Category: For the GM

  • My Basic Session Planning

    Before we get to today’s post, a little Extra Life update and reminder. I am currently just over a third of the way to my $1000 goal, which is excellent! Thank-you to everyone who has donated or spread the word, your support is going mean the world to sick kids at the Stollery. If you’ve…

  • From the Campaign: Emberhaunt

    Here’s a little something I thought I’d share, that will make an appearance in one of my upcoming D&D sessions. I’ve been developing a haunted location in my game, and I wanted something a little special to spring on my players. Enter the emberhaunt. After I’ve had a chance to run it a few times I…

  • Making Scrolls Magical

    I wrote before of ways in which you can make the magic in your game more magical. Today I want to focus on that most ubiquitous of magical items, the scroll. Casting magic from a scroll has been a staple of fantasy for longer than there has been fantasy. Mythology is rife with scrolls being…

  • Marginalia and Other Oddities

    I love introducing libraries of books in my campaigns. It’s the sort of treasure I’d love to find if I were an adventurer, after all. Cracking open a door no one has opened in centuries, only to discover shelf upon shelf of dusty manuscripts…oh yeah, you can keep your gold and gems (okay, maybe not…

  • Campaign Inspiration

    I was asked the other day about where to find ideas for tabletop campaigns. The person I was talking to seemed concerned that they weren’t coming up with enough interesting ideas for their campaign setting, a concern shared by most gamemasters, I think. They were also lamenting not having the resources to buy the latest…

  • Playing Card Treasure Generator

    I talked about why I started using playing cards as a random generator in the previous post. In short, as a young gamer I didn’t have the spare cash to pick up every new gaming aid that came out, so I improvised with what I had. And like any gamer, what I had were decks…

  • Playing Card GPC Generator

    I didn’t always have the budget for gaming that I have now. I’m certainly not complaining, it’s nice to be able to pick up a supplement if I want to, without having to decide to go without groceries or maybe hold off paying the phone bill for a bit. But I did have to get…

  • Guest Post: The Elven Monk

    One of the things I wanted to do for the site this year was get some guest bloggers to contribute, and to do some guest blogging of my own. Jesse C. Cohoon over at Fantasy Roleplaying Planes reached out with a post, and I’m currently working on a post for his site as well. In…

  • From the Campaign: Tome Guardian

    Even though I’m not entirely finished with this creature, I thought I’d share something I pulled together for my home D&D campaign. My party is going to be exploring many places which have not been seen for almost five hundred years or more, and this is one of the creatures they may encounter in their…

  • Mapping your World, Part 1: Getting Started

    Along with my renewed interest in campaign creation has come an interest in making good maps. My map-making skills are okay, at least when it comes to dungeon mapping. But I’ve always felt my terrain mapping skills were a bit…well, bad, if I’m being honest. Since I’m in the process of creating a new campaign…