Sam Robson

No Prep? No Problem!: How I Improvise One Shots

A blog post by Brad Zimmerman, creator of d12GO!, written for KiwiRPG week 2026, a week where game creators and enjoyers across Aotearoa New Zealand celebrate all the awesome games coming out of our little country!

Brad outlines how he improvises one shots, with a super clear outline of 8 steps to coming up with a story to tell in a TTRPG. Does improvising scare you? No worries, with these 8 steps, you can rest assured that you can figure it out!

Catch Brad running a game of d12GO! as a part of KiwiRPG Week 2026 live on our Twitch on Thursday 9th July, 6pm-9pm NZST / Thursday 7am BST / Thursday 2am EDT. The VOD will be linked here after the panel.

Designer Brad Zimmerman leads a game of the flexible and fun d12Go. A completely randomly-rolled game: what will the dice bring, and how will a team of brave players handle it?

Read the blog post here:

Day 3 of KiwiRPG Week has the first panel of the week and birds being chaotic!

The Visual Arts & Games panel is the first panel of KiwiRPG Week, and actually the first panel in the official KiwiRPG Week history! Come see Paul Tobin (Chaosium), Stacy Longstreet (D&D 4e, PikPok), Tim Denee (Blades in ’68), discussing the topic, hosted by Matthew Wills (Swords webcomic). It's actually happening RIGHT NOW! (Shhh, I'm not late at all...)

Then, later today, is a chaotic game of an Aotearoa native bird being a being of chaos! Join Rave (Wayward Masquerade) running players through her game, Tui: Birds of a Feather:

Tui are known for three things – song, style, and rage. The newest crew in the tui mafia are looking to make a name for themselves, and maybe score some points with the Dui.

Watch both on the KiwiRPG Twitch here!

Bloodthirst is a rules-light vampire ttrpg I've been working on for the past couple of months. With a handful of d6s you'll shoot, claw and bite your way through waves of enemies. Sanctuary upgrades let you take on more and more adversaries as you play- culminating in bosses like Mirabel, Forsaken Witch and Opal, Callous Slayer.

Interested? Next month I'll be running a two-week Backerkit campaign- follow along at the below link for more updates!

Bloodthirst is a rules-light vampire ttrpg I've been working on for the past couple of months. With a handful of d6s you'll shoot, claw and bite your way through waves of enemies. Sanctuary upgrades let you take on more and more adversaries as you play- culminating in bosses like Mirabel, Forsaken Witch and Opal, Callous Slayer.

Interested? Next month I'll be running a two-week Backerkit campaign- follow along at the below link for more updates!

Follow along if you like any of the following:

Vampires

Base building

i've been thinking about pangya, an animesque golf game from the early boom of online gaming which was kind of an early gacha game, now playable thanks to the pangya reborn project, which does away with all the nonsense that a lot of live service games put to slow your progression to a crawl and gives you the relaxing golf sandbox experience you deserve.

i've been thinking about my friend @txttletale's proxies, as well as that one bot the name of which I can't recall which generates random cards, and what makes them really different from "playable" mtg cards, what decisions go into balancing cards and what that game says about its universe through slates of cardboard.

i've been thinking about @jdragsky's zeeb, about the physical object that a ttrpg book is, and the tools we rely on for games, the relationship they have to the actual game we play. somewhere, someone has printed out the rules for a random game she thought up with her friends, and i'm thinking of the underlined text, of the things she crossed out, and the stickers her friends gave her to add to the zine. somewhere, someone has a copy of dark heresy's core book absolutely lousy with scrawled notes about ways to make its combat less of a chore, and snide commentaries on later editions of the FFG franchise. i've been thinking about all these books and the way that they change, the way people enter conversations with them through time. the way they defy the book, yet keep it close to their heart always.

Bloodthirst is a rules-light vampire ttrpg I've been working on for the past couple of months. With a handful of d6s you'll shoot, claw and bite your way through waves of enemies. Sanctuary upgrades let you take on more and more adversaries as you play- culminating in bosses like Mirabel, Forsaken Witch and Opal, Callous Slayer.

Interested? Next month I'll be running a two-week Backerkit campaign- follow along at the below link for more updates!

Follow along if you like any of the following:

Vampires

Base building

My first commissioned project is a two-player game about telling a story. It's entirely free- check it out below!

Bloodthirst is a rules-light vampire ttrpg I've been working on for the past couple of months. With a handful of d6s you'll shoot, claw and bite your way through waves of enemies. Sanctuary upgrades let you take on more and more adversaries as you play- culminating in bosses like Mirabel, Forsaken Witch and Opal, Callous Slayer.

Interested? Next month I'll be running a two-week Backerkit campaign- follow along at the below link for more updates!

Bloodthirst is a rules-light vampire ttrpg I've been working on for the past couple of months. With a handful of d6s you'll shoot, claw and bite your way through waves of enemies. Sanctuary upgrades let you take on more and more adversaries as you play- culminating in bosses like Mirabel, Forsaken Witch and Opal, Callous Slayer.

Interested? Next month I'll be running a two-week Backerkit campaign- follow along at the below link for more updates!

At looming Castle Ravenrock, a human decides to spend one year with a coven of variably murderous vampires.

Grab the ashcan today for just $3 and receive all future updates!

Of Tea & Twilight is now available on Itch!

Use a deck of playing cards to travel the land and heal dangerous revenants while avoiding becoming one yourself. Each time your deck is depleted, take a rest and write to the mysterious Umbral about the day's events. Is it becoming more human the more you write to it?

Surely that's just your imagination! 

Bloodthirst is a rules-light vampire ttrpg I've been working on for the past couple of months. With a handful of d6s you'll shoot, claw and bite your way through waves of enemies. Sanctuary upgrades let you take on more and more adversaries as you play- culminating in bosses like Mirabel, Forsaken Witch and Opal, Callous Slayer.

Interested? Next month I'll be running a two-week Backerkit campaign- follow along at the below link for more updates!

My first commissioned project is a two-player game about telling a story. It's entirely free- check it out below!

Next month I'm crowdfunding a small ttrpg called Bloodthirst! Play as vampires battling hunters, other vamps, and whoever else gets in your way as you fight to restore calm to your home.

Between fast-paced missions you'll return to your sanctuary to work on acquiring better contacts, weaponry, powers and more! You'll keep getting stronger, confronting greater and greater threats, until you take on the strongest enemies at the heart of the operation.

Interested? I'd love if you'd follow along on Backerkit! The teaser page is pretty sparse right now but I should have the campaign page sorted within the week.