FRPG Tips — April 2025

Over on Bluesky and Mastodon Dice Camp, I post daily fantasy roleplaying game tips for GMs and players. At the end of each month, you get the full collection of that month’s tips right here 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.

GM Tip: One of the best ways to give out magic items is to have foes use them against the party first. A character who gets to claim a weapon or a wand that someone else used to try to kill them makes for an especially sweet reward.

GM Tip: At the end of each session, remind the players what decisions they might need to make next session — which story threads to follow up on, which part of the dungeon to explore next, which NPC to go after, and so forth. Having time to think about choices can make it easier to choose.

GM Tip: Personal details are a great way to keep foes from becoming two-dimensional combat fodder. But be careful to not make it seem as if you want the players to feel guilty about defeating those foes. Every member of a debased cult carrying letters from loving family is probably too much.

Player Tip: It’s not metagaming to simply know things about the monsters and hazards of the game world that your character doesn’t have direct experience of. But it’s good to frame your player knowledge as a question to the GM: “Could my character have heard about this thing I know?”

GM Tip: If you run gridded combat, be flexible with distances to keep things moving. Let a character with a speed of 30 move 35 feet once to reach the boss. Don’t worry about ranged attacks being at long range unless the range is extreme. Counting squares shouldn’t get in the way of the fun.

GM Tip: For long narrative beats — travel scenes, describing complex dungeon locations, and so forth — give the players something to decide on so it’s not just you talking through the whole thing. “How far into the room do you advance?” “The path forks, so which way do you go?” 

GM Tip: If a fight in a published adventure features a combat-worthy magic item as treasure but no enemy is using that item, have an enemy use that item against the characters. Any sense that NPCs and monsters are disconnected from the story undercuts the players’ engagement with that story.

Player Tip: Don’t be afraid to make skill checks just because a particular skill isn’t your character’s forte. The one time you use healing to bring a friend back from the brink of death or spot the ambush everyone else misses will more than make up for any number of forgettable rolls.

GM Tip: Making your own quick notes on the player characters’ backstories and the interesting things they’ve gotten up to in the last few sessions is one of the best ways to keep those characters front and center in your campaign planning and adventure design.

GM Tip: Let players tell you after the fact that they’ve activated long-duration buff spells or magical defenses that their characters would have remembered to use earlier. Forcing a player to roleplay that their arcanist somehow forgot to cast the spells that keep them alive is no fun.

GM Tip: Reskinning monsters is a great way to make combat encounters unique, but reskinning doesn’t need to mean rebuilding a monster from the ground up. Changing up a stock creature’s description and tweaking one attack’s damage type is often enough to make combat feel fresh.

Player Tip: An easy way to play your character more effectively is to pay attention to what the other players and characters are doing. Needing a bit of distraction to stay focused is fine, but checking out of the game entirely until it’s your turn means you’re only playing part of the game.

GM Tip: The best way to make sure players and characters don’t automatically assume every NPC is out to get them is to not have the NPCs out to get them. Reserve betrayal and subterfuge for key plot points, not a default mindset for every NPC merchant, contact, or bandit who asks for quarter.

GM Tip: A lot of players, especially first-time or young players, can feel put off by a game in which the heroes are expected to kill people because they have no other option. Make nonlethal resolutions to combat — including letting enemies surrender or flee — part of your GM’s toolkit.

GM Tip: If you’re finding that characters are earning far more money than they can spend, especially in published adventures, cut the gold and replace it with magic. It’s generally easier to adjust encounters to account for extra magic than it is to fix the broken economy of most fantasy games.

GM and Player Tip: Session zero is about way more than just safety tools. Before your game begins, talk together about the style of game you want to play, character ideas you’ve been thinking about, and anything else that might become an ingredient in an amazing story.

GM Tip: When a successful save against a spell means an enemy suffers no effect, a small narrative benefit can lessen the frustration for the caster’s player. Maybe the enemy moves away from the caster from fear of being targeted again, putting them in better position for an ally’s attack.

GM Tip: Giving a name to a magic weapon found as treasure gives that weapon a useful degree of narrative weight in the players’ minds, even if the name is just a throwaway detail for you. Even better, doing so can inspire the players to name the weapons they commission or craft themselves.

GM Tip: Reskinning monsters is great fun, but focusing on reskinning can sometimes make running stock monsters feel like you’re doing something wrong. Never be afraid to just run threats straight from your monster book if that’s what fits the story.

Player Tip: Making notes on NPC names, factions, and other campaign details is always a good idea. But if you’re ever unsure what’s going on because you missed a bit of information, just ask. FRPGs are shared storytelling, and good players and GMs are always happy to summarize the story so far.

GM Tip: If you want the best sense of what your players are enjoying most about your games, don’t be afraid to ask them. It’s easy for players to assume that it’s obvious when they’re having a great time, but in all the chaos that comes with running a game, it’s easy for you to miss that.

GM Tip: If a party filled with melee-focused combatants does a bit too good a job of ganging up on and taking down powerful foes, giving those foes some kind of automatic-damage aura power can be a great incentive for the players to change up their usual tactics.

GM Tip: Giving a magic weapon the ability to cast a low-level spell once per day won’t break your game. Likewise, giving a weapon the ability to cast a higher-level spell once. If characters being able to buy scrolls or hire NPC casters is a thing in the campaign, just cut out the intermediary.

Player Tip: In a game in which the GM calls on players to add scene details, describe locales, summarize the party’s journey, or share the game narrative in other ways, don’t be afraid to join the fun. The campaign story is a story about you, and there’s no way for you to tell that story wrong.

GM Tip: Giving a stock monster the ability to use a couple of spells can upend expectations in a combat encounter faster than just about anything else, especially for experienced players. In a world in which magic is readily available to the characters, give their enemies equal access.

GM Tip: Look for any angle that can help turn a combat encounter into a social encounter, including having foes ask for quarter or offer badly injured characters a truce. Any monster who can talk can attempt to negotiate, and is intelligent enough to understand when they should negotiate.

Player Tip: If there are things about your character you find yourself struggling to recall, highlight your character sheet or keep a separate document with useful shortcuts. Can’t remember your initiative modifier or the names of useful spells that only come up once in while? Write them down.

GM Tip: Have a wide-ranging list of NPC names at hand that you can quickly look to whenever the players decide to talk to a barkeep, question a lackey, interrogate a cultist, and so forth. Nothing makes you look more in control than the illusion that every social interaction is already prepped.

GM Tip: A great many fantasy campaigns feature the idea of a present built on the bones of great ages of the past, so lean into that. Ruins in unexpected environments, lost dungeons under contemporary buildings, and art and relics of the ancient past can bring your world and your game to life.

Art by Dean Spencer

Missing in Action

When I was a teenager, I spake as a teenager, I understood as a teenager, I thought as a teenager, and I played D&D, like, 36 hours a week. But when I became a man, I put away teenagerish things and now have to scramble to consistently book weekly game sessions that all the players can make it to. (With apologies to 1 Corinthians.)

I know that many other adults suffering under all the real-world pressures of adulting feel this same pain, and know the frustration that comes of having to cancel game night because one or two players can’t make it. So rather than cancel, GMs and players should talk about options for keeping the game going when someone is absent.

Whither GM?

Many players might be inclined to automatically assume that for sessions where the GM is unavailable owing to life stuff, there won’t be a session. And if so, it’s worth a reminder that anyone can be a GM. If you’ve been playing long enough, you’ve probably already absorbed everything you need to know about running a game from the GMs who’ve run games for you — so why not give it a shot? A night when the regular GM can’t make it is a great time to run your first game. Just grab a one-shot adventure or a starter set for your game of choice and go. You can even pitch your group about running a starter adventure that one or more of the other players have already played through if you like. With you running your first game for your regular group, people will be less concerned about getting a brand-new story and more focused on having fun.

The GM PC

For a GM who’s up for a challenge, running a character on the side is an obvious solution to the problem of a missing player. The player will need to make sure the GM has a current copy of their character sheet or details, with many GMs who are comfortable running player characters asking players to pass on a copy of their character sheets each time the characters level up. On the plus side, a GM willing to run a character probably has a strong sense that they’re capable of doing the job, and will be faithful to what the player would want the character to do. On the downside, a GM already has way too much to do, and running a player character on the side can make for a tough session.

Side Trek

If it fits the current continuity of the campaign, an effective way to cover for a missing player is to have their character go missing as well. Not in any nefarious way, but by having them step out of the main story for a session. This approach only works if the previous session ended at a natural breakpoint — the characters about to start a journey, undertake downtime, enter a ruin for the first time, and so forth. If it works for the setup, a playerless character might go ahead of the journey to act as a scout. They might slip away from the rest of group to deal with their own downtime stuff. If the area of the ruins is particularly dangerous, they might hang back and make sure no monsters follow the party in, then catch up later — which is to say, in the next session when the player returns.

The Backup Player

Players who are willing can volunteer to run another player’s character for a session. Aside from the other character’s sheet or details — obtained from the player or from a GM who has a backup of everyone’s character sheets — a player taking on someone else’s character needs to understand and respect how the other player typically runs the character, and should do their best to play the character the way the other player would have. This approach works best for a player whose own character is straightforward. Running a warrior whose entire personality is built around smashing things with a maul makes it relatively easy to also focus on running a side character — even a complicated character such as a caster. But the player of a spellcaster already dealing with casting mechanics, resources, and spell lists might have trouble taking on another caster at the same time.

Fade Into the Background

It’s often workable to have a missing player’s character present during an entire session, but just not really there. The character is understood to be with the party and part of the action, but they simply spend their time on the narrative sidelines while the other characters do the narrative heavy lifting. Having a character fade into the background in combat is easily done by splitting off a couple of foes who they can focus on alone while everyone else works together in the main fight.

Character as Mechanical Benefit

Sometimes the best way to deal with a character whose player is absent is to have no one play them, then make up for their absence in other ways. With this extension of the “Fade Into the Background” approach, the GM simply narrates the character’s presence during interaction scenes, exploration, or combat encounters, then gives the other players mechanical benefits from that presence. For example, the character might grant advantage to other characters’ skill checks during social encounters by acting as a support or a foil. They might allow a different character each round to deal double damage in combat in lieu of the playerless character making attacks. A character might also deal a fixed amount of damage each round to one or more enemies, with the GM coming up with a number that feels right rather than rolling attacks and damage.

Mix and Match

No matter which approach your group decides on when a player has to miss out on a session, you’ll find it useful to keep the other approaches in mind as well. Your GM might start out running a player character because the session starts with intrigue or action in which the character needs to play an important part, then have the character fade into the background as the session continues. Or the character might fade into the background at the start of the session, then be picked up and run by another player for a key combat or roleplaying scene. 

With any of these approaches, the most important takeaway is that having a player unable to make a session doesn’t need to mean cancelling that session. Especially for players with limited time, getting together to game is an important real-life social encounter. If a bunch of players all can’t make it, there might be nothing for it but to call for a rain check. But with just one player missing — or even two players in a large enough group — it’s worth the effort to find ways to carry on.