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
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
You will occasionally see people like me banging on about all the miniatures we have and how they really, really enhance our Dungeons & Dragons experiences. Then you look at your own collection of three miniatures and a bunch of chess pieces and wonder how other people ever got their miniature collections. Here’s the truth: Miniature collecting is expensive. Most likely financially – most miniatures … Continue reading On Collecting Miniatures
My friend Teos Abadia recently made fun of me for not opening a bunch of D&D Miniatures boxes that have been sitting on my shelf for the past six months or so. They’re still not open, and I’ve just put more boxes of the latest miniature release on top of them… likewise unopened. The idea was that I’d open them and review them, but life … Continue reading To Miniature, or not To Miniature
It has not escaped my attention that not everyone is as fast as arithmetic as I am. Adding two numbers together can take time. The play of the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons isn’t as bad for this as 3E (where adding 17 and 24 together wasn’t that unusual at the higher levels). Combat in D&D often plays like this: “I attack and roll … Continue reading A Tip for Quicker Play of Dungeons & Dragons Combat
The rules for the Assassin (a Roguish archetype) in the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons include an extremely powerful ability: Assassinate. It’s the signature ability of the class, and it can be very effective. A reminder of what it does: You have advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn’t taken a turn in the combat yet. In addition, any hit you score … Continue reading Rules Spotlight: Surprise and the Assassin
Over the course of running Princes of the Apocalypse, the characters spent a lot of time in the Temple of Black Earth and its connected outpost, the Sacred Stone Monastery. When my group first encountered the Monastery, they weren’t powerful enough. They could defeat the gate guards, but that fight left them hurt and needing to rest. So, they would retreat and come back the … Continue reading Running Princes of the Apocalypse: Temple of Black Earth
Life has been a bit crazy recently, with work, more work, and even more work conspiring to take me away from blogging and reviewing. However, with a few projects now on pause for a few days, I’m getting the chance to return to the blog and have a few updates (and, with luck, more than a few reviews). One of the odder circumstances that recently … Continue reading Running Out of the Abyss: Gauntlgrym
Dungeons & Dragons is an amazing game. It’s one of the most enjoyable pastimes you can have and, especially for Dungeon Masters, can require varying amounts of your time: from just a couple of hours running a session, to many, many hours preparing, designing and planning your world and future adventures. These days, I typically use published adventures for most of my games. They allow … Continue reading Adventure Complexity and the New Dungeon Master
It’s a staple of fantasy adventures. The adventurers are in a crowded marketplace when they hear a scream, and they see goblins pouring from the sewers. They need to fight! At this point, what happen to the crowd? And how do you represent that in game? The standard answer for me and many other DMs is not great: we simply have the crowd mysteriously escape. … Continue reading Dungeon Master Tips: When Crowds are Attacked
