Adventurers wanting to break down a door is a really common scenario in D&D, but one that can be surprisingly hard to adjudicate, especially when the players are under no time pressure. The desire to transform a door into shards of timber typically occurs when the rogue fails their Dexterity check with thieves’ tools, leading […]
Category: DMs Tips (Page 2 of 8)
I finished running my first ever D&D “intrigue” adventure recently. Since a) it went pretty well and b) it was quite a different adventuring experience to our usual sessions, I thought it would make a good topic for a blog post. A while back I tried to categorise all the possible Dungeons & Dragons quest […]
Of all the posts I see on Reddit, RPG forums and social media requesting advice on running 5e D&D, DMs asking their peers for tips on how to speed up combat are by far the most frequent. It seems to be a real bugbear of many DMs. And while the usually solid advice given in […]
Legendary Resistances are one of 5e’s most unsatisfying mechanics. They are an incredibly blunt solution that the designers had to include to counter the many annoying spells they let in the door of the 2014 Player’s Handbook (…and indeed the 2024 version too). Wheeling out banishment or polymorph on a wandering monster might be a […]
Much proverbial ink has been spilt on the subject of running skills checks in D&D, including on this very blog (…discussing adjusting the default Difficulty Classes, using passive skills as a solution for swingy dice, and an early suggestion that certain proficiencies should be considered ‘technical’ proficiencies). Like most DMs, my methodology for adjudicating such […]
Designing and running truly fantastic Dungeons & Dragons scenarios time after time ain’t easy. More often than not your instincts and tools will help you create a great gaming session… but sometimes what sounded cool in your imagination doesn’t spark the game into life, the players lose interest and the session falls flat. I’d be […]
While cities in Dungeons & Dragons are jam-packed with adventure potential, it can be much harder for DMs to find the drama in an urban setting, versus that of the dungeon or wilderness. This is largely because the Dungeon Master’s main tool – monsters – can’t be deployed with the same frequency and credibility in […]
The other day I saw that Sly Flourish answered a question on his RPG talk show about running gladiatorial arenas in D&D. Given that I dedicated 1.5 years of my life writing an epic 300-page arena adventure, I figured this is probably a topic I should also address on my own media! Especially since writing […]
Recently, I have run two big trial scenes in two separate D&D campaigns. The first led to one of the most dramatic sessions I have ever run (or so the players who took part told me!), full of twists, turns, revelations and surprises. The second was full of prevaricating, repetitions, belligerent brow-beating and farcical pretence. […]
It’s a common lament in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons that players accrue bags and bags of cash, but have very little to spend it on. Inquisitive players start to wonder why they bother delving into dungeons, or accept life threatening missions, to amass more and more gold, when they can’t even spend the coin […]
