Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #648 How to send the party on decisive missions that turn the tide of war From Tony Medeiros Ever struggle with how your PCs can make a difference in war campaigns while the battle rages on all around them? I have the solution for you today: make them war heroes. Send your […]

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An RPT GM asked how he could help his player engage more and roleplay better after switching to online Virtual Tabletop (VTT) games. Several GMs wrote in with fantastic tips. Thank you! Here's what they said.

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Been working on my campaigns and thinking a lot about villain plans. I like to craft a roadmap for how the villain can win their goal. I call this Villain Win-State. And that road map becomes my adventure outline for villain type adventures. So what are the first couple of steps for making an awesome […]

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RPT GM Joshua asks: “Do all encounters need to advance the plot?” My answer is yes. But with a twist I’ll explain in today’s article. A session is made up of encounters. Encounters make up adventures. Adventures make campaigns. To speak about encounters I first need to speak about adventures. That’s one level up. We […]

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Here’s an encounter tip for you today, pulled out of my Adventure Building Master Game Plan, which launches later this year. Once I get to the encounter building phase, I start digging into the details. I’ve got a Campaign Game Plan created, and an Adventure Game Plan built, by the time I reach this stage. […]

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What to do with NPCs in the background to make encounters more interesting? That thought came to me as I bumped into a random blog post on writing, and this snippet jumped out at me: One of the things to watch out for when choreographing a scene is the chorus line – any people who […]

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Do you know how the eyeball works? It’s fascinating. Think about a camera for a moment. You point your camera at what you want to photograph. The shutter opens and closes to control the amount of light. A slow shutter action lets in more light. Great for dim conditions but poor for motion. Fast shutter […]

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RPT GM and Adventure Building Workshop alumni Jesse Cohoon reached out and asked if he could help with the newsletter. Thanks Jesse! I asked him to come up with some adventure seeds, as game masters often get stuck for ideas. Here’s what he came up with for us: Fey Games A group of fey has […]

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From Mike Bourke Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #291 Continuing on from last week, here are the final categories for you to consider fleshing out as you craft a racial profile that differs from official sources for your rules system. The monster race customization processes described in the following tips and those in last week’s article rely […]

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Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #292 In July, Roleplaying Tips Weekly ran a contest for monster related tips of all kinds. Subscribers responded with nearly 100 entries, and many prizes were handed out. Below are a handful of entries from the contest. May your critters live long and prosper! Filling A Niche From Sparrow You might want […]

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From Leslie Holm Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #293 Online Roleplaying is a huge animal, encompassing MUSHs, MUDDs, SIMs, PBeMs, PBPs…the list goes on. In this article, I focus on PBeMs (Play By e-mail) and PBPs (Play By Post, or forum based games). Roleplaying online is no longer just for people who don’t live near a gaming […]

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From Mike Bourke Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #294 NB: The language used in this text has been rephrased from orcish original statements to remove incidental foulness of tongue. A Slice Of Orcish Myth Long Ago, the gods looked down upon the world they had made and some said, “It’s a bit of a mess. If something’s […]

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