The Tiny Prep group hit a milestone the other day. We’ve got a streak going of 150 consecutive days! Congrats to the GMs getting their campaigns ready for next session, five minutes at a time. Speaking of Tiny Prep, I saw this question on the Discord from Game Master EwokTaintPuncher (ahem): Doc recently told me […]
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Use the Beaufort Scale to help make wind and storm rulings easier. I grew up on a street called Beaufort Avenue. When we moved there, it had no curbs or sidewalks. And it dead-ended a few blocks down the road. And we had some fantastic wind storms. The walnut tree became weather’s weapon during gales. […]
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Hola Game Master! GM’s Log #9: How to Build Legendary Magic Items was just published, and it cloaks my atomic unit of prep in the guise of juicy loot. What started as a quick way to outline NPCs in the 2010s has become my universal GM tool for instantiating any kind of game piece: NPCs, […]
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Far-future action on the trail of a serial killer in Star Marshal: The Paper Trails, this is the final weekend for the Kickstarter and we've one more stretch goal to reach - can we do it?! Blends Judge Dredd style action with Blade Runner ethos. Lots of information, images and downloadable content on the campaign page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thegrinningfrog/star-marshal-the-paper-trails Our next Kickstarter will be for Final Quest: Odyssey. Set prior to the first two games,...
New additions to the webstore
Design Diary where we explore the design process of creating a sequel to an existing Pocket Game
So I’m a cheap bastard. That’s number ten on The Gamemaster’s Hall Of Shame: Monty Haul’s Top Ten Cousins all the way back to Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #3: 10 Minnie Haul Players in previous campaigns joke about it. I like to pretend there’s no treasure chapter at all. Mice must’ve eaten those pages. But the […]
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Happy Canada Day! While swatting mosquitoes and sipping cool bevvies, let’s look at a dilemma that community member Sir Tainley poses about explaining the strength of commoners in certain game systems: I’m designing a world for a D&D 5e clone. I want magic to be reasonably common, and taught in the universities. But, powerful enough spells […]
The post Balancing Magic, Bears & Hit Points appeared first on Roleplaying Tips.
On the Roleplaying Tips Discord, @Kodia Tomekeeper reminded me about the fantastic template Pixar used for story spines. It works well for our own adventure, campaign, and even world seeds: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. Let’s […]
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Here’s a tip for new GMs or those new to point crawls. What’s a point crawl? I don’t know the official definition, but mine is an adventure you make based on story gates characters must get through. When the final obstacle’s been beaten and that gate traversed, the party’s won. Creating a point crawl confused […]
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GM’s Log #7 went out to CampaignCraft members yesterday, and it teaches my 5 Actions Framework that anticipates 90% of encounter derailments and broken adventures. After you complete the tutorial’s six steps, players can still surprise you, but they’re much less likely to break your encounters. One of my favourite examples of players ruining my […]
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Happy Monday, Game Master! Friday’s tip about using flashbacks for backstories garnered a great response from the community. You sent in several fantastic ideas on how to take this mechanic even further. Today, let’s look at a great breakdown from GM Allen (pictured here with his Magic 8 Ball USB button) on how to use […]
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The first time I encountered a flashback mechanic was at Intrigue Con here in town in a Night’s Black Agents game. The second time was the following morning playing Blades in the Dark. The cool thing about flashbacks is you can add them to any game system. I’m doing it right now for my Lost […]
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Hey folks, For all Starship Scavenger players and anyone who enjoys a little satire, let me present this copy of the Frontier Times, Issue 4942. To get the pdf version, which comes with all the previous issues, go to the downloads page and click and download your very own copy, for absolutely nothing. It's a freebie! https://www.thegrinningfrog.com/downloads (then scroll down to find it) For those of you who haven't seen it before, we release this on a semi-regular basis (we aim for monthly...
After nearly three years of deliberation and redesign we are excited to announce Protocol Runners . This is our first cyberpunk content since 2023 (when we released Neo City ) but in that time we have produced Starship Scavengers and released over twenty publications for it. Into that universe, Ben created Star Marshal (new adventure coming to Kickstarter in May) which will be building up the outer worlds. Also in that time, I've been tinkering away with a tarot deck based game. In the end,...
About eighteen months ago I took a chance and crafted a game that I wanted to play. Mythos Rising was a Lovecraftian inspired battle between investigators working for the Midsummer Institute and cultists looking to bring an entity into our reality from BEYOND!
Hey folks, For some reason, we have never posted a blog when we have released a copy of the Frontier Times . Why? Don't know. Madness. So, for both all Starship Scavenger players and anyone who enjoys a little satire, let me present this copy of the Frontier Times, Issue 4941. To get the pdf version, which comes with all the previous issues , go to the downloads page and click and download your very own copy, for absolutely nothing. It's a freebie! https://www.thegrinningfrog.com/downloa...
Hey all, This is simply to tell you that our special Twelve Days of Christmas event is now live. Come get a free family game, and a scary solo play Zilight: Christmas game! Snowman Run! is a free print and play party game where you race snowmen around the table and try to be the first across the finishing line. With rules only a half page long, this is fast and easy to play. I can attest to it being a lot of fun, as you have such options as the ability to steal cards from other players,...
Hey all, I'm not quite ready to do an end of year wrap blog just yet but I am ready to say, as I always am, thank you to everyone who has supported us over the year. We've had a great year at The Grinning Frog and that's because of all our wonderful supporters and customers -- whether on Gamefound, Kickstarter or the webstore. We want to give back, and we have two fun things coming your way - including a completely free game -- let's start with that! Snowman Run! is a free print and play...
We have NEVER done this before, but now the shop stock levels are all updated, and Christmas is coming, and that Black Friday sale thing is looming (that we in Britain don't really understand), well, we decided to have a sale! Yes indeed. EVERYTHING is 20% off with the following code: blackfrogsale