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.
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FRPG GM Tip: Running theater-of-the-mind combat doesn’t mean maps should be forbidden at your table. Especially if playing online, a map can provide you and the players with a sense of shared space that helps bring the scene to life even if you’re not counting squares.
FRPG Player Tip: If you’re into sports analogies, not all of your character’s moves need to be a home run, a slam dunk, or a slap-shot goal. The social aspect of RPGs means that setting up another player’s chance to shine can be just as rewarding as standing in the spotlight yourself.
FRPG GM Tip: Keeping track of what the villains are doing is an essential part of campaign tracking — and is easy to forget as you focus on what the heroes are doing. Make thinking about the villains’ plans a regular part of your prep, especially when the characters can’t see those plans developing.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: How to handle character death is an important topic both for session zero and as the campaign unfolds. For some, grimdark lethality is fun. For others, losing a character makes the investment in that character feel wasted. Talk about what approach works best for your group.
FRPG GM Tip: The different modes of many fantasy RPGs — combat, roleplaying, and exploration — are often talked about as separate elements, even as they most often play best in combination. Look for roleplaying opportunities during battles. Have exploration trigger quick and easy battles.
FRPG Player Tip: When a new session picks up after a week of real time but only ten minutes of game time, you’re going to have trouble remembering things that would be fresh in your character’s mind. So keep notes of party goals, recent discoveries, upcoming plans, and more to close that gap.
FRPG GM Tip: The best way to improvise is to do so before your game as well as during. Ad-lib or generate lists of NPC and location names, wandering monsters, bits of discoverable lore, NPC mannerisms and secrets, and anything else you can think of, then pull randomly from those lists as you play.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: The flavor of spell effects can almost always be reworked without breaking the game. Change up a spell’s appearance, components, damage type, or the way it’s resisted to create interesting cult casters, PCs and NPCs with unique magical backgrounds, and more.
FRPG GM Tip: Feints, red herrings, and unreliable narrators are great tools for fiction, but a campaign feels more personal than any fiction ever can. Using narrative subterfuge once to deceive the characters is fun. But doing it over and over again runs the risk of the players feeling deceived.
FRPG Player Tip: When joining a new game, definitely think about whether the system feels like a good fit for you. But every system is capable of telling a dizzying array of stories as it’s filtered through the players, so look first and foremost to the type of story the other players want to tell.
FRPG GM Tip: Villains should always be malleable. As the campaign advances — and especially if you’re running a published adventure — don’t be afraid to combine villains, switch their allegiances, or completely rewrite their goals and plans in response to how the story changes direction.
FRPG Player Tip: Having the game become unbalanced in the characters’ favor can feel like a windfall at first. But over time, things feeling too easy can undermine the heroic narrative that makes a game compelling. Let the GM know if house rules or story developments start to feel a bit too sweet.
FRPG GM Tip: For narrative scenes, have at least one obvious path the characters can follow. If an NPC is noticeably angry, trying to dial down that anger is an easy choice that will inspire other choices. But an inscrutable NPC can leave players so hesitant about what to do that they do nothing.
FRPG Player Tip: If you find it daunting or stressful when the spotlight of a roleplaying scene focuses on your character, always feel free to follow the lead of others. Talk back to a boss or expand on a roleplaying beat using elements another character has already introduced.
FRPG GM Tip: Most of the monsters you’ll ever run are a lot tougher than you. But on the flip side, your experience as a GM means you likely know more about the game’s mechanics and tactics than they do. Let enemies make mistakes in combat, especially in response to cool moves by the characters.
FRPG Player Tip: The win condition for any RPG is having fun, even when characters fail or suffer setbacks. So don’t lose sight of that goal even if a downbeat in the campaign is weighing on you. As one of the writers of the campaign story, you can always have your eyes on the next success.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: Always, always, always ask questions, whether you’re wanting to clarify a player’s intent, double-check a bit of lore, remember something a character or NPC would know, or what have you. The game is a conversation, so never be shy about starting that conversation.
FRPG GM Tip: Nothing makes a campaign go flat faster than following a narrative line that the players have lost interest in. A campaign is a living, organic thing, constantly reshaping itself based on the players’ and characters’ goals — so pay close attention to those goals and how they change.
FRPG Player Tip: Whenever you end up playing a character who’s more complicated than expected, pick and choose simple elements of that character and focus on them one at a time. If your warrior has six combat moves, test them out over six different fights before you think about combining them.
FRPG GM Tip: If you struggle to come up with options for characters to “fail forward” on a tanked check or test, try a humorous approach. On a failed check to find a secret door, have the door already broken and let it fall on a searching character for minor damage before revealing the room beyond.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: For heroes and NPCs alike, when describing the action in a scene, focus on active sensory details. Don’t describe a character or NPC being angry. Talk about how they knock their chair over and set a hand to their scabbard as they stand in response to a rebuke.
FRPG GM Tip: Going over the top with worldbuilding is great fun, and there’s nothing wrong with doing so. But in almost all cases, the lore your game needs at any given moment should revolve around people, places, and history that the heroes can get caught up in with just a few days’ travel.
Art by Dean Spencer