Adventure & Campaign Building Archives

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Give Enemies Missions Too

Siema Johnn, A new RPT GM emailed me and said something that triggered a thought about how to better balance your encounters. Here’s a snippet of his email: “The guild gives them an easy base of operations and provides a simple way of offering up quests on a job board. It’s been going really well, […]

How To Stop Campaigns From Fizzling Out

Here’s an email from RPT GM Sam about campaigning: Hi Johnn! Glad I stumbled upon your stuff over the weekend. I am a gamer from Melbourne, Australia. I’ve been playing RPGs for about 12 years and I’ve been interested in GMing for about 5 years now. My biggest problem is this: I find creating stories […]

How To Create Wicked Rumour Tables

RPT GM Roy Winfrey asks: Love the rumour post you just posted. I was intrigued by the Knowledge Table. Any chance we might see an article about how to construct that? Thanks for the question, Roy. I first spoke about the idea of a Knowledge Table in my Adventure Building Workshop, which is currently on […]

Adventure Design: Build From The Monster’s POV

When building cunning locations for your adventures and encounters, build out from their denizens’ point of view. Here’s a way you can do this in 5 steps: Step 1. Original Use Step 2. Who Built It? Step 3. Rooms Step 4. Map & Key Step 5. Recycle Step 1. Original Use Many locations have an […]

Celebrate Your Encounter Locations This Way

Make your locations memorable. And incorporate the story. Do those two things to make encounters even better. Here’s how: Features => Twist => Secret Let’s see what to do for each part: Figure Out The Special Features First, give your location a Purpose. Sometimes the game role for the location differs from the Purpose. This […]

Power Your Plots With Simple Rumour Tables

The Keep is a monthly D&D campaign, just three sessions old, where the PCs have been shipwrecked on the mysterious jungle island of Barbossa. In session one, I used a rumour table to drop several plot hooks into play to give the sandbox immediate direction. Each player rolled a d20 and received their own rumour. […]

The Keep: Introducing My New Campaign

In Barbossa, the PCs are the monsters. Today I share some thinking behind my new campaign, which gets its second session tonight. I’m very excited! The group is part of a monthly drop-in D&D event run at a local cafe in my city. The first session went well, despite me forgetting to bring the adventure. […]

Storymastery: More Examples of Bad Reveal Timings

Last Musing, we talked about how to stage your prophecies for maximum effect. Reveal your prophecy too soon, and players won’t be invested. They won’t care because they have not bonded with your campaign yet. And then even the best prophecy destined to hit your table will feel like a gimmick. There are other campaign […]

Your Campaign Agenda => Best Campaign Ever Part II

There’s a moment mid-campaign when my inner voice screams out: “I’ve lost the plot! What the #@$% is going on? What the #@$% do I do now?” (Sorry, in-skull Johnn has a potty mouth.) When I’m off the rails as a GM it’s panic time. …Everything feels like it’s crap. …The campaign’s falling to pieces. […]

What Would Be Your Best Campaign Ever? Part I

How do I make my Hobo Princes campaign my best one? There are a few campaigns it would need to top, including Riddleport, Temple of Elemental Evil, and the one I ran in Vancouver ’90-’92. Aiming to make each campaign better than the previous keeps your sabre sharp. On our quest to become master storytellers […]

Run With The Impressions Technique

Here’s the thing with read-aloud scripts and boxed text you find in published modules…. It’s boring. And it kills the mood. Imagine an actor stopping mid-scene to grab the script and read it aloud to you. A terrible experience for both actor and audience. Likewise, stopping your natural way of describing the action, answering player […]

Create Plots Easily With This Simple Method

Patrons have access to a cool plot-building PDF called the But Reversal Method. Today, I have a companion plotting technique for all RPT GMs called the Because Twice method, or B2. Sometimes my plans get convoluted and I literally lose the plot. Too many forks to detail and track, and not enough knives to cut […]

The Four Levers That Inevitably Pull Players Through Your Adventures

I’m writing right now in my Guide to 5 Room Dungeons about Push versus Pull. Push GMing means forcing players in a certain direction. But players are their own beings. They think and act independent of your wishes. You cannot control another person. Therefore, you cannot control your players. If you try, everyone just gets […]

The Subtle Gap You Should Close for Better Storytelling

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 take an unexpected turn […]

Create Your Special GM Moves

Adventures get repetitive and boring. “Bring me another 10 scorpion tales!” Even megadungeons and campaign paths can grind you down. I received an email from a subscriber who asked how to keep players engaged. He caught one player even playing video games on their phone during sessions. The best way I know how to keep […]

When Do I Peel Back The Cosmic Curtain In My Campaigns?

Sveiki %FIRSTNAME%, Grand campaigns take characters from weaklings to near demi-gods. Intrigue campaigns have shadowy layers with a central truth hidden deep in the core. Mega-plot campaigns have a pyramid of villains and factions piled atop each other like an Ikea storage unit. How do we know what truths to reveal? When do we reveal them? I’ve found […]

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

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 five rooms out from […]

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

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 with had a massive […]

How To GM Genius NPCs

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 plan they were […]

Building Encounters On The Fly

Roleplaying Tip GM Dario asks, “How do you create encounters on the fly? Do you just have the DM tables at hand, roll a d20 a few times and voilá? Or do you have a specific procedure?” Thanks for the great question, Dario. I have a few tools for improve encounters: GM Agenda The first […]

A Three Part Quest Template

Roleplaying Tips GM Iona asked me how to kick off new campaigns: I am going to run a semi-blank character sheet game. The game concept is that players are normal humans kidnapped from Earth and sent to a planet where they can gather magical skills Pokemon style. I am unsure on what to run as […]

New Mad Lib: Instant Magic Items

Got another Mad Lib for you today. This one is for special item creation and is inspired by the Perilous Deeps book for Dungeon World. Just fill in the blanks to make an interesting item: This item [DOES ACTION] [TO A THING] and the wielder [CAN CONTROL IT] which [CAN BE USED SOMETIMES]. For example: This item allows for communication with predatory […]

Creating A Sandbox Campaign – 7 Steps

Here’s a quick recipe for building a sandbox campaign. The point is to not do a whole lot of plot prep in advance. Be an Agile GM. Only plan deeper once players have chosen a hex, path, or entrance. Step 1: Sandbox Campaign Structure First thing I’d do is decide on the overall structure. This gives you […]

How To Create Five Room Horror Dungeons

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 horror game? For readers […]

Are You Keeping Too Many Secrets?

It’s better to give players lots of good information instead of keeping it all behind your screen. RPT GM Leigh wrote me and said, “The tricky bit is breaking the bad habit of keeping info secret.” How true. I remember often thinking, “Wow, it’s going to be so cool when I reveal this info. My […]

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