How to Craft Engaging NPCs

Consider the scene, your party having deftly avoided anything resembling a plot for the last three sessions, are in a nice cosy tavern and out of desperation, you pull a quest giver out of thin air to drag them, kicking and screaming if needed, to the next adventure. The problem is that the NPC you created has all the personality and charisma of slightly damp white bread.

The Psychology of Immersion: Tricks to Make Your World Feel Real

Immersion’s the secret sauce of TTRPGs — it’s what turns a dice roll into a ‘holy crap, I’m there’ moment. It’s not the rules, or the dice or even, to a certain extent, how well thought out the setting is. A good immersive game can literally carry you to another time and place, when your game is immersive you can lose track of time, get so deep into character you forget to eat, and the real world feels like it’s someone else’s problem.

Here are a few tips that I have picked up over the years to help really pull your players into the world because with Immersion comes fantastic roleplaying.

Alternatives to the Tavern Cold Open

Stop me if you have heard this one; a bounty hunter, warlock, holy knight and a cat burglar walk into a tavern… when you think about it, there is no way in the name of Gygax that this party would ever accumulate naturally, and that’s before you take into consideration their back stories.

For a game that places such a high value on imagination and creating epic stories, it’s surprising how many times I have heard the phrase: ‘You’re all in a tavern and it’s night…’ (to be fair, I have said it more than a few times as well).

It doesn’t have to be this way; parties can come together in a myriad of ways.  Here are ten of my favourite alternatives to a bunch of strangers suddenly deciding to become besties for no other reason than ‘because roleplaying game.’

Beyond the Dice: Mastering the Art of Being a Great D&D Player.

Roleplaying games are unique in many ways. One thing that non-role-players often struggle to grasp is that there’s no ‘win state’— “You can’t win at D&D.” That’s the conventional wisdom. I respectfully disagree. If you’re having fun then you are winning. I have had my perfect elven ass handed to me on a platter and still won because I had a lot of fun while it was happening.  It follows then that if you ‘re not having fun, then you are losing.

Not So Random After All: Designing Encounters That Feel Organic and Engaging

If there is one feature of RPGs, going back to first edition D&D, that is unfairly maligned, it is the humble random encounter. A brief survey of Reddit will reveal many threads, with the consensus being that random encounters suck.

The fact is that if you are rolling up a dozen goblins that mindlessly charge the players then of course they suck! As with every other aspect of roleplaying games, you get out what you put in.

10 Ways to Add Depth to Your Character’s Backstory

Cliched backgrounds are the unspoken curse of TTRPGs. If I had a copper piece for every ‘orphan with a tragic past’ or ‘fighter out for revenge’, I could retire and open a tavern. The first impression you make is with your backstory, and it can elevate a character you might not particularly care about to being the start of something special.

These tips apply to everything from a Rogue in Faerûn to a pilot in The New Republic. It doesn’t matter if you’re new to all this or if you have been at this for years; your background is a much-neglected facet of character creation, and it can be very rewarding.