#gmtip — Public Fediverse posts

A good campaign ending gives the players a choice on how to finish their character's story, even when all their storylines have been finished. #DMTip #GMTip

My favorite tool for planning a campaign is a mindmap. I use SimpleMind since it is cross platform, but there are many free alternatives. A mind map allows you to build your broad strokes of the campaign with the intersection of locations, factions, plot points, and PCs. It is also easy to change as PCs and player choice change things. #GMTip #DMTip

Waiting in a car to pick someone up? Waiting for an appointment? Now is a great time to pop open your phone and do some quick prep. Look up what creatures inhabit the mountains for next session or scribble down some possible plot points. #GMTip #DMTip

Prep is great, but nothing makes a session move smoothly like reviewing things right before game starts so it is fresh in your mind. #GMTip #DMTip

GM Tip:
Give your players enough information to make interesting choices!
If they don't know enough to make an informed choice, they're just stumbling around in the dark
If their choices don't matter, they're not really choices

#ttrpg #rpg #gmTip #DMTip #railroad #quantumOgre

Dear Game Referees:

If this isn't somehow on your list of encounters, then I don't even know...

#ttrpg #gmtip #dmtip

There is a lot to be said for having a mobile GM kit that you can carry all by yourself in one trip. You never know when you'll get to DM in a new location. #GMTip #DMTip What's in your mobile DM kit? #MobileGMKit #MobileDMKit

I'd imagine that commoners with no knowledge of the world probably call most monsters by the same name:
Farmer: Did you catch that orc yet?
PC: You mean the Ettin? It had two heads!
Farmer: Yeah, one of those two-headed orcs!
PC: *sigh*
#GMTip #DMTip

I like to think of bestiaries and monster manuals as field notes from researchers. Sure, that is what they thought about the creatures they encountered, but that doesn't mean there aren't local variants of the creatures that are radically different. #DMTip #GMTip #UnreliableAuthor

Anyone have any great low-prep/collaborative GM tips like Blades in the Dark faction clocks? I don't want to "write a story" but things like faction clocks give me threads to pull on whenever to keep a cohesive story together. Anybody got anything like that?

Asking because I'm starting a new game in 13th age after running Abomination Vaults in #Pathfinder 2e. I enjoy how 13A has a lot of narrative features and seems to even endorse a PBTA-style game where the players and GM work together on the story rather than having the GM do everything.

#TTRPG #DungeonMaster #GameMastering #DMTip #GMTip #DungeonsAndDragons #DND #PBTA #BITD