The encounter is the heartbeat of most D&D games, especially in 5E. A lot of the system is built around them, and that’s where you get to play with the toys: Characters get to use their neat powers and DMs get to bring out cool new monsters, traps and challenges. Get your encounters right, and … Read more
New to being a dungeon master or game master and not sure how to get better? Been doing it for a while and still don’t feel like you know what you’re doing? Well, we’ve been there. In fact, all three of us were the DMs the very first times we played, and it’s been a … Read more
Have you ever wanted to give your PC party a pet dragon? What about when it turns out to be unbelievably OP? Well, we’ve done it and hundreds of other DM stunts that ranged from “unconventional” to “ill-advised” to “Are you C-R-A-Z-Y?!” Here are the stunts we’ve pulled DMing TTRPGs that even we thought might … Read more
Players know speed kills, but DMs know lack of pace can wipe out whole games. How many encounters should you get through in a session? How long should combat take? What do you do when the players are board? How can you adjust pace if things are going to fast or too slow? In this … Read more
A lot of what we see around the Dungeons & Dragons culture is so focused on how dungeon masters can be good DMs — and how you can ruin a game if you’re not — that we lose sight of the fact that DMs are players, too. What’s fun for you? What interferes with that … Read more
In an ancient tome — the 4th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide — WotC broke down what it considered to be the eight main types of players and gave DMs tips on how to handle them. Understanding who your players are, what they want and why they play can be a big help in DMing them. … Read more
As much as DMs like to take responsibility for the success or failure of their games, you’re one person running a group that could be six or more players. Their personalities, attitudes, relationships, and a hundred other factors will have a big impact on the game. Some players are going to be very easy for … Read more
From accidental party kills to evil campaigns that went … well, evil … we’re only Wise DMs because we’ve made all the mistakes more times than we care to remember. What happened, what did we do about it, and what do we wish we’d done differently? We get into all the details and what we’ve … Read more
As a DM, the world is your character. And sometimes the rules as written, what they call “RAW,” may conflict with the way you want your world to work. How do you handle those conflicts? What do you do when a character ability disrupts the way you want that world to work? Perhaps you’ve found … Read more
Wizards of the Coast recently announced that they’re doing away with “evil” alignments and intelligence penalties as racial attributes. But that’s left some traditional gamers crying about PC culture run amok. How can you build a campaign without “evil” races? Does this undermine your bad guys? Does assuming “orcs are evil” make you look racist … Read more
