There are, sad to say, a number of players you will encounter while playing Dungeons & Dragons, that do not properly think through their actions before committing to them. They believe the world was created solely for their enjoyment, and they can do whatever they like without ever feeling the consequences of their actions. Well, as part of the League for Responsible Play of D&D, … Continue reading The Living World: Consequences
One of the slightly more confusing things in this edition of Dungeons & Dragons is the distinction between a “turn” and a “round”. I’ve seen many players not quite understand how they are different and, as many abilities refer to them, it seems appropriate to just remind people what they mean. Unfortunately, “round” is used in two or three different manners, so it isn’t as … Continue reading D&D Terminology: Turns and Rounds
The rider who greeted the adventurers as they descended from Argynvostholt was Ezmerelda d’Avenir, a gift to DMs everywhere. One of the major things that you’ll often need as a DM is a non-player character who can drive the plot and give information to the adventurers that they can’t otherwise obtain or, more frequently, have missed. In this game of Curse of Strahd, that character … Continue reading Running Curse of Strahd: Ezmerelda d’Avenir
Areas 13-24 of The Sunless Citadel contain the first organised group of monsters the adventurers meet: Kobolds! The kobolds of the edition of D&D when The Sunless Citadel was first published in 2000 were not quite the same as the kobolds of 2017. Both are relatively weak, cowardly creatures, mainly known for their attachment to dragons and their skill at trap-building. However, the current version … Continue reading Running the Sunless Citadel: Kobolds!
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
