Players are the people who generate characters and role play those characters in the world presented by the DM or GM.

Without players, the work of a DM will never see the light of day.

A game can be run with a single player, but usually two or three is considered a small game. Many GM’s will not want to run games with more than 8 or 9 players at once. However, there are stories of some DM’s running games with a dozen players at once. Personally, I prefer being a player in games from one to six players. Larger than that seems unwieldy.

In the world of the internet and using Google+ and a Virtual Table Top (VTT), the number of players can be limited by the technology. In the campaign I am playing in we have the DM and seven players. We use Google+ and the Roll20 VTT. We do not use video to speed things up, so it is like a voice conference call. We use Roll20 for dice rolls, intitiative, and showing the position of the players. There is no map. This is very close to how I started playing D&D, so other than the seeing the reaction on other’s faces, is very much like an in-person game.

Orcs are not just something from Tolkien. In the Silmarilion, we learn that orcs are created from tortured and corrupted elves.

In D&D orcs have an influence from Tolkien, but the word is from Orcus, for an ancient diety of the underworld. It is also connected to ogre. In D&D, Orcus is used as the name of the ruler of the undead, skeletons, zombies, wights, vampires, etc.

In the Monster Manual, the classic illustration are of creatures that appear to have the head of a pig.

If you have ever seen Return of the Jedi, the Gamorrean Guards reminded me of the D&D orcs. Players from my era think of D&D orcs when they see the Gamorrean Guards. Too funny.

A Non-Player Character (NPC), are all of the people and creatures the players encounter in the world presented by the GM. The GM must portray all of the NPCs.

Different GMs do this differently. Some merely portray them by the way the NPC describes things and using a standard vocabulary for a given type of NPC, like town guards.

Ohter GMs go all out and get into doing voices and facial expressions and the whole nine yards, much like a parent does when reading a bedtime story.

There is no right way for the GM to portray an NPC. As long as the players know which NPC they are talking to and everyone is having fun, you are doing it right.

Maps are a valuable tool in RPGs. They can be maps of a world and its continents, geography, political divisions, and dungeons. Or for a science fiction RPG can be a map of the star sector and the planets round there that players explore.

The most iconic map is the dungeon map as made famous by D&D.

Usually, the dungeon map is a map of the place the characters will explore. Usually, only the DM ever gets to see the dungeon map. The players may or may not have to map the dungeon, depending on how the DM wants to do things. If the dungeon is mapped, one player is designated the mapper and must draw a map from the verbal description of the DM. Most often this is done using graph paper.

Other types of maps analogous to the dungeon, might be above ground ruins, or a cave complex, or an adventure in a town or city.

Players may only get a glimpse of the world map in a D&D setting, but in a science fiction setting, they can look out the window and see the planet, or access a map easily enough.

In a fantasy RPG a treasure map is the best kind of map, assuming the player’s can read it and find the treasure to which it points. If they find the location, is the treasure still there?

I find it hardest to limit myself in preparing a campaign. I get so wrapped up in searching online for ideas for tables for different situations and ideas for maps and encounters and adventures and general and specific world building, that I don’t get the smallest part done, a prepared adventure/dungeon/sandbox for the players to get started.

The advent of the internet and access to world wide RPG players and there ideas is a gold mine of ideas. There are just too many ideas to choose just one.

A GM must force themselves to focus and limit their development of the game to what is most needed by the players. If the adventures and monsters are planned and prepared for the area the players are in currently, then expand and add all the bells and whistles.

Time for preparation is limited, so one must limit their research and focus on the parts that require immediate attention for play.

Kobolds are iconic D&D creatures. They are intelligent but weak, and are typically encountered by starting characters to work their way up to bigger and badder monsters.

Kobolds are creatures from Germanic mythology and have been equated with goblins, or other mythological creatures.

In D&D terms there are lizard like humanoids. Some DM’s make them organized to the point of being a great challenge to even the toughest player characters.

One very famous group of koblods, Tucker’s Kobolds, were discussed in an edition of Dragon Magazine.

Jerks are a common theme in RPGs. Whether the DM is a jerk or a given player is a jerk, can ruin a session or a game. If the DM is always a jerk, he will have a hard time finding and keeping players. If a player is a jerk, he will have a hard time finding a DM and group of players that will put up with him.

Back in the old days, it was usually the nerds getting away from the jocks who were jerks, but there were some players who could fill that role all to well.

Within role playing, a character or NPC can be a jerk. It adds to the realism when the NPC with information is a jerk and you have to play “that game” as you role play the interaction between the player character(s) and NPC(s).

May all the jerks in your life only be in the context of role playing and all in having fun; and not the kind that suck the joy out of life.

Being patient while the next game session rolls around can be a challenge. As a player, I want to dive in and go full bore into what the GM has prepared for us.

As a DM I need patience waiting for the players to find some really cool idea I have planned out. I don’t railroad the players, so if they never find it, my desire for them to find it and seeing their reaction to it goes unfulfilled.

There are just too many cool ideas out there, it is hard for any DM to get enough players in enough groups and manage it all to have any hope of all the cool ideas being found.

This is why it is good advice to only prepare enough to give the players a choice in the direction they go and what they do. If the players decide to go in a certain direction/focus, they may never get to something you put a lot of effort into.

Giants can be quite the interesting foe for adventurers. Hill giants can be the “weak” introduction of characters to giants, and their lower intelligence can give players the edge they need to beat them.

As a player I have run into them in a few situations, and can see all sorts of possibilities for using them as DM.

I love how my brother, Robert does Hill Giants, big and dumb and out for loot. They have a big club and a big sack. If you encounter them they say, “Aw’rite, what ya got? Weer here ta loot ya.” My attempt to convey this via text falls far short. I need to get recordings of him saying such things.