Descriptions Archives - Roleplaying Tips

Tag Archive

Tag Archives for " Descriptions "

A Horror Tip For Your Halloween Game

Horror is tough to pull off at the table. I don’t run scary games often, but when I do, I rely on one technique that punches through the beer and pretzels and gets players uneasy and scared. Deny Them Meaning When you have lots of clear information you feel confident. And confidence is the last […]

Better Descriptions: d7 Ways To Steal Great Words

A CampaignCraft member recently asked me how to master the lexicon when running a new genre for the first time. The game mechanics and general narrative were no problem, but technical and insider details stumped her in certain cases. Describing vehicle manoeuvres, piloting controls, gear, and how NPCs interacted with their environment were a big […]

What To Do When Combat Stalls

The Quarry Pit Trap In a Basilica campaign session, combat in a quarry almost stalled out like an airplane losing speed and starting to drop like dead weight. I could tell the pace was slowing down, but when a player asked after a few moments of table silence, “Whose turn is it?” I knew the […]

How Big Is The Shark?

Years ago in my Riddleport campaign I said this: “There’s a large shark circling in the harbour.” The characters went down to the docks for a closer look. The shark attacked. And on its turn it launched into the air, sailed right over the party, and splashed down on the other side. The shark jumped […]

3 Tips For Roleplaying Multiple NPCs In The Same Scene

Welcome back to our series diving into Game Master V’s tricky session! Last time, we tackled the problem of Passive Players. Today, we’re looking at a big cognitive load pit trap, which I think of as the Multiball problem. This is when too many things are moving at once and we lets things drop. “…the […]

How To Fix A Dull Setting (Without Writing More Lore)

A great way to craft and maintain a consistent atmosphere without the heavy prep. I’m experimenting with a Sensory Bible for my Obsidian Invictus campaign to solve a specific problem. How to keep the vibe consistent without writing a tome of lore? One of my first steps was creating a Sensory Bible for the city, […]

My Heuristic For Better Descriptions

Today’s word of the day is indite, which is also today’s tip. So, here is how I indite better descriptions. Earlier this month I shared my 3-step description trick in a Tuesday Tutorial with Platinum Wizards of Adventure. I call these descriptions Lore Drops. They give us a robust mental framework we can apply to […]

When They Always Split Up

What do you do when the party becomes the eight-pointed chaos symbol and splits up in every direction? RPT GM Lessa asks: If you can manage to keep your players together, tell me how. First thing my players do is split the party… Now, Lessa is a very experienced GM and actually has this under […]

Bake In The Pokey Bits: Design For Interaction

I try to keep it simple behind the screen and let players make it complicated. Part of doing that involves me handling The What and players handling The How. For example, I was creating a 3 Line NPC just now. Liorin, the wizard who created a powerful artefact in my Duskfall setting millennia ago: My […]

Weeds: What My Garden Taught Me About World Building

Each empty space on our map offers an opportunity. We often focus on the big things like rooms, doors, and treasure, but the real magic is in the clutter. The makeshift gardens, the forgotten tools, and even the weeds. As GMs, our goal is to make our settings feel lived in, and I was recently […]

Do You Speak in Ellipses? A Common GM Mistake (And How to Fix It)

Here’s a way to instantly improve communication at your game table and keep your players more engaged than ever. There’s a common, often overlooked, communication habit that might be subtly sabotaging your sessions. In today’s tip, I’ll share a powerful, easy-to-implement way to eliminate choppy descriptions and ensure seamless interaction. Speaking in Ellipses… I’ve noticed […]

Getting Players to Care About Lore

How to get players paying attention to your campaign lore. A great question came up in last night’s super secret GM coaching session: How do you get players to pay attention to, and care about, your lore and world details? Use AIDA as a Hook Tool First, we want to capture players’ attention. Aiki shared […]

Let Them Have The Last Word

I played The Dark Eye RPG again on Sunday. And with the GM’s permission, I’d like to share a tip I gleaned from the session: Let players have the last word. This can be taken on a number of levels. The case I’m talking about from the session is the end of a player’s turn. […]

Use This Technique for Delicious Drama & Irony

When the audience knows something the characters don’t, that’s great irony. If the characters are in danger, it’s also dramatic. I heard a great tip from a GM in my coaching program that I wanted to pass along. I did not note who said this at the time, so apologies for the lack of attribution. […]

Master Improvisation Using Story Stakes to Amp Up Your Game

I recently polled several GMs with this question: If you could learn anything about GMing that would significantly improve your gameplay, what would it be? The overwhelming response was the desire to improve improvisation skills. Tonight’s coaching workshop is dedicated to that very topic. It will focus particularly on setting Stakes, an aspect of improvisation […]

How to Subvert Clues in Room Descriptions

How do you subvert expectations in room descriptions when you’re running a mystery or hiding clues? This is a question I received from Wizard of Adventure Arvindh. He goes on: How do you control how much info you give away when you’re running a mystery game? Like, if there’s a hidden door below the bed, […]

Write More Engaging Room Descriptions

Description Sorcery from a Wordsmithing Warlock Crafting concise and evocative descriptions provides a huge boon for our storytelling prowess. Descriptions serve as the bridge between our imagination, character perceptions, and player choices. A well-made description: Jeremy Brown is a repeat offender, er, contributor, to the Roleplaying Tips Newsletter. 🙂 During a convo we started up […]

Master the Table With One Essential Ingredient

This is the final part of a series on How to Make Encounters Fun. Read Part I, Part II, and Part III here. The final part of this series about making encounters fun is a bit fluffy, but critical. I received a nice compliment from one of my players recently about the energy I bring […]

Add Details With Panache And Choice

Details are important for vibrant roleplay. But making them up all the time becomes difficult. Previously, @CasualOnesRay and @ExileInParadise tipped us about inviting players to provide details to help the GM out. Ask questions like: I often like to take this a step further. It depends on the group and each player. But imagine this […]

I Set The Scene, But You Fill It Out

Aloha Johnn! Before I dive into today’s GM tip, I have a quick hint for Campaign Logger GMs. Especially if you’re transferring text to CL from OneNote on Windows When pasting text from OneNote into CL, use CTRL+SHIFT+V to bypass Windows default of pasting as an image. I explain this in more detail with a […]

Unlock Player Creativity With Descriptive Options

We played another session of the WOIN RPG conversion of my Basilica campaign and it went well. We were running Old School Essentials, and the group opted to try a crunchier system. So far, WOIN is ticking all the boxes. Today’s tip is not about rules though. Instead, it’s about something great one of my […]

The Sneaky GM Trap I Spotted At Start Of This Adventure

The Sneaky GM Trap I Spotted At Start Of This Adventure I was reading an adventure last night (an adventure that I also played in January) and something troublesome jumped out at me from the initial encounter’s boxed text. Here is the first sentence: The stairs leading to the basement of the Otari Fishery creak […]

The Problem With Maps

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1201 Brief Word From Johnn Today I have some tips for when players get distracted by your beautiful maps and don’t pay attention to your encounter details. But before getting into those, I wanted to mention there are additional some Reader Tips this issue at the end you might want to check […]

When Players Go Feral — How to Clarify Actions of Misunderstood Players

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1200 Brief Word From Johnn Today’s tips from Jonathan cover a problem I’ve experienced many times, especially at conventions. What do you do when one player goes off the rails? I especially like the example of the ranger who seemingly isn’t on the same page as the party and wants to ask […]

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! A Simple Way To Improve Gameplay, Engagement & Character Outcomes

From JohnnFour Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1181 Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú Johnn? Here’s a refreshed tip from Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #5, going way back to 1999 right before the world was going to end with Y2K. Too often we become trapped in our heads thinking three moves ahead, doing math, or coming up with names […]

1 2 3 Next »