RPT#215 – Ideas For Involving Fantasy Phenomena

A Brief Word From Johnn Game Of Thrones Is A Great Game I had the good fortune to finally play the Game of Thrones (GoT) board game. I had asked for reviews awhile back and they were mixed, so I held-off purchasing the game blind. Luckily, I got in on a game Saturday and it’s […]

RPT#213 – Paranoia: Shattering The Trust Part III: Minor In-Game Events

A Brief Word From Johnn Campaign Design Begins – Rules First I’m taking a different approach for my latest D&D campaign: designing the rules first. My personal preference is to try and keep game content within the boundaries of the rules. If a plot element, encounter plan, background event, or whatever, cannot be reversed engineered […]

RPT#164 – 9 Ways To Bring Town Guards To Life

A Brief Word From Johnn Last Week Of Contest March 15th is the last day for the Interesting Scenes contest. Unlimited entries are allowed with each scene representing one entry. To enter, send in a 1-2 sentence cool combat or roleplaying scene like these ones: “The PCs are fighting the bad guys inside a giant […]

RPT#190 – 6 Ideas To Encourage Roleplaying

A Brief Word From Johnn I’m Back! But My Email Was Down It took just under 44 hours after I left for vacation for spam to fill my email account to the brim. Grrr. So, if you sent me an email after 7pm Sunday the 16th, then it would have bounced. Sorry–please re-send it. This […]

RPT#128 – Different Ways Of Kinging It: A Quick Look At Alternative Traditions Of Monarchy

A Brief Word From Johnn Monarchy Tips For World Building This week we have an awesome world building article for GMs who are serious about their campaigns, or for game masters who just want a cool story idea or two. I personally found it a most interesting read and I hope you enjoy it and […]

RPT#198 – The Session Checklist: Ingredients To A Successful Game Session, Part I

A Brief Word From Johnn A very brief word this week. Hope you enjoy today’s tips and use the session checklist idea as a quality assurance tool. Sometimes, as real life encroaches on our RPG time, and also during games when things get hectic, we put our heads down and charge straight ahead. A session […]

RPT#618: How to Get Your Players to Care

I don’t care what my players think about an NPC as long as there is some kind of emotion – funny, sad, irritated, or a good hate. Here’s how to do that.

RPT#700: My Favourite RPT Issues Of All Time

Brief Word From Johnn By Orcus’s Balls, Whodda Thunk It? 700 Issues! I’m not one for reminiscing, so I’ll keep this short. 700 issues works out to about 3.1 million words according to my word processor. Words from me, and words from you. And out of all those words one simple message is clear: we […]

RPT#642: “I only have 30 minutes to prepare for a game” What do you do?

Tips and ideas on how to panic and get ready for a game with only 30 minutes to prepare. I’m going to assume you don’t just wing it 100%. That requires no prep time except to go to the store to buy snacks. 🙂 Instead, I’m going to say you GM like me, where you want some ideas, notes, and rough plans, because you like a safety net and enjoy having at least some material to riff off of during the session.

RPT#632: How To Create Your Own Combat Missions

Want to design your own combat missions, fully tailored to the people, places, and things of your campaign? Today you’ll learn how to do this, including what design questions to ask and answer along the way. Let total annihilation scenarios take a back seat while you light a fire under your combat creativity.

RPT#631: Combat Missions: Adding Glorious Stories to Gruesome Struggles

Brief Word From Johnn Dungeon Crawl Classics Is A Classic I had a blast this past weekend playing the DCC RPG for the first time. We adventured through the character funnel, 67: Sailors on the Starless Sea. The flavour of the game is great. The core rules are a toned down variant of d20, with […]

RPT#531: How To Create Great Magic Items In Just Three Minutes

A Brief Word From Johnn Only Hours Left On Assassin’s Amulet Deal The special price for Roleplaying Tips subscribers expires October 27 – just a few hours from now. To get the code that gives you 33% off the cover price, before the special expires, visit this link. GMing Two Weeks In A Row I’m […]

RPT#699: PC Home Base Tips & Tables

Today’s issue is all about home base campaigns. Some great tips and ideas from Anson. And then some juicy tables for inspiration from Eric. I hope these help you run your next home base with lots of fun and adventure for the PCs.

RPT#697: Building the Klok’k’ot Culture + Reader Tips

RPG Designer James Gauvreau kicks off a short series on culture building for you with the Klok’k’ot. The Klok’k’ot are an urban desert civilization on a precipice.

RPT#696: How to Roleplay Seducers, Ancient Evils, Law Enforcement, and Genius NPCs

One of my players, Colin, has stepped up to GM our group through the D&D 5E module, Out of the Abyss.

We’re taking turns being GM. He’ll run his game, then next time I run Murder Hobos, and so on. This means I’ll be GMing about once a month now.

My character is a third level cleric of Helm. Guiscard Windholme, brother of another player’s PC, Raphael. Mike and I chatted by email about making our PCs family. Raphael is always getting into trouble, and Guiscard is always trying to save him.

RPT#695: Crossing Swords With Factions – How To Build Quick Guilds For Your Kingdom

A guild is a group of artisans or merchants who joined together in an association to protect their members and control their trade in a specific area. Non-guild members attempting to ply their trade would either find themselves persuaded to sign up or be quickly run out of town.

Guilds have become a popular feature of fantasy RPGs, with the idea of the thieves’ guild being almost ubiquitous. This article discusses what sorts of guilds populate a fantasy kingdom and how you can construct a capsule stat block for a guild in your campaign.

RPT#694: Villainous Banter: Using Propp’s Reconnaissance Scene

Bypassing a trapped stairwell, they descend into a room with three terrible monsters (umber hulks) trapped behind bars on one side and a tough metal door on the other. The Hobos quietly investigate. However, they hear a voice on the other side of the door: “Has anyone got pants?” Then a loud thunder crack nearly shatters the portal.

This enrages the umber hulks and the creatures start battering their cage. The portal opens. On the other side is a shovel-wielding pantless half-elf. (Welcome new player James and his bard, Captain William Blien!) “Hello. I have no pants. Can you help?”

RPT#693: How to Roleplay NPC Mannerisms

Memorable non-player characters are distinct. Whether you created an NPC or it came out of a published adventure, it is up to you as game master to make each quest giver, tavern goer, and orc slaver different from the rest.

The key to creating a believable, distinct cast lies in your performances. This might seem daunting, especially since every other player at the table has only one character to worry about while you have dozens.

RPT#692: Triage 101: Five Ways To Get Players Unstuck Without Forcing Them

Getting the PCs to do things is like herding cats. It’s hard to get them all pointed in a single direction, and sometimes they get lost and confused about what it is they should be doing. If you’re trying to give guidance to the group, but don’t want to put them on the Plot Express, here are a few things you can try.

RPT#691: Space Opera Part 3: Making It Personal

I love space opera, laser swords, and ray guns, jet bikes in space swooping around ships bigger than they are and winning. These epic stories in vast galaxies sometimes take place a long time ago, far far away, and sometimes they’re in our own time and space, but you need to play a video game well enough to even be noticed by the star league. I love the scope, tone, and feel, but those things all play second fiddle to what makes space opera most compelling to me: the characters and their personal stories.

RPT#690: How To Fill In The Blanks – Drawing Maps Dungeon World Style

The first Dungeon World principle is to draw maps but leave blank spaces. Maps are a fundamental part of world building, so leaving blanks suggests an unfinished world. However, the idea is to fill them in later. Blank areas on a map allow all manner of cool things to happen in your game. They prevent you from painting yourself into a corner at campaign outset. They let you be flexible and roll with the dice.

Here are some tips on using blanks on a map to increase the fun at your table. The tips are divided up according to the style of map being used…

RPT#689: GM Burnout: Tips For Prevention and Recovery

After awhile you don’t want to get ready for and run games anymore. You get writer’s block. You dread game day and find any reason to postpone. You feel uncreative and stressed out before each looming game day deadline.

It’s a tough spot to be in. And I’ve been there. Maybe you have, too. Maybe you’re there right now.

RPT#688: The Card Grid – The Fastest Way To Map Your Kingdom With Adventure Sites

A kingdom map helps you and your players see how your kingdom fits together. Players will use it to decide where they want to travel and what challenges to tackle next.

However, a map too detailed and complex harms gameplay. It blocks cool campaign ideas that come up after campaign kickoff. It puts players off, so its hooks fail. And prep becomes harder because you end up with too much detail to connect ideas with and GM for.

RPT#599 3 Line Cultures: How To Inject Races and Factions With Flavour

Here’s the core tip in brief. I’ll describe the full recipe on how to create everything later in this article. Create a very short story that exemplifies the culture so you can remember and roleplay anyone from that culture at the drop of a hat. We remember stories better than cold, factual stat blocks. These stories also give you handy in-game roleplaying and storytelling prompts. And they are fast to create using my simple recipe:

RPT#687: 7 Tips for Creating Awesome Legends

Myron Yorick, the king’s younger brother, went into the service of Our Lady in White, as was customary for younger siblings. He was a potent preacher, full of ecstasy and fire. When his discovered his brother’s plans to give preferential treatment to decadent Coraltoni wine merchants who would undercut the valuable Sweetblood trade, he resolved to do something about it.

He usurped the throne, threw out the Coraltoni pisswine vendors, and launched a war with Coralton over the trade routes to the Sword Sea. And though he eventually fell, he did not go quietly — the assassins who killed him had to poison, shoot, stab, beat, and burn him with magic before tossing him in the river, where he finally died of hypothermia while trying to claw up out of the ice. Then, as his body was cremated, he sat up in his casket.