NPCs & Roleplaying Archives - Roleplaying Tips

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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. […]

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 […]

A Simple Table for Rumours

RPT GM Chad Hooper shares this great approach for NPC roleplay and rumours: I use a News & Events percentile table. I roll every time PCs enter a new area or meet someone who shares rumors. Everything 75 or above on the table is a national or global-impacting event. Some examples are Declaration of War, […]

Tag Archive

Gesture, Voice & Salt — Helping Players Roleplay

The Secret Ingredient For Great Campaigns

Make Your NPCs Unreasonable

The Secret Role Of NPCs

7 Ways To Roleplay Factions Better

9 Secret Agents For Your Game

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

Roleplaying Tip: Distinguish Players From Characters

A Simple Table for Rumours

GMing Gods, Demons And Immortals

Factions Done Blades In The Dark Style

This Weapon Hurts High Level PCs

What I Learned While Creating My Latest Thieves’ Guild

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