5 Room Dungeon Archives - Roleplaying Tips

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Unlock New Adventures: 5 Room Dungeons With a Twist

Today’s tips come in the form of a 13 minute video. When I sent out a recent invitation to my Master of the 5 Room Dungeon Workshop, several GMs responded that they didn’t like the method. Fair enough. There are many ways to craft an adventure! However, some readers mentioned that the five rooms get […]

How To Conjure Incredible Sandbox Campaign Climaxes

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1000 Adventure Workshop GM Jeff B asked me this thorny question about how to finish a great campaign: If the adventure is not linear and the PCs aren’t railroaded, how can I get all the roads to lead to the big finale and tie up the loose ends? I like to have […]

The Subtle Gap You Should Close for Better Storytelling

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0970 When A Door Is Not Just a Door — The Technique of Transitions How your players go from one Room to the next will make or break your 5 Room Dungeon designs. If players have no choice, then that gets frustrating fast. If you give players choice, then what if they […]

An Example Of The Creature Feature For Your 5 Room Dungeon Designs

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0932 Without a key idea or theme, our adventures can feel like an uninspired assortment of random ideas. Our adventures fail to make an impact and they fall apart. One awesome solution is to create a Feature. Before you begin adventure design, choose a Feature. Pick a central idea and build your […]

Use The Feature Method To Make Adventure Design A Whole Lot Easier

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0926 Before you put pen to paper designing your next 5 Room Dungeon, do this one quick thing to greatly improve your design. When I build 5 Room Dungeons I often find it’s a struggle to make them more than just an assortment of encounters. Make It Pop A designer I worked […]

How To GM Genius NPCs

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0918 I wrote this Bonus Musing for you on the weekend in response to a question from RPT GM and Patron Andy Fundinger. Andy asked me how you draw on an antagonist’s high IQ to build clever plans. Here are three ways. Think Ahead I was talking to folks at work about […]

A Quick Tip On Session Prep

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0916 I got this tip while reading The Index Card RPG by Rune Hammer Games. Treat every session like you were prepping for a one-shot. If you’ve ever run a convention game or organized play type game, you know it’s a bit different than your typical campaign prep mindset. No one expects […]

Mad Lib 5 Room Dungeon Idea Generator For You

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0809 Use this Mad Lib to create a ton of 5 Room Dungeon seeds for your campaigns: [A GROUP] [IS DOING SOMETHING] with [AN ITEM] at [THE LOCATION] in order to [MOTIVE]. The location is the site or setting of your 5 Room Dungeon. The group is an NPC or faction from […]

Think About Encounters Like Game Tiles for Better 5 Room Dungeon design

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0739 Pizza last night was awesome. I ordered my favourite. My wife ordered the house special sans shrimp (I’m not a shrimp fan). Mmmmmhmmm. I’m a lightweight these days, though. Five pieces and I’m full. The pizza metaphor doesn’t handle well what I want to talk about today. But a board game […]

Psssst, How To Tell A Secret

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0801 Psssst, How To Tell A Secret “Here’s something about myself I’ve never told anyone.” It doesn’t matter what NPC says that, your players are going to stop fiddling with their dice and tune in. Everyone loves a secret. And one of the classic laws of GMing from the old Dragon Magazine […]

5 Room Campaign Planning

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0826 Roleplaying Tips reader Sean S. has great ideas about using 5 Room Dungeons in combination with story arcs. I neglected to mention how conversations I’ve had with Sean have influenced my thinking about 5RDs over the years (thanks Sean!), including making 5RDs within 5RDs, 5RD spawn points, and more. Today, Sean […]

5 Room Dungeon Spawn Points

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0821 5 Room Dungeon Spawn Points Ohayo %FIRSTNAME% You can make 5 Room Dungeons spawn points for deeper adventures. Here’s how. The basic formula is: Depending on the content of each encounter, you’ve got a good session’s material there. Enough play for a night. But what if this is just a rough […]

Spikes Of Danger Tease Your Players While Filling Them With Fear

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0841 Spikes Of Danger Tease Your Players While Filling Them With Fear Even though we try to balance adventures, not so much for fairness but for fun, it is tough to get right. There are so many factors involved. Current character health. Whether it’s session start and players are fresh, or session […]

How To Create Your Own Plot Factory – Part IV

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0837 In this final part of the Plot Factory series, we confront a major problem some GMs have. So far we have solved two of our Plot Factory requirements: Let’s look at the last item. Just how exactly do we create hooks (and enough of them) to get characters drawn to our […]

How To Create Your Own Plot Factory – Part III

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0836 With 5 Room Dungeons as our core short-adventure building technique, we can introduce and intertwine multiple plots running at once in our campaigns. We do this so we put the odds in our favour that every session a climax or major milestone will trigger. This keeps our players engaged. And it […]

How To Create Your Own Plot Factory – Part II

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0835 We add more NPCS to your campaign to create more gameplay options and interesting situations (you don’t jealously cling to and railroad NPCs when you have a wonderful abundance of them). We should add more plots or storylines for the same reason. Imagine if every session a plot thread was about […]

How To Create Your Own Plot Factory – Part I

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0834 Unending plots become a grind. Encounter after encounter with no resolution or reward in sight causes players to lose enthusiasm. And when they lose their drive, game sessions fall off the wheels. When Players Sabotage Your Game For example, why roleplay hard to squeeze clues out of reluctant enemies when it’s […]

The Elvis Hook For PCs

One GM has a bard PC whose background involves being famous. So the GM has prepared a music festival in a town the PCs will travel to.