Flying Swords

Roleplaying Tips
I thought I would share some tips I have seen lately. Enjoy!

Create Equipment Packages
This classic tip is another great time-saver. Prepare
equipment packages so PCs can buy many items in a single
transaction. During the game, players can refer to the
package list instead of having to record each item on their
character sheets.

Sample mundane equipment package ideas:

* Personal effects. Needle and thread, dishes and cutlery,
money pouch, comb, and any other personal items a person
would carry with them.

* Camping gear. Sets of clothes, tent, sleeping blankets,
and other equipment required for comfort, safety, and
survival in the wilds.

* Dungeon gear. 10' pole--just kidding!

* Class/professional gear.

* Social "gear". Clothing sets broken down into detailed
inventories and accessories.

Generous GMs can allow bartering on package prices if that's
important to the PCs.

In the past, I've found creating packages to be a bit of
work--time I'd rather have spent on NPC or encounter
creation. So, a good idea is to ask your players to whip up
various packages for you. They make good bonus EXP
assignments, favour requests, and boredom killers.

Keep in mind that packages aren't necessarily presented as
such by a single merchant. They represent a period of
shopping at a number of locations. Therefore, you might also
assign a time cost for each package and let PCs whittle that
down through skill use as well.

Packages are ideal for fast NPC creation too!

Tip On Tracking Hit Points Faster (I'm going to try this one) :)
This is just a very quick tip for tracking the hit points of
large groups of monsters in a big battle:

Add, don't subtract.

When you have a half-dozen ogres or so, each with 20 hit
points, what you do is keep a tally of the damage dealt, not
the total hit points remaining. Once the tally crosses the
total they're dead. I do this because addition is much
faster than subtraction.

This one change can easily cut half the time off taking care
of monster hit points, which helps your battle flow more
smoothly.

Make A Campaign Journal (The Easy Way) we're oh, so close to this one.

Get a subscription to an online journal or diary of some
kind, like www.livejournal.com. (Livejournal is invite or
pay only, so you may have to dig somewhere to find it.) From
then on, you've got an excellent place to put out campaign
rumors, hints and tips, or just post adventure summaries.
The great thing is that you can comment on the different
entries, which gives the players opportunity for feedback.
All without you having to lift a finger in the webdesign
department...