Category: For the GM

  • The Ordinary Life of the Players: Feeling Happy?

    [R.G.: The third of my RPG Blog Carnival posts; the first two are here and here. This is a little less put together than some other posts. I had a number of thoughts on the subject and as disjointed as they seem to me I wanted to get them down. After all, I can always follow…

  • The Ordinary Life of the PCs: Making Magic Magical

    This is my second in a series of articles for the November RPG Blog Carnival; the first can be found here. Enjoy! * * * It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons. A not-so-quick trip back through the archives of my blog give that away. One of…

  • The Ordinary Life of a GM: Getting Lost

    In what I’m hoping to make a regular occurrence, I’m taking part in the November RPG Blog Carnival. This month’s topic is Ordinary Life, and there is enough material there that I’ll likely have a few more posts this month around this topic. But today I’m talking about game masters. Getting Lost and Coming Back…

  • DnDtober the 31st: Tarrasque

    The tarrasque is meant to be a legendary destructive force in any campaign, a monster so terrible that it can’t be destroyed by mere mortal ability, even mortals as powerful as the adventurers. The characters must acquire something special to deal with this impending threat, whether divine (or infernal) intervention, artifact-level magic items, or simply…

  • DNDtober the 18th: Mimics

    There’s a gaming joke making the rounds right now that goes something like this: The tavern keeper asked why we always wore our weapons and armour in the tavern. “Mimics”, I told him. He laughed, we laughed, the table laughed. We killed the table and it was a good night. Funny, right? But it also…

  • DnDtober the Ninth: Undead

    I’m always careful with how much I use the undead in my campaigns. Don’t get me wrong, I love using them. But I believe that things like the undead should be used in such a way that it enhances the creep and/or terror factor of your campaign. Just dumping a bunch of skeletons or zombies…

  • DnDtober the 8th: Tieflings

    In a previous post I talked about some of the changes I made to the races in my D&D campaign. At that time, most of the changes were fluff changes; I had adjusted how some of the races had come to be, without really touching their racial stats. But as I looked at tieflings in…

  • DnDtober 7th: Ogres

    Most encounters with ogres result in plenty of screaming and not an insignificant amount of bloodshed. Few people experience the fun, playful side of ogres, or are even aware ogres have a fun, playful side. But when not terrorizing the local population or being terrorized themselves by random adventuring parties, ogres enjoy any number of…

  • DnDtober 6th: Displacer Beast

    Yes, I missed a day. A cold grew from the con crud, and and blossomed in my lungs. Don’t worry, I’m back on track and I’ll make sure to slip some posts in for the days I’ve missed. I think you’ll especially like the goblin entry… But today is DnDtober the sixth, which means displacer…

  • DnDtober 2016

    Surprising no one who attends conventions, con crud is real and it sucks. My Expo-sized crud laid me low last week, so I apologize for the abrupt hiatus. But I am back, reasonably hale and hearty, and raring to jump back into gaming nerdery. Travis Molina created an art challenge for the month of October,…