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
As most of you are likely aware, Storm King’s Thunder¸ the latest adventure from Chris Perkins and Wizards of the Coast, is now available in stores. It’s an adventure for 1st-10th level characters which sees them facing off against a lot of giants. It is also, in a lot of ways, the companion to the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. Your players have read that book? … Continue reading Adventure Structure and Design: Storm King’s Thunder
In the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons, a stream of new and variant classes appeared in the pages of The Strategic Review¸ The Dragon and other fan magazines. One category of class was the NPC Class, a character class designed specifically for use by the DM’s non-player characters. Often, they would have various features that made them inappropriate for use by the players – … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Priestess
One of the great tropes in adventure fiction is capturing the protagonist and letting him find a way to escape. Unfortunately, requiring the capture of adventurers is extremely problematic in the middle of a game of Dungeons & Dragons. It is something that needs to be very carefully handled. The problem derives from the nature of D&D. The essence of the game is that you … Continue reading The Trouble with Capturing Adventurers
One of the most important skills in the Dungeon Master’s toolbox is the ability to improvise. And, based on my long experience with the game, it’s a skill that takes time to develop. Like most skills, you get better at improvisation by actually improvising, and paying attention to what your players think of the result. Many of the games I’ve run have been improvised. Even … Continue reading On the Art of Improvisation
It is with some surprise that I find that I’ve been running the Dungeons & Dragons organised play at Guf Ballarat for the past six years. It began slowly, but now we typically have somewhere between 20 and 40 people playing with us on a weekly basis, coming to one or other of the D&D nights we hold or, for some players, both. We get … Continue reading New Players and the Slow Release Schedule of Dungeons & Dragons
Designing a basic adventure for Dungeons & Dragons isn’t hard. Just draw a map, put some monsters and treasure in it, and you’ve got an adventure! It’s one of the reasons that D&D remains the most dominant role-playing game on the market: it isn’t hard to create an adventure for your players. However, just going into a dungeon and killing monsters proves – after a … Continue reading Designing Adventures: Objectives
If you’re new to Dungeon Mastering D&D, the task of designing an adventure can be pretty daunting. After all, you’ve picked up Curse of Strahd or Lost Mine of Phandelver and there are lots and lots of words there. How is a beginner even going to get close to that? Well, you’re not. But then, neither am I. I’ve been doing this Dungeon-mastering gig for … Continue reading D&D for Beginners: Writing Adventure Notes
A few weeks ago, I was listening to Jeff Greiner, Sam Dillon, Mike Shea and Wolfgang Baur discuss designing adventures for the DMs Guild on the Tome Show. One of the many interesting comments they made was that there was a need for very short side treks that could be dropped into campaigns. That was the starting point. I’ve been interested in writing and publishing … Continue reading Inspiration and Designing an Adventure
When you play role-playing games, it is generally the case that your PC comes from somewhere and has a personality and history. The character isn’t just a collection of numbers, except in the most basic of dungeon crawls. Not everyone is good at creating these personalities and backgrounds. 5th Edition D&D uses “Background” system to give some context to the character and explores a few … Continue reading RPG Supplement Review: 5 Questions
