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Tag Archives for " Monsters "

Wow Your Players With Monster Hunts

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1189 5 Room Dungeon Template When I invented the 5 Room Dungeon in 2003, I first thought of it as a physical adventure framework. Five literal encounters. This method still works brilliantly, but we can advance it for great monster hunter storytelling. After reading a bunch of work by American professor Joseph […]

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4 Ways To Surprise Players Who Know All The Monster Stats

From Jonathan Hardin, sojournersawake.com Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1178 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 […]

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Making Monsters Marvelous – Monstrous RPT Gems For You

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1128 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 […]

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A Slick Three Step Wandering Monster System

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0775 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 […]

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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 […]

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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. […]

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The Faction Pyramid Technique

From Christopher Sniezak Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0644 The Faction Pyramid Technique 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. And I’m going to show you the Pyramid Technique to help […]

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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 […]

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