Dungeons and Dragons is a very open game. Your players could decide to walk off in any direction, look at anything, or pick a fight with anyone. This is one of the primary hurdles that dungeon masters have to face in their games and it is often hard to plan around. You can’t prepare everything …
Maps are a staple part of fantasy adventure. They’re not just pieces of paper that tell you where to go, they’re a visual representation of the places you could explore, as well as a rich and detailed plotting of how each area relates to each other. It’s easy to see why maps are great for …
Does your party play recklessly? Do you play with a vetran group who wants a bit more challenge? Do you have players who run characters with no regard for getting wounded, hurt, or otherwise suffering? If you answered yes to any of these questions then adding a wounds mechanic might be for you. These are …
Most people don’t randomly choose enemies when they’re doing their session preparation. Much like a painter choosing the colors for their artwork, you have to choose a selection of monsters that work well together. The themes can range from basic enemies like the undead to complex creatures from a jungle ecosystem. No matter what you …
When players think about Hit Points they generally think of it as a physical attribute. They imagine it’s how badly damaged they are or how wounded they appear. But what if we were thinking about HP all wrong this whole time? What if instead of representing your actual health HP represented your endurance? Let’s talk …
Does combat take too long in your DnD sessions? Are you spending hours on just a handful of rounds? You’re not alone. This is a common problem that many DMs face and it can be hard to fix. If you’re struggling with this, there is a simple rule that can help: the 1:10 rule for …
For many homebrew campaigns your players’ characters will travel in a straight line through the story, progressing from town to town and dungeon to dungeon. While this type of narrative progression from one location to the next often flows with the story, it can make the world seem flat and like you’ve railroaded your players …
Your players might be hoarders. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but health potions might go unused, magical items may stack up, and once common troubles are sometimes completely erased with a surplus of equipment for any situation. If you want a more casual game you don’t need to discourage hoarding. But in more serious …
In the world of Dungeons and Dragons secret doors abound. But most of the time they go unnoticed or end up hardly being secrets at all. This is a problem of making secret doors either too secret or too obvious. Often this is because the purpose behind the secret door hasn’t been fully explored and …
Keeping track of everything going on in combat can be a slog. The larger the combat, the more grueling that task becomes. A medium sized combat might have a ton of minis on the field at once and it really becomes a test of will for the DM to focus on maintaining the game state …
