Running Games Archives - Roleplaying Tips

A Change of Pace: How To Evaluate Pacing In Your Game

A Brief Word From Johnn Before we dig into pacing tips though, a couple of quick items. Get Help With Your Campaign August 26, 2023 – Wizard of Adventure Q&A Zoom. If you are a Wizard of Adventure, here’s details and the link. Feel free to bring questions about your world, campaign, encounters, NPCs, technique, […]

Try Back Pocket Events In Your Campaigns

Did you know there is a Fantasy Grounds version of my complete 1-20th level D&D 5E campaign, The Demonplague, co-written by James Introcaso? I don’t advertise this on The Demonplague’s information page, but will fix that soon. Meantime, if you are a Fantasy Grounds GM, you can purchase the campaign here. Unfortunately, due to Fantasy […]

Stopping The No-Game Blues

A Brief Word From Johnn How have you been doing? We just got back from a crazy camping trip. Mosquitoes, heavy winds, stuff breaking… I also earned a pulled neck muscle, so now I turn my whole body to look around. You could say I’m all-right now. 🙂 While I was killing bugs and cooking […]

From Dusk Till Dawn: Time Tracking in Your Campaign

I received this request from a new GM: How do I as a DM keep track of time passage? Suppose the PCs are traveling to a lair and it’s a two-day walk. Should I have them set up camp? What should happen during the camp setup and through the night? How long should I track […]

Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

Ahoi! Before my vacation I released GM Cheat Sheet #08 that I don’t think I announced to you. Check out the Forests 5 Room Dungeon Generator at DriveThruRPG. Have your dice ready to quickly create interesting forest-based 5 Room Dungeons, adventures, and encounters. You can also watch a video walkthrough of the GM Cheat Sheet […]

From Tasty Bait to Terrifying Consequences: Tricking Players With Instant Gratification

It’s great to be back from vacation! Thank you for your patience as I took a couple of weeks off from the newsletter. We went camping near a place called Rocky Mountain House where it’s not rocky and there are no mountains. The picture below was each glorious morning for me. This might leave you […]

Streamline Your Gameplay With This Cool House Rule

Streamline Your Gameplay With This Cool House Rule On a podcast with Dr. Keith McNally, Jonathan from Sojourner’s Awake shared his three table rules. And one of them I wanted to forward along to you because it is very good. Here’s a link to the 29 minute podcast on YouTube. Watch My Face Jonathan’s third […]

How To Keep Story Arcs Alive

How To Keep Story Arcs Alive How do you keep campaign arcs alive? That’s how I’d summarize this tip request I received from Wizard of Adventure Sharon: Our party meets every two or three weeks for a four hour session. With family and life taking center stage between sessions and memories fade, it makes remembering […]

Get Ready to Roll: How to Plan and Prepare for GMing Successful Convention Games

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1224 We just played session #09 of my Basilica campaign that’s half sandbox, half Temple of Elemental Evil. The party was bequeathed land as reward for escorting settlers safely to the area. As it turns out, the land is a swamp with ruins of an old moathouse on it. Girding loins and […]

The Sneaky GM Trap I Spotted At Start Of This Adventure

The Sneaky GM Trap I Spotted At Start Of This Adventure I was reading an adventure last night (an adventure that I also played in January) and something troublesome jumped out at me from the initial encounter’s boxed text. Here is the first sentence: The stairs leading to the basement of the Otari Fishery creak […]

3 Early Warning Signs You’re Suffering From GM Burnout

3 Early Warning Signs You’re Suffering From GM Burnout A GM replied to my recent Master of the 5 Room Dungeon email and said they’d lost the spark for GMing. I asked them for more details in case I can help, and am awaiting a reply. Meantime though, I’ve suffered from apathy and burnout several […]

Tiny Prep: How to Enjoy Prep Even More

Do you struggle being consistent with campaign prep? Do you suffer a bit from writer’s block when you do manage to start a bit of prep? Has prep become a fun habit for you, or do you still struggle getting the job done? I hope today’s Tiny Prep tip helps. If you are doing #Dungeon23, […]

Prep This Instead Of Plans

RPT GM Steffen asks: Maybe you have a tip for a problem I’m having with prep. In my group, we sometimes play fairly open RPGs. Open in the sense of an open world. At the end of a game session, I don’t know how the players are going to approach a problem, and then I […]

Three MegaDungeon Tips

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1220 Three MegaDungeon Tips So, in the coming weeks I’ll be sharing some megadungeon tips and resources. These will be for any megadungeons, not just Dungeon23 stuff, to keep it as useful to as many RPT GMs as possible. And today I have three tips for you based on questions from RPT […]

How To Improvise When Players Do Combat Stunts in OSR RPGs

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1218 How To Improvise When Players Do Combat Stunts in OSR RPGs Bonjour, Johnn! Last session a player went way outside the rules. He wanted his character to leap through the air onto a giant bird’s leg, climb up the tarsus, then release a magical belt attached to the beast’s limb. This […]

How To Create Engaging Session Recaps To Get Players Ready To Play

From Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1215 Brief Word From Johnn Thank you to everyone who sent along birthday wishes. I had a great day and got to spend extra time working on my campaign, which is always a treat! In Wizard of Adventure news: Watch this video on YouTube where I walk through the […]

The Story So Far

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1213 I mostly run sandboxes these days. That means I wrangle a lot of details. After a few sessions I’ll have dozens of Pages and Log Entries in Campaign Logger. After a year, they’ll be in the hundreds. Here’s an example from Wizard of Adventure ExileInParadise’s Sword Coast campaign: And here’s a […]

How to Deal with Silence at the Table

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1205 Brief Word From Johnn Today Jonathan talks about silence during sessions. There are many kinds of silence, and he shares his thoughts about a couple of the trickiest ones. If you worry about conflict at the table, be sure to check out his advice. One Card Dungeon Changing topics for a […]

How to Write Motivation Into Your Games

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1202 Brief Word From Johnn I played in a Pathfinder 2E one-shot on Saturday using Foundry run by my friend Mark. My guy was a big brute wielding a dwarven scattergun trying to save our town from a zombie horde. I played him like Dolph Lundgren meets vodka. And according to the […]

The Problem With Maps

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1201 Brief Word From Johnn Today I have some tips for when players get distracted by your beautiful maps and don’t pay attention to your encounter details. But before getting into those, I wanted to mention there are additional some Reader Tips this issue at the end you might want to check […]

Simple Ways to Keep Fun in Your Games

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1199 I recently wrote a few tips for running lunch games. Several RPT GMs sent me this link, which is a D&D 5E Practical Guide to One Hour DnD Sessions (you might want to turn on your ad blocker before viewing the site): https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/dungeonmasters/one-hour-sessions/ I’m away halfway through, and it has great […]

What Do You Do When Characters Fail? — 5 Solutions For You

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1196 What do you do when the dice betray your players? When the party seems to meet a dead-end? When your adventure stalls due to bad luck or bad choices? That’s the topic of today’s tips. But before you dig into them, please take the associated poll here: How to Prevent Dead […]

How To Make Every Encounter Interesting

From Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1195 (Join the conversation about today’s tips here.) Here’s an interesting question about encounter building that WorldWibe asks on RPT’s Discord: Is a dungeon-making philosophy that goes: “Every room should have something interesting in it, be it battle, treasure or lore” a good design-methodology? Thanks for the great question! […]

How To Improvise Better With Connect & Shift

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1194 By Jonathan Hardin, sojournersawake.com Discuss these tips on their dedicated thread here at Campaign Community. Improvisation seems scary and sometimes difficult, especially for new GMs. I have learned a few tips from people who think quickly on their feet. And I think the pair of techniques I’m sharing with you today […]

How Can You Take Fast Notes During Sessions?

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1185 * Tips on keeping better campaign notes without slowing down the pace of sessions I’ve been in the same boat. For me, I never want to cause a pause in gameplay. So it feels like I’m always too busy to take notes. However, there are a few things we can do. […]

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