RPGaDAY 2025 Roundup

#RPGaDAY2025

Roundup

I made it through the whole month! With some decent-ish blog posts and just a few where I drew a blank.

If I’d seen an example to rip off sooner I might have tried to make the random extra prompts a whole series of plot hooks for one setting. Yes, probably Buffy.

The last of the random numbers to be rolled was unsurprisingly on the D10, the 9 - and it was close, it didn’t appear until day 28!

Roundups, thanks to David and Anthony, and always fun seeing what people say.

See you, fates willing, for 2026!

RPGaDAY 2025 31 - Reward

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31 - Reward

Action is the players’ reward! But the PCs probably want something else too.

Due payment or treasure or new powers or the advancement of their political goals or a nice quiet life. How much do these overlap between player and character? Players often like their PCs to have new toys they can play with, and sometimes want plot development like changes in the setting they helped bring about, but very few actually want that quiet life before the final session.

A really big reward is usually held back for the end of a series or the retirement of a character because it could significantly change the feel of the game. There are stories about Conan after he became a king, but the Rebel Alliance moving to the New Republic was quickly dismantled in the main Star Wars films, and the X-Men got their utopian SF nation and got to keep it for a few years out-of-character before being knocked back down to more-or-less normal.

The PCs getting their goal and living well can be fun for a while, opening up new angles, and it doesn’t always have to come crashing down to put them on the outside again, but it should feel different.

And for some it’s the kind of thing to be idly considered after the end of the campaign, like the spinoff books and comics following a TV series, and maybe a sequel game with a new central conflict some way down the line. (Yes I’m wondering what the Buffy The Vampire Slayer sequel series will do with a world full of slayers.)

And for some PCs action is their reward as well, and it’s okay to end a series riding off into the sunset towards possible future adventures.

31a - 1, 3, 7

Who, Proud, Person

The PCs see an updated Wanted poster for them and the reward has gone up. Cause for celebration for some I’m sure!

31b - 6, 10, 8

How, Excited, Lesson

One of the PCs is asked to teach at the setting equivalent of Adventurer School, passing on what they’ve learned to the next generation. Teaching and corralling an entire class like senior X-Men, or mentoring a single pupil like a Jedi, hoping not to get killed off for added motivation. They may well find themselves wondering if they were ever that young.

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 30 - Experience

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30 - Experience

There are two obvious subjects today, and I’ll say one thing about the system bit.

Experience Points - I like buying one thing at a time, not levelling up.

And RPGs as an experience, a part of life and their effect on it. I’ve been published, seen my descriptions for possible art made into actual art. I’ve had people ask me questions on panels.

I’ve made lifelong friends, when I went right around the world I stayed with people I knew from gaming. A couple who met through TWH married and started a family.

It’s an art form and culture that, as you can see, I think about pretty much every day.

Here’s to the next experience.

30a - 5, 10, 4

Why, Excited, Rule

The characters realise something fundamental has changed and nobody else seems to have noticed. Has their world been updated to a new edition?

The best use of level up is in Catch These Fists by Wet Leg.

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 29 - Connect

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29 - Connect

I got online in August 1999. Before that the little text-based gaming I’d done was play-by-post with actual post, with stamps and everything. After that, I got onto forums like RPGnet and into games like the official World Of Darkness chat New Bremen. I’m still involved in the RPGnet play-by-post subforum over twenty years after it started. I’ve made friends for life through online RPG spaces.

And some thoughts on players and characters connect. Some games offer more advice than others, and some systematise things like how each PC in some Powered By The Apocalypse games feel about the others. And this on top of NPC connections like allies.

And on PCs being in constant contact. Being reachable by phone lessens the instinct not to split the party, and PCs can talk in and otherwise affect a scene they’re not physically in - see Steve D’s thoughts on this in Leverage and how it affects play in modern settings.

And I’ve seen this feature retroactively in modern media, like the importance of walkie-talkies in Stranger Things compared to their rarer key appearances in original 1980s Kids On Bikes stories, and the extreme example of Sending Stones in Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves. Some things made now only work with a phone in your pocket, even if it has to be brought in by magic.

And due to the phones in out pockets usually being connected to the internet, how to solve the problem of PCs looking everything up. Sadly these days Google solved that problem themselves.

Elastica reference goes here.

29a - 3, 2, 6

Where, Nostalgic, Art

The PCs find an old letter, seemingly placed for them to discover. Does it reveal a secret from someone’s past? Or is it addressed to them from a hundred years ago, a la Back To The Future?

Runeslinger

Glasgow Regionals

Obviously someone at Glasgow had fun at Nationals 2024, as they’re organising a mini version in October. The prize for the winning team is a chunk of the charity money going to their chosen charity, which is a pretty cool variation.

Holmes and... someone

Who was Holmes’s flatmate before Watson? There’s gotta be a story there. At least a tetchy anecdote about how much noise that Holmes guy made.

I have a variant on this, where Watson gets a flat with Henry Jekyll and Holmes is his Hyde.

Gar Hanrahan

RPGaDAY 2025 28 - Suspense

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28 - Suspense

Suspense in-session is easy enough with cutting between scenes, and a little bit can be generated by something simple like opening a door or turning a corner.

But for a good cliffhanger ending you need to be able to escape after the session.

Online games means you can turn off the camera and the players can’t chase you as you try to flee the room.

For slightly more serious advice, check the timing of the session. No fun almost getting to the cliffhanger.

This depends on stakes. A dungeon where your character might be killed by something behind every door feels different to a game with narrative stances or plot armour. And that variety is good, and we should be clear on who wants what in a given game or session to session.

Not every game needs the risk of dire consequences. I learned that running TOON when I was twelve.

If I get attached enough to a character in a really danger-centric game it can just become stressful.

But in any case a good moment of suspense should leave the players wanting more. Ha ha.

28a - 2, 9, 7

What, Contemplative, Person

A chance for suspense with someone weighing a decision. A potential ally considers your call for aid. Can you make a final point to urge them to action?

Runeslinger

Women Of WWII Resistance Miniatures

Bad Squiddo Kickstarting now with miniatures of some historical heroes, a Handiwrk Games backdrop book among the add-ons.

RPGaDAY 2025 27 - Tactic

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27 - Tactic

I’m really not a tactical play player or GM. I draw a map for a fight maybe once every five years.

One of the three times I made a tactically interesting mapworthy fight in The Watch House was a complete accident. It was the time I put a fight with vampires in a house with heavy shutters during the day, so the PCs could stop them moving freely but there were enough vampires to close the shutters again so they couldn’t keep them all open.

But I do have tactics for other things, like a reliable way to infodump an urban fantasy setting for new players by asking if one or more of them wants their PC to be new to it.

27a - 2, 4, 1 (offer!)

What, Enthusiastic, Adventure

Your Adventure! PCs have a chance to go on an expedition to a lost city! But they have to take this film crew with them! I’m sure that won’t be a problem!

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 26 - Nemesis

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26 - Nemesis

I’ve written before about how to make a good recurring villain, including the time I made a pretty good nemesis for the central hero of The Watch House.

Face time. Power and weaknesses. Betrayal and otherwise making it personal. Metaphor. Neat gimmicks. Bigness.

I find it helps to have them annoy one or more PCs beyond the plot specific. And it’s pretty much essential to have them appear somewhere the PCs can’t just kill them.

Take a look at Indiana Jones’s assorted enemies and how Belloq in Raiders is the one that feels like a nemesis. An old rival with the same quest and a history of stealing Indy’s victories, happy to have a chat (when surrounded by armed thugs) and showing some human feeling at least involving Marion. He’s the one who talks Indy down from destroying the Ark. And his fatal flaw is that he did what he warned Indy about at the start - he chose the wrong friends.

But with the word Nemesis in particular I want to talk about Nemesis The Warlock.

If you met me aged about 15 to 18 there's around a 20% chance I was wearing this T-shirt.

Nemesis is a long-running 2000 A.D. comic strip about an anarchistic alien wizard fighting a human supremacist theocracy called Termight with its army of Terminators. The setting has never had its own tabletop game unlike some of its fellow series, although we did get some Dice Man comic gamebook strips and a HeroClix figure, but it may have ever so slightly influenced Warhammer 40,000.

But it’s a more hopeful take where revolt can work, and good beings (and sometimes chaotic evil beings willing to work with them) can oppose and defeat oppressors.

26a - 5, 3, 3

Why, Proud, Genre

Your nemesis showing up to spoil your party (in a social situation where you can’t attack them) is one thing. How about a chance to do it to them in turn?

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 25 - Challenge

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25 - Challenge

Day 25 of the 2025 challenge is Challenge! I see what you did there.

Challenge characters to duels, or to complete tasks or labours, tempt them with wagers.

(Ever had an entire game based around one like Around The World In Eighty Days?)

These can be the body of the game so there are RPGs based around sports and fighting contests, or major or minor sidelines like the extensive jousting and tournament sections in Pendragon.

And you can simulate games in other games. You could play chess for real, but what if your character is substantially better at it than you are? You could narrate it, rely on stats, or adjust the game to fit. See also the issue of player versus character skill in puzzles, which is why I hardly ever use puzzles.

This is how an official boardgame for the TV series about chess The Queen’s Gambit happened, which looks like an interesting deceit mechanic sort of connected to chess.

Also it's for up to four players, which is a bit different too.

And the gangster RPG Mob Justice uses poker as a mechanic - but the number of cards you get is based on your stats, mixing player skill with a bit less of the randomness of the normal game.

(Small aside; Challenge was GDW’s house magazine for its SF games and others too. I started getting it with one of its more horror-tinged Halloween issues and the haunted spaceship MegaTraveller adventure Fated Voyage is an all-time classic that I’ve run for Doctor Who and off-brand Star Trek games.)

25a - 1, 6, 2

Who, Optimistic, Character

Is it really a good idea to bet all our money on a joust against the knight who never removes his helmet?

Runeslinger

Are You Afraid Of The Dark Universe retrospective?

Are You Afraid Of The Dark Universe? creators Dylan Roth and Delton Deschain look back at their thirty treatments and scripts imagining what if Universal’s Dark Universe got past The Mummy 2017.

YouTube link as you can see them! (And Dalton’s cat Holly!)

Ahead of... whatever their next series is, starting in September.

Taking an existing plan and character roster gave them a structure to work in and sometimes against, and a challenge like that bring out new ideas in a way that a totally blank page doesn’t.

RPGaDAY 2025 24 - Reveal

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24 - Reveal

Having already discussed ways to present a mystery, and how to involve - and react to - the unexpected, how do you include a big reveal?

First of all, consider the audience. Will the players boo? This is where the complaints of bait and switch come in, where a surprise acts to mess up what made some or all of the players interested in the game in the first place. What will the reveal change? And can it fairly be reversed, or would it need a sharp edit to undo it which will still leave it obvious the game was supposed to change?

The kind of reveal depends on genre as well. You can drop a total reality change into a game with a high enough Weird Level and undo it by the end of the session, but a country house mystery needs enough clues to at least indicate who the culprit is and it probably shouldn’t turn out to be a time-travelling killer robot.

Maybe once.

How much can you foreshadow? This can be tricky when improvising, or when the players go off in surprising directions, and can be easy to overplay and underplay. Like the Three Clue Rule, it can help to do some light foreshadowing repeatedly to reinforce it.

And think of the timing in the session, adventure or series. Is it an early shakeup, a three-quarter swerve cueing up the final act, or a twist at the end? The latter is quite likely to get a boo as well, as it can change the story after the final actions of the PCs, so only good for some genres and best clearly foreshadowed.

And consider how to play it. An open secret hidden from the PCs but not the players doesn’t work for everyone, and everyone has different degrees of wanting surprises versus authorial distance, but it can be a lot of fun sometimes.

24a - 6, 5, 4

How, Confident, Rule

A carnival fortune teller really does know what’s about to happen. So why are they working in a tent and telling people their futures for a dollar a time?

Runeslinger

Serenity at twenty

Serenity premiered here at the Film Festival twenty years ago.

That was a nice week. Saw it twice, got a ticket from a crowd member for the premiere and had some for the TWH crew for the repeat screening, and got into the Q&A as well.

RPGaDAY 2025 23 - Recent

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23 - Recent

Recent evil is rarely as big a problem as ancient evil, and recent magic is hardly ever as good as ancient magic. Recent being better tends to be more of an SF thing.

But it could be an interesting inversion, ghosts fading with time and the like. Mummy: The Curse has this for the PCs, who are of course ancient but who are at their most powerful when they wake up and weaken as they go along. World Of Darkness miniseries game Orpheus had the ghost hunters think ghosts only lasted about three years but that was actually because of an apocalyptic change in the underworld.

Buffy does have modern methods and attitudes undercut ancient threats on the regular.

"That was then. This is now."

23a - 5, 7, 8

Why, Lucky, Lesson

An ancient text needing a translation and the sources from the 1920s and 30s only go so far - but there’s actually a new translation from a couple of years ago and you can get the translator on a video call.

Runeslinger

90s Superhero Name Generator

A 90s Superhero Name Generator, following a request for help by Colin at RPGnet leading to Thomas T making, yes, a random assembly of ever so 90s naming!

Beam Scream! Heavy Cat! Arcnado! (That one is admittedly more a 2020s joke.) Wraith Ghost!

And just now getting the link, Witch Scream! Might actually use that one.

RPGaDAY 2025 22 - Ally

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22 - Ally

NPC allies, including my best trick for making players accept them.

Helpful and reliable NPCs can make a setting feel a lot less lonely.

Unless you get a player who will not trust any NPC, and the only thing you can do is reassure them out of character and then let them see how it goes.

(And if you promise out of character that an NPC isn’t going to betray the party, keep that promise. Of course if the PCs betray or mistreat the NPC point that out to the players.)

If nothing else, an NPC who can join in with the players’ regular banter is a nice thing to have.

They can be party members filling a niche or occasional allies, good friends or comrades or friendly rivals or frenemies or shady contacts, strangers or foes turned to friends by the PCs’ words and deeds - they shouldn’t be GMPCs but can certainly have a decent space in the game.

I’ve always wanted an ally-finding sequence in a big enough game to get the cavalry arriving, perhaps literally like the Rohirrim.

And the most reliable way I’ve found to get players on side with an NPC: give the NPC a dog.

22a - 5, 10, 6

Why, Excited, Art

A gig! The PCs should get to go to gigs more often! They can’t all end in a bar brawl! Right?

Well, at least you’re on the guest list.

Runeslinger

Happy birthday Lucy!

Chronicles Of Darkness at 21

Happy 21st anniversary to Chronicles Of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem!

RPGaDAY 2025 21 - Unexpected

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21 - Unexpected

Roleplaying games have a number of ways to bring in the unexpected. Most have dice or some other randomiser, many have tables for things like random encounters and treasure - and nearly all have multiple players bringing their ideas to the table.

Too much can derail a game - the bait and switch is an unpopular idea for good reason, and I like systems where I can buy off the occasional failure at a dramatic moment - but the detours are fun often enough that we keep making them.

The most unexpected fun way a session went for me is another TWH story. The time one PC got jealous of another starting to date a handsome charming possible villain, cast a spell to have her see him the way he did - while ranting at length about how perfect and dashing he was. So now she saw the NPC as “CAPTAIN RUGGED! The Man With The Face!”, a literal superhero. Among other things this meant I couldn’t reveal him as a villain any more because it would be that much harder to take him seriously.

(Bonus amusing weirdness, the actor I used as a reference for the possible villain was Henry Cavill, after he was shortlisted to star in Superman Returns but years before being cast as Superman the next time.)

21a - 2, 3, 1

What, Proud, Adventure

The PCs are surprised to receive an accolade for one of their adventures. Do they have to give a speech or something?

Runeslinger

Bloodlines 2 thoughts

Having now watched the premiere stream for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2...

It’s nice that we get some answers right away.

Confused grouchy elder and helpful voice in their head works, though is a bit Intercom Girlfriend. And as an elder you get to be scary awesome against humans right away.

I like the atmosphere, especially the music.

I feel like more people should be dressed for the cold though. Yes yes rule of cool.

There’s a lot more riding on Bloodlines 2 than there was on 1, which came out almost a year after Vampire: The Masquerade originally ended.

(To the confusion of a friend who got into the games through it, got Vampire: The Requiem and wondered who these clans were.)

Although maybe less than there would have been in 2020, but now there’s a lot to prove.

Leaning Camarilla - an elder, fighting Anarch agents early on. Hopefully not in the way BL1 nudged you to independent or Anarch and the Anarchs sent you back to work for the Prince.

I like that 1 ends with opening a coffin-shaped box being a bad idea and 2 starts with that.

(Of course this is also how the modern section of Redemption starts. And it has a named and voiced protagonist. Hmmmmmmm.)

Nice to spot a repeated Munch reference in the haven.

Reactor reactor reacts to Event Horizon

Kali Wallace watched Event Horizon for the first time for the Science Fiction Film Club at Reactor and was a bit thrown by having already written a novel that starts close to the same way. Plenty of nice links to behind the scenes bits in the article, especially this retrospective at Inverse.

RPGaDAY 2025 20 - Enter

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20 - Enter

“Enter, stranger.”

Knightmare

Do you take the opportunity to make a dramatic entrance or exit?

It doesn’t fit every character but if presented I almost certainly will.

“Who are you?”

“We are justice!”

And it’s good to have the stats to back that up as it tends to make the antagonists attack you in particular.

Monsters from beyond trying to find ways to enter our world is a go-to plot I’ve used really rather often. It gives the villains a clear goal and ways to stop it along the way, and a partial success on their part gives you a boss fight in a contained space.

The PCs traditionally arrive just in time. Best to include some riders about closing the portal if you don’t want the world to actually end if the PCs are a bit late, but you could certainly make the final battle easier or harder depending on their preparation and promptness.

And one of the funniest episodes of The Watch House was the result of me letting the PCs discover an attempt to summon ancient evil a couple of days early, giving them time to sabotage the site and grab the cultists while the resident werewolf PC distracted them by pretending to be the demon.

It’s all about timing.

20a - 1, 5, 5

Who, Confident, Accessory

An accessory that allows you to enter confidently and the word Who? Doctor Who lets the Doctor open just about any door with the sonic screwdriver and bypass plenty of questions about why they’re there by faking credentials with psychic paper. What kind of trouble could your PCs get into with shortcuts like that in their pockets?

Runeslinger

Bloodlines 2 - October 21st

A release date for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. October 21st.

A release trailer.

An hour and three quarters starting video stream.

Confirmation of Toreador and Lasombra launch DLC (I knew there would be two DLC clans, just not which ones) and some other preorder perks, and getting the cosmetic perks if you registered back in the day.

I... want to believe.

Hugo Awards 2025

The Hugo Awards 2025

Since I wasn’t in the building and didn’t vote this is a bit more academic than last year.

Nice to see Lower Decks getting Dramatic Presentation (short) for the finale and Graphic Story for the spinoff gamebook comic Warp Your Own Way.

Surprising that’s the first time Star Trek got anything since the end of TNG. Deep Space Nine: Far Beyond The Stars didn’t even get nominated? And Insurrection did?!

(To be fair Dramatic Presentation hadn’t been split into Long and Short in 1999, so there was one TV episode, the finale of Babylon 5, and four films. But still, one was Insurrection.)

The book about fash appropriating genre works is a good and worthy winner for related work, but a lot less fun than The Spectacular Failure Of The Star Wars Hotel as discussed here, and I guess the two reports on Hugo Award own goals split the vote.

Where my GMing head is at

Willing to be the introductory Vampire ST again. Inevitably swinging towards wanting to run a Buffy game. (My RPGaDAY random term ideas are often going Buffyish.)

Might try two slots. Really shouldn’t.

RPGaDAY 2025 19 - Destiny

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19 - Destiny

“I don’t have a destiny. I’m destiny-free, really.”

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Becoming Part 1

Characters having destinies is obviously easier in games with big narrative pushes and low random death.

Sort of vague destinies are available in the middle.

(Coming up with a prophecy that was pretty specific but could apply to one of our heroes and her arch-enemy - “The Watcher’s daughter will fall and rise and hold the world in her hand.” - was one of my proudest moments running The Watch House.)

(Also why one of the trailers for the final season was scored by Destiny Calling by James.)

Characters being revealed to have had destinies can be added later when retelling a campaign.

Do they accept it, refuse the call for a Hero’s Journey story beat, seriously refuse the call and make that their main deal, or find their own way?

Many non-RPG settings with a Chosen One narrative already have one in place. You’d have to take the place of Luke and/or Leia to be one in classic Star Wars, for example, though it doesn’t mean there’s nothing else to do.

But the Buffyverse is nice enough to have multiple Chosen Ones and prophesised champions and more.

See story games designed to end a certain way with little or no wriggle room for specifics, as well as games like Apocalypse Keys inspired by dark destinies like the arc plot of Hellboy. The characters there are called Omens, reminding me of the idea to run a take on the Antichrist protagonist.

(And as its grand title which sort of connects to the main story being Chosen One ish despite the number of players, I have long been perplexed that Bungie’s action MMO Destiny doesn’t have an official RPG, as the setting seems like a better fit for it than an action MMO.)

19a - 2, 4, 7

What, Enthusiastic, Person

A Buffy-ish prompt - someone gets mystically chosen and they’re super keen! Keener to start than the amount they have to learn would allow. Keen enough to annoy people in the know. Maybe keen enough in terms of apprentice upstaging tutor to go a bit Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 18 - Sign

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18 - Sign

I’ve never had a deaf player at my tables, though I have had some hard of hearing, and sometimes non-verbal who communicated by notes.

Sign language has a fascinating history, but in a verbal medium like RPGs they’re rarely represented. Some PCs are quite likely to know military hand signals, other sight-based communication methods like semaphore or secret codes for silent action, however.

Other visual communications like hobo code and graffiti markers sometimes appear in games, often with actual visual references, or described in scene-setting.

18a - 1, 2, 4

Who, Nostalgic, Rule

Vows of silence weren’t common in monasteries until after the medieval period, but they had places and times where silence was expected, so developed their own sign languages. And now for some adventure-based reason like stealing a reliquary, the PCs have to get around a monastery at night without making noise...

Runeslinger

Terence Stamp

Terence Stamp’s entire cameo as the Devil in Neil Jordan’s film of The Company Of Wolves.

RPGaDAY 2025 17 - Renew

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17 - Renew

Second half of the challenge, time to renew something.

Shaking up an ongoing series can be tricky, keeping the parts people want while adding something new that might distract from them. Having a bit built in, possibly connected to an opportunity for players to come and go, can help.

My long-running Buffy The Vampire Slayer game The Watch House used the season structure from the source material as outlined by the game, aiming to get to the final battle with each Big Bad in time for new players to join and their characters to bring their own plot hooks around the start of the real academic year, as well as giving each season a bit of a different tone with the variety of opponents.

We’d have an in-character summer gap so the returning players could adjust their PCs too, usually in small ways but at least one life-changing one after the previous season ended with one of them being cut off from his ability to use magic.

I’ve never really considered a sequel to a game that ended. It would need some or all of the same players and a similar mix of other factors.

(We did briefly consider season eight of The Watch House once the Buffy season eight comics started, but I jokingly considered doing it as a comic.)

(And there was talk of a Natalie and Matthew spinoff at one point, but never got past banter.)

And I’ve run basically the same game for different groups a few times, when it had a strong premise and lots of material either because it didn’t get far or because it did...

I’m more casual about reusing premises and specific characters and motifs. Some are repeated go-tos - I like seeing how different groups react to the same NPCs and plots.

As a player I’ve reused the same basic character a few times, some being favourites and others having never gotten much mileage, but I try to adjust on an archetype rather than make My Guy over and over.

17a - 2, 1, 7

What, Envious, Person

Borrowing from On Stranger Tides:

Someone finds the Fountain of Youth, or a suitable game equivalent. Cloning including consciousness, stealing a Time Lord’s power of regeneration, that kind of thing.

Now anyone can be young and strong again, and maybe change more - for the right price.

A longer lifespan is just the start in some cases. A whole new body could become a fashion statement.

(A particularly horrible version in Dark Harvest: Legacy Of Frankenstein eliminates rejection for transplants so the rich and powerful can take what they want from the bodies of the poor and downtrodden...)

PCs could be brought in to steal the power, find another source, smash the corrupt system, or get an advance look at what a patron’s rival will be wearing to the social event of the season.

That last one also works with something like clothes in a more mundane setting. See the Leverage episode The Runway Job about stealing designs at Fashion Week.

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 16 - Overcome

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16 - Overcome

The halfway point! We shall overcome!

I tend to think of combat more as fight scenes than in tactical terms. The PCs can overcome their opponents before I’m overcome by the rules.

I gravitate to systems as a GM or player that don’t give me choice paralysis. I often go first or last in character generation for the same reason.

16a - 6, 5, 4

How, Confident, Rule

A legal battle! And you’d better be sure that expert witness is going to deliver the goods!

A system like Leverage where the Mastermind makes a final roll for how well the plan succeeds based on everyone else’s rolls until then could work for a lawyer show building to a closing statement and decision.

Autocratik illustrating 1-16

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 15 - Deceive

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15 - Deceive

Deceiving the characters is often vital to a plot, such as a mystery. But what about deceiving the players?

Because the GM in most games is the narrator of the world they’re largely expected to be a reliable narrator. You need a sign not to trust it.

And they’re also making up what NPCs say on the fly so it’s easy to assume everything the NPC is saying is truthful as well and hard to indicate when one is lying, because on some level it’s all equally untrue. I often find it helpful to describe tone as well as perform it: “I didn’t see anything,” he lies.

And there are two main kinds of deceit at the table - purely in-character and out-of-character. A game where the PCs have secrets but the players don’t plays differently than one where the plots and schemes are actually hidden.

The former can be harder to play - I’ve met some players who can not avoid acting on OOC information - but it can also be fun to lean in to the blissful IC ignorance. “Sure, let’s go this way, Doppelganger Bob!”

The latter will result in more natural responses - but those responses may be hurt or upset. Something to be discussed up front, and might have to be curtailed.

15a - 3, 3, 6

Where, Proud, Art

An art heist! And not in a con-and-heist game! Is it a magical statue or treasure map painting or something like that which is needed for a more common adventure? Is it just to show up the proud sponsor of the show? And since the day’s prompt is Deceive, do some of the PCs trick their way in? And is the piece to be replaced by a forgery? Or maybe it already has been...

Runeslinger

garbage at 30

Happy (when it rains) 30th anniversary to garbage by garbage.

“I can’t use what I can’t abuse... and I can’t stop when it comes to you”

2025 V5 premise

Vampire: The Masquerade

Destroy Everything You Touch

Two decent-sized cities an easy night ride apart. Maybe in the American West for the desolate / Western aesthetic. A Prince in each. Neither of them all that well backed, but thinking of taking the other down.

Somewhere for young upstarts and orphans to slip between the cracks.

--

This is intended to be newbie-friendly, so might just be thinking this in order to have a slightly different setup.

Last time I changed things up significantly was Last Dance where the band focus led to a hangout game and that wasn’t really planned and only happened after all the new players left before we started.

Vive’s historical setting is a nice change of pace as well, but the kind of thing that benefits from being a second game at least.

I could borrow from City Of Angels and present an anarch domain in need of a new way, but that might be too... upbeat.

And first games can still be tricky no matter how straightforward I try to be, as players latch on to different parts of the setting. Anarchs? Camarilla? Autarkis? Yes, no. maybe?

RPGaDAY 2025 14 - Mystery

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14 - Mystery

How to host a mystery?

Which is a less deadly spinoff from How To Host A Murder which didn’t catch on as much because the original title is so much more morbidly fun.

And that’s an example that interactive mystery stories are popular beyond genre gaming circles.

Murder mystery parties can and do become LARPs if the guests start playing characters instead of just investigating as themselves.

Call Of Cthulhu, one of the big RPGs for forty years now, is built around solving mysteries. (And then wishing you hadn’t.) So it’s a baked-in playstyle going back decades, earlier than that as some D&D modules tried it early on.

The GUMSHOE system is dedicated to making sure the PCs got all the core clues and then deciding what else to select.

I will tend to start a game with a mystery to solve if I don’t have a reason to do something else. The kind of mystery can help set the tone - murder establishes stakes.

And there are other ways to run mysteries, closed or open. This goes for secrets between players and the like as well.

There are even mystery genre games with no actual answer so you propose a solution and roll to see how right you are.

How complicated do you get, and how much do you nudge, remind, throw in surprise reveals and the like? My high school group got stuck in Power Behind The Throne for Warhammer and I couldn’t figure out where to redirect them.

Having at least some of a solution in mind generally helps with making the clues make sense even when improvising, otherwise you have a mystery box, not a mystery.

Red herrings are tricky because the GM is the narrator of the world as well as making up what the possibly lying suspects say, and players have to know what to trust in and out of character.

And there are only so many games where you can solve the mystery like I often do with crime shows by identifying the most familiar actor with too few scenes early on.

14a - 2, 10, 4

What, Excited, Rule

The PCs get roped into a murder mystery party or play. And it doesn’t end up featuring a real murder!

Runeslinger

GEAS 2025-6 plans

Vampire: The Masquerade idea for the games society: premise sort of in place.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer idea: run Buffy. Figure out a premise.

Third idea: Star Wars or supers. Maybe for afternoons.

Fourth idea: ALIEN depending how I feel after Alien: Earth.

Alien: Earth

Alien live-action media produced after 1986 that might actually be good? Sounds fake.

RPGaDAY 2025 13 - Darkness

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13 - Darkness

For day thirteen:

Continued darkness! (More darkness, get it?)

Ahem.

How dark in tone do your games get?

Mine can get fairly dark, though I’m probably middling for The World Of Darkness or Chronicles Of Darkness as a whole. I generally aim for a 15 certificate feel rather than 18. My Vampire games often focus on moral dilemmas, but there’s usually some way to do the right thing even if it isn’t easy.

There are plenty of things I’ll line and veil as a Storyteller or GM in general, and would ask to as a player.

Outside of that genre not so much, partially as a break from that. None of my Buffy games have ever approached the Angel season two existential crisis for example, and my Star Wars games have never gone Andor.

If I want to go bleak - still with some hope - I’d only pitch that to some of the players I know.

13a - 3, 6, 7

Where, Optimistic, Person

Rolling Optimistic led me to share this.

Angel’s crisis ended with the episode Epiphany and this humanist lesson:

“If nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. Because that’s all there is. What we do. Now. Today.”

“The smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.”

Runeslinger

V5: City Of Angels 1.35

Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels session 35

First session since a summer break, so I’ve had time to plan a couple things for Paris to do. She changed haven, checked if the coterie could visit a crime scene (no) and confirmed she was still okay to go to the Rack (yes) so therefore went clubbing in a way that could be seen as taunting potential enemies. Clan Toreador represent

RPGaDAY 2025 12 - Path

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12 - Path

A path suggests something narrower and perhaps less clearly marked than a road.

Morpheus says “there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path” in The Matrix. The Crow ends with Jane Siberry speaking of how “we walk the narrow path beneath the smoking skies” and City Of Angels ends with Heather Nova singing “I believe there’s a path we follow...” The end of the Tenth Doctor’s era in Doctor Who begins with a hymn that “there is always a path, we walk it all our lives...”

Pathfinder emphasises paths have to be found.

And the Onyx Path heads into the horizon.

All suggest going out past the roads where civilisation ends, possibly going into literal danger and wilderness or possibly seeking wisdom. And that it isn’t easy.

(Of course you can also have a garden path, but work with me here.)

12a - 3, 7, 3

Where, Lucky, Genre

Going in search of mystical answers all gets a bit too metaphysical for the genre you’re in. Buffy didn’t take her vision quests entirely seriously. To be fair, one involved Giles jumping out of a circle of sticks and back in and shaking a magic gourd. Presentation is important when trying to seem mysterious and wise.

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 11 - Flavour

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11 - Flavour

Having already talked about games set around taverns and other eating and drinking establishments this month...

Different systems can change the feel of a genre or the focus on a setting, but the GM and players provide and choose the flavour on top of that. What do we include or exclude, introduce, want more of?

11a - 5, 5, 1

Why, Confident, Adventure

It’s the start of what we might call “adventuring season” in a setting with public heroics - a tournament at Camelot, the superhero Olympics, something like that. Or some equivalent like the first game in the year for a sport, Battle Of The Bands for a game about musicians, and so on.

(For an odd example I did this for my long-running Buffy game The Watch House with the Watchers in training having to show how that training was going through various tests, like a school sports day with added monster attacks.)

The PCs get to meet and get the measure of other parties, friendly or otherwise, and show off what they can do. And if some other kind of plot happens that can shake up some expectations.

And since I just remembered to mention Flavour, there will probably be a nice meal at some point.

Or we could go all in on that and make the goal of the challenge to bring back a rare spice?

Plug for the adventure The Anaitis Ingredient in Dead Rock Seven for Ashen Stars, where the PCs have to protect a cooking competition from a time warp attack.

Runeslinger

Vive Chapter Twelve

One of the PCs has a spiritual crisis after committing Diablerie.

Matthieu gets to walk away from a burning building, so that’s one for the bingo card.

D&D 3 and the OGL

Dungeons & Dragons third edition (actually the third edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons if anything so the inaccurate numbering is off to a fine start, but never mind) was released on this day in the year 2000.

And the Open Gaming Licence led to the d20 boom, including some direct competition when the likes of Pathfinder came along, which may not have been the plan.

RPGaDAY 2025 10 - Origin

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10 - Origin

Where do the PCs come from? Some genres and styles of game put more weight on this than others.

Superhero media starts with the origin story so regularly that not doing so gets a film headlines. The importance of origin here makes sense because the characters are generally unusual in some way. And in gaming it fits because starting superhero PCs are built to last, and can be so varied that specialising really helps.

The breakthrough superhero RPG Champions was an early point-buy system unlike the earlier Villains & Vigilantes, and that became more common than random generation in and out of supers. Both have their advantages - points are good for creating what you want and an attempt at balance but encourage tinkering with builds, random can prevent minmaxing and reflects some of the odd power mixes out there but can go too far with that or leave you with something you’d rather not play.

Nowadays games like ICONS have both with chances to switch from randomness if something sparks an idea.

Random tables can also be more helpful as a starting point for villains.

The first supers game I ran, Golden Heroes features random generation with options for nudging like switching powers and advice for negotiated modelling, an early lesson for me in different ways players and GMs can work together on a premise.

And there are other approaches like Powered By The Apocalypse playbooks, used in supers in Masks: A New Generation where the powers are a small check box as part of defining your role in the world and team. They get you into the game very quickly, but mostly work for that particular playstyle, a step up from pregens.

10a - 3, 8, 6

Where, Grateful, Art

The PCs are among the crowd at the unveiling of a statue to a fallen hero. Then an old enemy attacks! Can they become the heroes the city needs today?

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 9 - Inspire

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9 - Inspire

What inspires you?

The unhelpful answer is pretty much anything. But I’m most likely to get a fitting idea from something relevant.

I sort reference pictures by games and settings and genres, some to be used directly and some because they might come up. Easier with a broader setting, so my narrow setting folders often get bigger to keep plenty of ideas around when I can’t find a new one.

And sometimes something strikes me enough that it takes a while to find something suitable.

(I had this picture of ice sculptures of running wolves saved for months before they became Doctor Who monsters. They could easily have gone into a classic fantasy game if I’d run one.)

By Takao Waki, photo by Gary Whitton.
Perhaps they might inspire you too.

I play in-genre music ahead of sessions, and new music will sometimes filter in or get mentally filed for a different game it might fit later.

I’ll watch TV and movies, read books and comics, check forums and blogs and the like, and even read game materials!

And random lists can spark all kinds of unexpected things, like the Episodes Based On Song Titles challenge, where you get a list of titles or similar random phrases and a genre or setting and have to come up with adventure hooks that more or less fit.

Or indeed RPGaDAY!

Alternatively, inspiring characters.

I’m currently playing a character who inspires others, leading from the front and offering wise words. That’s unusual and a lot of fun, and works because the wise words are actually listened to.

9a - 4, 6, 3

When, Optimistic, Genre

An inspiring event gives everyone a boost. A rarity in a lot of genres, but some hope goes a long way. A chance to save someone in a horror game and it actually works. A call to action that someone surprisingly responds to.

Runeslinger

Jim Lovell

Vale, captain.

DIE: Loaded

DIE, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’s comic about being trapped into a fantasy RPG that also has its own RPG, is coming back with a new sequel series. (Bit of a spoiler for the first series in the promo.)

And the DIE RPG is getting a comic-format quickstart, and additional material in Loaded, and now has a community licence.

Unknown Armies: Jailbreak

Ludonarrative Dissidents takes a deep dive at this classic adventure with writer and member Greg Stolze there to discuss it.

RPGaDAY 2025 8 - Explore

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8 - Explore

Having just said that I don’t really run travelling quest kinds of games, what do I do for Explore?

This goes double because I actively avoid making maps.

But I have done some dangerous trapped ruin style scenes in pulp action games like Adventure! In one case the traps had long gone without maintenance but a swinging log going the wrong way is still dangerous and the PCs were able to get behind the arrow slits to fight off their enemies.

8a - 1, 1, 8

Who, Envious, Lesson

Academic backstabbing can get particularly nasty when out exploring lost valleys and the like.

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 7 - Journey

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7 - Journey

I don’t really run travelling quest kinds of games. Not really intentionally, but my main games are squarely in the urban fantasy category, and a formative experience was The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy focusing on investigations in various cities and towns.

I’ve certainly run games with settings of the week, but the travel between them is rarely a feature. Doctor Who can go anywhere and anywhen, but the travel in time travel only features very occasionally.

Should I try one?

Hmm, I could. But my main place to GM also has a lot of D&D so I would expect at least some to involve travel and quests.

But I suppose I could take the midnight train goin’ anywhere.

Though that might make me want to run a Glee game instead.

7a - 5, 7, 6

Why, Lucky, Art

A visit to a casino! Gambling! Shows! Suspicious happenings!

Runeslinger also featuring a Journey lyrics joke

Bonus: Polyhedral Nonsense taking the Journey joke further

RPGaDAY 2025 6 - Motive or Motivate

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6 - Motive or Motivate

Motive in the picture, Motivate somehow got into the list I copied, possibly an early typo but here we are.

Motive

This suggests mysteries. A classic way to introduce a setting, get the PCs to talk to various NPCs and investigate locations. And a murder in particular sets a certain tone.

(Not that it has to, as I’ve noted in the past there are some weirdly cosy murder shows out there. Imagine someone reacting to the start of Murder She Wrote like they do in The Killing. I guess it was Twin Peaks that first got me thinking about that...)

The trickiest part of such an investigation is NPCs lying. As the GM is making pretty much everything up already, and has to be a reliable narrator most of the time, I sometimes have to make it clear in a description that an NPC isn’t telling the truth.

Motivate

What’s your motivation?

Sure, it can just be “this is the adventure” but there can be more to it than that, and often is in more character-led games.

Have you ever been turned off by an adventure hook? I have. Not often, hopefully not often enough to be that kind of problem player (I’ve seen a couple players who would avoid basically any adventure, which I’ve always found baffling) but sometimes the buy-in isn’t there. Mismatched expectations can bring this up, but it could also be how someone feels on the day. I think the best approach is to discuss what you all do and don’t want from a series, and see what works for this session.

6a - 2, 2, 2! (That does make 6!)

What, Nostalgic, Character

A gremlin has stolen your childhood teddy bear! THIS WILL NOT STAND.

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 5 - Ancient

#RPGaDAY2025

5 - Ancient

Fantasy RPGs often have an ancient past to call back to, usually a lost golden age that explains the more powerful magic items and/or a terrible empire that explains the demonic and undead monsters locked away. Fantasy settings where things are more magically advanced now are rarer, and tend to involve flying trains and stuff like that.

SF RPGs mostly have ancient pasts where it’s space opera. Sometimes this is our present. This goes even faster in post-apocalypse settings where knowledge gets lose within a generation.

Pulp games use our ancient past to generally explain one (1) powerful magic item per adventure, or hidden lands with dinosaurs.

Supers? Possibly all of the above.

Contemporary real-world games also have an ancient past but it’s most likely to come up when you’re robbing a museum.

5a - 5, 8, 7

Why, Grateful, Person

You found the lost scroll of Plotdevice! Can you return it safely to its rightful guardians?

Runeslinger

GEAS 2025-6?

Five weeks to Welcome Week. Yes it is quite early. Hm.

A new to us Easter Island statue, not a new one as such

A previously undiscovered Moai in a dried-up lake bed as opposed to one appearing out of nowhere like those shiny monoliths. Still interesting but not as WTF as one might hope.

RPGaDAY 2025 4 - Message

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4 - Message

Does your game have a message? Sometimes, maybe as connected to a theme. Intended or otherwise.

Some RPGs have messages built in, whether strong like a lot of one-and-done games or lighter like the various games in the Darkness family that look at the human condition in different ways, apart from Werewolf: The Apocalypse always being in part about fighting for the environment.

Messages are also things PCs might have to deliver. Urgent news? Battle plans? Love letters?

You could base a game on a group like the Pony Express. See The Postman for an out-of-genre example.

“Can’t stop the signal.”

The first Vampire: The Masquerade V5 adventure pitch I heard, from White Wolf’s Jason Carl at its announcement at World Of Darkness Berlin, was about the PCs being “volunteered” by the Prince to deliver a message to another city due to the new rules against electronic communication. “You, you and you, take this box...”

4a - 1, 10, 2

Who, Excited, Character

One of the gang has been waiting all week for a text from a possible romantic partner... and there’s no signal in this cavern full of monsters.

Runeslinger

Vive Chapter Eleven

Having stopped a cult, on to other matters of import that might be less morally straightforward.

Still enjoying being first through the door, pronouncing judgment on the wicked.

Though should really buy more Fortitude.

RPGaDAY 2025 3 - Tavern

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3 - Tavern

Taverns are the kinds of places freelance adventurers meet patrons or hear rumours, and the details vary by setting.

But they’re also places where downtime can happen, which sometimes segues into other adventures. One of the first setting details established in Vampire: The Masquerade was the Succubus Club, because vampires hanging out in nightclubs and hunting there had already become a feature. And inverse of that, the Bronze was the most fun place among the standing sets for Buffy apart from the occasional monster attacks.

Adventures set in and around bars include the infamous barroom brawls like A Rough Night At The Three Feathers for Warhammer.

Freeform LARPS are often set around (and played at) bars and the like for similar reasons, if not in a more focused event like a diplomatic event.

And the next step is games set wholly or partly around bars and clubs and restaurants, with the PCs as regulars, owners or staff in the service and hospitality industry. Often fighting monsters who try to eat the patrons and the like. I’ve considered it with vampires running a cool club and done it with monster hunters staffing a pizza place.

3a - 3, 1, 8

Where, Envious, Lesson

Can the PCs get into that exclusive club opening? And will it really be worth it?

Autocratik

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 2 - Prompt

#RPGaDAY2025

2 - Prompt

Why is Prompt day two? Why? WHY?!

Ahem.

These are prompts to thought, something I’m happy to make sets of when, ha ha, prompted.

As I am now demonstrating with the extra roll prompts.

In sessions there are often prompts to action. What do you do?

Prompt can also mean turning up and getting things done on time. Which is a superpower I’d like to have.

2a - 6, 3, 5

How, Proud, Accessory

A prompt borrowed from a Buffy comic: A new craze sweeping the school, a status symbol everybody’s so proud of having. How did it start? Is something weird going on? I mean, obviously...

Autocratik

Runeslinger

The ENNIE Awards 2025

ENNIEs 2025

Product Of The Year goes to Moria: Through the Doors of Durin from Free League Publishing. Yay!

Another reminder of how big the RPG field is, especially the d20 area I pay little attention to. I had vaguely heard of the Silver for Product and not at all for the Best Game runner-up, though I had read (and bounced off) the winner Triangle Agency.

RPGaDAY 2025 1 - Patron

#RPGaDAY2025

1 - Patron

The Patron or questgiver is generally the NPC who aims the PCs at the adventure of the session. Patron comes from Traveller, where it’s usually expected to be a freelance job rather than rumours in the tavern or orders from a superior. (Discussed here in another RPGaDAY post)

Different games have different expectations for these, like the slightly overused tradition in Shadowrun where Mr. Johnson betrays the PCs. Orders from Starfleet or the Rebel Alliance high command are likely to be treated with less resentment than orders from the local vampire Prince.

Only rarely do patrons recur and develop more as characters - Giles could be a PC patron in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, getting some spotlight episodes of his own, including the Watchers being his patron in turn and changing how he feels about them.

These days a Patron can also be an out of character reference for someone who’s subscribed to Patreon or something like it. They’re generally much more welcome.

Which comes from patrons of the arts. Can you get the PCs involved in creative fields? Maybe finding rare art supplies?

1a - 5, 8, 3

Why, Grateful, Genre

The patron gives you a cushy new gig because they’re happy with how well the last one went. Enjoy it while it lasts!

And being me, might as well do a Buffy take.

A witch shifts the town into a fairytale. Can the gang bust the princess out of the tower without a handsome prince’s help which will trap her there sorta-happily ever after?

1b - 1, 1, 1

Who, Envious, Adventure

Who is envious of you getting called for this adventure?

Autocratik drawing responses

Runeslinger with a horror campaign prep plan

Bonus: Odd Artworks draws a dungeon

#RPGaDAY2025

#RPGaDAY2025

RPG a Day 2025 begins now! (With my first answer around noon.)

Each day in the month of August, roleplaying gamers work from the infographic below to take inspiration from each of the 31 prompts to post positively in affirmation of the joys and benefits of RPGs and the relationships and skills we have developed as a result.

Introductory post by David F. Chapman, including a text prompt list

Explanatory post by Runelinger, including an audio interview with David and Anthony

Daily Prompts

1) Patron

2) Prompt

3) Tavern

4) Message

5) Ancient

6) Motive or Motivate

7) Journey

8) Explore

9) Inspire

10) Origin

11) Flavour

12) Path

13) Darkness

14) Mystery

15) Deceive

16) Overcome

17) Renew

18) Sign

19) Destiny

20) Enter

21) Unexpected

22) Ally

23) Recent

24) Reveal

25) Challenge

26) Nemesis

27) Tactic

28) Suspense

29) Connect

30) Experience

31) Reward

Question Prompts (roll D6)

1) Who

2) What

3) Where

4) When

5) Why

6) How

Mood Prompts (roll D10)

1) Envious

2) Nostalgic

3) Proud

4) Enthusiastic

5) Confident

6) Optimistic

7) Lucky

8) Grateful

9) Contemplative

10) Excited

Subject Prompts (roll D8)

1) Adventure

2) Character

3) Genre

4) Rule

5) Accessory

6) Art

7) Person

8) Lesson

Roundup!

On RPGnet!

On Bluesky!

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