All tagged DM Tips
Dungeons are the bread and butter of adventuring in D&D, and dungeon maps are one of the most exciting things for the players to explore and engage with. Since we already learned from the previous articles how to design world, region, and hub maps for our sandbox campaign, let's see how we could design and create dungeon maps and learn how to organize all of them for your next session.
So why is it important for us as DMs to have Hub Maps? Hub Maps are mainly used to organize your NPCs, stories, and plot hooks in one place that would lead to your quests or other locations. Hubs might also be an excellent avenue to add some side quest content for your players to invest more into the NPCs and add a layer of story for the quests connected to a hub.
While World Map is the most helpful tool for the DM to design their overarching sandbox campaign, Region Maps is one of the most valuable tools for the player to experience your story in your Sandbox Campaigns. Regional Maps entice the players to go to different plot hooks and be intrigued by what the region offers. For the DM, it's also a valuable tool for planning your quests and having a player progression that does not go out of hand with too many choices for your players but also provides the freedom to explore your sandbox campaign organically.
Was it about a good year since AI took off as the next big thing? Even though it's remarkable technology, it's still a bit sketchy, raising important questions about regulations, intellectual property, and ethics, which are still being explored. However, until Skynet takes over, I'm here to delve into how we can enhance our Dungeons & Dragons sessions and generate some silly things!
There are numerous pitfalls to avoid when you start as a newbie Dungeon Master. This post will share a couple of ways a new DM can make their life way less complicated than it needs to be. I'm not a smart man, and I made most of these mistakes or witnessed them as a player. Now, let’s look at a couple of the crucial ones…
Zombies are one of the most iconic monstrous creatures not only in D&D and fantasy. And over the years of their existence, we saw different variations of zombies in movies and TV. However, today we will be looking at the D&D depiction of zombies and how to use them in our encounters.
Character flaws are among the most crucial story tools for any character, whether it's the Player or DM playing the character. Character flaws let us create more conflict in our games, but flaws make a path for a character to overcome them in the long run, creating memorable stories.
I love playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends next to a table with some terrain props, snacking, and laughing next to other people at the table. I always thought it's the best way to do it. But besides, organizing logistical aspects of your game is not the only hardship for playing D&D in these times.
And it's pretty hard to play one of the most social games when the social distancing is settling in our daily routine. But there are other alternatives, that to be honest, are not that bad. They are pretty great and offer new opportunities for your tabletop games, and today let us talk about that.
For every Dungeon Master out there, note structure is one of the most challenging aspects to master running D&D games. How do you keep the whole "World" full of characters, plot twists, and encounters organized? It's not easy, but today we will be looking at some applications that might help you in the process and finally pick one to keep our worlds from falling apart.
It's almost taboo to run games associated with "Hardcore" homebrew mechanics that can bring negative feelings to the table. No one likes their character to die, fail, but I believe that players should learn how to thrive on their mistakes, not only being a hero, all the time. Let's find a way to give our games a little bit of spice while balancing it all with your player satisfaction.
Towns are probably the most balanced location for Dungeon and Dragons stories. They are not too big like the cities or small as villages, yet towns strike a perfect balance in their scale. I choose Towns over other areas since they don't require as much work and preparation as the cities and give way more content opportunities than the villages..
So, you had a couple of DnD sessions. You got into the hobby, the party is waiting for the next session, everything swell, right? Well, like any other hobby, everybody can improve in their craft, and being a Dungeon Master is not an exception. Let's talk about the common mistakes I see from newly baked DMs and what we can learn from them.
It's quite daunting to start your first D&D session. There are many tools that you might not know yet. You will need to decide on your Note structure, for having a productive D&D session, how to balance the game itself, since there are so many things to juggle at the same time. Today we will be looking at how to prepare for your D&D session and learn a couple of ways how to avoid some of the mistakes I made as a Fresh Dungeon Master.
We're making papercraft and today we will learn how to use it for your D&D table. It's an easy, cheap and great way for your players to visualize the field of battle. We going to make a master template for your papercraft, so you could make dungeons in a spur of the moment. But, actually, we are just cutting some paper with some grid, yet it's going to be worth it in the end..
In the last episode, we are looking at ways how not to make an Epic Wizards Tower. That video made me sick, I got the plague(the flu) for the following week so this video is me trying to wrestle with the flu, my tendencies for rambling and the English Language. Today, we are looking at ideas on how to make fantasy maps for Dungeons and Dragons, that you can use at your table, enjoy.
One of the biggest problems in running a sandbox campaign, in my opinion, is the scale problem and the biggest of them all - burnout since you probably will need to prepare more than one or couple things before the session. In this blog post, we will take a look at how I deal with these scale problems and what do I do to avoid burnout, that could happen rather fast if not managed well.
Look, there are many ways to create conflict with your villains. Sometimes Dungeon Masters get a little bit overboard giving reacquiring Villians more powers, followers and other things that make your players go - what? Today I will be dwelling on how to run your villains organically, create more conflict in your campaign, and have more fun while doing so.
When writing many characters for your RPG game, how do you find inspiration to distinguish your NPCs from the player's characters? The answer is not the easiest, in my opinion, especially when you need to tie them with your story that you are planning to make as a Dungeon Master. These are a couple of ways that I find inspiration for the characters that appear in my games. With these tips, I find something to write even if I have nothing but a blank page looking at me, looking at me like a buffoon.
There are many ways to improve your game, but if you will not have a good atmosphere at the table a good puzzle or a good combat encounter will not save the game in the long run. Today we will be looking at the things that could make your game better in means of atmosphere for your players and yourself.
Villages are not the most exciting places in DnD. Most of the time, a village is a place for your players that just started the campaign or in the long run, a stop to rest up between adventures that lead the players to Dungeons or other Quest Locations. But that doesn’t mean that they have to be boring or don’t have something to do with them. The opposite, if you craft your village well, there could be plenty of things to explore for your players and stories to craft if you do it well.
