What a weird island and a Depression-era supernatural battle can teach you about character design
Intelligence isn’t random. Bad writers try to make their aliens exotic behind a layer of randomness, but you can usually smell that on them. The AMAM Model is a better approach.
Improv 4: Enemies and Hazards
We’re up to Step Three of my simple encounter improv process. If you want to slash your prep time and respond on the fly, then check out this next chapter.
QQ&A: Dealing with attention hogs
D&D is a social game, so what happens when one person sucks all the attention (and maybe even air) from the room?
GM = Game Meditation?
Yet another reason I prefer running games to being a player: you can’t beat the spiritual transcendence.
3 DIY Disasters
Want to build your own catastrophe? Something that spans kingdoms and will really mess things up? Here’s how Footprints can help.
Improv 3: How the encounter feels
More about my process for improvising encounters. This time, we’re talking about the feel and vibe of the encounter.
QQ&A: Playing as the Secret Service
Want to put the party on protection duty? Here’s how to stop it being a boring, passive wait for the action to come to them.
The Drizzt Card is bad worldbuilding
Monocultures in fiction are boring and unrealistic, and they don’t serve the game well. So why not have an NPC who goes against the grain? Uh, here’s why.
Improv 2: Context and the Environment
Since I’m a fan of improvising interesting encounters, you might think I dislike random encounter tables. And I do, but not why you think I do. Here’s one thing they get right, though.
QQ&A: Faster combat
I get peeved with turn-based games in general, D&D in particular. If you’re sick of encounters feeling more like chess and less like battle, read this.
Magic microaggressions are boring
Is your worldbuilding boring? There are two common traps - thinking all races are the same and thinking all members of a race are the same. Here’s the much, much better approach.
Improv 1: The Overall Process
Thus begins my new series on how to improvise excellent encounters, quickly and easily, even with your attention on running the game. Strap in because this is about to get fun.
QQ&A: Preparing for Adventure!
How do wise GMs prepare? By doing the opposite of these two common mistakes - mistakes that take more time and make your role harder.
How the void thinks
Let’s say you want to create a species of space-faring clouds of dust. Great – I’m intrigued so far. How do you not mess up the next step of figuring out how they’ll think and behave?
Is D&D a roleplaying game or a different sort of roleplaying game?
D&D is a system at war with itself. Is it a stats-based power fantasy or a rich, compelling story? Here’s how to reconcile those two halves of it.
QQ&A: Invisible NPCs
When an NPC turns invisible, GMs could get lazy, mean or fair. You can probably guess which one I lean towards.
Modern adventuring solutions
Is your adventure tired, outdated and falling behind the others? Maybe you need to modernise and move it into the 21st Century (but not literally. Medieval fantasy still rocks.)
Unboring urchins: more than thieves and victims
Living on the street takes wits and courage. If you want urchins in your setting with more agency than tragic orphans and more to offer than basic thieves, check this out.
QQ&A: Stopping Insight Check Spamming
Rolling Insight on everyone is a dull, tedious way to play. It also makes sense, so how do you stop players from doing it?
QQ&A: The forgotten 5e rule
Intimidation rolls don’t make sense… in most other systems. If you’re sick of your brainless killbot failing to intimidate people, you need to remember this rule.