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My Secret Ingredient For Making Great Puzzles

A Brief Word From Johnn Think too small and think too big. We’ve got a critter making a nest under our deck. We can’t see it because it’s found a good crack to inhabit. But we can hear it. It’s chewing something. Leaves maybe. Paper perhaps. The bones of some poor victim, most likely. Or […]

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A Divine Way to Manage Your Meddling Gods – a 3 Part Framework

This is a guest post by Jonathan Hardin, sojournersawake.com based on his original article at Sojourners Awake. How can you have gods walk your realm without whacking campaign balance? How can you turn deities into Plot Factories? And how can you roleplay divine beings in interesting ways that do not spell immediate doom for belligerent […]

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 […]

World-Building In Five Steps

RPT GM LadySeshiiria asks a big world-building question. Good timing, LadySeshiiria, because I’ve just started planning out my realm called Duskfall for season three of Hobos of the Apocalypse. So I can hopefully help today with a high-level overview of my world-building recipe. Here is LadySeshiiria’s question: Johnn, What is a good way to organize […]

A Quick Way To Make Awesome Rewards

Saw a great tip on Twitter from Mike Shea the other day: Adding a daily spell to a magic itemis a great way to make it boththematic and mechanically useful. This is an awesome method to customize and enhance treasure. You could also surprise players with cool boons like this. The magic pool, mysterious portal, […]

Darkness Ignites the Sunless Citadel

I started a new campaign last Friday with the Murder Hobos group. I’ve put my Hobos of the Apocalypse campaign on hold while I do some additional prep for it. The campaign is going full sandbox, and I’m currently thinking through the faction stuff. To fend off GM rust, I picked up Tales of the […]

How To Build A Fantasy City In 47 Seconds

Need a city fast for your campaign? Follow these 6 steps to build a fantasy town or metropolis in under a minute. Drawing or consulting a map is my First Move. [Kill GM Procrastination With Your First Move] So we’ll begin this recipe with a quick fantasy city map generator. Let’s dive in! Step 1. […]

How To Rock Your Encounters With This Monster Design Tip

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0746 Here’s a tip from Faster Combat: when you chose or design a monster, start with how you want the PCs to defeat it. I say “choose or design” because it doesn’t matter whether you’re picking the foe from the monster manual or homebrewing an original critter. The benefit is the same […]

Monster Challenge

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0761 Had a great game of Out of the Abyss on Friday. Lots of funny gameplay stories came out of it. Here’s two, plus a challenge for you. First story is about housekeeping. As a player, always confirm your XP! I’m playing a 4th level cleric who runs around saying “Praise Helm” […]

Character Home Bases Part III: Example Village of Coldwater

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0759 On Monday we covered how to get players to care about home bases. Wednesday I showed you a simple three step village creation recipe that you can world-build from. And today I’ll walk you through a quick example that you can also drop right into your campaign this weekend. Note that […]

Character Home Bases Part II: How To Create Villages Fast

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0758 Last tip I rambled on about building character home bases and several ways you can invite players to care about them. While the Hobos of the Apocalypse will likely be creating a village community from ground up, I will want other villages to exist in the Good Faction held territory to […]

Character Home Bases Part I: 6 Tips

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0757 The Hobos of the Apocalypse (formerly The Murder Hobos now reborn as positive change agents) need and want a home base once they emerge from the bowels of the elemental dungeons they currently cleanse. The problem is, they’ve got few stakes in the place I’ll design. The campaign started as a […]

More City Flavours

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0815 Ciao %FIRSTNAME% Last week, I shared a list of flavourful things the PCs might see happen each day in your city. I received some great comments from readers I’d like to share with you today. Here’s a great campaign kick-off “birds eye view” approach from Tom Ganz: I started my Curse […]

What’s Night Life Like In A Fantasy City Like?

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0813 New Roleplaying Tips reader Nathan M. sent me a nice list of city details. In his words, “Here are a few of the things adventurers might come to expect as they return or leave the bustling cities. After all, you do not want to be caught out after dark scuffling with […]

Use Setting Questions To Avoid A Tossed Salad

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0812 Last Musing we explored the idea of Setting Questions. Getting your players to help you flesh out your world with new details from their imaginations and character perspectives. We talked about making sure you add adventure details into your questions so players will care more about their characters, the adventure, and […]

Mad Lib 5 Room Dungeon Idea Generator For You

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0809 Use this Mad Lib to create a ton of 5 Room Dungeon seeds for your campaigns: [A GROUP] [IS DOING SOMETHING] with [AN ITEM] at [THE LOCATION] in order to [MOTIVE]. The location is the site or setting of your 5 Room Dungeon. The group is an NPC or faction from […]

Add Corruption To Your World

I was reading a Dungeon World worldbook for Star Wars the other day and there was a section on corruption that caught my eye. I often plan corruption within plots and factions, but I have not thought of it in world building terms before. So I did a bit of research. Buckets of Corruption Turns […]

A Quick Way To Make Player Victories Sweeter

I just finished reading the Kobold Guide to Plots and Campaigns. I highlighted and flagged a few pages, so expect a tip or two I’ve gleaned from the guide in the future. On page 23 there’s a great tip about making player victories sweeter: Designing a finale specifically to a setting makes an ending stronger, […]

When Fluff Spawns From Rules, A Great Game Emerges

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0790 Guten morgen %FIRSTNAME% I’ve long had a fascination with how game rules affect game settings. Too often in game world products, I see a setting likely created separately as fiction in a word processor or wiki, and then the game patched onto it. What I quest to build is a setting […]

I Need Help With My Weather Drop Die Table

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0785 Have you heard of a die drop table before? You print the table out. Then hold dice above it. Then drop the dice. Where the dice land is your result. It’s random generation meets physics. Here’s an example by Eric Nieudan called Dungeontown generator posted via the Die-Drop Table Heaven G+ […]

A Secret Society Of Character-Hunters For Your Campaign

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0802 This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is about Occult Mysteries and Magic. To celebrate that theme, here is a quick and adversarial secret society idea for your campaign. The Masters of Destiny These guys hunt adventurers. They believe an ancient evil will soon awake, but the world is doomed because there are […]

Teleport With Style

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0808 Hau?oli Friday, %FIRSTNAME% Today’s Musing is both a fun bit of inspiration and some age-old advice. While surfing, I found a great table from John Stater over at Land of Nod. It asks, and answers, the question of how you appear when coming out of a teleport. Here’s a few of […]

Do This Now Every Session For Easy World-Building

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0811 There’s a doc out there called Tight Dungeon World One-Shots. It’s great advice for running a night’s gaming with no prep. The doc offers a section called Setting Questions. You ask each player something about their character that relates to the world. For example: Druid, what is your homeland? How is […]

What If Weather Tells a Story?

Roleplaying Tips GM Iona has a tip for us today about turning random weather into a storytelling tool, which is a great idea. Take it away Iona…. Dear Johnn, I love weather tables and I’ve used them in the past for the adventure I created with the Adventure Building Workshop. Something I like to do […]

Myth Crafting in RPGs

There is a better way to give your games vibrant life and compelling conflicts for your gods and game world. Don’t describe them. Instead, give them a myth story.

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