It’s what’s between rooms that’s the real puzzle. Hola Game Master! Before I draw on today’s mapping tips, please consider this my invitation to you to join us for RPT Map Week. Draw, paint, thumbnail, click, sketch, or code a map based on a daily hook. Today’s Map Hook: A Flooding Dungeon. This is a […]

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Constrain one thing to transform your dungeons. Hola Game Master! Continuing our celebration of RPT Map Week (make sure you swing by the #rpt-map-weeks channel on Discord to check out the daily hooks), I want to talk about the hidden rules dictating your map designs. How Architectural Constraints Affect Maps We often draw floor plans […]

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Take Part in RPT Map Week #1 Hola Game Master! Starting next Monday, April 20, @Auke and I are running a fun, free, chill event on Discord for those who like to make maps. Each day for a week there will be a map hook I created. The theme is Locations Under Pressure. Read the […]

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Tuesday, I shared out the tip to create Back Pocket Encounters you can push into play in case you need to change the pace, stall, or provide a transition or clue. In response, Roleplaying Tips GM TT writes: Examples of each of the 3 Back Pocket Encounters would have been nice. Thanks for the suggestion, […]

The post Anatomy Of A Back Pocket Encounter: The Screaming Ambush appeared first on Roleplaying Tips.

What do you do when the party gets stuck, the game gets bogged down, or you simply need to stall for time? In a recent Tiny Prep Challenge on our Discord server, one GM mentioned they were preparing a “backup/extra encounter to keep the fight-oriented players happy, if things go too lore-heavy.” This is an […]

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Here’s a super Daggerheart point crawl map created by @muted and shared with the Roleplaying Tips community that I thought you might enjoy. From @muted: I am running a loop countdown (started on a location just outside of the dungeon – the Dig) and the dungeon is a collection of a few custom Daggerheart environments […]

The post A Great Isometric Point Crawl Map appeared first on Roleplaying Tips.

Run your campaigns like the best board game in the world. In 2018 I got back into board games in a big way. I had stopped playing in 2003, so did not get to experience the new wave and evolution in design of the 2000s and 2010s. Then I dropped into a board game day […]

The post My 7-Step Strategy For Successful Long-Term Campaigns appeared first on Roleplaying Tips.

Players can draw on my maps and on my table. And I love it. My group used to have a player assigned to drawing the map. I would describe things, player would struggle to make squiggles, party would still get lost. Then I tried simplifying my maps to make them easier to, er, map, which […]

The post How Do You Reveal Your Maps To Players? appeared first on Roleplaying Tips.

We got to talking about living graffiti on the Discord and @ØCÇÜL? STOÒL shared this great idea: If you can’t see the image above, the message in part reads: I always pictured Druidic hobo signs to be a thing, like most folks that saw branches growing in a strange pattern might notice but someone proficient in Druidic […]

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For my Obsidian Invictus campaign, I’m aiming to make every magic item unique. Potions was a bit of a head scratcher. I don’t want a lot of extra prep. In fact, I want the opposite. But Roleplaying Tips GM Daniel saves the day with some cool ideas on making potions distinct. He sent me this […]

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I like graffiti. I got the idea of adding vandals to my dungeons from Barrowmaze Complete by Dr. Greg Gillespie. Buried under the several feet of tephra that surrounds Obsidian Invictus is a vast network of crypts built in a former age to service a Beast. And the characters have discovered the way in. It’s […]

The post The Writing On The Wall – Using Graffiti For Clues And Foreshadowing appeared first on Roleplaying Tips.

I’ve got a great checklist for you today. @Exile In Paradise, a fantastic mod helping fellow GMs in my Discord, shared with me a great list of AI generated questions and details for creating colonies, outposts, and settlements in space. This is in response to Orbital Trouble: d12 Space Outpost Hooks. I normally don’t spit […]

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