Rakshasa: Advice on how to run one
Thumbnail art by MtG artist Erica Yang It’s time for a different monster to be used in combat. It’s the rakshasa‘s turn to shine! With the recent release of Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus I think it’s about time I ...
A guide to Hexcrawling, Part 1
Truth is that if you have already played videogames such as Civilization, board games like Catan, or opened one of the D&D 5e modules, you have already seen some sort of hexmap. These typically appear to show great maps to ...
Five Commonly Confused Rules in D&D 5e
In my last article (Five Tips for New Dungeon Masters), my top tip was to “Know the Rules”. The rules are the skeleton of the game. You can flesh out the story all you want, but without a skeleton you’ll ...
Managing time in your games
Fighter: This goes for killing our friend Boblin, the goblin! The fighter slashes the front of the hooded’s person torso, leaving a great trace of blood and fully removing the hood. This leaves the mysterious figure still ocult by the ...
How to make an Indiana Jones-like campaign
Thumbnail art by Rafael Chies Last month I finished Tomb of Annihilation as a player. Being a big fan of the adventuring style Indiana Jones-vibe genre in pretty much any media I completely adored the adventure. I am pretty tired, ...
Challenge: Think of multiple solutions for your next encounter
We’ve all seen the classical combat encounters while traveling between cities. Monsters appear, and there is only one way through: killing them. It is often done to burn some character abilities or spell slots before a big confrontation. Maybe it’s ...
Factions, renown and how to make your players care about ...
Thumbnail art by Etienne Hebinger Fighter: “All right. Tonight we are pulling off the heist to the Sorcerer’s tower. What have we got ready for it?” Cleric: “I’ve got a Harper agent working for me inside of it. It’s supposed ...
What to do when you run out of monsters?
Thumbnail art by Bastien Aufrere D&D has hundreds, if not thousands of monsters for the DM to place in the game. However, at some times the usual ones start becoming normal appearances in the campaign. You want something new to ...
Classic vs Cinematical: Tips on creating Dungeons
Thumbnail art by Wadim Kashin After some thought, I came to the conclusion that there are two ways of making a dungeon. The first one is the Classical one we know and love: You go ahead for 10ft before turning ...
Maintaining Engagement and Solving Problems at the Table
Thumbnail Image from Netflix’s Stranger Things S03 Last week I had one of those sessions where I as a DM realized something was going wrong and the players started dispersing and getting bored. I managed to end the session as ...