My current Dungeon Master loves designing scenarios that feature the alarm spell. Currently we’re sneaking around a dragon’s lair complex for the second time… having triggered an alarm the first time, lost the element of surprise and been forced to beat an undignified retreat. On our second attempt we’ve been casting detect magic a lot […]
Category: DMs Tips (Page 1 of 8)
Last Christmas I ran the Bone Dragon Pyramid from The Creative GM’s Guide To Extraordinary Locations as a one-shot for some of my old school friends and their kids. I placed the pyramid in Chult (Forgotten Realms) and inserted a Heart of Darkness-style boat ride up the river Tyriki to reach the pyramid, after which […]
I’ve seen even experienced Game Masters resort to railroading at the gaming table. Hell, I’ve been guilty of it myself, and on more than one occasion. But why would any GM stoop that low, when pretty much the one thing that everyone in this hobby agrees upon is that “railroading is bad”? Contrary to what […]
Too often in Dungeons & Dragons, DMs and adventure writers default to creating temples for their settings that closely resemble real-life churches. And I’m not talking about just the aesthetics. Often the entire “vibe” of fantasy temples, along with their role in society, are copied and pasted from how Christian churches function in the real […]
It’s February already, which means the RPG Blog Carnival on the topic of “Fantasy Locations”, has wrapped up. A total of 8 bloggers contributed a variety of design tips, think-pieces and original new locations that gamers can drop into their own RPG sessions. Below you can find links to all that location-based goodness, posted on […]
Extraordinary locations are at the heart of all great RPG adventures. They provide the cinematic settings of our shared stories, inspiring our players to interact with and explore the worlds that we inhabit in our imagination, while offering abundant opportunities for magic, intrigue, danger, and adventure — the very reasons we come to the table […]
I’ve tried to fix falling in D&D twice already. Maybe, I even succeeded. But since I wasn’t able to recall my own house rules during a recent session, without looking them up, they don’t quite fulfil my twin needs of being a) more realistic than the official rules but also b) being simple enough to […]
Over the course of 2025, I’ve seen multiple bloggers and Youtubers attempt to fix D&D 5.5’s new hiding rules. While these are all folks I respect, most of their revisions ended up as 2,000+ word treatises full of technical jargon that made me want to reach for the Ibuprofen more than my gemstones. So, as […]
In my last post I talked about the maxim: “rulings, not rules”. Living by this maxim can drastically speed up your game, as making a quick ruling about a situation and getting on with the game is obviously far faster than poring through the handbooks and trying to reach consensus on the “correct” way to […]
Despite starting my RPG journey with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in the late 80s, I have almost zero nostalgia for the early days of D&D. It was fun at the time, but laboriously making my way through an improbable dungeon, prodding every square inch of stone with a 10-foot-pole for traps, all so I can […]
