RPG Narration Through the Eyes of Viewpoint Characters

We Dungeon Masters often describe our roleplaying game worlds like neutral, all-seeing narrator robots, and that means we’re wasting a lot of potential. Fantasy authors use this trick of picking viewpoint characters to provide sharper, more useful, more flavorful narration filtered through their characters’ expert lenses. Of course, that would never work at a Dungeons & Dragons table. We couldn’t possibly use viewpoint characters to punch up our scene-setting narration. Or could we?

Why Haggling and Shopping Suck in D&D and How to Un-Suck Them

Players love haggling in Dungeons & Dragons, but haggling mechanics usually suck, players suck at it, and modern roleplaying games treat shopping like a trip to a modern mall. Fortunately, I’m here with a better way to handle shopping trips and barter exchanges. You might even find some tricks to sharpen your own house-ruling and system hacking if you pay attention.

Y’all Mind if I Rant About Encounters… Or Predestination

Why do Dungeon Masters get so weird about encounters, randomness, and determinism. Whether you’re talking about Passive Perception, keyed encounters, quantum ogres, or wilderness encounter placement, most DMs just freak the hell out about knowing outcomes in advance or plotting encounters with anything other than precise geographical and temporal coordinates. Don’t worry, guys; you aren’t railroading just because you’re not running a full-on holodeck sim.

Should You Really Talk To Your Players About Their Characters?

We Game Masters never think about narrative points of view. We just default to the thing we’ve always done. Years ago, I suggested that it was time to switch from calling players you to a third-person approach. It was great for pacing and clarity, but it also changed how players connect to their characters. But is that a problem? More importantly, have you ever considered how your narrative point-of-view affects your game?

Y’all Mind if I Rant About Light and Vision

You can’t run traps well if you don’t handle vision, light, senses, and searching properly. Which none of us do. Some of that can be blamed on the game system, but some of it is down to us Game Masters just doing a crappy job with our descriptions.

The Campaign That Didn’t End On Time

Many of us have run campaigns well past the date we promised to end them and far beyond the ending we planned for them. But everyone was having fun and we were running our best games, so who cares, right? Well, maybe you should care. But maybe not care as much as I’m going to scream that you should. Because I am kind of nuts.

Breaking Your Map Addiction

Would you like to rely less on maps in your game, create more work for yourself, and upset your players? Of course not. Enjoy this advice no one asked for or would ever follow.

Actually… You Are an Author

As a Game Master, you are an author, but that doesn’t mean what most people think it does. What it mostly means is that you can learn a lot of stupid narration tricks from authors. And video games.

The Battletoads Problem

How do you build a good monster hunt that feels like an actual monster hunt? It’s do-able, but you have to be careful not the make your game the Battletoads of D&D campaigns.

Let’s Build a Pretty Good Dungeon: How Players Explore

Now it’s time for the third and final short essay laying out the underlying design approach for our pretty good dungeon. Except this isn’t the final one and it isn’t short. This one’s all about how players decide where to go next.

The Anatomy of a Screwjob

Today, I’m going to tell you exactly how to screw over your players. That’s so you can stop yourself from doing it. Because screwjobs are bad.

The Hacking Problem

I ran a crappy encounter and rather than accept the blame, I’m going to blame not just the system, but the fundemental underlying fabric of all roleplaying gaming ever. And I’m not even going to solve the problem. Happy Thanksgiving.

Order Matters: Guided Nonlinearity and Closed Openness

When it comes to gameplay experiences, order matters. What comes first, what comes next, it’s literally a game changer. So what’s a conscientious adventure maker to do when roleplaying game is all about letting players explore any way they want?

How Well Do You Know Your PCs?

How much of your prep time should you spend before the start of a campaign reviewing the players’ characters? How much time should you spend before each session reviewing their Reactions and Bonus Actions? I’m willing to bet the correct answer is, “More than you do.”

More Shapey Goodness

Before I move on from Scenario Shape, let’s talk a bit about we might apply these ideas to detailed Encounter building. When we actually get to that. Someday.