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How To Rock Your Encounters With This Monster Design Tip

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 to your encounter. What […]

Monster Challenge

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” in a French accent. […]

Character Home Bases Part III: Example Village of Coldwater

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 I use my app […]

Character Home Bases Part II: How To Create Villages Fast

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 flesh the region out […]

Character Home Bases Part I: 6 Tips

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 pre-gen playtest of D&D […]

More City Flavours

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 if the Crimson Throne […]

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

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 some drunk bandits.” Sunrise […]

Use Setting Questions To Avoid A Tossed Salad

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 your world. Another ingredient […]

Mad Lib 5 Room Dungeon Idea Generator For You

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 your campaign. The item […]

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

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 that works within the […]

I Need Help With My Weather Drop Die Table

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+ Community. Here’s a bigger […]

A Secret Society Of Character-Hunters For Your Campaign

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 no heroes powerful enough […]

June – Teleport With Style

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 John’s often funny ideas: […]

Do This Now Every Session For Easy World-Building

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 it beautiful? Ranger, what […]

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.

Screenshot of a mindmap showing RPG adventure design and conflict.

World Story Meets RPG Story For Designing Better Adventures

A tip for you today about making your world feel dynamic and amping up your stories at the same time.

Add Spikes Of Danger To Get Deeper Campaigns

An RPT GM asks about a design technique from my Adventure Building Workshop: Hey Johnn, I was reviewing the links in your 2019 Compilation and saw reference to “Spikes of Danger”. What is that referencing? I googled around and couldn’t find anything. Thanks, Paul I replied to Paul directly, but thought I’d share with you […]

3 Common World Building Mistakes

By Danny O’neill and Ivan Sadzakov from Hammerdog Games Mistake #1: Avoiding All Tropes While it seems like everything has been done before, our favourite characters, locations, and world features fit many tropes. It’s less about being original and more about how well you execute and whether you can make these things stick. Through an […]

Add Lost Civilizations To Your World

Been watching a lot of history videos on Youtube lately. I especially like the short ones with time lapse maps of changing settlements and populations. For example, this one on Europe from 400 BC to present. It’s fascinating to see how countries grow, shrink, migrate, and disappear. On a similar note, my civilization schema for […]

Build Your World With This Cool Map

Brief word: Roleplaying Tips Monthly Round-Up — October 2019 Here’s a simple world-building method from Reddit user MordecaiKravits. [OC] Finally developed a world building method that appeals to my love of hexagons and straight lines. This a relationship map he created that illustrates the technique: In his words: I’ve been trying to create a sleek […]

Three Ways To Make Your Coins Special

I created a coinage system for Duskfall last week and did three things to make money special. Today I’ll share what these are for you to consider using in your worlds. These tips are inspired by NOD #1 (Amazon affiliate link, Lulu link, blog link) where there’s a short article on coins. Mint The Most […]

Deep World Building Using The Estates Method

A beloved RPG, Ars Magica, splits its setting into three estates: the Church, the Nobles, and the Commonfolk. Wizards are outcasts. Hunted, exiled, or slain for blasphemies and politics. Players run Magi in the Mythic Europe setting. Forced to hide and handle a delicate power balance between the three estates, play becomes strategic and deeper. […]

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