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How Do You Make Encounters More Interesting? — Introducing The Chorus Line

What to do with NPCs in the background to make encounters more interesting? That thought came to me as I bumped into a random blog post on writing, and this snippet jumped out at me: One of the things to watch out for when choreographing a scene is the chorus line – any people who […]

My Top Monster Villains

The other day I read a blog about the GM’s Top 10 mastermind monster villains. I love this idea! It’s great inspiration. So today for fun I’m sharing my favourite monster villains with you. The requirements for my list are I can only list monsters I have GM’d or made adventures for. In some cases […]

Your Villain’s Missing Ingredient

I loves me my villains. I believe every great campaign is powered by a strong villain the PCs hate. But something is often missing from the villains I read in adventure modules. Add this missing ingredient, and your campaign instantly improves. Hobos Reboot Before I get into that though, a quick thanks to Eddy Morrow […]

Stories Within Stories

Roleplaying Tips GM Michael Downey has this great tip for us about finding story opportunities in NPC reactions. Hey Johnn, Just thought I would share a new trick I found for adding some variety and depth to NPC reactions. When I create an NPC, I roll a d10 to determine their initial reaction to the […]

Tarrasque vs. Dracolich

Got this great email from Martin Lavallee in response to my ghost story [The Craziest Jerk I’ve Been Yet] the other day: “I am using a red dragon from time to time [to harass the group] and the PCs are about to become strong enough to engage her directly. “They’re racing against time to find […]

The Craziest Jerk I’ve Been Yet

I’ve done something terribly good and amazingly evil in my campaign. I don’t know whether to cackle in glee or hang my head in shame. Here’s what’s happening. The Murder Hobos early in Season I killed the Townmaster of Phandelver and buried his body in his back yard. The Townmaster provoked the fight, and Roscoe […]

My #1 Learning from Last Game

Last week I talked about listening to my players better. It turns out listening is HARD. I GM’d last Friday and here’s how it turned out. First, a recap of my GM Quests for the session: Hooks: Get at least one hook from each player from something they mention during the game Excitement: Note at […]

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 […]

A Secret Society Of Character-Hunters For Your Campaign

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is about Occult Mysteries and Magic. To celebrate that theme, here is a quick and adversarial secret society idea for your campaign. The Masters of Destiny These guys hunt adventurers. They believe an ancient evil will soon awake, but the world is doomed because there are no heroes powerful enough […]

May – Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em – These Guys Juice Up Your Game

I’m reading Kings of the Wyld (aff.) by Nicholas Eames. It’s tongue-in-cheek fantasy. Not normally my fare, but the world has interesting ideas and I’m getting drawn into the plot. In the world of Heartwyld, adventurers form bands, as in music bands. Except the bards always get killed. Agents book adventures and send their signed […]

May – The King’s Man

Hola %FIRSTNAME% I watched a crime show last night. Turns out the thug who was busted on suspicion of capping the victim is an undercover federal agent. A King’s Man. Today I want you to add a spy in your game. Step 1. Which Faction? Which side does the spy work for? Pick a faction. […]

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 […]

45 Master Characters – A GM Resource Review

Roleplaying Tips reader Jim B. sent this great overview of a GM resource I thought you might be interested in. Thanks Jim! Hi Johnn, I’d like to suggest a good resource book for GMs: 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt, 2011. The book is written for fiction writers, […]

Game Of Thrones For NPCs, Part III

This week I’ve been talking about how we can model Game of Thrones’ character development and management for the betterment of our adventures. We create NPCs like viruses that have simple external hooks to dynamically hunt the PCs and emotionally connect with them. However, I mentioned we GMs must game this out. Unlike TV and […]

Game Of Thrones For NPCs, Part II

Last Musing I shared how much I admire Game of Thrones’ character development and management. We want that exact stuff at our game table. And one awesome way to do this is by having you and your players bond with your NPCs. We want your NPCs to trigger an emotional reaction via an emotive hook. […]

Game Of Thrones For NPCs, Part I

I love Game of Thrones because it’s showing me how to build and run better campaigns. One of the first things that jumped out at me was character management. Here’s what we can learn from GoT about NPCs. Have Players Bond With NPCs For almost every notable character in Game of Thrones, you hate them, […]

Gesture, Voice & Salt — Helping Players Roleplay

Got this great question by email last week: Johnn, A lot of people at my table bring some pretty good game. I rarely roll with an accent unless there’s a good reason for it – but I have to admit it’s good for differentiating between when you’re in character vs out. Any ideas for how […]

The Secret Ingredient For Great Campaigns

Give everything a secret. Sound advice from Ray Winninger’s “Dungeoncraft” column in Dragon Magazine in the late 1990s. When I read that advice it instantly clicked. Alas, it’s easier said than done. You know I like my plethora of NPCs, plots, and side plots. Ray also advised giving locations, items, and pretty much anything relevant […]

Make Your NPCs Unreasonable

RPT GM Mark of the Pixie sent me these great NPC tips for better stories: I have the bad habit of making NPCs too reasonable. PCs will put forward a reasonable case and I (as a person) will agree with it, and so the NPC agrees with it. Sometimes, it would make a better story […]

The Secret Role Of NPCs

It occurred to me I’ve never explained my fascination with NPC story roles. In this article just for you, awesome Roleplaying Tips Patrons, I’ll share their secret function in my campaigns. But before I can dig into that, I need to back up a couple steps and talk about how I think and run my […]

7 Ways To Roleplay Factions Better

How do you run and portray factions in your campaign? Are your factions full of life and rich gameplay? Or are they vague mentions in your world? You can tell how well a faction gets roleplayed by how much interest your players show in interacting with the group. For example, three signs players don’t care […]

9 Secret Agents For Your Game

I like this list from Cheka Man in RPT#461. It speaks to me of archetypes and story roles. And I like those because they are reusable containers you can fill again and again. For example, The Idealist. They’d rather be somewhere else. By being someone else. Tough gig. In one plot you can make this […]

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. […]

Why I’ve Changed My Approach Roleplay

Awesome RPT Patron Roel asked for my two cents on a couple of roleplaying house rules he’s thinking of for his campaign: When a player role plays a social situation well they can take +2 on social checks (diplomacy, intimidation etc) (GM’s discretion). This rule is to encourage players to role play conversations. The bar […]

Roleplaying Tip: Distinguish Players From Characters

Roleplaying is tough. And sometimes players don’t separate themselves from their characters. This causes problems. RPT Patron Richard Grilley asks: Johnn, How do you help a game table to distinguish players from characters? It is great when the brawny footballer can do a high pitch voice with a twist of Scottish accent for his female […]

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