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 …
In Dungeons and Dragons most of the time when we visit a “dungeon” it’s actually just a location. Despite being part of the name, most adventures don’t take place in actual dungeons and players rarely fight dragons. This isn’t a point we’re bring up as a complaint. On the contrary, we find DnD to be …
Sitting in a tavern after raiding a lost ruin near a swampy settlement, the group divides up their loot. The leader parcels out what they recovered: old coins, a few gems, and what appears to be a magical ring. As per tradition, the member of the party with the most monster kills chooses their pile …
In DnD there is no place more well-tread for players than the general store. Adventuring supplies, rations, and goods of all types typically come from some general shop in most campaigns. While it can be tempting to consider these shops as a catch-all for any non-specialty good, they have a lot more to offer than …
It may sound obvious to some, but one of the best things you can do to improve your DnD game as a dungeon master is to take time to think about your campaign. So often dungeon masters spend a lot of their session prep working out mechanics, dialogue, and descriptions, but not all of the …
Dice play an important role in Dungeons and Dragons. They provide a random chance to events. They leave certain actions in the game to fate. Rolling well feels lucky and rolling poorly feels unlucky, but no one argues these rolls. While dice are a wonderful and an integral mechanic to the game, you as a …
The DM Screen is a long standing piece of Dungeons and Dragons tradition. Not everyone uses one, but we’d argue that more DMs should. The relatively simple addition of a barrier between you and your players’ eyes can change your game in many different ways. Let’s take a peek behind the screen and see what …
Have you ever had a bad session as a DM? Did you ever think your story was bad or characters were flat? This happens to even the most experienced dungeon masters. You’ll always have times that you’re not at the top of your game. And you know what? That’s okay. Because being a dungeon master …
