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Most GMs, at some point in their illustrious careers, will have to design a village. What at first appears to be a ridiculously easy task will, on closer inspection, turn out to ‘be’ a ridiculously easy task. In case you’re designing your village at 2 a.m. and can’t think straight, there’s...

Retelling your adventures can be a lot of fun. You’ll remember things you’d forgotten, laugh at the funny things everyone did, and it makes for a good story in the process. Some people like to recap all of their adventures at the start of the next one, some like to brag about their exploits...

Okay, first off, I’d like to explain the question mark in the title. One: it’s one of the requirements of the articles here on En World. Two: it’s because even I don’t know how to do this. Okay, you can read the article now. I think we can safely assume most GMs know ‘how’ to be a player. The...

Many campaigns are based around cool plots, interesting characters, and awesome settings. No matter how cool your campaign intrigues are, however, you’ll need an awesome fight scene at some point. While your heroes might be fond of solving all their problems with words and skill checks, there...

Creating your own campaign setting is one of the most rewarding parts of being a GM. You get to create fantastic lands, interesting locales, cool NPCs, and more. A good campaign is like a living and breathing world. Not only is it a place with history and character, it’s also a fantastic...

You can never have too much game mastering advice. Just as you can never have too many monsters, too many successful adventures, or too many times the villain reappears and says, “Ha, you thought I was dead, did you?” The below is a list of all-purpose game mastering tips which you can apply...

Most of the time you’ll be trying to avoid creating a stereotypical character in an RPG. For those other times, there’s this article. Halfling Thief Your Halfling thief should be: scared of everything, fat, whine and complain, and furthermore he should try to steal anything valuable he...

Are you looking for a new RPG with no levels and no classes to constrain your creativity? If so, your quest may have just ended! The new Flint & Steel RPG is just that. This week I’ve put together a bit of a Q&A with game designer Bora Mitricevic regarding his new game system entitled...

I used to think that the less comprehensive the rules were to a game system, the better it was. I figured if you could write a good role-playing game in 10 pages instead of a thousand then you had a winner on your hands. To my mind, rules just cluttered up the game system and got in the way of...

What role do adventures have when designing a game? Upon creating a good game design, it’s only natural that you’ll want to follow it up with something. I’ve always thought it was a good idea to include all the essential rules in the opening books so that people don’t have to arbitrarily buy...

One of the things which always used to bug me about the older RPGs was the hugely convoluted way you had to figure out your attack rolls. So if the opponent had an armor class of 7 you needed to roll a 12 or something like that to hit him. Of course, if you ever managed to get past 3rd level...

Well, first off, I’d like to point out that this story has nothing whatsoever to do with game design. I was simply too lazy to change the title of my column. Everyone who plays RPGs for a certain length of time seems to have a favorite ‘war story’. This one is mine. If anyone else has a...

One of the things I really enjoy doing is finding the flaws in professional game designs. I do this only out of spite. It has no actual value. Seriously, though, any game designer worthy of the title has some problems with the games out there. If you didn’t, why bother writing your own games in...

One of the best things you can do to sharpen your game design skills is to remake old game designs. I’m not saying to plagiarize other designers’ works and then try to sell them, I’m saying to copy successful systems in your own way to privately learn new techniques. They say that copying...

One of the last things we think about when designing a game is the economy of the fictional world. It might be important to know how much wealth a starting character will receive, but the impact of wealth itself on a game is rarely given much thought. Wealth is a mechanical and background...

Most game designs start with an idea and a concept. An idea is the spark of creativity that launches you into the game design process. It’s the fleeting image which spurs you to undertake the great endeavor of game design. The concept quickly follows. A concept is like an outline for a game...

When you’re designing a game, you’re mostly dealing with rules. Combat is one of the most rules-heavy elements of any game system. I always like to say that this is because it’s one of the most highly contested aspects of the game. While some players might be okay with the GM making up some NPC...

How important are items to your game system? Are they irrelevant? Of the utmost importance? Of little use? A secondary concern? A crucial part of your game design? The answers to these questions can have a major impact on your game. Most players will consider equipment of great importance to...

There are two main approaches to RPG design. One is to aim for a game which is fun, and the other is to aim for a game which is realistic. Neither approach is wrong, but both can be taken too far. It’s something good to consider as a game designer because if your game is too realistic it might...

I like to say, “There are no bad ideas, only good ideas explained poorly.” In my experience, absolutely everybody has really awesome ideas for writing a book or coming up with their own cool game design. Often, there isn’t anything wrong with the cool ideas unless it’s that they haven’t been...