Running Games Archives - Roleplaying Tips

Horror Tip: Break the Pattern

Our brains evolved to be pattern-matching machines. That weird movement in the tall grass…is it the wind or something that wants to eat me? Growing up, I did well with the Sesame Street game, One Of These Things. Pro tip: It’s always the single article of clothing from a missing child. To make our horror […]

A Horror Tip For Your Halloween Game

Horror is tough to pull off at the table. I don’t run scary games often, but when I do, I rely on one technique that punches through the beer and pretzels and gets players uneasy and scared. Deny Them Meaning When you have lots of clear information you feel confident. And confidence is the last […]

Better Descriptions: d7 Ways To Steal Great Words

A CampaignCraft member recently asked me how to master the lexicon when running a new genre for the first time. The game mechanics and general narrative were no problem, but technical and insider details stumped her in certain cases. Describing vehicle manoeuvres, piloting controls, gear, and how NPCs interacted with their environment were a big […]

How Big Is The Shark?

Years ago in my Riddleport campaign I said this: “There’s a large shark circling in the harbour.” The characters went down to the docks for a closer look. The shark attacked. And on its turn it launched into the air, sailed right over the party, and splashed down on the other side. The shark jumped […]

When We Improvise Ourselves Into A Corner

“How do I get these 13 things I dropped into the game because I thought they’d be fun to now integrate and make sense?” That question came up in July’s GM Q&A call. Gameplay takes us in a direction where we start improvising, and afterwards we’re left with square pegs that need to fit the […]

Handling Noise At Cons

Game conventions too loud to hear? Old Man Masha asks about this on the Discord: I recently ran a convention with 15 tables. I spaced them so that the chairs would be 4 feet apart after people sat down. But many folks complained about the noise. Can anyone here give me tips on how to […]

Everything You Need to Start D&D 5.5 For Free

How can you get started with D&D 5.5/2024 without spending any gold pieces? New community member GW asks: Hi everyone. I learned about DnD but thought it was going to be too hard way back in about 8th grade, so that was like 1989. The books and the rules were very different than they are […]

When Players Derail Our Prep

GM’s Log #7 went out to CampaignCraft members yesterday, and it teaches my 5 Actions Framework that anticipates 90% of encounter derailments and broken adventures. After you complete the tutorial’s six steps, players can still surprise you, but they’re much less likely to break your encounters. One of my favourite examples of players ruining my […]

Retroactive Clues

Happy Monday, Game Master! Friday’s tip about using flashbacks for backstories garnered a great response from the community. You sent in several fantastic ideas on how to take this mechanic even further. Today, let’s look at a great breakdown from GM Allen (pictured here with his Magic 8 Ball USB button) on how to use […]

How To Cure GM Overwhelm When Your Brain Runs Out Of RAM

Instinct vs. Prep. A GM in our community recently shared a struggle many of us face: “I generate NPC actions by zen and instinct, but eventually there are too many pieces to track. My notes become random, unactionable noise, and the prep becomes an exponential amount of work. How do I stop my campaign from […]

The Infinite Canvas Changes Player Behavior

Playing online is a lot different than in-person. Online gaming changes play in subtle ways. Pacing slows a bit. Prep can take longer. Engagement becomes trickier, too. In-person, I find side chatter keeps energy alive and engenders teamwork. Online, it’s just one mic talking to another, and it becomes too chaotic to hear well when […]

3 Tips For Keeping Gameplay Going

Welcome to the fourth and final part of my series breaking down Game Master V’s tricky session! We’ve explored how to handle passive players, the Multiball cognitive load of GMing several NPCs at once, and turning treasure into hooks. Today, we bring it all together by tackling the Hot Potato and how to keep the […]

Create These 3 Back Pocket Encounters For More Confident GMing

What do you do when the party gets stuck, the game gets bogged down, or you simply need to stall for time? In a recent Tiny Prep Challenge on our Discord server, one GM mentioned they were preparing a “backup/extra encounter to keep the fight-oriented players happy, if things go too lore-heavy.” This is an […]

How Do You Reveal Your Maps To Players?

Players can draw on my maps and on my table. And I love it. My group used to have a player assigned to drawing the map. I would describe things, player would struggle to make squiggles, party would still get lost. Then I tried simplifying my maps to make them easier to, er, map, which […]

4 Ways To Track Resources Without Slowing Down Your Game

Resource tracking has come up twice in my orbit recently, so I thought I’d share a couple thoughts on how to reduce tracking friction on encumbrance, spell slots, and other meters and pools. Case in point, Roleplaying Tips GM @jcauseyfd asks on the Discord: Has anyone run across any good systems/mechanics for DnD (5e) to […]

Reducing GM Pressure: Phase In Your Jobs

Reducing GM Pressure: One Thing Added, One Removed Go easy on yourself. And keep it simple behind the screen. I ran Night’s Black Agents for the first time on Sunday. We did the chase scene with the nuclear briefcase. Great game. Tricked my players to play again in March. The PCs are super agents. The […]

Use Moves To Beat Brain Freeze & Deepen Play

How to simplify things at the table and drop dynamic game pieces onto it. In response to a description tutorial I sent out, Wizard of Adventure GM Will asks: I want to know more about the “Moves” section Thanks Will. I first discovered Moves in the Dungeon World RPG. At first, I didn’t understand the […]

Solo RPG Suggestions

Do you play solo RPGs? That’s you, a game system, some dice – maybe, and a quill and parchment. If you quest for some sci-fi solo evenings, here are several recommendations from Wizard of Adventure @ExileInParadise based in response to a recent newsletter about asking the right questions to oracle in solo games. Exile’s a mod […]

My Heuristic For Better Descriptions

Today’s word of the day is indite, which is also today’s tip. So, here is how I indite better descriptions. Earlier this month I shared my 3-step description trick in a Tuesday Tutorial with Platinum Wizards of Adventure. I call these descriptions Lore Drops. They give us a robust mental framework we can apply to […]

Solo RPGs – How To Ask The Right Questions

Ack Ack Johnn! Before I give you today’s tip, I have exciting news. First draft of my new book on dungeon design is done! It’s called Logical Dungeon Design: Tactical Cartography. Here’s the cover: It’s about how to design dungeon maps and levels that respond to the players. Living Dungeons. This book is also about […]

In A TPK They Can’t Hear You Screen

To screen or not to screen, that is the question from Roleplaying Tips GM Eli: Johnn! Thank you for these wonderful articles. I was wondering, could you tell me why you do or do not use a DM screen? I’m interested to hear what you think! Thanks Eli. I stopped using a GM screen in […]

When They Always Split Up

What do you do when the party becomes the eight-pointed chaos symbol and splits up in every direction? RPT GM Lessa asks: If you can manage to keep your players together, tell me how. First thing my players do is split the party… Now, Lessa is a very experienced GM and actually has this under […]

Daggerheart + World Ripples

Hei Game Master. And happy New Year. On Sunday I got to play in a Daggerheart one-shot run by @mungo9494. Great session. Fun system too, though I need to lean more into the Hope mechanics next time. The GM did something at the end that I liked a lot. And I’m now noodling on how […]

Handling Clever Actions

The Rule of Cool.Yes, And.Be a fan of the characters. These tenets push us to let players try clever, chaotic, and unexpected PC actions. For example, saket asked this on the Roleplaying Tips Discord: In the middle of combat, one of my players wanted to create an opaque, black orb around my main villain’s head, […]

The Red Box Trick for Faster Sessions

Caller You’re on the Air Have you ever tried using a Caller? The topic came up in Saturday’s Wizard of Adventure Zoom session, and the role has several great uses. Gygax used this method a lot. Here are Mentzer’s instructions on using a Caller from the 1983 D&D Red Box (bolding is mine): The caller […]

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