-
Recent Posts
Tags
Recent Comments
- The Breacher on It’s Been a Minute
- JiSK on About
- Isaac on Removing Ability Scores
- Arnie Rogers on D&D Stats in Simple Language
- Daniel j. Squire on D&D Stats in Simple Language
Meta
Category Archives: DMing
DMing with Constitution
I don’t know how many of you remember November, when I tried to line up guest posts while I focused on National Novel Writing Month. It didn’t work out, but I did get one late in the month and now … Continue reading
Posted in DMing
Comments Off on DMing with Constitution
Serious Stories and Emotional Taxes
It takes a lot for me to drop a story early. I’ve struggled enough with pacing and storytelling to know how important a good beginning, middle, and end are to any narrative, and I feel like I can’t effectively judge … Continue reading
An Attempt at Truly Improvisational DMing
Over the course of my DMing career, I’ve slowly moved from a rigid style to something looser. When I started off, I was one of those DMs who had to have every beat of the story planned, every NPC statted … Continue reading
Wish
Some years ago, when I frequented the Wizards D&D message boards, there was a user whose signature said something to the effect of “the spiked chain exists to find the DMs brave enough to ban Core material”. That is, the … Continue reading
The Art of Art
Our campaigns tend to have three names: an real one, a colloquial one, and a snarky one. I’ve talked about how The Eight Arms and the Memento Mori quickly became The Monster-Hunting Campaign and soon after became The Monster-Friending Campaign. … Continue reading
House Rule: Three-Axis Cosmology
Especially astute readers may have picked up on this in the last article: …the players suffered a planar travel mishap and ended up on Carceri, the plane of prisons…Instead I told the players on their way out the door that … Continue reading
The Art of the Retcon
I’m wrong a lot. Like, a lot. It’s a big part of the reason my first campaigns were so incredibly linear, because I couldn’t reconcile being the all-powerful expert running the game with being the guy who thought his rubber … Continue reading
Posted in DMing
3 Comments
DMing with Intelligence
Except my wife, our first guest DM is probably the person with whom I have spend the most gaming time. He’s the player behind Mikau the Unwitting and Hadarai and the DM behind The Gods are Dead, Long Live the … Continue reading
Posted in DMing
Comments Off on DMing with Intelligence
Making a Puzzle Boss
The steps for building a puzzle boss are pretty much the same as building any kind of encounter, or any kind of story, ever. That is: Goal: The players want something Conflict: The DM puts an obstacle in their way … Continue reading
Posted in DMing
Comments Off on Making a Puzzle Boss
On D&D as a Brand
As I’ve mentioned before, I follow professional wrestling, and today I want to talk Sunday’s WWE event, “Hell in a Cell”. Its namesake is the Hell in a Cell match, which is the big brother of a steel cage match. … Continue reading →