The life of an adventurer isn’t always about saving the kingdom and having ales. Sometimes, the heroes are faced with failure, and nothing is a greater example of this than a TPK. So. allow me to pay my respects to an old rival of mine as I begrudgingly explain why he deserves to be counted among the ranks of the greatest D&D wizards, such as Elminster and Mordenkainen.
DMs have some crazy ideas. And deep down, there’s nothing most of us want to do more than unleash those ideas on our unsuspecting players. These strange homebrew ideas can be the coolest and most memorable part of the campaign, but they’re also risky. Will your player throw a fit after their corporeal form is replaced with a pile of insects? The quit risk is high. What makes sense in the story? If you can get the players to go along with that, you can have fun with all sorts of crazy homebrew ideas.
What if the treasure horde was just so over the top that instead of its collection being an awesome moment it was more of a WTF one? Let’s take a look at the module that made my players feel like they both jumped the shark and nuked the fridge, and what was done to keep the campaign going afterward.
Movies: They fire our imagination as storytellers and DMs. We want to help create the same level of tension, drama, hope, fear, love and hate that our favorite stories do. Here are 4 blockbuster movie franchises that could make epic RPG worlds.
campaigns, including how it can go wrong, choosing the right system, and understanding the details your players will identify with.
The Throne of Bloodstone is the finale of a 4-part series that was published in 1988. What makes this module so unbelievably difficult that it made the #1 spot on my most challenging module list? Grab yourself a coffee and let’s talk about how, back in the day, D&D used to crank the difficulty up to 11.
How often has the new campaign just become murderhobos in space, murderhobos vs. Cthulhu, or murderhobos visit Scooby-Doo? It’s one thing to start a new campaign in a new setting or system. It’s another to get the PCs to act they belong there. Here are 3 tips that can help bring your new setting to life and keep murderhobos from infesting every world in your multiverse.
Thorin, Tony and Dave are always looking for ways to make their settings stand out to the players in them. Here are 13 tips we use to bring different RPG campaign worlds to life with players who’ve seen them all (and could easily start forgetting which game is which if we’re not on top of our genrebending).
A confounding villain scheme can be the thing that brings your campaign to life. It’s even better when you can make multiple villains crisscross and double-cross with the players in the middle trying to catch up. Here’s how to build a truly tangled web of intrigue starring the Kingpin and some of Marvel’s competing heavy hitters.
Even if your players have experience with gaming or roleplaying, new systems always have more parts than a deluxe Lego set. What if there was a way to bring first-time players into a campaign and get them comfortable right away? you could run a specially designed starter game that is more focused on getting everyone familiar with how the system works before jumping headfirst into things. At the end, your new players should walk away with a foundation for how both their characters and the system operate.
