Threads upon threads
As we discussed last week, a proper theme can really help guide you in planning a campaign. Today I’d like to talk about using theme to not guide your own campaign but to guide your players.
You see, players are tricky creatures and will subconsciously pick up on the themes you’re putting down. You can use this to both make your game more compelling and to pull the rug out from under them for a surprising upset. How to do this, well, that’s what we’ll be talking about here.
So you’ve decided to GM a roleplaying game. Awesome! You’ve got a system all picked out, your players are excited and you’ve started doing some prep for your campaign. You’re figuring out names for towns and what optional rules to use. You’ve read the rulebook again and are starting to draw up some NPCs and potential plotlines.
But now comes the hard part of creating and running a successful campaign. You somehow have to wrangle and wrestle all of your ideas into a cohesive whole and then herd the cats that are your players in the right direction to actually experience all that content you’ve made for them. And that’s not easy.
But fear not, dear reader. There are tricks to be employed, ruses to use and techniques to master that’ll make this if not easy, at least doable.
Aka, Stay a while and listen.
There may come a time in your campaign, where you as a GM may wish to introduce an NPC to the game that could guide the party along the story.
Much like a quest giver or a contact/source of information. Or even as a companion that could join the party on their quest and help out.
How subtle you are about these things, is entirely up to you.
Consider the following Characters:
Last week, I spoke about making treasure interesting again. I mentioned crafting custom tailored magical items for your players to make finding said magical items more interesting. This week, I’d like to go into a little more detail with regards to those magical items and offer a few examples of such fantastic pieces of loot.
I’m going to be looking at three examples here and give you my reasoning as to why these would make for engaging magical weapons, what could perhaps be improved for them and giving some tips and tricks on making your own.
For many roleplayers and certainly many characters, treasure is one of the primary reasons for their adventures. Treasure is rarely the end goal (unless the characters are truly shallow) but fine quality loot is a mainstay of an adventurer’s diet.
So how do you make finding ever increasing sums of gold and piles of magic items interesting? Well, that’s what we’re here to talk about!