Over on BluSky and Mastodon Dice Camp, I’ve been posting daily fantasy roleplaying game tips for GMs and players. On the last day of each month, I’ll be posting a full collection of the previous month’s tips for your reading pleasure. And please feel free to follow me at either of the above locations to get new tips every day, fresh out of the idea forge.
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FRPG Player Tip: The best type of character is one who’s an extension of you, reflecting your own interests and personality. The other best type of character is one who’s completely different from you, letting you explore new sides of yourself. Try one approach. Try the other. Meld them. Have fun.
FRPG GM Tip: We notice cliches and coincidence in fiction much more than in real life — and an RPG feels like real life when we’re in it. Don’t be afraid to have NPCs show up in taverns, or to leave convenient notes and journals lying around. As long as it advances the story, the players won’t care.
FRPG GM Tip: An encounter that feels flat can be easily energized by a ticking clock. A magical shrine threatens to explode. Guards have been called and the duke must be won over quickly. As long as any outcome advances the story, tell the players they have a time limit and see the tension rise.
FRPG GM Tip: When it’s clear that the players — especially young players — don’t want to kill every foe they meet, think about building the biggest battles of your campaign around constructs, undead, fiends, and enemies who have freely chosen a path of irredeemable evil.
FRPG Player Tip: Characters don’t necessarily need to be balanced in their features and roles to have a fun game, but balance in look and feel is usually a good idea. Your “Bob the Fighter” can feel out of place next to more “realistic” characters, so ask the other players how they feel about that.
FRPG GM Tip: When characters attempt to sneak or hide, avoid opposed rolls in favor of setting a DC based on your sense of the challenge. Sneaking by a tired town guard at night? An easy check. Hiding by day from a pack of wood elf scouts all wired on amphetamines? Probably a hard check.
FRPG GM Tip: If the party ever ends up divided by circumstance rather than by choice, set out clear guidelines for how to bring everybody back together. Whatever subgoals emerge from being separated, make sure that reuniting is the overriding goal, and that the players know how to make that happen.
FRPG GM Tip: Players picking less-than-perfect builds or doubling up on party roles isn’t an excuse for you to run a game that’ll teach them a lesson about character optimization. It’s an invitation to show off how you can shape an adventure — even on the fly — to be a fun challenge for any group.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: When playing face-to-face, some folks are fine with food and drink at the table. Others prefer to keep game time and snack time separate. Talk to each other to make sure everyone’s happy with the snack situation. And if appropriate, snacks for the GM make a great thank-you.
FRPG GM Tip: Perfect encounters don’t happen by design. They happen because of all the unpredictable things that can unfold during a game. So the best way to encourage perfect encounters is for your encounters to be loose enough to absorb a maximum amount of unpredictability.
FRPG GM Tip: For a first session with a new group of players — especially inexperienced players — let appropriate humor play out in the adventure, even in small ways. Laughing during a session can help players overcome initial nervousness, and quickly establishes that having fun is everyone’s goal.
FRPG Player Tip: Your character’s flaws or dark side should never become an excuse to disrupt or derail the game for other players — especially the GM. Antiheroes who don’t play nice with others make great characters in fiction, but a campaign is about shared narrative, not solo stories.
FRPG GM Tip: Don’t do this for every foe, but key encounters can be made much more interesting by having one or two enemies flying. Flying magic exists in most games, so as long the characters have effective ranged attacks, give the bandit chieftain a potion and let them soar.
FRPG GM Tip: Writing little bits of in-game fiction is a great way to help players remember key developments in the campaign. But whether a letter, a journal, a cargo manifest, an arrest report, or what have you, keep it brief. Too much overall detail makes it more difficult to remember key details.
FRPG GM Tip: Asking for feedback is one of the most difficult things to do for any creator — but the campaign you create will benefit from it. Every few sessions, ask your players what they’re enjoying most about your games. Then ask what things you can do to make them enjoy your games even more.
FRPG Player Tip: Skipping the murder-hobo vibe of a fantasy RPG you otherwise love can be as easy as asking the GM, “Hey, can we skip the murder-hobo vibe?” Start by talking about house rule options for all attacks and spells to leave creatures incapacitated, so killing foes isn’t the only option.
FRPG GM Tip: A session where the players spend two hours planning how to undermine foes, then one hour in combat against those foes, can be just as much fun as the characters doing zero planning before spending three hours in combat. Embrace helping players avoid the trouble you’ve planned for them.
FRPG GM Tip: When thinking about which elements to make recurring features of your campaign, let the players decide for you. Take note of which subplots, NPCs, locations, and threats they talk about most after the fact, then prep those things for a follow-up appearance.
FRPG GM Tip: Especially for starting characters, a number of easy-threat foes are often a better combat choice than a single high-threat foe. A group of foes deals less damage each time one of them is taken out, but a single foe deals full damage right from the start of a fight to the end.
FRPG Player Tip: A good backstory is more about asking questions than making statements. Statements can only tell you where your character has been. Questions covering the things your character wants to knodw or is looking for will set up where you’re going, and that’s what the game is about.
FRPG GM Tip: Any spell available to the party — or to any character of the same power level if the party is short on casters — makes a perfect treasure reward. Whether a scroll, a potion, or a one-use magic item, another use of a spell the characters already have can’t possibly unbalance your game.
FRPG GM Tip: One downside to loving the GM’s life is having no time to play in other people’s games. So make the time. Find a campaign to play in alongside yours. Pitch your friends on running one-shots. Nothing helps you see your own game from the players’ perspective better than being a player.
FRPG GM Tip: Thinking about your character’s story can be one of the best parts of being a player — so don’t forget to have that same fun with your key villains and NPCs. What are their ambitions? Their hopes and dreams? What are they afraid of? What secrets do they least want to see revealed?
FRPG Player Tip: If you’re new to the game, focus first on the narrative side of a character’s features and traits, not the mechanics. You can develop and fine-tune your understanding of mechanics as you play. But building a character story based on the rules of a game is almost always a bad idea.
FRPG GM Tip: Don’t be afraid to pass on tactical tips to the players that their characters would be well aware of in the midst of combat. If you know the front-liners will break if their captain is taken out, work that into the narrative of the fight — especially if the characters are struggling.
FRPG GM Tip: When asking players “What do you do?”, make sure two or three default options are already laid out. It’s great fun when someone picks the fourth or fifth option you hadn’t thought about, but having no sense of what’s possible can easily freeze up a player’s ability to make a decision.
FRPG GM Tip: Swapping damage types is one of the easiest ways to make foes stand out in a fight. Mercenaries of the Flameblood Company whose weapon attacks deal fire damage. Wolves serving pestilence druids whose bites deal necrotic damage. Even a minor change can make a stock threat feel fresh.
FRPG Player Tip: Arguments and disagreements can make for great roleplaying. But unless you know your group well and have established suitable boundaries, don’t look to create real conflict between characters. An adventuring party is about strength in numbers, and conflict eats away that strength.
(Art by Dean Spencer)