running the game

How to Deal with Silence at the Table From JohnnFour | Published June 6, 2022 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,205 Brief Word From Johnn Today Jonathan talks about silence during sessions. There are many kinds of silence, and he shares his thoughts about a couple of the trickiest ones. If you...

How to Write Motivation Into Your Games From JohnnFour | Published May 17, 2022 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,202 Brief Word From Johnn I played in a Pathfinder 2E one-shot on Saturday using Foundry run by my friend Mark. My guy was a big brute wielding a dwarven scattergun trying to save...

Campaign’s Pillars: How to Pacing Your Game’s Exciting Moments By JohnnFour | Published March 21, 2022 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,034 Manage pace during sessions instead of scripting it. This lets you react to your game as it unfolds and is one less strict plan you must track. But...

When Players Go Feral — How to Clarify Actions of Misunderstood Players From Jonathan Hardin, sojournersawake.com | Published April 25, 2022 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,200 A Brief Word from Johnn Today's tips from Jonathan cover a problem I've experienced many times, especially at...

How To Handle Hack & Slash and Plot-Breaking Character Powers From JohnnFour | Published June 24, 2021 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,157 How can you make travel and exploration more interesting? And what can we do about players who like to kill everything and ignore roleplay? I’ll share a...

Highlights and Hopes — How to Get Valuable Feedback From Your Players From JohnnFour | Published January 3, 2022 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,186 Happy New Year! May 2022 be a year full of happy gaming and dice rolling for you! I hope to get back behind the screen this year after taking...

My Simple Sandbox GM Tool - The 5 Actions From JohnnFour | Published December 6, 2021 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,183 Brief Word From Johnn I'm not sure of the exact date I launched RoleplayingTips.com and newsletter #1. But it was a wonderful day in November 1999. Which means RPT is 22...

The Dangling Description Mystery Method Formula - The Secret Sauce To Riveting Descriptions From JohnnFour | Published June 7, 2019, Updated June 9, 2019 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,037 I was working on a new Faster Combat lesson about the Action Economy last weekend and a lightbulb went...

How To Start Every Session With A Bang! From JohnnFour | Published October 18, 2021 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,176 I was excited to play but bored within minutes. It became difficult to focus. I noticed other players starting to zone out too. We were on Zoom, making it even harder. Ideas...

5 Ways To Warn Players Of A Deadly Challenge From JohnnFour | Published November 17, 2021 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,180 Brief Word From Johnn We received our first blanket of snow this week, indicating perfect gaming weather is upon us! Why not turn on the lantern and tell tall tales by...

3 Quick Horror Tips For Your Halloween Game From Johnn Four | Published October 26, 2021, updated October 28, 2021 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,177 RPT GM Bruce M. asked me for tips on how to scare players during a special Halloween one-shot he's prepping. Alas, I don't have a ton of...

Top 7 Tips For Developing The Voice That Wins By Dr. June Johnson From JohnnFour | updated February 17, 2020 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #009 The voice is your most powerful means of communication. How you hear yourself is not necessarily how others hear you. Successful professionals have...

I've recently switched from D&D to the Genesys system for running a home-brew campaign. I used D&D Beyond for that system and it was pretty smooth to run on my laptop, but I mostly ran published campaigns. Genesys is all PDFs and I'm finding it really unwieldy (given I'm new and have to do a...

Tim, I'm curious, do you game in Mandarin? (I'm also generally interested in any other languages people are running game in!) I'm considering D&D as a topic for Mandarin conversation group--maybe even a one-shot immersion. I wonder if there are any recommended resources!

One of my biggest weaknesses as a GM is my lack of proper preparation and focus when it comes to rewarding my players for a completed adventure or campaign. To play the campaign I prefer intrinsic motivation of the players/characters and as a GM, I am quite content if a story was fun, the climax...

I used to run regular weekend marathon sessions. Alas, real life and age cap my sessions. Oddly, I prefer 3 hours now. But I GM longer to make it worth it for my players who need to block off their schedules, break away from family, and sometimes have to commute quite a distance. My Terror in...