it’s good fun for all involved, […]

Gesture, Voice & Salt — Helping Players Roleplay

Got this great question by email last week: Johnn, A lot of people at my table bring some pretty good game. I rarely roll with an accent unless there’s a good reason for it – but I have to admit it’s good for differentiating between when you’re in character vs out. Any ideas for how […]

How To GM Knowledge (Local)

Today we talk about playing at a different level than your players to make your adventures more challenging. We begin with RPT Platinum Patron Mark Aston asking a great question about players using a local knowledge type skill: Hi Johnn, I have never really got to grips with how to run the skill Knowledge (Local), […]

When Characters Overlap Too Much — Three Questions

I’ve got a character problem. Maybe you’ve experienced it too? The rogue in my Barbossa campaign is being subsumed by other PCs and the emerging campaign style: Monk and bard are also good at stealth. The rogue is a halfling. So is the bard. Last session there was no combat. So sneak attacks became null […]

Character Stories — How To Keep Players Highly Engaged

RPT GM Sebastian has seven players and asked me for tips on how to handle large groups. My article Handling Large Groups: Keeping Players Busy has good advice. But I have a different tip for you today. One not shared before. And this tip applies to every party size — especially large groups. We’ve covered […]

Roleplaying Tip: Distinguish Players From Characters

Roleplaying is tough. And sometimes players don’t separate themselves from their characters. This causes problems. RPT Patron Richard Grilley asks: Johnn, How do you help a game table to distinguish players from characters? It is great when the brawny footballer can do a high pitch voice with a twist of Scottish accent for his female […]

67 Questions To Make Your Players Roleplay More

Here’s a great technique to get your players roleplaying more. Have NPCs ask them questions. But not just any questions. Yes/No questions, for example, don’t get players talking or thinking much. Good NPC questions provide another boon: they give you ideas to steal for later use. While the players answer the NPC, you log their […]

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