Category: GM advice
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Swept Up in the OSR Revival
After ten years of playing Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons, my tables are beginning to turn to the borrowed nostalgia of simpler times (not experienced by any of us) in tabletop games. Now we, too, carry torches to illuminate the dark and tap at every tile with a ten foot…
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Running the Long Con with Your Players
The heroes love the trinket pendants given to them by the high priest and show them off at every opportunity. Little do they know that the high priest had given them these pendants for his own purposes, and they are playing right into his hands…
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A Practical Guide to Becoming a Dungeon Master (Glossary Included)
Hail and well met, courageous soul who dares to take on the mantle of Dungeon Master. This post is for you and others who asked, somewhere in the nebulous web, how to get started…
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5 Memorable Magical Trinkets (And Two Regrettable Items)
Some magic items are memorable because they were the object of a lengthy quest. Some magic items are memorable because they were used in a pivotal moment. And some are memorable because they are dumb…
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House Rules
A game should be alive. It should breathe. Like a recipe, it offers a baseline which can be adjusted to suit one’s taste. And thus was born the house rules. Here are the house rules frequently used at my table.
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Combat System for Text-Based D&D
I am currently running a text-based solo adventure for a friend, and the delay between messages is often several days. If not weeks. This causes a dilemma. Combat in D&D is notoriously time-consuming…
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Monster Encounters That Flopped
It is the fate of a game master that, on occasion, you plan an encounter which in your head will be immersive and dramatic, requiring the player characters to fight desperately for their lives. And then when it is played out, it is over in twenty minutes and the players…
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When Players Make Bad Decisions
The GM rolled a die, informed me that there was a spider crawling on my character’s arm, and asked what I wanted to do. I said that I yelled in horror and tried to fling it off, and the veteran players all sighed and rolled their eyes…
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Making Monster Fights Cool
In a game that is about fighting monsters, it is surprisingly easy to have monster fights that are, well, boring. I would like to focus on making monster fights exciting, suspenseful, and memorable.