Running Games Archives - Roleplaying Tips

d6 Ways To Spice Up Next Session

Next session, let’s mix it up. Let’s make things more fun for ourselves and our players using these d6 tables of dangers, goals, and plot twists for ideas.

Get Into Gamespace Faster With A Good Session Warm-Up

Sometimes you have a rough transition between everyone arriving for a game and the game starting. Everyone catching up on news, one player looking everywhere for missing dice, another player bugging you with min/max ploys. It’s raucous. When you do finally catch everyone’s attention, it still takes awhile for players to ease into character and […]

Use This 10 Idea Checklist To Fix Your Pacing

RPT GM Jim B has a great idea for us today about how to better manage pacing with a cool checklist: Hi Johnn, Another way to adjust pacing is with a midpoint checklist. The midpoint checklist is a series of brief entries you prepare in advance that you’ll refer to when you reach the halfway […]

Is Running Two Game Masters A Disaster?

I’ve had mixed success with co-GMing. First, let’s talk perils.

What Do I Do When My Players Try To Rob A House?

I’ve got a DM question for you. What do I do when my players try to rob a house?

Try A Sheet-Switch Event For Better Roleplay

Loooong-time Roleplaying Tips GM Lord Skudley replied to my recent musing of blank character sheet campaigns with this neat idea about PC swaps.

How Long Does Forever Take? A GM Pit Trap To Avoid

That’s how it might feel waiting for the player on your left to finally wrap up their turn. “Whew. Whose initiative is it now?”

My Phases of GMing

My friend Eric got the Red Box for Christmas and gave it to me to figure out. A couple days later I was GMing his new PCs through B1: In Search Of The Unknown.

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy – What’s the Adventuring Difference?

RPT GM Sky Slayton asks, “Sci Fi adventure ideas — how are they different from traditional fantasy?”

Quick & Cool Magic Item Backgrounds In 60 Seconds

Today’s Musing is a longer piece about how to create great background stories for your magic items. It’s something I wrote for Strolen.com in 2011 and I thought you might find it useful now for romancing your treasure.

What Do You Wish Players Asked You?

You find a Ring of Gather Player Information. It makes each of your players ask you any question you want about your game. What questions would you want them to ask?

The Haunted Mansion Savage Experience – Intriguing GMing Tips Gleaned From A Con, Part 3

The third game I played at the recent IntrigueCon was the scariest.Haunted Mansion was a homebrew one-shot using the Savage Worlds (aff.) rules.

Save Yourself Some GMing Headaches

Today I want to talk with you about something that makes you a poorer game master and how you can change that.

Being A Devil With The Details – Intriguing GMing Tips Gleaned From A Con, Part 2

A big learning I had at IntrigueCon was to watch the timing of your details.The second game I played was Night’s Black Agents.

Intriguing GMing Tips Gleaned From A Con, Part I

This past weekend I played about 14 hours of games at IntrigueCon here in Edmonton Alberta.

Make Your Turns Go Faster – Improving GM GIT Part IV

Welcome to part four of my series on how to engage players better by avoiding a terrible GM trap.

What Props Do You Use?

Patron Andy Fundinger asks about what kind of props we all use:

Getting Your Players To Roleplay More — Improving GM GIT Part V

We conclude the five-part series on how to improve your GM Interaction Time (GIT) with the final bucket that traps screen-time: Roleplaying.

Use This Simple Technique To Improv Tricky Situations With Great Clarity

Here’s a cool tip from RPT GM Jim B about how to handle roleplay and skill challenges.

He Rode In On A T-Rex And Got Buried

Murder Hobos assembled once more Friday night and the session started with a bang (literally) and ended on a very interesting note.

My Best Reads of 2018

I got to the last page of a few fine books last year that inspired my gaming.

How To Think Faster On Your Feet — Improving GM GIT Part III

In this five-part series we’re talking about GM Interaction Time (GIT) and making a conscious effort to manage it to help make every game fun.

How Do I Know If My Game Master Cheating?

How do I know if my game master is cheating?

Using Random Magic the Gathering Cards As A Quick Source Of Inspiration

The guys on Dungeon Master Block have done a few podcasts of inspiration from Magic the Gathering cards and mention this site as a place for random inspiration.

Fix Session Problems Before Game Day By Doing This Simple Exercise

Post-mortem is Latin for after death. At work, I’ll run post-mortem meetings after projects to learn how we can do better next time.

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Hola From Johnn

Hello and welcome to my site!

I've been writing and publishing Roleplaying Tips since 1999. I produce books, courses, and an app to help game masters have more fun at every game.

I'm mostly a fantasy and D&D GM. I live in Edmonton, Alberta and love bacon, d20s, and sword & sorcery books with a little hard sci-fi thrown in.

I discovered D&D in grade 5 when a student tried to GM our entire class one afternoon. The game was a disaster, but it left a huge impression on me.

Learn more about me »