World Building Archives - Roleplaying Tips

Weaponize Encounter Weather With The Beaufort Scale

Use the Beaufort Scale to help make wind and storm rulings easier. I grew up on a street called Beaufort Avenue. When we moved there, it had no curbs or sidewalks. And it dead-ended a few blocks down the road. And we had some fantastic wind storms. The walnut tree became weather’s weapon during gales. […]

Balancing Magic, Bears & Hit Points

Happy Canada Day! While swatting mosquitoes and sipping cool bevvies, let’s look at a dilemma that community member Sir Tainley poses about explaining the strength of commoners in certain game systems: I’m designing a world for a D&D 5e clone. I want magic to be reasonably common, and taught in the universities. But, powerful enough spells […]

The Sovereigns of Stink – My Lost Isle Troglodyte Faction

How do we take a standard monster and make it feel alive without writing pages of lore? Today during Tiny Prep I added the first faction to my Lost Isle campaign. I am running troglodytes I call the Sovereigns of Stink, though in-game they’re the Rotscale Clan. To bring them to life and make them […]

Colony & Outpost Creation Checklist

I’ve got a great checklist for you today. @Exile In Paradise, a fantastic mod helping fellow GMs in my Discord, shared with me a great list of AI generated questions and details for creating colonies, outposts, and settlements in space. This is in response to Orbital Trouble: d12 Space Outpost Hooks. I normally don’t spit […]

How To Fix A Dull Setting (Without Writing More Lore)

A great way to craft and maintain a consistent atmosphere without the heavy prep. I’m experimenting with a Sensory Bible for my Obsidian Invictus campaign to solve a specific problem. How to keep the vibe consistent without writing a tome of lore? One of my first steps was creating a Sensory Bible for the city, […]

Bottoms Up!

During Tiny Prep this morning I added factions to my setting, and that inspired three ideas. I’m finding the bottom-up approach great for inspiration in this way. For each campaign I have in Campaign Logger I create an Ideas Log. And today I added these: However, I feel like I could squeeze more value juice […]

Three New Layers for My Shadowdark World Building

Hello Game Master and happy Super Wolf Moon! In these parts, it’s the first full moon of the year (wolf) and Luna is at perigee (super). Snowing here in the morning darkness, so I can’t see it. But the clouds sure are bright. It’s great getting mooned on a Friday. This week I started prepping […]

4 Steps to Better Maps

Tired of pausing gameplay to hastily sketch a scene? Front-loading your map prep is one of the best ways to help with session pacing. The #Mapvember2025 map challenge is still going strong on the RPT Discord, and it’s your perfect chance to front-load your prep and save yourself stress later. Thanks to @Auke for facilitating […]

How to Make Your Players Love Paying Taxes

Do you charge taxes? I got a chuckle from DaveW’s post on the RPT Discord about levying taxes on the characters: My current campaign has a silver per wheel and copper per leg toll for the fortified town the players start in. An ox pulling a four wheeled cart is 4 sp, 4 cp to […]

3 Ways to Make Domain Play Fun Again

Here’s a query I received a little while ago from Wizard of Adventure JL: How to make conquering/managing/defending a domain FUN (for the players, not just the DM?) I like this question because it gets to the heart of a common GM challenge: making the world matter. Characters with no attachment to your setting will […]

Weeds: What My Garden Taught Me About World Building

Each empty space on our map offers an opportunity. We often focus on the big things like rooms, doors, and treasure, but the real magic is in the clutter. The makeshift gardens, the forgotten tools, and even the weeds. As GMs, our goal is to make our settings feel lived in, and I was recently […]

The One Book That Changed How I Build Cities (Johnn’s Bookshelf #02)

Who knew economic and urban development theory could be exciting? I certainly didn’t, until I stumbled upon a book called The Economy of Cities by Jane Jacobs. This small academic tome changed how I build worlds, and today I’ll show you why. Welcome to the latest installment of Johnn’s Bookshelf, my series where I share […]

World Calendars & Campaign Timelines

Do you create a world calendar and campaign timeline? RPT GM Chris asks if this is common: Good day Johnn. I was working on my game world history a bit today, and found myself wondering if things I do are common among many other DMs? For instance, I always have a calendar for any world […]

Your World Is An NPC

Before I share today’s tip, a reminder for Wizards of Adventure that it’s the last Saturday of the month in a few days and that means it’s Zoom time! Hop onto a call with me this Saturday noon Mountain Time to get some help. Get tips, ideas, or feedback about your next encounter, monster tactics, […]

Golemageddon: Golem Ideas for Your Next Campaign

A couple of quick announcements. First, I was on the Roleplay Rescue podcast recently with Tiny Prep co-author, Che Webster. It starts off with a question: What would you do if you had a new player to add to your existing roleplaying group? And the convo evolves from there. Here’s the link to listen. Second, […]

5 Excellent Sci-Fi Tips (Mail Bag)

Monday I explored some scifi stuff with Orbital Trouble: d12 Space Outpost Hooks. Got some great responses and tips from fellow Roleplaying Tips GMs: Outposts vs. Colonies From Wizard of Adventure ExileinParadise First, for my Salvage Space RPG, I am pushing both “colonies” and “outposts” What’s the difference? Colonies are “mostly” self-sufficient on food, air, […]

Orbital Trouble: d12 Space Outpost Hooks

Had some large blocks of “waiting time” on the weekend, so I started noodling on what might make space outposts interesting. Why? I’m a sci-fi RPG noob, aiming to run my first game when things settle down a bit over here. And I’m not very familiar with the details and tropes of the genre. So, […]

3 Design Tricks for Unique Races

Adding strange, wondrous, and interesting races to your homebrew world can get challenging, especially if you have a long list of races to brew up and you want to make each one unique. Here are three tips to ensure each race is distinct and thematically fitting to your setting. 1. Start With a Unique Anchor […]

Play 20 Questions With Your World

I love Jeff’s blog post here about how to flesh out your world by asking yourself a few simple questions. It reminds me of the tip about ensuring there’s a gameplay layer to your world building because we have players, not a passive audience. If you haven’t clicked over to Jeff’s post, here are some […]

Ideas For Churches & Cults in Your Setting

A while ago, we chatted about how we can make Noble NPCs special because they receive special privileges and responsibilities most others in our worlds do not. RPT GM Anonymous +1 sent me this great response about potential privileges your priests and clerics might get. Some ideas posibly for your campaign… Hi Johnn, In a […]

Peer Deeply Into the Map…

A map is higher bandwidth than text. With text we take in one word and one page at a time. But a map shows words, locations, terrain, continents, and villages, all at once. The secret ingredient to getting the most data out of detailed maps and remembering them easily, almost without trying, is to peer […]

Cursed For Divine Transgressions (a d20 Table)

I’m homebrewing a setting called Duskfall, and I’ve reached the creation step I call The Powers That Be. With this technique, I ask: What powerful NPCs can control or influence the setting, and more specifically, can affect my plotlines and the party’s actions? By NPCs, I mean gods, powerful monsters, villains, factions, and any other […]

Death Straw

What if the way people in your setting mourn the dead could spawn new adventures? In response to this world-building detail about knocker-uppers, I received a nice tip from RPT GM Cheryl the Shadow: Hi Johnn, When someone died, it was considered respectful to keep it quiet around their home, so straw or hay was […]

Knocker-Up: The Forgotten Profession of Waking People

What if your alarm clock was a person with a 10 foot pole? Shared by @Exile in Paradise on the RPT Discord server: This could be an interesting world-building detail for towns to go along with town guards and town criers… A knocker-up or knocker-upper was a member of a profession in the Netherlands, Britain, […]

One-Shot Monster Powers

Here’s a idea I think is cool from Points of Inspiration: single use monster powers. There are similar examples out there of this type of mechanics already. We’ve got limited dragon breath uses, D&D 4th edition rechareable dailies, and one-shot magic items. However, upon reading Craig’s article, I wanted to explore the idea further, And […]

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