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Dead Men Tell Tales – How Do You Signal Lethal Danger In A Dungeon?

CampaignCraft GM K. asked me how to signal lethal danger up ahead in a dungeon. Like him, I prefer to stock dungeons with a variety of encounters, some of which are too powerful for the party at its current level or in its current state. Dungeons are tricky though, because we’ve got less space for […]

Big Bang Events

Big Bang Events: How to Create Player-Proof Plots I’m very excited to announce GM’s Log #12 is now available. The topic is a core method I developed in the early 2000s that’s saved my Canadian bacon for over two decades now. A problem that hits my inbox and my coaching sessions on the regular is […]

Why Dungeon Maps Feel Fake – The Dungeon Timeline Method

How to make logical dungeon maps. Nonsensical maps were a major theme in the fantastic feedback I received from Monday’s request about your biggest pain point with dungeons: How to make dungeons make sense and believable? Most GMs think they need to design a dungeon for the adventure they are running right now. You sit […]

CampaignCraft: Announcing My New Secret Weapon for Building & Launching Successful Campaigns

The secret weapon I wish I’d had in my first dozen campaigns… GMing long-term campaigns is hard. I’ve started dozens over the years. Some crashed. Some fizzled. And a few became legends. What made the difference? How I started. Big worlds. Big plots. Big prep. Those campaigns buckled under their own weight. The best ones […]

3 Tips for Groundhog Day Scenarios

Wizard of Adventure Buck asks: Have you ever run or heard of someone running a Groundhog Day type game? Do you have ideas on how to do this? We know: Great question, Buck! I recently ran a Groundhog Day scenario for my Basilica campaign. For Basilica, I used Groundhog Day as a way to convert […]

5 Room Dungeon Outline Generator

In awesome news, my mom’s final radiation treatment was yesterday. We had a special dinner to celebrate and she is doing very well. My wife also had her second chemo treatment yesterday, and those are rough. But she is strong and doing ok. Related, I had a stack of Pathfinder 2E books I was selling […]

Do Puzzles as Barriers Suck?

Hujambo Johnn! I received these great comments from RPT GM Jay about puzzles: I recently read something (I don’t think it was you, but I don’t remember 100%) giving a scathing take on using puzzles as barriers rather than the much simpler (and possibly more effective) lock-and-key. I had just made an abandoned wizard tower […]

Crafting an Exciting GM Boot Camp for Kids

An RPT GM asked me this morning to give feedback on a curriculum for a kids GM Boot Camp. I share my response below. I don’t know if the kids are young teenagers, younger, or older. I’ll assume around 12 years old. At that age, in my opinion (I never had kids), you want to […]

A New Year, New Campaign Tool For You

Here’s a Mad Lib you might find useful for your GM Toolbox. There’s a January tradition in the RPG community. It’s called New Year, New Campaign. You might start a campaign. You could also run a different game system. I like to add a third option: campaign reboot. Why not take the opportunity of setting […]

Map, Monster, Chest: The Golden Trio of Adventure Design

The Golden Trio of Adventure Design RPT GM Benjamin asks: For an anxious and inspiring GM that tried to learn way too much for what is actually needed, how do you just sit down and say, “I’m doing this random plot, with random PCs, and keep everything afloat and fun?” My brother can improvise anything […]

d20 Ways To Hide A Golem

Dragon Magazine #139 offered great ways to hide a golem in a room. I love animated objects and golems as monsters. They need no air, water, or food, so make perfect dungeon foes. But if we serve up such obstacles and enemies the same way each time, it gets boring fast. So here are 20 […]

How To Keep Dungeons Interesting – 5 Ways

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1223 How To Keep Dungeons Interesting – 5 Ways How do you make dungeon crawling perpetually interesting? This was a frequent tip request made in December’s Dungeon23 poll. I struggle with this too, whether it’s an endless series of rooms in a megadungeon, a series of 5 Room Dungeons, or just a […]

Tips For Lunch Hour Games + Personal Announcement

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1198 Big news to share with you this week. I have embarked on a grand adventure. Two adventures, really. The Great Resignation First, I’m going fuller-time with Roleplaying Tips! I’m thrilled but nervous and can’t wait to begin this new journey. I gave notice at my day job last week and I’ve […]

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 […]

Visual Aid Session Prep with the Five Room Dungeon

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1174 Hello Sojourner! The goal of Visual Game Session Prep is to have a quick glance reference that reminds me of notes and plans I made before the session. This keeps paperwork to a minimum. Rather than referencing your notes within a large document during the game, you can simply look at […]

Fast 5 Room Dungeons, Clue Tip, Instant Idea Generator, Different Combats – Mail Bag Edition

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1162 Ahn-nyong-ha-se-yo Johnn, It’s a Mail Bag issue and today I’ve got four helpful GMing tips for you. First is about alternative combat outcomes. Second is how to instantly generate ideas. Third is about adding clues. Fourth is a fantastic 5 question formula for fast 5 Room Dungeon ideation. Before we dive […]

How to Create Situations With 5 Room Dungeons

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1153 We want to cue up situations, not outcomes. By that, I mean we don’t dictate the actions of the characters. That’s the players’ job. But as storytellers, we have a job to do too. We need to weave good tales from our setting, adventure plans, and gameplay as it happens. How […]

How To Create Five Room Horror Dungeons

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0870 Hola %FIRSTNAME% Roleplaying Tips Patron Jeffrey asks how to create five room horror adventures: Johnn, been reading for a long time, and always figured that I would one day have a question worthy of asking… I guess that day is today. How would you use a five-room dungeon to run a […]

$5rds-go-fractal$

5RDs Go Fractal

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0753 5RDs Go Fractal You’re going to see me writing more about Five Room Dungeons. It’s because they are the best way I know how to master adventure building. Here’s why. As you might know, I’m creating a new product for you on the topic of 5RDs. In my upcoming 5RD Adventure […]

A Simple And Fun Way To Run Army Battles

Today, RPT game master Scott Brown shares with us a cool and simple system for running epic army battles as stories in your campaigns.