Quick Tip- Use Their Name

"Using a person's name is a key to opening doors for you and to maintaining an initial rapport that could turn this person into a new friend for life or a lifelong business partner."

"In particular, when we hear our name, we don't simply attend, we jump, alerted, aroused, vigilant. Even if three names are recited at a time, we hear our own (but only our own) quite clearly."

When someone uses our name we remember them more readily. The same goes for NPCs who use the name of your character. If you want the players to remember an NPC, have that NPC use the character's name when talking to them.

Remember Your Core Premise

The other day I was thinking about Stargate:Universe and its demise. As normal, my thoughts eventually strayed to RPG gaming and how the two are connected; in particular how the demise of a rpg campaign and the demise of Stargate:Universe can follow the same lines and how to avoid them. My random thoughts coalesced into an overarching thought…Stick with your core premise or risk losing your audience (the players).

NPC Voice

We’ve all read about techniques for using NPC voices in our games, but I think we can kick it up a notch. I’m not talking about the typical accents or speech impediments such as lisps or stuttering. These are all about the sounds. Rather I am talking about the way in which an NPC uses his words. There are unique ways for an NPC to use words; here are 10 examples of how a DM can change up an NPCs speech patterns…

Random Blog Topic

Stuck for a topic for your upcoming blog post? Running out time and fearful your follower count will drop if you don’t put something-anything-up? Well, look no further! Provided here is a complete (mostly) list of blog ideas in table form, just roll and you’ll have the topic for your next blog post!

Hmm, now that I think about it, this might actually be a fun thing to try for a week. Let the die fall where they may and see what I have to write? Could be a fun experiment...just so long as I don't roll a 6-9.

How to write an EPIC! adventure

There has been some talk lately about how to make and run Epic adventures. A lot of these points can be used for every edition or game system. Of course, most of these discussions have been on the mechanical side of the issue; how to balance the numbers to make it feel epic, how to make it so the monsters are not pushovers. However, there has not been a lot of talk about what goes into the story part of an Epic adventure, how to build the feeling of EPIC!

All too often DMs simply throw bigger monsters at the characters and call it EPIC! More hit points and damage dealing does not make EPIC! Sometimes the DM will put the characters in exotic locations and call it EPIC! Simply going to another plane is not enough to make it EPIC! Sure these things are part of being EPIC! but it’s a matter of magnitude. There are a few things to remember if you want to build truly EPIC! adventures.