Learn how to apply one of screenwriting's most effective tools to your own campaign, for a game with better pacing and solid endings.

So you’ve finally done it. With the best of intentions all around the table, your PCs have finally blundered into the blender like curious gerbils, and now they are hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. They are doomed, unless you unleash Secret GM Gambit #4 on them.

Everyone dies. But delaying that impending sentence is the holy grail. Science, scorcery, and wishful thinking do all in their power to bestow such delays. Be your deeds pure or evil, cheating death is neither easy nor reliable.

Wanderers beware, these gates open not,

Except to those only who the way have bought.

You may purchase the right to pass me by,

By each guessing my riddles. Care to try?

And the walls came tumbling down...

Letting one of my players encounter a Raccoon might have been a bad idea... (now with PC summaries written by their respective players.... if everyone does it)

Get ready, a great deal happened.

Interrogating the suspects doesn't go as planned.

My commentary and thoughts on the session we played tonight.

My commentary and thoughts on the campaign I started tonight.

Busy GMs need help prepping for games faster. And you can create fantastic magic items in just three minutes using my stat block.

Giving NPCs memories can go a long way to making a more realistic and enjoyable game world.

This is not a submission about creating NPCs, this is about presenting them. Not everyone walks around with a different accent, strange tic, or catchphrase, our memories are what make us different.

An alternate way to present your campaigns history, (or a weapon/piece of equipments legacy) to your players.

The skies tell the tale of the living and the dead. The honored and the worshiped. What do the stars tell in your setting?

The question was asked about how you run a high level campaign. While this is a simple question it is not very simple to answer. Anyone who is an experienced DM will tell you that, especially for a beginner. In order to answer this I began thinking backwards.

"Prophecy today is hardly the romantic business that it used to be. The old tools of the trade, like the sword, the hair shirt, and the long fast in the wilderness, have given way to more contemporary, mundane instruments of doom --the book, the picket and the petition, the sit-in at City Hall."

- Jane Kramer

Be it a cursed artifact, an angry god, a spell gone wrong, or bad luck, these are just a taste of the strange things that might befall a character.

Creating a specific Web of Intrigue for a social situation players will encounter can be a very strong aid towards immersing players in a social quagmire they will have to navigate. In this article I will articulate how I have created a web of intrigue for my current campaign, and how I plan to continue the trend.

GMs definitely need to enforce strict "in character" play, eliminate "across the table" chatter, and by doing so - set the scene for an awesome role-play experience!

In the World of Star Trek," authored by David Gerrold, Gene Roddenberry explains how a central character trying to solve one or more needs builds drama into any type of story.