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My Secret Ingredient For Making Great Puzzles

A Brief Word From Johnn Think too small and think too big. We’ve got a critter making a nest under our deck. We can’t see it because it’s found a good crack to inhabit. But we can hear it. It’s chewing something. Leaves maybe. Paper perhaps. The bones of some poor victim, most likely. Or […]

6 Tips On How To Tie Dungeon Encounters Together

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1203 Brief Word From Johnn Last night I found a great course on Udemy about video game design. In part, it dives into the tension between player agency versus game designer agenda. Open world games versus plotted story paths. This is old hat for us though. The first moments behind the screen […]

How To Make Every Encounter Interesting

By Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1195 (Join the conversation about today’s tips here.) Here’s an interesting question about encounter building that WorldWibe asks on RPT’s Discord: Is a dungeon-making philosophy that goes: “Every room should have something interesting in it, be it battle, treasure or lore” a good design-methodology? Thanks for the great question! […]

Simple Ways to Enhance Your Magic Items

From Jonathan Siema Johnn! In todays’ Roleplaying Tips Newsletter, I’ve got the following GM tips for you: 3 Simple Ways to Enhance Your Magic Items How can we spruce up magic items so they aren’t boring +1 shields? Jonathan Hardin (sojournersawake.com) shows us how via three quick changes we can make to an item’s properties. […]

5 Ways To Power Up Your Secret Doors

From JohnnFour Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,179 Depending on your system, secret door checks every five feet bog gameplay down and soon get tiresome.This topic came up in the most recent Wizard of Adventure Zoom call: How do you handle secret doors??I’m not a big fan of the passive check, or maybe I’m using it incorrectly.?I […]

4 Ways To Surprise Players Who Know All The Monster Stats

From Jonathan Hardin, sojournersawake.com Hello Sojourner! My players know all of the stats for every villain I place in their path. Through searching on the internet, hours studying monster manuals, and good old fashioned wits, my players have found a way to circumvent the wonder of being surprised in battle. As GM, I want to […]

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part I

In Faster Combat, a Three Round Combat Plan is how your combat will end after your side has had three licks against the other side. Why would we make something like that? If your fights finish after the third bell, think how much faster they’ll be than melees that just grind on to the last […]

Cunning Combat Strategy – 3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats Part II

How do you make your next combat fast and exciting effective 3 Round Combat Plans? And what are we supposed to do in each round? What is our strategy here? That’s what I show you in today’s tips, which are taken from my brand new Faster Combat 5E course launching this spring. Today, I’ll go […]

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part II

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part I

Starting a West Marches Campaign – Step By Step

By Jochen Linnemann Starting a West Marches Campaign (Part 1) Some time ago, I decided to start a West Marches type campaign with the idea of an episodic, easy-to-prep game for a group changing players in mind. So, I started to research the topic. Reading Tips Google was a good jump off point, and I […]

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 […]

How Do You Keep Things Fresh For Your Players?

RPT GM Mark Ariesen asks this tricky question and my answer goes down a dark path. Here’s his question: How do you keep things fresh for your players year-in-year out, when they have seen it all and done it all? One easy way to do this is design your own stuff. Build your own adventures, […]

Coax The Details Out

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0751 It all starts with a flaw. The item does not work as expected. This creates surprise, which makes great gameplay. After the surprise, it makes the item distinct and valued because it’s not just another +1 dagger. Design cost-value into your flaws and find that sweet spot where the penalty of […]

Fear the GM

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0764 When I surveyed readers last year about what kinds of adventure design challenges you all faced, one thing that came up was how to solve the PCs rampaging through your encounters without a care in the world. The characters don’t plan, never retreat, and don’t parley. This topic is salient because […]

Why Will It Be Fun?

We get stuck in our own heads. What we think will be fun for players is actually ego strokes for our GMing. Don’t fall into this trap. Here’s a perfect example. A GM asked for help polishing their encounter: GM: “As the PCs explore a cavern I plan on having a flash flood hit them […]

Build Story Last

For RPG purposes, I define story as the sequence of events that come out of gameplay. And I think of plot as the GM’s plan for those events. Plot comes first, story comes second. Plot is based on ideas and connections for events and situations. It’s flexible and adapts to character actions and resulting consequences. […]

Welcome To Adventure Hacking

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0799 If you’re like me, you’ve got a bunch of published adventures on your shelf and your computer. More than you could ever GM. However, I love reading adventures. I get so many ideas for my campaigns this way. I also got an unexpected side benefit from reading adventures after awhile. I […]

When Fluff Spawns From Rules, A Great Game Emerges

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0790 Guten morgen %FIRSTNAME% I’ve long had a fascination with how game rules affect game settings. Too often in game world products, I see a setting likely created separately as fiction in a word processor or wiki, and then the game patched onto it. What I quest to build is a setting […]

May – How to Use the Other Kind of Intelligence

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0795 Recently I challenged you to place a spy in the party. In response, RPT reader Joshua Barry wrote in with some excellent tips on Tactical vs. Strategic spying with some great fantasy examples I’d like to share with you today. Let’s dive in! I’d like to expand on your definition of […]

Hide The Monster’s Stats To See The Story

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0818 If you’re like me, you sometimes let monster stats limit your thinking. I was reminded of this when I received Fourscore Phantasmagores in the mail for review. It’s a monster book created by Montreal artist Rupert Bottenberg. It’s what I’d call a high concept book. It presents ideas, not stats. Its […]

Get These Two Things Right For Stories To Make Sense

We want to check Congruity first because it’s faster and easier to spot errors at this level. If we get the immediate details right here, it’ll automatically fix those errors at the campaign level.

Use Plot Factories For Unlimited Hook Inspiration

So what do I do with new adventure ideas? I ask a simple question and brainstorm answers for a couple minutes. If I like the answers, then I incorporate the idea into my campaign.

Happy House Ruling – How to Use Game Design to Create New Gameplay Experiences

From Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #623 Introduce constraints through house rules and game design to offer unique gaming experiences and encourage creativity. A couple of old school AD&D modules come to mind. EX1: Dungeonland and EX2: Land Beyond the Magic Mirror I think are the names. (All my books are in boxes in the garage at the moment.) […]

Adventure Design Tip: How Do You use Chekhov’s Gun in Gaming?

From Ben Scerri Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #524 The literary principal of Chekhov’s Gun has been around since the late 19th century and has influenced every aspect of storytelling culture. However, in my experience, it has failed to fully affect gaming and the stories game masters tell. This might be due to the reactive essence of […]

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