How To Become A Better Actor?
A reader sent in this plea for help. Do you have any tips for him? Hi Johnn, In many ways, there is no scope for subtle NPCs in an RPG. I need to portray strong personality traits to ensure these features are made clear to the PCs. Plus, it would help to distinguish my NPCs […]
Continue reading8 Ways to Make Game World Management Easy
Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0526 A Brief Word from Johnn Welcome to Fall Gaming I’m in two campaigns now. One I GM, one I play a magus. That should get me gaming two weeks out of four. Booya! I hope you can fit gaming into your fall schedule. As I’ve said before, life is too short […]
Continue readingGM Tip Request – How to Run Professional Conferences for PCs
Hi Johnn, Every Year, my campaign features a wizards’ colloquium, called The Studious Accord, with speakers on various topics. These speakers are NPCs familiar to the PCs, or their topics recall adventures that they’ve had. The Accord effectively serves tips, rumors and adventure hooks. I write up a list of speakers and the titles of […]
Continue readingPlot Management for Those Who Like Storytelling: Nine Events to Configure
By Michael Garcia Today we have a request for help from Gm Micheal Garcia, who is seeking advice on how to make his campaign reach a truly memorable climax. We played D&D Friday night again. Our campaign is really picking up speed. It’s starting to hit the point of critical mass, which I enjoy a […]
Continue readingRediscovering Magic
by Silveressa Recently James S. asked: “In my new campaign, arcane magic has been outlawed. It’s still there, people are just too scared to use it. This has been the status quo for 1,000 years. How would you recommend handling the pacing of magic items, non magical rewards, and character wealth in general?” Hi James, thanks […]
Continue readingPet & Peer NPCs
by Silveressa Sometimes playing a major NPC that’s part of the party can be tough. After all, it’s hard not to have the NPC come up with a winning strategy, spot a piece of evidence or find a trap the PCs overlooked. However, if one does this too much, the NPC becomes the crutch the group leans […]
Continue readingKeep focused on the game
By Silveressa When I first started GMing years ago I ran into this problem rather frequently: An in-character action resulted in an out-of-game movie one liner, and then the game unexpectedly paused for several minutes while the group discussed the movie in question. I found a few easy tricks that worked surprisingly well to keep […]
Continue readingMinis Giveaway Contest
Time for a new Roleplaying Tips contest. Gator Games has kindly offered an amazing 12 packs of D&D Heroes minis as prizes. There will be four winners in all, each will receive two or more packs of minis. Thanks very much, Jean! How to enter To enter, email me a tip related to minis or […]
Continue readingReader Tip Request – The Manhunt
Today I received the following tip request. As the newsletter is a couple weeks away, and Justin needs some tips asap, I thought I’d put this shiny new blog to work and see if you have any ideas or advice for Justin: Johnn, I have been reading your newsletter and blog for about 2 months […]
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