Adventure & Campaign Building Archives

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Tag Archives for " Adventure & Campaign Building "

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 […]

8 Things Worth Starting a Dungeon War Over

Just picked up Level Up by Courtney Campbell. It’s a small book of tables on random topics. And the first table I started reading spawned an article idea. The table is titled “Top Ten Dungeon Resources” and has this description: Well, you’ve got a dungeon. And you’ve got all these factions. Apparently they all live […]

Know Of Any Good Mystery Resources?

Over on ze Discord, Al Dente wants to noodle on mystery resources: Hey! I’m trying to get better at designing mystery scenarios for investigative games like Call of Cthulhu. I was wondering if you guys could suggest any resources i should check out @Loz replied: GURPS Mysteries could be a good source. I remember their […]

Never Trust a Kenku

My friend in high school tricked me one time. He was GMing me 1:1 in a new campaign. I was following a Kenku. We played for an hour and he described the desert. And nothing happened. Just following the kenku. So, finally, I say something along the lines of, “This is boring.” My friend cracked […]

Do Easy Prep While Walking

The Tiny Prep group hit a milestone the other day. We’ve got a streak going of 150 consecutive days! Congrats to the GMs getting their campaigns ready for next session, five minutes at a time. Speaking of Tiny Prep, I saw this question on the Discord from Game Master EwokTaintPuncher (ahem): Doc recently told me […]

The Minnie Haul GM

So I’m a cheap bastard. That’s number ten on The Gamemaster’s Hall Of Shame: Monty Haul’s Top Ten Cousins all the way back to Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #3: 10 Minnie Haul Players in previous campaigns joke about it. I like to pretend there’s no treasure chapter at all. Mice must’ve eaten those pages. But the […]

Try This Fantastic Adventure Mad Lib

On the Roleplaying Tips Discord, @Kodia Tomekeeper reminded me about the fantastic template Pixar used for story spines. It works well for our own adventure, campaign, and even world seeds: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. Let’s […]

What’s the Point (Crawl)?

Here’s a tip for new GMs or those new to point crawls. What’s a point crawl? I don’t know the official definition, but mine is an adventure you make based on story gates characters must get through. When the final obstacle’s been beaten and that gate traversed, the party’s won. Creating a point crawl confused […]

How to Create Non-Combat Encounters

A Brief Word From Johnn Hola Game Master! First, a quick note to say that yesterday I fixed the broken video links in the 7-Day GM Organization Challenge. To get the fresh links, you can re-join the challenge or feel free to email me and I will send you the link list directly. Today’s tip […]

A Big Surprise From Session 0 Yesterday

The fighter awoke on flat, wet, cold rock, his face in a puddle of something warm and sticky. His eyes immediately fixated on a tipped, flickering lantern leaking oil right toward him. Thus began my Lost Isle campaign, an homage to The Isle of Dread and the TV show Lost. We started In Medias Res. […]

3 Tips For Better Player Engagement

How can you get players engaged more in roleplaying encounters? Game Master Vildara presents this tricky session situation: Last night was a bit of a first for me and I find myself here looking for advice to avoid a situation like this. The crew is escorting a bride to her new husband on some backwater world. […]

Campaigns Are Hard

What kind of campaign do you run? We had a fascinating discussion in the Discord this week about how some campaigns end with a bang and others quietly retire. From RPT GM Gilladian: Campaign endings are hard. I have been a dm for over 30, maybe 40 years. I don’t remember most of the old […]

Fix Boring Dungeon Walls

It’s what’s between rooms that’s the real puzzle. Hola Game Master! Before I draw on today’s mapping tips, please consider this my invitation to you to join us for RPT Map Week. Draw, paint, thumbnail, click, sketch, or code a map based on a daily hook. Today’s Map Hook: A Flooding Dungeon. This is a […]

Break Reality To Build Better Dungeon Maps

Constrain one thing to transform your dungeons. Hola Game Master! Continuing our celebration of RPT Map Week (make sure you swing by the #rpt-map-weeks channel on Discord to check out the daily hooks), I want to talk about the hidden rules dictating your map designs. How Architectural Constraints Affect Maps We often draw floor plans […]

Anatomy Of A Back Pocket Encounter: The Screaming Ambush

Tuesday, I shared out the tip to create Back Pocket Encounters you can push into play in case you need to change the pace, stall, or provide a transition or clue. In response, Roleplaying Tips GM TT writes: Examples of each of the 3 Back Pocket Encounters would have been nice. Thanks for the suggestion, […]

Create These 3 Back Pocket Encounters For More Confident GMing

What do you do when the party gets stuck, the game gets bogged down, or you simply need to stall for time? In a recent Tiny Prep Challenge on our Discord server, one GM mentioned they were preparing a “backup/extra encounter to keep the fight-oriented players happy, if things go too lore-heavy.” This is an […]

A Great Isometric Point Crawl Map

Here’s a super Daggerheart point crawl map created by @muted and shared with the Roleplaying Tips community that I thought you might enjoy. From @muted: I am running a loop countdown (started on a location just outside of the dungeon – the Dig) and the dungeon is a collection of a few custom Daggerheart environments […]

My 7-Step Strategy For Successful Long-Term Campaigns

Run your campaigns like the best board game in the world. In 2018 I got back into board games in a big way. I had stopped playing in 2003, so did not get to experience the new wave and evolution in design of the 2000s and 2010s. Then I dropped into a board game day […]

The Writing On The Wall – Using Graffiti For Clues And Foreshadowing

I like graffiti. I got the idea of adding vandals to my dungeons from Barrowmaze Complete by Dr. Greg Gillespie. Buried under the several feet of tephra that surrounds Obsidian Invictus is a vast network of crypts built in a former age to service a Beast. And the characters have discovered the way in. It’s […]

Design First, Draw Second

5-Minute Megadungeon Maps. You have a great idea for a massive complex. But the thought of drawing every 10ft. corridor before you even know what goes where is so daunting that you never actually start. I’m faced with this proposition right now as I need to map the megadungeon for my Obsidian Invictus campaign. I […]

Dungeons in Modern Games

Running “dungeons” in any genre or setting. Roleplaying Tips GM Richmond grabbed my book, Logical Dungeon Design: Tactical Cartography, and sent me this note: Johnn, I have read the first chapter and part of the second. I don’t know how useful it will be for the game I am currently running, but I may be […]

Create Dynamic Dungeon Maps & Levels That Make Sense

Have you ever been running a dungeon crawl, feeling good, when suddenly a player asks a question that stops your dice cold? “Wait, why is there an ice room right next to a lava chamber?” “What do these monsters actually eat?” “Why are the ceilings only ten feet high if giants live here?” I call […]

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 […]

Quarrel at the Quarry: Bottom-Up Encounter Prep

Quarrel at the Quarry: Bottom-Up Encounter Prep Here’s how I’m building certain types of encounters in my Basilica campaign using world logic. By world logic, I mean starting with a map based on terrain and environment details, and then having plot and gameplay wrap around that. Using biome, hex, and other relevant details from my […]

Running Demons

How do you liven up gameplay when the characters are near max level? Here’s a question posted in the #demonplague channel in the RPT Discord: …the party finally came to the entrance of Xancrown’s Dungeon. I perused the 4th adventure shortly, have to read it in detail, but aren’t the enemies too weak for this […]

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