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Sandbox Adventures – 5 Essential Ingredients

I got my first taste of sandbox play in B2: Keep on the Borderlands. The PCs based themselves in The Keep and forayed into the Wild. A crazy hermit shared the location of several caves nearby, confirmed dangerous, rumoured with riches. As the party crested a hill, a horseshoe valley stretched before them, rings of […]

Quick Plot Design: How To Create A Villain Plan First Draft

Been working on my campaigns and thinking a lot about villain plans. I like to craft a roadmap for how the villain can win their goal. I call this Villain Win-State. And that road map becomes my adventure outline for villain type adventures. So what are the first couple of steps for making an awesome […]

Adventure Building Tip: Must All Encounters Advance The Plot?

RPT GM Joshua asks: “Do all encounters need to advance the plot?” My answer is yes. But with a twist I’ll explain in today’s article. A session is made up of encounters. Encounters make up adventures. Adventures make campaigns. To speak about encounters I first need to speak about adventures. That’s one level up. We […]

How To Detail An Encounter In Less Than A Minute: Dangers, Discoveries, Impressions

Here’s an encounter tip for you today, pulled out of my Adventure Building Master Game Plan, which launches later this year. Once I get to the encounter building phase, I start digging into the details. I’ve got a Campaign Game Plan created, and an Adventure Game Plan built, by the time I reach this stage. […]

Monster Design Tip: Take Away The Sun

Do you know how the eyeball works? It’s fascinating. Think about a camera for a moment. You point your camera at what you want to photograph. The shutter opens and closes to control the amount of light. A slow shutter action lets in more light. Great for dim conditions but poor for motion. Fast shutter […]

Campaign Reboot Example: Murder Hobos

Readers asked for an example of a campaign reboot using my three step map. Rebooting My Murder Hobos Campaign (And Yours) in Three Easy Steps Here’s one using my current campaign, which needs new life injected into it as I prep Season 3. Step 1. Write a Story Summary The party tried helping the village […]

$5rds-go-fractal$

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 Building System though, there’s three key concepts […]

Rebooting My Murder Hobos Campaign (And Yours) in Three Easy Steps

Let’s talk about a campaign reboot. But before that, let me crack open the champagne and yell Happy Year +1! Alana and I had a great time visiting her parents in snowy Salmon Arm, B.C. We spent Christmas there, then flew back to ring in the changing of the calendar with dinner out and a […]

Cool Idea: Skill Treasures

Here’s a simple way to make awesome magic items customised for your players. The idea occurred to me the other day, and I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it before. I’ll outline the recipe in three steps because I loves me my GMing recipes. 🙂 Step One: Skill Hunting Review each character sheet […]

Idea: Living Spell

Here’s a cool Wednesday idea for your game sent to me by Aramax over at Strolen’s Citadel. What happens when a spell goes awry? Perhaps it’s a miscasting? Maybe a foe warps three simultaneous effects cast upon him. Maybe it’s a research mishap. Of the many ways spells could change and twist unexpectedly, a few […]

Resonance Part II: How to Create Resonance

Last Musing we talked about how to get apathetic players to care about your adventure by using Theme and Resonance. Theme is about choosing, designing, and introducing gameplay elements that focus on your campaign goal. Resonance is about choosing themes that will draw your players in and make them care deeply about what happens during […]

Mad Lib Template for Hook, Line & Sinkers

The other day I talked about a classic GMing technique called Hook, Line & Sinkers. Use this three-part method to generate encounter skeletons fast. I remember first coming across this method in the Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine. Each issue would have a few to inspire your game. Victor Diaz recently posted about them, […]

The Hook, Line & Sinkers Method Will Inspire Your Encounters

Here’s a great way to create encounter seeds for your next game via RPT Reader Victor Diaz. It’s called the Hook, Line & Sinkers method. From the RIFTS Adventure Book, page 38: Hook, Line & Sinkers ™ is the popular Game Master’s tool created by Jolly Blackburn. The idea behind it is simple — give […]

The Phantasmal Pessimist and Other Living Spell Examples

A couple weeks ago I offered a tip on creating Living Spells using a three step recipe. At the end was a challenge to use the recipe and create your own Living Spells. In today’s Musing I share with you four Living Spells, crafted by your fellow readers, that caught my eye. Here’s a link […]

A Slick Three Step Wandering Monster System

Ever since running B1: In Search of the Unknown I’ve enjoyed wandering monsters. As PCs quested for the legendary treasure of Roghan and Zelligar, I’d roll and run all sorts of monster encounters. It gave me yet another opportunity to be creative during the game. This month’s RPG Blog Carnival hosted over at Moebius Adventures […]

What If?… Plot Seeds Generator

Last Musing I answered a question from Anon GM about what hooks are and why you want to use them. Today let’s dig into part two of their question: What are seeds? In my lingo, a seed is an idea not fleshed out yet. For example, good drow running from evil kin. Or, magic armour, […]

What Are Seeds And Hooks?

Anon GM wrote in with this request about seeds and hooks: I need your help with something embarrassing. I have been DMing for years now and realized there is something that seems to be foundational to game play and I kind of don’t know anything about it. I have read your tips and have read […]

The Quarantine

Here’s a great campaign seed from Danish Roleplaying Tips GM Alexander Aubert: A quarantined city where a magical disease is turning everyone, including the PCs, slowly into monsters. These days, when I come across ideas for adventures I do something new. It’s a quick action borrowed from Dungeon World. And it’s part of this bigger […]

Pcs Versus Everything

The picture above is hex biscuits my wife Alana made last night to go with chilli. A pretty awesome surprise. Thanks wife! The daily writing continues to go well. Even better, I’m getting positive feedback on the shorter emails I’ve been testing out. It’s a joy writing them, and so far readers have been enjoying […]

A Village Name That’s a Funny Puzzle

Here’s a funny, simple puzzle for your game. My mom is reading a book called The Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman. In it there’s a place called Saint Ophere. Turns out the place was named because someone long ago misread a sign. The sign read: Stop here Stop here with some punctuation becomes […]

Encounters Seeds Formula Part II

In a recent Musings email [Panicked Prep For Next Session] I talked about a formula to create encounter seeds fast: What if? + one source of inspiration = one encounter seed. I also provided three example sources of inspiration: The Monster Manual The News Random Page Finally, I offered bonus points if you connect encounter […]

d10 Things You Hear In Town

I often stumble over thinking up rumours on-the-fly. Especially in my sandbox games where there are so many possibilities. I end up just slandering a character or bad-mouthing the establishment. While good for a laugh, that doesn’t drive the campaign forward. So Jochen and I just added a new generator to Campaign Logger called Town […]

The Potion Factory for Fun Faction Finagling

The Potion Factory for Fun Faction Finagling On theme with this month’s RPG Blog Carnival, here’s an idea for arming your next faction without destroying campaign balance. We began my Murder Hobos campaign as a playtest of the D&D 5E rules using the adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver included in the Starter Set box. In […]

Plot Your Dungeons with This Simple Grid System

The Nine Sector System of Dungeon Design I saw Castle Oldskull ~ CDDG1: The Classic Dungeon Design Guide ~ Book 1: Forging the Underworld (yup, that’s the full actual title) by Kent David Kelly in the Amazon Kindle store and on a whim purchased it. The book is a couple hundred pages of dungeon building […]

I’m Killing Pcs and The Fun Doing This

Another bad habit I’ve gotten into is being arbitrary with encounter difficulty. This undermines player thinking and creativity and makes for a poorer gameplay experience. In my group, we don’t typically do long dungeon crawls. Encounters are a mix of wilderness, town, and dungeon, and of plot, puzzle, combat, and roleplay. So encounters are non-linear […]

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