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4 Ways To Surprise Players Who Know All The Monster Stats

From Jonathan Hardinwww.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 keep […]

Making Monsters Marvelous – Monstrous RPT Gems For You

A Charter Member of the Adventure Building Master Game Plan asked me about monsters. Great topic. One might say there are three kinds of monsters: Constructs Tricksters Mirrors Constructs fulfill our System needs. Stats, abilities, xp/treasure. Tricksters serve our Story needs. Clue bearers, agents, plot twisters. Mirrors serve our Setting needs by reflecting darker aspects […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Monster Challenge

Had a great game of Out of the Abyss on Friday. Lots of funny gameplay stories came out of it. Here’s two, plus a challenge for you. First story is about housekeeping. As a player, always confirm your XP! I’m playing a 4th level cleric who runs around saying “Praise Helm” in a French accent. […]

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 […]

Monster Lore With A Twist

Here’s a radical idea, but hear me out. I’ve done this before, and when done right it works well. When a character makes a fantastic monster lore check, hand them the monster manual and let them read the monster entry out to the group. There are pros and cons here. Cons No secrets, no surprises […]

Monster Backstories

In response to my skyfall challenge a few weeks ago, I received a great email from RPT reader Roger B about a wyvern foe from his campaign: Johnn, I started a campaign a number of years ago where a wyvern in the area was a challenge for the local communities. It normally flew high and […]

June – 4 Tips For Better Secrets

An anonymous reader wrote in response to my recent Musings on How to Tell a Secret. They had a few great pointers on secret-telling. I know I’ve been the victim of #3 several times, so these are good tips to keep in mind. 4 Tips For Better Secrets Hi Johnn, One thing about secrets I […]

Hide The Monster’s Stats To See The Story

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 weird and disturbing entries […]

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. […]

5 Story Hooks From A Dead Monster

A bunch of hooks instantly sprung to mind as I pored over this….A cult wants the skeleton brought to their secret laboratory for revival. Of course, outsiders who learn the lab’s location must also be revived.

Challenge High Level PCs With A Quick Reskin

How do we challenge powerful player characters?Roleplaying Tips GM Scott has a tip for us on reskinning monsters and their context to give tough PCs a good run for their gold pieces.

Let Players Gaze Into Your Sandbox

The Special Table will be kept secret.Special will contain surprises, clues, and mysteries.

A New Use For Monster Parts

A table of encounters by Zack S. inspired me. Goblins using glass vials of green slime as a weapon? Pure gold.So why not have monsters in your campaign use parts of other monsters? Consider it a nefarious recycling program

Monsters Under The Skin

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #650 Four Questions to Characterize Random Encounters From Mike Bourke Many GMs don’t roleplay monsters. Instead, they jump straight into combat. This is a big missed opportunity to improve your game. Roleplaying with monsters means more plot potential because you can bring hooks and clues into play to set up future encounters. […]

The Faction Pyramid Technique

From Christopher Sniezak Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #644 As a companion piece to last week’s great article by John Large about factions, today we’re gonna get into organizations and factions because you can’t have factions without organizations. Why? Glad you asked. An organization is a group of persons organized for a particular purpose. A faction is […]

Making Undead Cool Again

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #626 Earlier this month, Roleplaying Tips kicked off the RPG Blog Carnival with the article Making Undead Cool Again. Featured in both the Roleplaying Tips Newsletter on October 6th, you can find the article here. Remember that if you want to get the earliest access to the Roleplaying Tips Newsletter, as well […]

Monster Features and Terrain Game Changers

By Ben Scerri Monster Features: The Premise Monsters in RPGs have had a long history of special abilities that add additional cool tidbits to encounters. For example, a dragon’s fiery breath and a rust monster’s corruption of metallic objects. However, seldom do they have attributes that cause players to think outside the box or that […]

Customizing Common Race – Part I

From Mike Bourke Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #290 The processes described in the following tips and those in next week’s article rely on trains of thought colliding and connecting. Schedule plenty of time and try to get through the whole process in one sitting, at least to the point of rough notes. That’s not to say […]

7 More Monstrous Tips

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #281 In July, Roleplaying Tips Weekly ran a contest for monster related tips of all kinds. Subscribers responded with nearly 100 entries, and many prizes were handed out. Below are a handful of entries from the contest. May your critters live long and prosper! Use Terrain To Tweak Monsters From Sparrow When […]

6 Monstrous Tips

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #274 The following are contest entries from the recent Expeditious Retreat Press Monster Tips Contest. The One Minute Monster From Adam Marafioti One way to quickly give your players “new monsters” without all the hassle of statting them up is to simply write up a new monster description and then steal the […]

I Like The Way You Move

From Pahl Millirons Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #219 DDG Games So, just how long does it take for a carrier pigeon to deliver a message? How far could the modron squad travel in a day? Can the PCs rollerblade to the arena in time to stop the bomb? Time and distance questions like these constantly plague […]

6 Tips For Creating Aliens For Sci-Fi Games

From Jonathan Hicks Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #147 Aliens. When you think of these you immediately think of two things – Star Trek-type rubber faces, or movie-type dark killing machines. But the ecology and personality of aliens are as diverse as the worlds they herald from. Here are a few pointers on how to give your […]