How Many Players Is Just Right? - Role Playing Games
Getting the right number of players for a game is a bit like getting the right amount of spice in a soup. It's partly a matter of personal preference, and partly a matter of what soup you're making. The traditional number of players in role ... [... more]
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Running One-Shot Adventures - Role Playing Games
A nice long running campaign spread over months of real time is all well and good, but there are times when what you want is an exciting adventure that can be finished in a single session. That seems to be all I run these days, since my gaming ... [... more]
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Role Playing Scenarios With A Twist - Role Playing Games
We've all had the experience where we're watching a move, or reading a book, and before you're a third of the way through you have this insight. You know exactly what sort of plot twist is going to happen toward the end of the story. Whenever you ... [... more]
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On The Fly Role Playing, How Much Preparation Do You ...
It's the eternal dilemma of GMs. There's never enough time to completely prepare for the next gaming session. When I first started role playing games, using AD & D;, I followed the standard template put forth by modules. I mapped out dungeon ... [... more]
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Alternatives To Meeting In A Tavern - Role Playing Games
An adventuring group meeting in a tavern is traditional in fantasy role playing games. The clichï¿1/2 has traveled into other genres, too. I've used it in space opera settings, Call of Cthulhu adventures, pulp adventure settings, and ... [... more]
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Using Riddles In RPGs - Role Playing Games
Most of the fiction that role playing games pulls from is rich with a history of heroes solving difficult riddles. The most famous of these is probably from Greek mythology, the riddle of the Sphinx: What goes on four legs in the morning, on two ... [... more]
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Creative Use Of RPG Treasure - Role Playing Games
You've created a terrific campaign, probably a fantasy campaign, that includes opportunities for character development, an intriguing plot, great NPCs, the works. And your players run through it from treasure to treasure, trying to get ... [... more]
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Using Traps Effectively - Role Playing Games
Every adventuring party stocked up on such essentials as iron spikes and ten-foot poles, to better deal with the challenges a dungeon could provide. I don't think we realized until later that the spikes were for securing doors, but we knew right ... [... more]
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How To Create An RPG Campaign Web Site - Role Playing Games
More and more GMs are creating RPG campaign web sites for their home campaigns. It's great from the perspective of fellow GMs who want to get new ideas, or for players who want to point their GM toward new ideas. It's also a way to capture the ... [... more]
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Splitting the Party, Tips for GMs - Role Playing Games
All GMs know that adventuring is supposed to be done as a group. After all, it's our job to keep players engaged and having fun in the game. That's hard to do when a player is just sitting there because his character isn't involved in what's ... [... more]
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Time Travel Rules For RPGs - Role Playing Games
Time travel is a rich field in fiction. The lure of returning to past ages, and perhaps changing the outcome, is strong. Time travel is devilishly hard to get right for RPGs, though. There are tons of ways you can set up time travel rules, and ... [... more]
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Buying RPG Dice - Role Playing Games
Dungeons & Dragons set the stage for using different sorts of RPG dice back in the day. When we talk about dice, we use a convenient sort of shorthand. We use a lower-case 'd', followed by the number of sides the die has. So d6 is a regular six ... [... more]
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