Should your TTRPG campaign allow players to make clones of famous fictional characters (like Drizzt, Riddick or The Avengers)? Maybe. After all if a player is inspired, they’re going to be more engaged. But these can be complicated situations. Here’s how to make them work.
Some DMs are right at home improving from the first time they open a Monster Manual, while others are never comfortable without a rock-solid module to run for the night. If you want to improv more, or just do it better when you have to, here are seven tips for making it up on the fly.
Is it better to put players on the train through your tight, entertaining story, or create a reactive world for them wander around at their leisure? In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they build their campaigns, from what they want to accomplish to how they prepare week to week. Along they’ll way, we’ll look at how the different styles affect the players and their game experience. And we’ll discuss whether or not, in the end, they’re really all that different?
Should your players be able to buy magical items in your campaign? It’s not a new question for DM’s, and believe me, I understand that plenty of DMs feel very strongly against this. However, I ask you to hear me out because this has worked beautifully in many of my previous campaigns, including the one I’m running now.
Gold and jewels are all over the treasure tables in the Dungeon Master Guide. But what can they do with it? In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about how they handle the RPG economy and the crazy things players can and can’t do with gold in their games.
When we left our heroes, they had found their party member to be missing, possibly kidnapped, by the group known only as “The 13.” Hot on the trail of their compatriot, with the help of the mysterious Visitor, our brave adventurers found themselves transported into a modern-day fairy-tale in Harbor City and their strange City Hall, a former amusement park known as “Storybook Land.” Prepare yourselves for the conclusion of this 2-night Halloween adventure as we travel into the weird, terrifying and true tales of The Black Pines!
Some players come into any RPG they play with a 4-page character origin and personal history that drives them to adventure — others can barely pick a name. What do you do with player character backgrounds like these? In this week’s episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave dig into what they want and don’t want from character backstories, and how they use them in their games.
In our most recent episode, we discussed crazy stunts that our players have pulled on us – things above and beyond what I call “just D&D.” And I talked in-depth about the short, multi-night adventure that I took a group through years ago. An adventure that took our heroes to the terrifying wilds of “Weird New Jersey.”
Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about 19 of the craziest stunts players have pulled in their games and how they bent the systems to make it happen — or sometimes didn’t. Along the way, hear our best secrets for adlibbing and adjudicating some of the hardest situations DMs face.
Playing a TTRPG is an incredibly subjective experience, almost like a Rorschach test. With this in mind, I wanted to shift our perspective from the system and edition wars that populate so many social media feeds to something much more basic: What makes a TTRPG in the first place and what could we learn from that to improve our enjoyment of all our games (instead of firing shots at someone else’s fun)?
