A Brief Word From Johnn Before we dig into pacing tips though, a couple of quick items. Get Help With Your Campaign August 26, 2023 – Wizard of Adventure Q&A Zoom. If you are a Wizard of Adventure, here’s details and the link. Feel free to bring questions about your world, campaign, encounters, NPCs, technique, […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1120 My Embarrassing Improv #Fail Hola dfdfd! Last time I told you how terrible my game was when I tried running the published adventure, Princes of the Apocalypse. That was a 255-page $65 disaster. But if you don’t use published adventures, what do you do? Building adventures is tough. Where do you […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1218 How To Improvise When Players Do Combat Stunts in OSR RPGs Bonjour, Johnn! Last session a player went way outside the rules. He wanted his character to leap through the air onto a giant bird’s leg, climb up the tarsus, then release a magical belt attached to the beast’s limb. This […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1196 What do you do when the dice betray your players? When the party seems to meet a dead-end? When your adventure stalls due to bad luck or bad choices? That’s the topic of today’s tips. But before you dig into them, please take the associated poll here: How to Prevent Dead […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1194 By Jonathan Hardin, sojournersawake.com Discuss these tips on their dedicated thread here at Campaign Community. Improvisation seems scary and sometimes difficult, especially for new GMs. I have learned a few tips from people who think quickly on their feet. And I think the pair of techniques I’m sharing with you today […]
Continue readingFrom 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 […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1169 RPT Platinum Patron Lee asks: I still struggle with “green box text” vs. map building. Do I spend my time providing 3 sentences of description, or do I spend an hour drawing a great map? I find writing those 3 sentences very intimidating for some reason, like I am not giving […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1168 When there’s good communication, it’s invisible. When there’s bad communication, everyone feels it. As an anti-social, only child introvert, I’ve always considered myself as having a low emotional quotient. I’m much more polite in writing. 🙂 At work I’ve been called direct due to my questions. Being direct is effective, in […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1153 We want to cue up situations, not outcomes. By that, I mean we don’t dictate the actions of the characters. That’s the players’ job. But as storytellers, we have a job to do too. We need to weave good tales from our setting, adventure plans, and gameplay as it happens. How […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1135 Ever make a fire from scratch, without matches or gasoline? Every material has an ignition temperature where a spark lights it up. The shirt you’re wearing probably ignites around 267°C or 513°F. Wood is about 300°C / 572°F. And what about our encounters? What ignites them? More on that in a […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1130 I realized last month I’ve been in a rut slinging boring monsters. This troubled me because boring foes = boring games (h/t to Slapchop). In my Terror in the Badlands campaign, for example, we had a crazy battle in a ruined underground city against a white dragon. It was tricksy with […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #0903 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: […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #0804 Last Musing we chatted about the importance of characterizing details you bring into gameplay. As you provide encounter descriptions, introduce NPCs, offer treasures, tell secrets, and convey the world to your friends, you can think about both variables of the equation. The first variable is about how you inject physical and […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #0803 Better Storytelling With Two-Sided Characterization Characterization is how you roleplay the people, places, and things in your adventures. Here’s how to add panache, style, and zing via characterization to engage your players more and become a better storyteller. To me, it’s all roleplaying. But in the literary world, they call it […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #0816 RPT GM Haukur posed this question to me: Hey there Johnn. I’m relatively new to DMing. I’m having some problems with improvising. Do you have any improvising tips on encounters and characters, if it’s not too much of a hassle, that is. Thank you. There are two kinds of improv we […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1083 Sometimes all you need is a skeleton. With a few guiding bullet points, you become unblocked and inspired to create next session’s adventure. I’ve featured a couple of adventure design templates in the past, including the Hook, Line & Sinkers Mad Lib (March 2017), the Mad Lib 5 Room Dungeon Idea […]
Continue readingRoleplaying Tips Newsletter #1079 Last summer I watched a video with a great tip on how to add more story and drama to my melees. I’ve been using this tip for several sessions now, and it’s made a big difference. However, this narrative tactic was tricky for me at first, especially because it’s all improv. […]
Continue readingWhy do we fear improv?In my experience, GMing by the seat of your pants means facing embarrassment and frustration because of?
Continue readingFrom Jonathan Hicks Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0259 A Brief Word From Johnn GM Survey – What Would Be On Your Wishlist? Imagine you could send your players a well thought out, carefully crafted session survey to find out their honest opinions of what they liked, didn’t like, and stuff they wished you’d be better at. […]
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