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 and Player Tip: If your campaign takes place in a single well-defined nation, does that nation have a day celebrating its founding? What’s the story commonly known and told behind that founding? And what truths and secrets does that official story skip over or try to hide?
FRPG GM Tip: When making notes for narrative drops — histories, personalities, environments, et al. — work in bullet points rather than complete paragraphs. Focusing on highlights primes your GM brain to be engaging in the moment, but dense detail turns you into a person reading aloud at the table.
FRPG Player Tip: Every good RPG player wants to help new players figure out what they’re doing. If you’re with a group of players whose attitudes run counter to that, those players are very clearly telling you to move on and look for players who are better than them.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: More so than just about any other human pastime, RPGs are social activities. Planning for a nice block of social time at the start of a session is a great way to make sure the game doesn’t get sidetracked (or at least gets sidetracked a bit less) by out-of-game interactions.
FRPG GM Tip: Mysteries and intrigue adventures rely on NPC exposition, but do everything you can to turn an NPC’s monologue into a dialogue. Having to entice, bribe, threaten, or cajole an NPC into revealing big secrets is always more interesting than just having the NPC volunteer that information.
FRPG Player Tip: If your game makes use of ethos or alignment as a character metric, think about whether you want to play that as prescriptive or descriptive. Prescriptive means “Your character’s ethos defines what they do.” Descriptive means “Your character’s ethos is defined by what they do.”
FRPG GM Tip: Rolling your dice in the open can make for a swingy game that often goes in unexpected directions. Rolling your dice behind a screen lets you stop things from going off the rails for no reason. Both approaches have merit, but you need to think about which one works best for your game.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: Every campaign tells a story, and the story you and the other players are telling is more important than the rules of your game. Every game designer alive will tell you to bend the rules that they themselves have written if doing so means the story kicks more ass as a result.
FRPG GM Tip: Especially if you’re running a published adventure, make sure that close-quarters combat encounters give a party room to move. If most or all of the characters depend on positioning or area attacks to do their coolest stuff, move a battle in a crowded room to a bigger location.
FRPG Player Tip: House rules aren’t just the purview of the GM. If a minor tweak to the mechanics of your character would make that character more fun to play — especially a tweak that has both positive and a negative impact so there’s no overall power boost — pitch it to your GM for consideration.
FRPG GM Tip: If you’re running combat without a tactical map, you’re asking the players to invest more in imagining how the scene plays out. Reward that by having the scene play out in their favor when they’re asking which enemies they can target and seeking advantageous position.
FRPG Player Tip: Especially with a mechanically rich character, you’re going to inevitably forget about a certain option or trigger for something you could have done during a complex scene. Don’t sweat it when it happens — but make note when it happens as an aid to helping you remember next time.
FRPG GM Tip: If the ideal monster for an encounter is likely to feel a bit too familiar to the players, swapping out one of that monster’s features with the feature of another monster of the same power level gives you a brand-new monster the characters are guaranteed to have never seen before.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: Whether you’re a GM setting the scene or a player describing your actions or backstory, focus first on the most important details. If your description were a film, think in terms of doing a close-up to get everyone’s attention, then pulling back to reveal additional detail.
FRPG GM Tip: Heroes fear nothing — but your players likely have the same fears many of us share, so use that within the bounds established by your safety tools. Even if the characters can take a diseased horde of giant rats in stride, the players’ reaction to that can energize an encounter.
FRPG Player Tip: Especially if your GM drops a lot of random magic-item loot in your games, let your character use an item that doesn’t fit their existing idiom and see how it feels. If it’s an item your character normally can’t use, talk to the GM about how to make that happen.
FRPG GM Tip: A secret note passed to a player — either an index card at the table or through chat online — is a great way to keep the other players focused. With players you know well enough, dropping a note saying, “Everything’s fine but act like you’re worried and can’t say why” is especially fun.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: If one character feels particularly overpowered compared to the rest of the party, it’s okay to have a conversation about reworking that character. It’s usually fun to have a character shine, but one character who outshines all the rest can bring your game down in a hurry.
FRPG GM Tip: The best villains are often those whose morality comes in shades of gray rather than as strictly monochrome evil. But if you have a lot of moral ambiguity in your campaign, make sure there’s at least one unambiguous bad guy the players can hate without reservation.
FRPG Player Tip: The amount of work your GM puts into creating the framework for the campaign story should inspire how much work you put into developing your character story. The best campaigns play out as a resonant call-and-response interaction, so when the GM’s story calls, be ready to respond.
FRPG GM Tip: Looking to favorite books, film, and TV shows for ideas is cool, but giving real life a sideways twist can generate great fantasy story. What would a world cup of magecraft look like in your campaign? Who are the sinister cultists running it? What corrupt leader are they kowtowing to?
FRPG GM and Player Tip: Becoming good at your favorite game doesn’t always mean becoming super fast with that game. For sure, learn the rules and study what you need to remember. But don’t ever worry about asking for help or looking something up if it’s a thing you haven’t done or seen before.
FRPG GM Tip: Keep a close eye on monster features that can absolutely ruin a fight based on the makeup of the party. Antimagic wrecks the fun for casters. Flying will frustrate melee-focused characters. Lockdown abilities mean that characters who need to be mobile might as well stay home.
FRPG GM and Player Tip: If you’re playing online, don’t get hung up on trying to find a single platform that does it all. Your maps, video chat, character info, space for sharing notes and handouts — maybe all of that works in one VTT, or maybe it’s five different apps that do exactly what you need.
FRPG GM Tip: Whether you give out magic, swag, or more ephemeral benefits as treasure, add description and a story connection to the campaign when you do. Making every magic sword, every bit of jewelry, every eldritch blessing unique increases the narrative value of those rewards for the players.
FRPG Player Tip: GMs aren’t the only ones who can use published adventures as inspiration. If you read adventures (whether just for fun or because you’re also a GM), maybe the story or setting of a particular adventure features cool details that are just what you need for your character backstory.
FRPG GM Tip: Especially if you have one or two natural roleplayers or super-optimizers in your game, don’t be afraid to track how often each player gets the “I’m doing something amazingly cool!” spotlight. Then set up specific scenarios where the less up-front players and characters get to show off.
FRPG Player Tip: It’s easy to think of roleplaying as being focused only on big social scenes or intense moments of negotiation. But one of the most satisfying and ongoing roleplaying exercises in an RPG is you roleplaying your character in a way that supports and uplifts the other characters.
Art by Dean Spencer
