Ten Cool D&D Things #101-110
These items were emailed between January 3rd and March 6th, 2024.
The One Page Dungeon competition is back, and the organizers have just released the compendium of 2023 entrants. It includes 112 dungeons, and it is Pay-What-You-Want.
Hex Roll is a D&D sandbox generator with the goal of allowing you to run prep-free sessions. They just released a new version, and it is very impressive. The maps look great, and the system includes full dungeons for the first time. It is not yet clever enough to apply a theme to a hex or dungeon, but I think that is coming.
Most of you already know what a West Marches campaign is. Duncan describes his West Marches urban campaign called Waterdeep: Dirty Jobs. It sounds like great fun!
Xaosseed ran a lot of episodic and one-shot D&D in 2023. In this post, he shares various tricks to ensure a session ends on time.
Bike Problem Guy thinks long character backstories are overrated. I agree that longer is not necessarily better. I give my players the option - some like to take their time and write up a full story, while others just want to jot down a few notes. Players should know it's fine to leave gaps in the backstory to fill in later. "I was a member of House Callain, but I fled because of some scandal" is an acceptable backstory, and you might not figure out what the scandal was until the game progresses for a few sessions.
I know I often link to The Alexandrian, but his content is too good to ignore. In Spell Component Roleplaying, he demonstrates a simple pattern to give your NPCs some depth.
Speaking of people I often link, Sly Flourish explains how to have hard conversations with your players. Honestly, this is the sort of advice I'd like to have in the official Dungeon Masters Guide.
Johnn Four explains how to turn combat into clever puzzles. It is hard to do in practice, but pulling it off is incredibly satisfying.
Influential game designer Chris McDowall just finished crowdfunding Mythic Bastionland, his new D&D-adjacent game of knights and heraldry. In this post, he discusses what makes traveling fun in the game. It's short but gives a little window into his playstyle.
The Gameatory brings us adventures in encumbrance. I do try to account for encumbrance in play, but not in a very systematic way. I need to find a better approach.
Phil Vecchione shares Five DMing Things I Learned in 2023. I should create a similar list. And you, gentle readers, please let me know your big DM lesson from 2023.
Are you beginning a new campaign? Scott F Gray shares some unusual ways to kick things off. These are fun!
Scatterbrained Sabatini suggests that you should sometimes swindle your players. Not too often, but sometimes.
The Unwritten Man has a bunch of tips for adapting pre-written adventure modules.
I recently discovered Hex Friend, an attractive and user-friendly hex-mapping tool. It is entirely online and completely free.
Speaking of great online tools, I plan to use Excalidraw to share diagrams with my D&D group. I was using Jamboard previously, but it was clunky.
Lich Van Winkle encourages you to Trust the Dice for Your Fiction. It reminds me of a justly esteemed Grognardia article, On the Oracular Power of Dice.
It is D&D night, and a few people have dropped out. What should you do? Polygon shares a list of excellent, no-prep RPGs.
Merric suggests some ways to make D&D skill challenges more meaningful and engaging. He has put in many hours at the gaming table and is worth listening to.
Yossarian has a simple NPC tip that will save you a lot of embarrassment. There are some great tips in the comments, too.
Merric is musing about the objective of published adventures. His first sentence contains a brilliant insight, and adventure writers should take note.
Kobold Press returns with "Pack Tactics." This time, the experts answer a question asked by anyone who has ever sat behind the screen: what should I do when my players are not engaged with my game?
Xaos Seed has been playing Baldur's Gate III, and it's made him realize that D&D games need to do more with terrain. I agree, but let's acknowledge it's a little more challenging with theatre of the mind.
Weird Writer suggests we treat social encounters as problem-solving exercises and invoke social saving throws when the PCs misstep. I like this idea A LOT, but I disagree with how he downplays roleplaying the actual conversation, which is usually very fun.
Characters often meet at a tavern for the first time at the start of an adventure, but connecting them through some preexisting relationships is usually better. To help achieve this, I've devised a d66 character connection table inspired by Fiasco.
Michael Prescott is thinking about fiddly game mechanics and how to make them worthwhile. He's got some good insights. One idea for spell components is that they can enhance a spell. For example, crushed sapphire might extend the range of a spell.
Goblin Punch critiques the traditional portrayal of demons in D&D and devises an impressive and fully-fleshed alternative. This is an excellent example for all you world-builders.
Speaking of worldbuilding, the ever-clever David McGrogan of Yoon Suin has identified the different degrees of magic you encounter in fictional worlds: high magic, implied magic, no magic, low magic, and fake magic. D&D defaults to high, but what if your next setting used a different degree?
More worldbuilding! Joel from Silver Arm Press has a simple test to determine if your game lore is "meaningful."
J.D. Corely is thinking about RPG crimes. Tell me, citizen, have you committed "felony railroading?"
Do you need help running urban and wilderness adventures? A lot of DMs do! Davyd Barker suggests one good solution is to run everything like a dungeon and illustrates his point with terrific graphics. It is the best D&D Beyond article I've seen in years.
Keith Baker wants you to spice up your campaign with Wondrous Caches, and he shares some evocative examples. They are Eberron-focused, but you can easily transfer them into your campaign world.
The Canadian Broadcasting Commission has discovered that Dungeons and Dragons is being used in therapy. And it is very effective. More stories like this, please.
Here are the 10 Most Anticipated TTRPGs for 2024, as voted on by thousands of EN World readers. I'm looking forward to many of these games.
Merric is musing on D&D combat and examines a stunning conundrum. I wonder if WOTC will address these issues in D&D24?
Matt shares a small but surprisingly evocative dungeon in Cave of Creepers. I enjoyed the little cultural reference!
Ktrey has created a d100 table of street names and street embellishments. Keep this list handy next time your party visits the city.
Sly Flourish suggests you need to bathe your world in lore. Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes! As an aside, I love getting emails where people tell me about their campaign worlds. Or, if you don't have time for epic world-building, perhaps check out my Iskandar setting?
Goblin Punch, a respected voice in the OSR community, says the quiet part out loud: hexcrawls kinda suck. Not always, of course, but pretty frequently. He does a good job identifying the problems, though his proposed solution is still rudimentary.
The Unwritten Man suggests we can fix D&D's gameplay loop with item degradation. It's a bold claim, but I like the guts of his proposal.
One of the boffins at the DM Academy says that originality is overrated. He makes a great point--read the whole post.
Scott F. Gray describes how some of the best D&D characters are beautifully broken. In my current campaign, we have a Fighter modeled after Indiana Jones, who won't wear anything except leather armor for that reason. He's a fantastic character!
Franco Alvarado has created an online Six-Room Dungeon Diagram Generator using the Bite-Sized Dungeon concept by Marcia B. You'll need to click through to Marcia's post for further explanation and some of the theory.
J.T. Evans describes how to set up your character goals. His system will suit many, though it is too complex for my taste. In my current campaign, I asked each player to define One Big Problem their character had, which would drive their arc. Check out the latest issue of the Iskandar Explorer's Guide for some ideas.
Sly Flourish suggests you replace Fifth Edition Inspiration with Luck. He uses the Tales of the Valiant Luck system, which is excellent. Folks have complained that ToV is too similar to vanilla 5E, but I have seen plenty of innovation so far.
Open Hearth is looking at great RPG mechanics, and this week discusses the Escalation Die from 13th Age. I also like this mechanic, and I've occasionally used it in my D&D games.
RPG designer Peter Eijk is taking inspiration from point-and-click adventures. It's an excellent framework for conducting a pointcrawl, and I was especially pleased to see he highlighted inventory puzzles, which work well with D&D.
GFC shares the golden rule of sandbox refereeing. It is straightforward, but you will have much trouble if you ignore it.
G.R. Michael is creating random encounters with poet Stephen Crane. It's a great example of using non-obvious pieces of culture as the creative mulch for your game.
The annual Bloggies highlight some of the best blog posts in the TTRPG scene. This year's host, Zedeck Siew, has just announced the winners of the Best RPG Advice category.
Merric is back, and he is musing on D&D doors. It's a surprisingly thorough and helpful treatment of this topic.
In The DNA of Adventure Modules, Chris Bissette takes a single encounter and presents it in the different styles used by various flavors of D&D over the years. It's a very informative exercise that will be useful to anyone creating an adventure.
Jae has one big tip that will elevate D&D combat in your game. It's an old idea but a good one.
D&D Beyond has published some strong articles recently. This week, Mike Bernier explains how to run murder mysteries in D&D.
Adam suggests you should give the PCs new names. It's a great little tip, and I want to incorporate it into my campaign as appropriate.
Baron Deropp explains how Shadowdark fixes everything wrong with Fifth Edition. He might be guilty of hyperbole, but the article is worth reading!
The Kobolds present another round of Pack Tactics. This time, they are answering the question: how do I get the characters across a big city?
Warren D. presents John Romero's level design rules from Doom. There is some solid advice here, which Warren reinterprets for D&D.
Wisdom in the Dungeon has a simple system called Confidant, Flame, or Rival that allows you to quickly generate messy relationship webs, such as you find in Game of Thrones.
Do you like math? Metaphorical Simile shows you how much difference a +1 bonus really makes in Fifth Edition. (Spoiler: quite a lot).
Stephen Bandstra is looking at Warren Spector's 10 commandments of game design. These are terrific and will help anyone run a better campaign.
Duncan explains how he fixed D&D's "too much gold and nothing to spend it on" problem. He includes 10 strategies, and they are very practical.
The 2023 Bloggies have just wrapped up, and Zedeck Siew has announced the Best RPG Blog Post of the Year. The article is well worth reading.
Sly Flourish is back with another simple but oh-so-effective tip. It is this: tune monsters with extra attacks. That's it! We sometimes make life more complicated than it needs to be.
Ben shares thirty encounters for Midgard's Wasted West location. These are outstanding examples of one-sentence encounters, as they present every creature with some context.
Jae has a comprehensive article on navigating player absences in Dungeons & Dragons. It includes lots of strategies and some creative tools.
Graeme has a new take on the pillars of a roleplaying game. While I think the hobby will retain the three pillars model, I also agree with the challenges he has identified.
Monte Cook discusses the importance of keeping to the theme when writing your RPG rules. If you are ever writing RPG material for someone else to read, this is worth understanding.
Martin has created The Bell Curving Encounter Table, which aims to unify the encounter tables for settled, borderland, and wilderness areas. It's a clever approach that I like a lot.
The VTT DM thinks that dungeon turns are cool and would like to see them reintroduced to Fifth Edition.
Mike Shea flips conventional wisdom on its head and argues that sometimes the Dungeon Master needs to tell, don't show. I've often made the mistake of being too obtuse and bogging my game down. If there's nothing of value in the room, don't let the players spend 15 frustrating minutes trying to find a non-existent secret.
In a similar article, Thomas Manuel discusses the difference between the theatrical and transparent approaches to session management. Mike laid down the general principle, while Thomas shows you one method of application.
Riley Silverman shares 9 Dungeon Master Lessons from Baldur's Gate 3. It is solid advice and will help you build longevity into your campaign.
Josh Storey explains parallel backstory mirroring (his phrase) and how you can use it to tie your player characters into your campaign world. It is an advanced technique, and I want to try it out.
Lowell Francis returns and highlights more great RPG mechanics. I'm particularly interested in the Faction Campaign Playbooks, as I'd like to design an easy system for DMs to integrate faction play into their campaigns. I get glimpses of what I want, but I am still seeing through a glass, darkly.
The Alexandrian explains how to design and run a vertical combat. Many of the best fights I've run have spanned three dimensions, and I should create more of them in my published adventures. Maps, of course, are the challenge.
Brian Rideout describes how he uses one-to-one time in his Silver Gull campaign. That is, for every day that passes in real life, a day also advances in his campaign world. This approach is often practiced in Old School games and has some significant upsides--though you need to be running a sandbox campaign for it to work. In my Iskandar campaign, one of the characters is tracking the calendar, but I've thought about doing a one-to-one campaign at some point. As a bonus, Brian includes a link to his 100-page world guide. Plunder it for inspiration!
Daily Adventure Prompts has some advice: if you want to liven up an adventure, add a mini-game. I tend to agree, but it is hard to find good mini-games, especially those that feel consistent with the 5e core mechanic. I'm open to suggestions!
This article is a few years old, but it's the sort of thing I love. Phlox presents a list of 20 cheap Dungeon Master tricks. Truthfully, good DMing is just a collection of little tricks.
J.N.Sinombre has discovered the power of messy success. I like this idea a great deal, and I think the key would be to devise a list of appropriate "penalties" to take. If you do this sort of thing in your game, let me know.
Ramon Dozol has shared 10 homebrew rules his players seem to like. I have to disagree with some of these, but the list is worth reading.
Michael Galvis explains how to conduct a Dungeons & Dragons play-by-post game. This article includes some really practical advice, and PBP is on my list of things to do. Do any of you play in a PBP game?
Is your D&D combat sometimes a bit monotonous? Baron Deropp outlines several strategies to fix dull combat. You'll be familiar with some of these, but they are tried and true.
Inkwell Ideas has some 101-level advice for all worldbuilders: do what is essential and inspiring. He is worth listening to!
Johnn Four explains how to transform passive players into active players. I especially enjoyed his analysis of what prevents players from seizing the day.
Merric is musing about the importance of player choice. Good thoughts! If you have read my book, "The Anatomy of Adventure," you will know I am on the same track.
Speaking of tracks, Travis Miller thinks Sandbox vs. Railroad is a false dichotomy. I agree, and I've been unhappy with this framing for some time. Travis also describes some alternative models that better explain campaign structure.
This article is quirky! Graphite Prime Blog says weird things happen when you sleep in a dungeon. To model this, he devised a d20 table called "Restless Sleep & Strange Events."
Jahmal Brown has some advice on how to run a great roleplaying game. It is simple and direct--follow it!
A pair of game designers has spent years reworking the weaker 5E spells. You can now download the final result, called "Spells That Don't Suck v1.20: The Complete Edition".
Robert Adduci explains how to make a published RPG setting your own. This is a strong article by a professional game master and designer.
Mike Shea shares his strategies for running infiltration/heist adventures. It is a really fun adventure pattern!
Scroll for Initiative asks how many liches does your world have? But his real question is more profound.
This article is cool. Gothridge Manor reveals several fun facts about medieval stairways. I'll incorporate some of these ideas into future dungeon maps.
Speaking of which, Morgan has devised a procedure for elegant dungeon map design, resulting in a looping floor plan with many options. I strongly commend such designs.
Mike Bernier explains how to create a D&D campaign. It is 101-level advice but a good foundation. It occurred to me the other day that most so-called "campaign guides" don't actually explain how to run a campaign; instead, they just present setting information. Can you think of an exception?
The 7yo DM shares 10 ways to make mimics even cooler. Also, check out the mimic episode in "Delicious in Dungeon." Outstanding!
I rather liked this. Semiurge has listed 20 reasons why werewolves, etc, are allergic to silver. These are the kinds of imaginative ideas you want when you are building out your world.
Are you running a sandbox campaign? The Forbidden City Dweller has a message for you: trust the process. I agree, and I've seen this work time and again.
Poisonous Cloak explains the point of purpose and mystery in a dungeon. In my experience, these sorts of details are the difference between good adventures and great adventures.