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The Problem With Realism Is…

Imagination. I remember a monster I built to guard a 5 Room Dungeon. It was a bit of a platypus. It spun webs and spit poison. It could climb. It could magically blink. It turned out quite effective and my players got snarky about it. They thought the monster was from a book and they […]

Two Quick Free Game Master Tools

I like online tools where people can make useful stuff and share with others. And then others can build on that stuff and share it back to everyone else. I’ve got two such tools for you today. Roleplaying Tips was conceived on this idea in 1999. GMs around the world receive GM tips I write […]

What Should You Do With First Sessions?

First sessions carry a lot of encumbrance. New setting, new players, maybe even new dice. At the least, for established groups, you face new characters and story arcs. I had a First Session this year. My co-workers who had never played D&D wanted me to GM them. I outline the steps I took below. The […]

How To Stop The Abuse of Your NPCs

In my recent NPC survey [https://goo.gl/forms/FgHvFIPkELEoJcxo1] I asked what problems you have right now with NPCs. Here’s one of the responses and a couple tips from me: NPC Pain: Having them abused or exploited by players. Basically, how NPCs reply to dire situations created by players on the spot. Have NPCs React Like Real People […]

Explosive Session Starts, Part III: The Encounter Pyramid

An Encounter Walkthrough Example As this mini-series about kicking sessions off with excitement winds up, here’s a step-by-step walkthrough of planning my next explosive session start. We’ve been talking about how to launch with instant energy and surfing that wave to have amazing sessions. It’s harder to wind up from a slow start than it […]

Kill GM procrastination with your First Move

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 with you a quick […]

What, When, From Above

Let’s say there’s four goblins in the forest waiting to ambush the PCs. Wait, that’s boring. Let’s say it’s six goblins lead by an NPC with a grudge against the party. That’s a bit better. What if the NPC is a guard who was exiled from The Keep because they failed to stop the PCs […]

Play the Infinite Game

A small book that has made a big impression on my gaming is Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. It’s a philosophy that analyses two types of games. Finite games, like Monopoly and Risk, have a clear start and end. Infinite games, like some campaign-style RPGs, do not have a definite ending. The […]

Psssst, How To Tell A Secret

“Here’s something about myself I’ve never told anyone.” It doesn’t matter what NPC says that, your players are going to stop fiddling with their dice and tune in. Everyone loves a secret. And one of the classic laws of GMing from the old Dragon Magazine column Dungeoncraft [http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeoncraft/http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeoncraft/] by Ray Winninger is to give everything […]

GM Improvisation Screen, Weather Tables, Western RPG Elements

Today I have three quick resources shared with me by RPT readers that you might be interested in. Weather Tables The first is a weather generator one-page cheat sheet by Rick Herron. He wrote in response to a Musing where I talked about a weather die-drop table for my Demonplague campaign (which is on haitus […]

May – How to Use the Other Kind of Intelligence

Recently I challenged you to place a spy in the party. In response, RPT reader Joshua Barry wrote in with some excellent tips on Tactical vs. Strategic spying with some great fantasy examples I’d like to share with you today. Let’s dive in! I’d like to expand on your definition of a […]

June – Looking For Game?

Hola %FIRSTNAME% How do you find players and GMs to game with nowadays? Years ago I wrote a book on the topic called How To Find Gamers: Filling The Empty Chair. I’ve decided to make it free now and ask for help in updating the links of places where you can recruit gamers. What’s In […]

Don’t Do This To Yourself

I received this very nice email from Roleplaying Tips Reader Mike D. last week in response to the daily city details Musing: “Hey Johnn! I swear, I heard my voice while reading that list. I’ve used those exact same descriptions in my cities (though I did pick up a couple of new terms, spruikers, for […]

Have Problems Improvising?

RPT GM Haukur posed this question to me: Hey there Johnn. I’m relatively new to DMing. I’m having some problems with improvising. Do you have any improvising tips on encounters and characters, if it’s not too much of a hassle, that is. Thank you. There are two kinds of improv we do as GMs: creating […]

3 Tips For GMing “Blank Sheet” Characters

Recent emails in my inbox share a common theme of characters unknown to their players. Example: the PCs have amnesia and players get blank character sheets. As facts emerge about the PCs through trial and error or memory recovery, the character sheets get filled out. Another example: zero level PCs. A compelling mythological device with […]

How My Ego Trashes Games

Today I want to talk a bit about how you might be influencing unwanted player behaviour without realizing it. Imagine if you discovered you were sometimes the cause of bad group tension? If you could stop this behaviour, would you? If so, keep reading. There’s one basic human trait we should think about while we […]

Just One Spike In The Ground Gets You Started

A friend sent me this interesting article on how inmates make dice to play D&D in prison. “We made dice out of card stock, toothpaste, and toilet paper. Rigorously tested, rolled right 85% of the time.” Necessity is the mother of invention. Which brings me to a short bit of advice for rolling a crit […]

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 […]

Hitting The Wall: When You’ve Got No Creativity And Have GM Burnout

RPT GM E. shared with me that they’ve got writer’s block, and maybe a little GM burnout. Here’s their email, paraphrased a bit: RPGwise, I realized this week my creativity is gone. I had to brainstorm and couldn’t whip up anything. Right now, I’m in a total slump gamewise. Right now is a great opportunity […]

Checklist: Compelling Session Alerts

Here’s another way to get players more engaged and better prepared to game when they arrive. It could also get more players showing up more often if you have that problem. Send a message to your players a week before next session. An alert. But with added strategic pieces to make it a fantastic new […]

Beg, Borrow, And Steal

Got this comment in an email the other day: “I feel guilty ripping off other people’s stuff/ideas to use in my campaigns.” I know that feeling. But I suggest you should use any source of inspiration possible to make your campaigns great. Let’s get one possible worry settled first. Is using others’ ideas for your […]

Better Session Kick-Offs — The Warm-Up Trick

Here’s a quick tip about session warm-ups. I don’t know about you, but it takes a good 15 minutes or more for my players to say hi, shed the day’s energy, and get their head into their character. Sometimes it takes longer. I don’t mind because it gives me the chance to get my head […]

3 Tips For Better Sessions

I came across this post on a blog called Semper Initativus Unum and enjoyed some of the points the poster made. Today, I thought I’d share my three favourite ideas from that post along with some commentary, with a focus on what we can do to make our sessions even better. Make a balanced world, […]

When A Friend Leaves Your Game

I received an email from RPT GM NK who received news from a friend: I DM a group of 8 players and the one who got the most people involved is leaving in two months across the country. The whole party is very emotional about this. Any ideas on or for the last two sessions? […]

How To Move Your RPG Campaign Online: Tools

For the best technical experience possible, it comes down to four key decisions….

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