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How To Start Every Session With A Bang!

I was excited to play but bored within minutes. It became difficult to focus. I noticed other players starting to zone out too. We were on Zoom, making it even harder. Ideas and collaboration stopped. It became GM => Player => Repeat. No flow between players. No flow between party and GM. And the story […]

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 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 Plot Factories […]

Ripping Up Adventure Drama With A Saw Blade

Make your adventures wondrous with terrific drama. We want tension in our plots and gameplay that escalates as players get close to the climactic ending. To increase drama we raise the Stakes (what’s in it for the characters) and toughen the Conflicts (foes, hazards, obstacles, challenges). However, we shouldn’t make every encounter even more tense […]

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 […]

Cunning Combat Strategy – 3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats Part II

How do you make your next combat fast and exciting effective 3 Round Combat Plans? And what are we supposed to do in each round? What is our strategy here? That’s what I show you in today’s tips, which are taken from my brand new Faster Combat 5E course launching this spring. Today, I’ll go […]

Do You Get Bored Of Your Campaigns?

What’s the purpose of a campaign? My answer: To finish it. No joke. Other factors rank high too: Tell a long-form story Keep the adventure going with beloved characters Have more fun at every game! My apex, though, is to finish the dang thing. Else, feelings of a story unfinished. An open loop that nags. […]

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 […]

How to Create Situations With 5 Room Dungeons

We want to cue up situations, not outcomes. By that, I mean we don’t dictate the actions of the characters. That’s the players’ job. But as storytellers, we have a job to do too. We need to weave good tales from our setting, adventure plans, and gameplay as it happens. How can we do this […]

Keep Players Intensely Engaged With the 3 Conflicts

Character arcs tell the story of how characters develop by overcoming foes and challenges in pursuit of their goals. This is the ambition of campaign play: to develop cool character story arcs. Such arcs keep players intensely engaged in your games. Why? Thinking about armour, health points, personality scores, and other character sheet elements are […]

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part II

3 Round Combat Plans For Lightning Combats – Part I

Ripping Up Adventure Drama With A Saw Blade

How To Create Wicked Rumour Tables

RPT GM Roy Winfrey asks: Love the rumour post you just posted. I was intrigued by the Knowledge Table. Any chance we might see an article about how to construct that? Thanks for the question, Roy. I first spoke about the idea of a Knowledge Table in my Adventure Building Workshop, which is currently on […]

Celebrate Your Encounter Locations This Way

Make your locations memorable. And incorporate the story. Do those two things to make encounters even better. Here’s how: Features => Twist => Secret Let’s see what to do for each part: Figure Out The Special Features First, give your location a Purpose. Sometimes the game role for the location differs from the Purpose. This […]

The Three Word NPC Formula

Remember 3 Line NPCs? These are awesome. Quick to make, easier to GM, and great for improvisation. Campaign Logger even has a 3 Line NPC generator so you can spin up roleplay-ready NPCs in less than a second. But as I plan Hobo Princes and other campaigns, I want something even lighter. I don’t need […]

Power Your Plots With Simple Rumour Tables

The Keep is a monthly D&D campaign, just three sessions old, where the PCs have been shipwrecked on the mysterious jungle island of Barbossa. In session one, I used a rumour table to drop several plot hooks into play to give the sandbox immediate direction. Each player rolled a d20 and received their own rumour. […]

How Do You Pace Game Sessions Well?

Long-time RPT Patron Eric Gosselin (thanks Eric!) asks about how to pace game sessions: Hi Johnn, I recently awoke to the concept of game session pacing, you know, how to put slow and fast scenes during a game session? I’m looking for advice on the topic. How do I plan my session? Do I make […]

Your Campaign Agenda => Best Campaign Ever Part II

There’s a moment mid-campaign when my inner voice screams out: “I’ve lost the plot! What the #@$% is going on? What the #@$% do I do now?” (Sorry, in-skull Johnn has a potty mouth.) When I’m off the rails as a GM it’s panic time. …Everything feels like it’s crap. …The campaign’s falling to pieces. […]

What’s Your World’s “Only Factor”?

What facet of your world affects gameplay in a way no other setting does? Two key pieces here. First piece: your world needs at least one unique factor or you might as well save yourself the time and use a published setting. Why bother putting all that creation work in? What’s only in your world […]

How To Conjure Incredible Sandbox Campaign Climaxes

Adventure Workshop GM Jeff B asked me this thorny question about how to finish a great campaign: If the adventure is not linear and the PCs aren’t railroaded, how can I get all the roads to lead to the big finale and tie up the loose ends? I like to have sandbox kind of stuff […]

Create Your Special GM Moves

Adventures get repetitive and boring. “Bring me another 10 scorpion tales!” Even megadungeons and campaign paths can grind you down. I received an email from a subscriber who asked how to keep players engaged. He caught one player even playing video games on their phone during sessions. The best way I know how to keep […]

Monsters Are NPCs Too – A Short Monster Personality Stat Block

When monsters become meat bags you lose a big opportunity for roleplay and storytelling. I’m guilty of queuing up encounters with 2d6 orcs in a 10′ x 10′ room. Big time wasters. Pointless. And boring. I know players love to use their characters’ powers. And crushing a foe is fun. But after a few times […]

Use The Feature Method To Make Adventure Design A Whole Lot Easier

Before you put pen to paper designing your next 5 Room Dungeon, do this one quick thing to greatly improve your design. When I build 5 Room Dungeons I often find it’s a struggle to make them more than just an assortment of encounters. Make It Pop A designer I worked with had a massive […]

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