The Sunless Citadel is the first adventure in the new Dungeons & Dragons book, Tales from the Yawning Portal. This adventure is designed for beginning characters, and is also a very good choice for Dungeon Masters as their first adventure. Here are a few tips for running your first session of the adventure! Character Selection The Sunless Citadel is a dungeon adventure, where much of … Continue reading Running the Sunless Citadel: First Steps
One of the fascinating questions of any D&D game (and most RPGs as well) is “when is it acceptable for a PC to die?” It’s not quite as simple as it sounds. Certainly, it’s rarely “when the player decides” (at least as far as D&D goes), but – likewise – we DMs are very careful to not arbitrarily killing PCs. At least if we want … Continue reading Beware! Tomb of Horrors ahead!
The second half of Out of the Abyss is taking my group a little longer to complete than I first thought. There are some tremendously difficult encounters in the adventure, especially if the group hasn’t worked out how to tackle them. An encounter with a beholder left two of the group petrified, one dead, one fell into a chasm, another was charmed, and the last … Continue reading Out of the Abyss… Making Random Encounters Fun!
One of the rules I never quite understood in the Basic Dungeons & Dragons set of 1981 was the Monster Reaction table. The basic idea was when you encountered a group of monsters, you’d follow the following sequence: Roll 2d6 to determine distance between monsters and party (in tens of feet) Roll to determine surprise (in Basic D&D, there was a 33% chance for each … Continue reading Monsters can be Friends, Too! Monster Reactions
Monsters are people too! They want to go home at the end of the day, settle down with their loved ones, and count their treasure. They certainly don’t want to be killed by adventurers who just happen across them when they’re on their afternoon stroll! However, there are times when a monster’s got to do what a monster’s got to do: defend their home against … Continue reading Morale: When Monsters Run
You’re DMing your very first game of Dungeons & Dragons. Your players enter a cave and see four kobolds. The kobolds rush forward and attack… …and the players look at you expectantly. What do you do? Here’s a few notes to help you run that first combat. Combat Sequence Roll Initiative (d20 + Dexterity modifier). Rolling once for each group of monsters makes the combat … Continue reading The Very Basics of Running Dungeons & Dragons Combat
I first tried being a Dungeon Master over 30 years ago. I was horrid. This is a common experience. It probably would have helped if I’d been older than twelve, but, even so, your first experience of running a game will often abound with problems: errors in the rules, the tone, and in guiding the players to the right adventure. I’ve still have no idea … Continue reading A few thoughts on running Dungeons & Dragons
Doorway to Darkness, an adventure for four 2nd-level characters by James Desborough and M.T. Black, takes a solid idea – a mine being overrun by zombies – and adds enough unusual features to it to provide interest and entertainment. It’s very easy to just have a parade of combat encounters. Having features to mix them up, to engage the players and tell a story, is … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Doorway to Darkness
Tony Petrecca’s Killer Kobolds is an adventure for 8th-12th level characters. Yes, you read that right: A high-level adventure featuring kobolds. It’s also a beautifully-constructed adventure. Deriving from events in Tony’s home game, we get to see what Defence in Depth means when applied to kobolds. I’d stay well clear of this one if you’ve got a group of players who prefer to negotiate: it’s a … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Killer Kobolds
Playing Dungeons & Dragons well requires several skills. You don’t need to be great in all of them, but it helps to have some familiarity with all of them. For parts of the game like role-playing and exploration, you get better at them with practice. This is especially true of role-playing. The more you speak to DM-controlled characters, the better you get at it. I’m … Continue reading Dungeons & Dragons Tips: Know Your Character’s Abilities
