Ten Cool D&D Things #41-50
This list was emailed on October 3rd, 2022.
Two goblins guard the cave entrance, and your rogue sneaks up to listen to their chatter. What do they say? Konsumterra created a d100 table of dungeon guard gossip to answer this question.
Jon Bupp wrote a nice article on D&D magic item creation called Charms, Cantrip Items, and Long Rest Items.
Rise Up, Comus devised some new long rest rules for D&D. They are nicely crafted and would suit a hexcrawling game with a simulationist bent.
Are you stuck in an RPG gaming lull? The good gnomes share some practical advice for getting out of the doldrums.
Scroll for Initiative thinks boxed text is bad for you. I'm afraid I disagree, but I do appreciate their twelve tips for great description on the fly.
Eldritch Fields designed an excellent lair generator and used it to create six mountain lair encounters. These are full of flavor and are a great example of using randomization to make compelling game elements.
Would you like a free supplement? Orana's Expanded Spellbook is 54 pages of free, magical goodness.
One of the boffins at the DM's Academy has some very, very good advice about lair actions.
The Old Dungeon Master asks a simple Fifth Edition question - are dead creatures objects? The answer is more involved than you might think.
Speaking of questions, Michael Galvis answers a perennial one - how should you handle character death in D&D?
This list was emailed on October 11th, 2022.
Terrifying is passé, so John Roy has five tips for making your dragons funny.
Reader Seth Jones created an online Fighting-Fantasy style game called The Saints Tomb. It's 5E compatible!
Would you like a free 129-page supplement? Terror Unto Madness is a book of aberrations for D&D 5E!
Johnn Four has seven suggestions for keeping players of unconscious dying characters engaged. Good advice!
Stephen Bandstra shows you how to create cult boons. These are great, and your players will love them.
Sly Flourish has some tips for dealing with pre-game nerves. I just got back from running four tables at PAX AUS, and yeah, this is a real thing.
The Alexandrian describes some valuable techniques for connecting your hexes in a hexcrawl.
The_mellojoe has an amusing method for introducing new NPCs to a high-level party.
Jeff Lee offers some tips and tricks for magical contracts. If you want to get the player's attention, offer their character a contract to sign!
Codex Fantasia has created ship combat rules for Spelljammer. These are beautifully presented, and I like how they provide combat options that leverage character class features.
This list was emailed on October 18th, 2022.
Eldritch Fields shares six D&D forest encounters. He created these with his quick lair generator, a simple tool that produces surprisingly rich ideas. It is worth taking a closer look.
Christopher Tamm has written up 100 cursed manor houses. Drop these into the middle of your hex crawl, or plant one just outside your home village.
I send out plenty of advice for Dungeon Masters, but this week Brittany Ferrandi has seven tips for being a better player.
It's not easy being evil. It's not! And so, Alyssa Visscher explains how to play an evil character in Dungeons & Dragons.
Too many players and not enough Dungeon Masters means you sometimes get packed tables. DragnaCarta shows you how to run D&D for large groups.
Mike Shea went from running D&D exclusively in person to running D&D exclusively online for more than two years. In this post, he shares his most significant learnings about online play. It's a good and valuable read.
Monte Cook should blog more often! In this rare post, he explains why specificity is the game designer's friend.
NeffinDaSamich invented a silly DM trick to re-engage his players. It might feel a bit gamey, but it works.
Ronja Bär and Jannis Jorre created a free new space biome called the Shimmer Zone. They wrote it for Spelljammer, but you could effortlessly drop it into any campaign as a demi-plane.
A modest designer has devised a simple method to ensure a fantastic session of D&D--just add C.O.R.P.S.E.S!
This list was emailed on October 25th, 2022.
Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque presents a free D&D location called "Wildacre." They describe it as a "gothic powder keg," and it is essentially a set of NPCs and adventure seeds. It would be ideal for a social-heavy game.
D&D Speak has created a d100 table of travel montage events. These well-crafted mini-encounters will add color to your next journey.
Brandes Stoddard is converting some evocative Fourth Edition spells across to Fifth Edition.
EnPublishing has created an online random dungeon builder. It uses Paul Hughes' NODES system to populate the rooms, meaning they have coherence and dynamism. Check it out!
Some of the folks from Critical Role recently sat down for a chat about dungeon mastering. The Alexandrian has summarised their best tips. This post contains excellent DM advice and is well-worth reading.
I know that many of you publish your own material. Mike Shea has shared the best RPG marketing advice I've seen.
Ok, this is for those with an academic bent. In a lengthy post, Brian Rideout explores what a TTRPG system is.
Just in time for Halloween, Joe Starr has some tips for bringing horror to your D&D game.
Merric addresses a perennial question: how many monsters should you include in a D&D encounter?
Finally, Elven Towers presents a free 5th-level adventure called Shrine of the Basalt Pilgrim. A fun dungeon with a fantastic battle map!
This list was emailed on November 1st, 2022.
Konsumterra presents 100 dirty tricks of the dungeon gods. Some are easy. Some are elaborate. All of them are fun.
Ingo2020 ran over 300 sessions of D&D Fifth Edition and discovered 23 tips for speeding up combat.
Grognardia suggests that random encounters, rather than being a nuisance, are the real lifeblood of D&D gaming. As it happens, my group recently finished up a hexcrawl through northern Calimshan, and the random encounters frequently turned into engaging little side stories.
Dump Stat Adventures has a good overview of thieves' cant, including a vocabulary. This article is a fantastic resource for a Rogue character prepared to do a little work.
Are your characters planning to visit a high-magic city? Adam Roy designed some magic items that regular city dwellers use to make their lives easier.
Want to improve your improvisation skills? Jason Cordova invented the 7-3-1 technique to help you get better.
Gimble's Grimoire of Gnomish Knowledge is a 63-page compendium full of new races, subclasses, spells, and magic items. And it is entirely free.
Adding a new player to an existing D&D group is hard work. Headless Hydra created the gaming group questionnaire to make things a little easier.
J.T. Evans asks what the "heartbeat" of your D&D world is. Have you created a "living world" or an "undead world?" It's a thought-provoking article.
Finally, here's a little something from my own pen. I'm a fan of RPG history, and I've decided to review each issue of the old Dragon Magazine on my blog. You can read my review of issue #1 here. Please have a look; it's fun!
This list was emailed on November 8th, 2022.
The ever-prolific Mike Shea has some excellent D&D advice for reaching a satisfying campaign conclusion. And check out the result of his youtube poll!
Ktrey presents 100 magical hats and helms. Hat 70 "reveals the presence of lycanthropes with howls only the wearer can hear." Love it!
D&D game prep can be a serious time sink. Celeste Conowitch has some strategies for sharing prep work with the players.
Stephen notes that the terrain is an adversary. This post is the best write-up on D&D terrain usage I've seen.
One of the boffins at the DM Academy has nine tips to make D&D combat more engaging.
Zellorea created a fun D&D homebrew - presenting the demigod class! It's more focused on solo play than anything, but the presentation is lovely.
Merric has some thoughts on D&D as a game of attrition. The word "attrition" makes it sound grindy, but it doesn't have to be.
You've heard of hexcrawls and pointcrawls, right? Let Justin introduce you to the depthcrawl. I have yet to run a game like this, but I'd love to.
Mike Bourke does a deep dive into time travel campaigns. This blog post covers a lot of territory.
Josh had a nasty scare recently, prompting him to share a five-step process for creating a megadungeon.
This list was emailed on November 15th, 2022.
Scroll for Initiative demonstrates how to use factions to make your monsters unique. I always encourage you to use factions in your D&D game.
This article is neat. Joe from Worldogragpher (they produce cartographic software) shows you how to create a fantasy world map. You can use these same principles whether drawing a map by software or by hand.
Rick draws on some old-school D&D energy with a set of rules for potion creation. He adds just enough detail to complement the rules in the DMG nicely.
Jack the DM recommends you try using group initiative in your D&D game. Honestly, he makes a bunch of good points.
Konsumterra presents 100 strange doorways. Some fantastic ideas here, including "Ancient stone slab with mystic spirals and dancing horned people. Inside is a magical labyrinth connected to similar mazes in different times and worlds..."
Elven Towers shares two free one-page D&D adventures. Check out Lair of the Mind Eater and The Golem Factory.
For Ravenloft fans, Jake Guignol has revised the dread domain of Keening. But beware of Gristgale Tor!
Dragonlance is coming really soon! For those still catching up, here is a five-minute introduction to the defining event of the setting.
Noisms describes a fun trick for creating new monsters. There are more good ideas in the comments.
How would you like 120 pages of free D&D subclasses, spells, and feats? Check out Spellcaster Options by FermatMD.
This list was emailed on November 22nd, 2022.
Johnn Four explains how to create engaging D&D session recaps. I've gotten a lot more disciplined about recaps in my latest campaign, and it makes a difference.
Many of you already use Dungeon Scrawl to create your maps. Are you aware that it recently underwent a major upgrade? If you haven't been there in a while, check it out.
Donut Fiend has a strategy for handling overly powerful D&D player characters. It's a good suggestion that's worked well for me at the table.
Ktrey created 100 wilderness landmarks. Combine these with a random encounter, and you have a fantastic resource for hex crawls.
James Eck has a whole bunch of strategies for increasing D&D campaign longevity. Some of his points are excellent, others less so. He omits two essential techniques: define some campaign-level factions and weave PC backstories into your main plot.
Phil Vecchione shares some helpful (and perhaps contestable) thoughts on immersion at the gaming table.
I've been linking to Justin Alexander a lot lately, but he is very linkable. In this excellent post, he explains what a D&D pointcrawl is. He includes links to a complete example along with some fascinating historical context.
Shannon Appelcline has compiled a list of the top 10 megadungeons of all time. I own most of these and cheerfully plunder them for ideas.
I suspect a few of you are fans of Laser Llama. They have just released a new version of the alternate ranger. It's a beautiful document and full of excellent ideas.
Michael Galvis answers a question that is not often asked: what happens when a dragon dies in D&D? And he is right - it is a major event.
This list was emailed on November 29th, 2022.
In Describing Rather than Defining, Monte Cook explains a methodological shift that happened early in the days of RPGs and its negative impact on scenario design. It's the most insightful article I've read in the last few months.
D&D Speak presents 100 evil magic items. An impressively grisly list!
A well-realized city is an absolute joy in D&D, but preparing them can be daunting. Mike Shea explains how to build cities around your characters.
One of the boffins at the DM Academy had a simple question: why do D&D puzzles suck when escape rooms are such fun? After some reflection, he devised three guidelines for better D&D puzzles.
Brian Rideout identifies three quirks of D&D player psychology and suggests many clever ways to utilize them in the game. There are some golden suggestions that I've immediately added to my campaign.
Staying with the psychology theme, James Eck has a valuable piece on RPGs and Psychological Needs. There is some genuine insight here.
Chris McDowell identifies seven monster abilities that D&D players hate and creates a new monster around each.
Peter from the Dungeon Fantastic reminds us of a neat little trope he calls mirror mirror gaming. This would be a great way to shake up a campaign.
Are you looking for something different? In Ambergleam's Demise, you play the role of demons in the service of a wizard. It's 119 pages of epic D&D adventure, and it's free!
Finally, Noisms explains why D&D death should be final in The Phenomenology of Death. Hardcore...
This list was emailed on December 6th, 2022.
Dump Stat Adventures has some strategies to use if your D&D player characters take too many rests. This article has some good advice, though my own players often forget to rest!
In the coming months, WOTC will release new encounter-building guidelines for playtesting. In a timely blog post, Sly Flourish explains what monster Challenge Rating (CR) actually means.
In my world of Iskandar, the thieves guild is called the Friendly Society of Mendicants, and they are not to be trifled with! But, just in case you do, DND Speak has 100 thieves guild quests for you.
Justin Alexander recommends you spray your bullets when introducing threats into your campaign. He makes a good case.
DM David recommends you steer clear of roll versus random punishment when doing overland travel in D&D. He's right when you are doing travel montages, but his point is less applicable to hex crawls or even point crawls.
Gabe Rodriguez designed a 67-page 5E campaign guide called The Streets of New Capenna, and it's beautiful. Though not stated explicitly, the book has a real diesel-punk vibe. This setting would be an excellent place for your players to explore as a change of pace. And, of course, the book is entirely free!
The ever-clever Brandes Stoddard has some thoughts on dungeon fatigue and its solutions. Formatting makes this a difficult read, but there are some valuable observations.
In a lengthy article, Mike Bourke explains the four roads to characterization in RPGs. Honestly, characterization as a topic has been underserved in our game, with many folks getting no further than a laundry list of attributes.
The Alpine DM describes How to Make your D&D players think you're a super genius. No pressure!
A few weeks ago, WOTC took Dragon+ offline. This news was unwelcome since that magazine had some excellent articles. Thankfully, the playable content from Dragon+ remains online at the WOTC server, and someone has compiled a list of links to this material.