Bagquest

Printable, system-neutral tools for the part of tabletop RPGs no rulebook covers: the people. Session zero worksheets, NPC tables, scheduling pacts, group-health checklists. Works with D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, or whatever you're running. Most campaigns don't die to a dragon. They die to a group chat poll nobody answers. Free starter sheets + full catalogue: bagquest.itch.io

[bagquest]

We wrote a book about the part of tabletop RPGs that isn't the game

Roll for Friendship is about the actual hard part of this hobby. Not the rules. The people.

It covers the things that end campaigns and that no rulebook has a chapter for:

The flaky player problem, and how to tell a scheduling issue from an interest issue. The fix for each is completely different, and treating one as the other is how you lose a friend instead of a player.

GM burnout. The warning signs GMs hide, including from themselves, and how a table shares the load before it breaks rather than after.

Switching systems or settings mid-campaign without losing the group in the transition.

The slow fade, where nothing is exactly wrong but the fun is leaking out, and how to diagnose it while it is still fixable.

Every chapter ends with a checklist you can act on this week, because advice you cannot act on is just company.

It is for GMs who love their group and can feel it slipping, players watching a good campaign wobble, and anyone who has typed "are we still on for Saturday?" and gotten silence.

It lives on itch, on the bagquest page, alongside the free session zero sheets.

No generative AI was used in the writing of this book.

[bagquest]

Decide what an empty chair means before it's someone specific

Somebody is going to miss a session. Not maybe. The only question is whether you decided what that means while it was hypothetical, or while everyone is staring at one specific empty chair.

Decide it early, because once it is about a specific person it stops being a policy and becomes a verdict on them.

The options, roughly:

Fade out. Their character is quietly not in frame this session. Cleanest option, requires everyone to not be precious about continuity.

Run by committee. Another player runs them, with a hard limit: you can move them and defend them, you cannot spend their resources or make their decisions.

The GM runs them as a background NPC. Works, but it adds load to the person who already has the most.

The party does nothing dangerous. Great excuse for a session of shopping, downtime and politics, which are usually under-played anyway.

Whichever you pick, add two rules:

Nothing permanent happens to an absent character. No death, no maiming, no life-changing choice made on their behalf. This is the rule that prevents actual resentment.

Absence never costs XP or loot share. If missing a session sets you behind, people show up sick and miserable, or they stop showing up at all once they are behind.

Five minutes of conversation. It is the difference between an absence being an administrative fact and an absence being drama.

[bagquest]

Your NPCs all sound the same, and it isn't because you can't do voices

The party talks to someone you didn't prep. You panic, you give them a name, and from that moment on that character is a wall you do improv against.

The problem isn't your acting. It's that you never decided anything about them. Four decisions, about fifteen seconds, and they're a person:

WANT. What they want in the next ten minutes. Not a life goal, because a life goal gives you nothing to play. "Wants to close up early" gives you a whole scene: they're impatient, they cut the party off, they'll trade information for speed.

WOUND. The thing they won't say. You never have to reveal it. It exists so that when a player asks the wrong question, the character deflects, and deflection is the single most human thing an NPC can do.

TELL. One body habit and one speech habit. Not an accent. "Never takes his gloves off." "Says no first, then negotiates." Players imitate these back at you, which is how you know an NPC landed. And unlike an accent, you can't forget how you did it last time.

LEVERAGE. What would flip them. Most GMs skip this one, and it's the one that turns an NPC from scenery into a puzzle. If the party works out the price, they get the help.

You can roll these, write them, or steal them. The point is that four small decisions beat one big improvisation every single time.

No funny voices required.

[bagquest]

The sheet that saves more campaigns than any rule you'll ever house-rule

Every group has the same conversation eventually. Always too late, always in a group chat, always at 6pm on a Tuesday: are we still on?

Here is the fix. Decide these four things once, out loud, before session one. Write them down somewhere everyone can see them.

Cadence. Not "weekly-ish". An actual day and time, and whether it is every week or every other. Vague cadence is how groups quietly stop meeting.

Quorum. How many players need to be there for the session to happen? Pick a number. Four out of five? Three plus the GM? Without a number, every absence becomes a fresh negotiation.

What happens to an absent character. Do they fade into the background? Get run by another player? Does the party just not go anywhere dangerous? Decide this before it is about a specific person, because after that it becomes a referendum on them.

The cancellation ladder. Who calls it, and by when. "If we do not have quorum by noon that day, the GM calls it, and we do not reschedule, we just play the next slot." The point is that nobody sits waiting for a group chat to resolve itself.

That is the whole thing. Fifteen minutes at session zero, and it prevents the specific death most campaigns actually die of, which is not conflict or boredom but scheduling entropy.

[bagquest]

Hi, we make the boring sheets that save campaigns

Bagquest makes printable, system-neutral tools for the part of tabletop RPGs no rulebook covers: the people.

Not encounter tables. Not stat blocks. The scheduling agreement. The session zero agenda. The conversation about what happens when someone can't make it, had before it happens instead of in a group chat at 6pm on a Tuesday.

Because most campaigns don't die to a dragon. They die to a poll nobody answers.

Everything is print-and-play and system-neutral, so it works with D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Blades, or whatever's in your homebrew folder.

We'll mostly post the actual advice here, not the storefront. Follow if a group of yours has ever quietly dissolved and you'd like the next one not to.