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 […]

How To Handle Hack & Slash and Plot-Breaking Character Powers

Dia Dhuit Johnn, How can you make travel and exploration more interesting? And what can we do about players who like to kill everything and ignore roleplay? I’ll share a couple of tips on these topics, triggered by recent emails, with you today. Too Hack & Slash Focused Roleplaying Tips GM JG emailed me yesterday: […]

How To Create Roleplay Encounters

I received this great request from RPT GM Carter: I have a problem I’m trying to solve: my players tell me they’re more interested in roleplaying than combat, but I’m most comfortable with making interesting combat encounters than interesting roleplaying encounters. With combat I create interesting terrain, interesting enemy mechanics, cool boss fights, etc. But […]

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, […]

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 […]

7 Essential Encounter Ingredients

Here’s a fun reader tip from GM Barky on how to build your encounters. It’s definitely food for thought. Johnn, Here’s my recipe for encounter creation using a food metaphor: Meat Meat is the protein, the basic building block of life. In an encounter, it’s the enemy leader. Example: my players have to pay a […]

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. […]

How To Rock Your Encounters With This Monster Design Tip

Here’s a tip from Faster Combat: when you chose or design a monster, start with how you want the PCs to defeat it. I say “choose or design” because it doesn’t matter whether you’re picking the foe from the monster manual or homebrewing an original critter. The benefit is the same to your encounter. What […]

Make Encounters Intense

Static RPG encounters become predictable. We roll initiative. PCs choose their targets. Grind until the last hit point. However, there’s a concept I’ve penned in my upcoming 5 Room Dungeons book called Intensify. Use this to make encounters come alive, surprise the PCs, and keep your players thoroughly entertained. The technique is simple. At some […]

RPT Gem: A Fantastic Encounter Building Tool

If you have writer’s block, this is a fantastic GM encounter building tool created by Brennan OBrien. Today’s Musing is a short one. Just check this tool out and explore its possibilities. For example, I think it’s awesome for encounter building. Encounter Building Recipe Start with an encounter seed idea for a person, place, or […]

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 […]

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 […]

How to Avoid a TPK When GMing Intense Encounters

With the Encounter Intensify Technique you increase the stakes during an encounter to give your players a jolt of adrenaline. Just when you think it can’t get worse or more desperate, it does. A reader asked me how to avoid wiping the party, because I advised picking a moment when encounter outcome seems dubious. Pick […]

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 […]

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 […]

A Cracking Way To Conjure Compelling Encounters

The best way to start adventure planning is with conflict. Conflict drives gameplay. When PCs must meet and beat something, you’re going to offer up choices, skill checks, attack rolls, and parleys. Roll the dice, say yes, keep the pace storming. A problem I used to face was coming up with enough conflict, encounter, and […]

Encounters Are Like My Favourite Zesty Game Food

How do you think your games? My favourite unit of thought for gameplay is encounters. Encounters are like pizza. They are central to the meal. You might get pop, dips, chicken wings, and other add-ons, but the meal is all about the ‘za. During sessions, we usually order four or five pizzas, each one different […]

What, When, From Above

Let’s say there’s four goblins in the forest waiting to ambush the PCs. Wait, that’s boring. Let’s say it’s six goblins lead by an NPC with a grudge against the party. That’s a bit better. What if the NPC is a guard who was exiled from The Keep because they failed to stop the PCs […]

A Flash Flood of Responses

Merhaba %FIRSTNAME% Last week I critiqued a flash flood encounter. I asked for your feedback and ideas at the end on how you’d tweak the encounter for fun gameplay. Below are some of the great responses I received. Thanks everyone! I appreciate the time you take to read, learn, and respond to these Musings to […]

Ambling Itinerant Roaming Encounters

Hola %FIRSTNAME% Some of you like wandering monster tables, and some of you hate them. I think part of the dislike when I bring them up comes from my sloppy naming, because it makes you think of the old style where you just pull random critters out of a book and roll initiative. My version […]

Ramping Up Tension In A Roleplay Plot

Here’s what I look for when I have roleplay plots. 1) A core Problem, 2) Three Intensifiers, 3) Everything has a Secret.

This is easier said than done though, so let’s see how we can use these GM Toolbox techniques to give our roleplaying plots lots of juicy tension.

Part 2: What To Do If It’s Too Easy?

I received an interesting tip request from RPT GM Kristen: What do you think about things like adding 50 HP because the baddies go down too quickly? One of my players actually said I should have done that rather than letting the encounter flop. A tricky situation. I refrain from doing this. I feel it […]

Part 1: What To Do If You Made It Too Difficult

RPT GM Kristen emailed me this worry: Hi Johnn, I used to fudge dice rolls. I’ve definitely changed my perspective on that from stuff you’ve said and other DMs that talk about this. I think what made me want to fudge things is that I’m afraid what I’ve made is too difficult for my players […]

Morale: the Missing Encounter Piece From D&D and Pathfinder

From Daniel J. Mello (danscififan) Morale — the esprit de corps, the willingness of the unit to continue to fight. This is an old wargame trait assigned to various armies. Infantry are well trained and usually have a high Morale, where partisans and rebels are not as well trained and often have a lower Morale. […]