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A Review of The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide

You don’t need to be familiar with James D’Amato’s One Shot podcast in order to have a blast with the The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide, released this month from Adams Media. Ability Scores Title: The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide Author: James D’Amato Page count: 272 Price: $14.99 Softcover, $10.99 Kindle edition Dimensions: 5.5” x 8.4” ISBN-13: 978-1507208373 Publisher: Adams Media Publication Date: October 2, 2018 Ramp up your role-playing game and make your character your own with this fun, interactive workbook—an essential addition to any RPG...

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5 Steps to Writing a Killer RPG Character Backstory

Whether this is your first or your hundredth time rolling up a character for a new roleplaying game campaign, coming up with a compelling backstory can be tough. Maybe you’ve spent a ton of time trying to come up with a character, but you still end up bored with them or worry that they’re one dimensional. Or perhaps you have the basics down and want to take your characters to the next level. The following steps will help you write a killer character backstory, one that will get you excited about your character, provide cues to roleplay them, and give the GM tools to...

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5 Tips for Writing Social Drama RPG Campaigns

For my next roleplaying game campaign, I’m writing the foundation for a social drama campaign that I’ll then pass off to a co-GM who does a much better job at portraying Non-Player Characters and figuring out the logical (not just conventional) implications of choices. I lamented on social media that writing up the campaign so that someone else can take it and run with it is much more challenging than writing up a traditional, linear story adventure. This post deals with my approach to tackling those difficulties and provides tips for prepping social drama campaigns...

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Mini RPG Campaign Template: Session 0

Technically the first “session” in my nine-part mini RPG campaign template, I like to call this part “Session 0“: it doesn’t actually involve running the game yet, but it does entail everything you need to get started. This post covers the things you as the GM will be facilitating the first time you gather all the players in one place, as well as the things you’ll want to prepare ahead of time. Those things are the hook, the cast of characters, the character backstories and/or individual quests, and the inciting incident. The Hook:...

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A Conflict-Driven Character Creation Questionnaire

What is an RPG campaign if not a series of conflicts between player characters and the world, conflicts between player characters and non-player characters, or conflicts within and among the player characers themselves? The following questions just popped into my head as a new way to facilitate character backstory generation–specifically by getting to the heart of the answers most useful to the GM in terms of crafting a story that engages the PCs. Can you think of any other questions I’m missing that will help generate conflict, i.e. story potential, in...