Linear dungeons, where players see room 1, then room 2, all in order, can feel constraining.

Dungeon: any location in an RPG scenario with details of opportunity and danger.

Jaquaysing: to make a dungeon non-linear, so players must select which paths their characters take.

The 'how' falls directly out of the in-world …

Chekov's gun poses a real threat to some games.

If a group playing Vampire: The Masquerade ('VtM') encounter a Ravnos, spinning illusions, and confusing mortals, then the next time they hear about unusual events, they will assume that the Ravnos did this. Clearly - the Ravnos is part of the plot! After all, VtM draws …

Ronald Knox wrote ten rules on how to avoid ruining a murder mystery with an unsatisfying solution. They apply very well to writing and running RPG modules, with a little alteration.

And just like any module or murder mystery, I'm going to start with a problem, then undress it slowly.

How to Ruin a Story

Suppose your …

RPGs with a shared narrative mechanic - where players and the GM both come up with interesting people, results, and situations - come with a cost. They pull focus away from the puzzle elements of the RPG, and that's my favourite element, so I can't see myself enjoying shared narration mechanics.

Let's start with an …

Last year, I got excited about the idea of tracking realworld time over downtime . Shortly after I implemented it in my campaign, and it served the entire table, very well.

The Perspective Flip

Real-time RPGs look strange if you look at them from the wrong end. Let me turn it around for you:

1. The players are just …

Railroading chat devolves into nonsense, as people are working with unclear definitions. Here's the solution:

'Railroading' means that an out-of-game white-list constricts in-game actions.

A 'white-list' is a complete list of things one can do. A 'white-list of websites' would mean that someone can only connect to …

A player rolls the dice, and the table watches the result, like a roulette ball bouncing about. Rothgar has a +4 to make the jump, but the chasm demands a Target Number (TN) of 12.

The player rolls 2D6...

               (( _______
     _______     /\O    O\
    /O     /\   /  \      \
   /   O  /O \ / O  \O____O\ )) …

A hundred paces down the dark tunnel, you see dozens of goblins dancing round a fire and singing about eating anything that moves.

At this point the crew begin to plot.

• Could we just stay here and shoot at the goblins? We should be able to get a load of arrows off in three rounds.
• If we run back to where we avoided …