I’m a little late to the #RPGaDAY2025 party, but why not give it a go here. I’ll start with rapid fire answer for the first 5 days. Later today, I’ll make an effort to write up a more thought out post for today, day 6: Motive.

Patron

Players having a an NPC around which to anchor their exploits can be incredible useful. Shadowrun has fixers and Johnsons, many fantasy games can have mentors, sages, even dragons, that put the characters on quests. Even superhero games can have heroes of the old guard that function as guidance and insight. And then, of course, patrons can become points of tension and disagreement, turning into interesting complications and twists in their own right.

Prompt

How very meta. I could go on for hours on how much I love the Mythic Gamemaster Emulator by https://www.wordmillgames.com. I’ve also written a post about Ironsworn: Starforged, which is a solo game entirely built on using prompts to tell a story. I use random prompt generation to create many aspects of my games, to prepare for a sessions, and often during a game to keep things fresh and interesting. It’s the best way for me to run games. Gets me out of my comfort zone or safe headspace. Notably, I’m not talking about random encounters that tell me what’s happening and letting me figure out how to make it work. I’m talking about more abstract action/theme sort of prompts that make you think differently about the current fiction and its context.

Tavern

The first ever session for many people getting into the hobby through d20 fantasy games start in a tavern. It’s a trope, but it works. And even seasoned players can have fun with this when you start putting twists on it. A frozen tavern full of iced-over zombies, but it was the only refuge for the characters during a blizzard; an invasion of the arch villain of the campaign sees the tavern they’re staying at destroyed, as the city is being plunged into chaos; a hive of scum and villainy, where one of the characters is introduced by shooting first.

Message

I once used messages to taunt a character. It was a real “I know what you did last summer” sort of situation. The character had secrets, and someone out there was trying to taunt him to come clean, to give in. Leaving messages in writing and in blood. Messages left behind for the party to find can be a great storytelling and worldbuilding tool. Gets them thinking, without direct means to probe further, ask questions. All they have are the words/clues/visions given to them in the moment.

Ancient

Ever read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time? It’s great, read it. One of the big parts of the setting of that story is that the humans are traveling through space on a massive arc ship left behind by a much more advanced human society that fell to their own hubris. The characters barely know how to operate the ship, barely have any records on that once great human empire, their language, their technologies, their understanding of the universe. Something so ancient, yet so much more advanced that we can barely touch the surface of it. And all that’s left are ruined behemoths and knowledge lost to dust and time. Not alien, but clearly human. It’s a theme I love to incorporate in all of my games in some way. Something ancient, something nearly completely unknowable. Yet so close to who we are today.