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Tips For Lunch Hour Games + Personal Announcement

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1198 Goeiedag Johnn, Big news to share with you this week. I have embarked on a grand adventure. Two adventures, really. The Great Resignation First, I’m going fuller-time with Roleplaying Tips! I’m thrilled but nervous and can’t wait to begin this new journey. I gave notice at my day job last week […]

How To Make Every Encounter Interesting

By Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1195 (Join the conversation about today’s tips here.) Here’s an interesting question about encounter building that WorldWibe asks on RPT’s Discord: Is a dungeon-making philosophy that goes: “Every room should have something interesting in it, be it battle, treasure or lore” a good design-methodology? Thanks for the great question! […]

New Players – New Group – New Campaign

RPT GM RF emailed me this question: Johnn, I’m about to start a brand new group in my AD&D 1e campaign I call ‘In a Handbasket’. All players have Dungeons and Dragons experience, but most have never played 1st Ed. I have run this campaign twice before. Once for my kids and their friends. Once […]

4 Ways To Surprise Players Who Know All The Monster Stats

From Jonathan Hardin, 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 […]

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3 Easy Ideas To Generate Instant Adventure Ideas – Plot Factory Tutorial Part II

From JohnnFour Last week we talked about Plot Factories as a tool in your GM Toolbox. Think of them like spawn points in a video game. Foes keep emerging to assault your character until you destroy the spawn point. In our adventures and sandboxes, we do the same via Plot Factories that churn out new […]

Visual Aid Session Prep with the Five Room Dungeon

Hello Sojourner! The goal of Visual Game Session Prep is to have a quick glance reference that reminds me of notes and plans I made before the session. This keeps paperwork to a minimum. Rather than referencing your notes within a large document during the game, you can simply look at a simple visual diagram […]

Use This Clever Tool To Herd Your Cats – Plot Factories

From JohnnFour Plot Factory Tips When something automagically generates valuable plot hooks within your System, Story, or Setting, I call that a Plot Factory. Plot Factories have been mentioned before here and here. And to help you worry less about your plot hooks and adventure seeds, I want to show you today how to craft […]

9 Ways to Prep For Sessions Faster

In a recent Zoom call with Platinum Wizards of Adventure I read this in the chat log: My biggest pain point: Prep Time vs. Game Time – I like preparing but I often don’t have the time. I understand this dilemma. While some GMs can improvise entire campaigns with just a packet of salt, a […]

Troubles With Green Box Text

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 enough information. Green text […]

Outsmart Your Players With 3-Step Villain Plans

How do we outsmart our players? It’s all their brains against ours. Surely the odds are against us. However, here’s a neat trick we can perform to make our villains smarter and our adventures more cunning. We look at the possible plots and actions our poor villain might take and group them into three buckets. […]

My 7 Keys to a Great Sandbox Game

New RPT GM Eddie asked for advice on homebrewing adventures: I love that a campaign can be going strong that long. The one I’m running is like 6 months old. Even though I’m pretty new to the game (less than a year) I’ve been looking more into old school revival and alternative materials because although […]

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part I

In Faster Combat, a Three Round Combat Plan is how your combat will end after your side has had three licks against the other side. Why would we make something like that? If your fights finish after the third bell, think how much faster they’ll be than melees that just grind on to the last […]

3-Step GM PiXiE Kaizen

There’s a myth about game master time management. Or even about time management in general. Folks think it’s about time. But in my experience that’s not true. It’s about energy. Doing campaign prep for 15 minutes a day will get more prep done over the long haul than doing it once in a while in […]

Don’t Be A Minnie Haul

I remember getting caught with my pants down running Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. One player had magic claws that could chew through six feet of rock each round. When the party finally made their way to the villain’s lair, they bypassed an entire page devoted to the magic barriers, traps, and tricks by digging through […]

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part I

Starting a West Marches Campaign – Step By Step

By Jochen Linnemann Starting a West Marches Campaign (Part 1) Some time ago, I decided to start a West Marches type campaign with the idea of an episodic, easy-to-prep game for a group changing players in mind. So, I started to research the topic. Reading Tips Google was a good jump off point, and I […]

My 7 Keys to a Great Sandbox Game

Factions & Villains – 3 Reader GM Tips

Hitting too Close to Home Let’s dive in with this observation from RPT GM Maja who brings up an interesting point about favourite villain types that mirrors my own experience. Let’s call it the Seinfeld Effect. Johnn, If you ask me what villain type gets the most attention, it is the personal type. My players […]

Outsmart Your Players With 3-Step Villain Plans

How To Stop Campaigns From Fizzling Out

Here’s an email from RPT GM Sam about campaigning: Hi Johnn! Glad I stumbled upon your stuff over the weekend. I am a gamer from Melbourne, Australia. I’ve been playing RPGs for about 12 years and I’ve been interested in GMing for about 5 years now. My biggest problem is this: I find creating stories […]

A Quick Tip On Session Prep

I got this tip while reading The Index Card RPG by Rune Hammer Games. Treat every session like you were prepping for a one-shot. If you’ve ever run a convention game or organized play type game, you know it’s a bit different than your typical campaign prep mindset. No one expects to play again after […]

Create Your Memory Dungeon

I recently read about a memorization technique called Memory Palace, also called Method of loci. It helps you memorize lists and facts. Dungeons are more my style than fancy palaces. So today let’s look at how this quick memory hack can help you prep faster and run adventures better. We Think Story Our brains are […]

How To Beat Prep Anxiety

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0766 Here’s a cool experiment from fellow RPT reader Iona to reduce the anxiety she felt before games. As smart, caring, sensitive people, we GMs want the best experience for our players. But this leads to perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and unease before sessions. Here’s how Iona solved it. I have something I […]

Kill GM procrastination with your First Move

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0792 Roleplaying Tips GM Leif told me this: “Game prep, or ‘designing’ as my DM Partner and I call it, is my biggest challenge currently. It’s tough to find the motivation to get started.” I asked for a bit more info, and while I wait for his response I’d like to share […]

Unpack Last Session To Loopy Plan Next Game

After each game, let’s take 10 minutes to review our session log to help plan for next time. I outline below a quick approach we can follow using my Loopy Planning method. We do this for a couple of reasons. First, we tend to improvise a lot during sessions. So we want to review and […]

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