Over on Bluesky and Mastodon Dice Camp, I post daily fantasy roleplaying game tips for GMs and players — except for this month, because I’ve been on holiday in France! So instead of the full collection of this past month’s tips presented here for your reading pleasure, I’ve pulled together a selection of some of my own favorite tips from the first half of this year. Please feel free to check out the monthly tip archives on the blog if you’ve only started reading recently, or 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 GM Tip: Softening failures with small benefits can dramatically improve the fun of a game. The next time a character goes prone for the second time in a fight, give them a defensive edge against an area effect that mostly whooshes past over top of them.
FRPG Player Tip: Metagaming isn’t when you as a player know things your character doesn’t. Metagaming is when you try to turn that knowledge into benefits your character doesn’t deserve. The game is about pretending to be someone you’re not, so just pretend to not know what you know. It’s easy.
FRPG GM Tip: The characters’ backgrounds and backstories are often a big part of the campaign start, but can easily slip out of mind as time goes on. So make specific notes about those elements, then refer back to them regularly to let you build story that will feel personal to the characters.
FRPG 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?”
FRPG Player Tip: A GM is often a much more generous source of magical loot than a video game algorithm. Use your potions and other consumables regularly rather than saving them for the best possible time, because a good GM will note you using consumables to do cool stuff and make sure you find more.
FRPG GM Tip: Some players find it hard to come up with shared-story campaign ideas on the fly, but most can easily tell you what their character got up to during the last downtime. Asking players to detail downtime narrative is a great way to work toward even greater levels of shared storytelling.
FRPG Player Tip: Always feel free to ask whether some element of an encounter can be used to your benefit — high ground, potential allies, whatever. Sometimes a GM plans such benefits and waits for players to uncover them. Sometimes they don’t plan them and are happy for you to discover them anyway.
FRPG GM Tip: A great way to get characters and players thinking is to throw a randomly generated powerful magic item into a treasure cache that no character has an obvious need for—or even the ability to use. Then see what kind of story ideas they come up with as they figure out what to do with it.
FRPG Player Tip: A lot of “old school” exploration tricks are worth picking up if you do a lot of dungeon crawling. A 10-foot pole to test floors and unknown recesses, a mirror for looking around corners, and extra rations to throw at hungry monsters have saved innumerable characters over the years.
FRPG GM Tip: Especially if you’re giving out magic items you’ve created or adapted yourself, spend as much time on an item’s description and a sense of how it feels to wield it as you do on its mechanics. Nothing makes magic feel less magical than reducing it to just modifiers and properties.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: It’s easy to lose track of time while playing, so don’t forget to move. Discuss with your group the idea of hardwiring regular 5- or 10-minute breaks into your sessions every hour or so, so everyone has a chance to stretch, snack, hydrate, unhydrate, or what have you.
FRPG Player Tip: If it’s been a while (or never) since you used a paper character sheet, try it. You can still use online tools for rules reference, but tracking a character’s foundation, advancement, and evolution in writing creates a tactile connection to that character like nothing else.
FRPG GM Tip: If players don’t want to kill every foe they come up against, fine-tune your campaign and house rules to accommodate them. Letting the characters know they can spare bandits, cultists, and other minor enemies without having them automatically come back for vengeance is a great start.
FRPG GM Tip: Between your set-piece encounters, energize mundane locations or exploration scenes with a bit of treasure, an unexpected magical effect, or a trap or hazard that’s easy to overcome. Help the players stay focused by creating an underlying sense that there are always things to discover.
FRPG Player Tip: The freedom to have your character be whoever they want to be is foundational to RPGs — but it doesn’t override the importance of the game being a group activity. If conflict and antagonism between characters threatens the group’s enjoyment, talk it through before the game suffers.
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 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.
FRPG GM Tip: Irredeemably evil NPCs can be great fun in a hack-and-slash campaign where everyone is fully on board with the idea of taking no prisoners. But if that’s not the case, NPCs who are misguided, corrupted by magic, or the dupes of evil overlords often make for a more interesting story.
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 Player Tip: Spend some time before each session reviewing your character’s gear. Magical gear is especially important, but remembering in the moment that your character has rope, caltrops, chalk, a bell, or a hunk of strong-smelling cheese can make a difference to a scene in unexpected ways.
FRPG GM Tip: Thinking like a player is a great way to create challenging encounters as a GM. Don’t just focus on what the villains are plotting. Think ahead of time about what plans the players might hatch to counter those plots — and then expect to be surprised by the plans you didn’t expect.
FRPG 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.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: The best number of dice to own is the number you routinely need to roll. Playing a damage-dealing caster? Have d6s and d8s on hand. Make a ton of attack rolls each turn? Have groups of d20s and damage dice. And if you ever come up short, don’t be afraid to ask to borrow.
FRPG Player Tip: Active listening might be best skill a player can bring to a game. Focusing on what the GM and all the other players are bringing to the table scene by scene is the best way to stay centered in the story — and to make sure the GM and other players are listening to you in turn.
FRPG GM Tip: When it comes to worldbuilding and adventure backstory, think “menu,” not “meal.” Players don't need a whole history prepped, cooked, and served up. They need you to give them a sense of what tastes the setup has to offer, then to let them order the specific entree they want to sample.
FRPG Player Tip: When making choices for a character, asking “What would I do?” is a good starting point — but don’t stop there. RPGs are about possibility. About being our best selves. So instead, ask: “What would I do if I could truly make a difference? What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?”
FRPG 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.
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.
Art by Dean Spencer