Campaign Mastery

Drow are soon to make their appearance in my Riddleport campaign. They are part of The Great Game being played out in the background as the characters struggle for fame and power in the pirate city. To help me GM the dark elves I created the following tables and references. Maybe they would be useful […]

Dungeon Master Toolkit is an RPG iPad app aimed at game masters of any game system. It is my favourite dedicated RPG app, and my review will explain why. I am using version 1.21 of DM Toolkit. Level 99 Games has promised a 1.3 update soon that offers some interesting new features. Level 99 also […]

You can win a set of the dice that appear in this blog post. Details at the end. Thanks for Q-Workshop for supplying dice to give away! A gamer recently mentioned a disappointing lack of detail when his GM handed out a “pouch of gems.” The player wanted more flavour. It is difficult detailing every […]

This week I thought I would describe a tool that I came up with to help me create quick and easy NPCs, called The Ubercharacter Wimp, or TUW. Three into TUW The concept is really simple: in a document of some kind, I list the highest and lowest PC scores for each of the stats, […]

Great names are critical for immersion. Name an NPC Bob and you set a bad tone for any serious campaign. However, even the best GMs get stumped occasionally on generating great names. Following are links to several online names resources, lists and generators. Before diving into the links though, I have a naming tip for […]

iAnnotate is fast becoming my most-used in-game iPad RPG app. It not only reads PDFs, but it lets you edit them too. And this is where it becomes a killer GMing app for me, which I will soon explain. Thanks to Tom Ganz for pointing this app out in his comment on good gaming apps […]

Roleplaying Tips reader Zerfinity sent me a campaign survey he used to build his new group. A friend once told me the best finishes have great starts. So it is with great campaigns, and one key is getting a group of like-minded, enthusiastic people around you each game night. Zerfinity’s survey offers a great tool […]

Dragon encounters are supposed to be special. Black dragons are supposed to be nasty. Put them together and you get….crickets. It is tricky pulling off a great dragon encounter, especially when player expectations run high from watching movies and imagining Smaug and looking at gorgeous art in monster books. The good news is you just […]

I’m interrupting my series on Psionics to bring you this timely post on sports and nation-building… As I write this, the local TV host is replaying highlights from the opening ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Since Johnn is Canadian and I am Australian, both Commonwealth countries, we find our respective nationalities on opposing sides. […]

Reader Yong Kyosunim sent in one of his plot planning documents. This was in response to Campaign Mastery’s recent post on plot flowcharts. Check it out: You can download the plot flowchart in better quality as PDF if preferred. Yong created the chart using Excel. Thanks very much for sending this in, Yong!

Today I want to share a simple and fast way that makes planning easier. I was going through old gaming papers recently and came across a partially crafted plot flowchart. This would be a short plot in Myste Cryk, a home-base type campaign that ran 2005-2006. As the blog carnival for September covers preparation, I […]

Q-Workshop sent me a set of orange elven dice. The design and graceful script on their faces would give great luck to any elven PC or NPC, I’m certain. Very nice dice. Continuing on with the series started last month with a random political plot generator, this month we offer you a random high elf […]