Generation of the world or universe, the setting, is important to numerous aspects of creating media, from novels to games. Careful design can’t be undervalued.
Zen and the Art of Dungeon Mastering #7: Asking Loaded Questions
As I mused on the session during the ensuing weekend, I realized that I might have rediscovered some of the best dirty GMing tricks I’d read in small-press RPGs like Dread. Asking loaded question can indeed steer a player’s action.
The Cardboard Dungeon, Part 1
For our second D&D session, I was “planning” to run a classic Dungeon Crawl™. In the spirit of the previous session, I didn’t want to prepare an actual dungeon map with a key of its content. First I didn’t have time, and second, I wanted to see how I could run an improvised crawl. As I […]
Fake it like Chatty.
No matter how many years of experience you accumulate as a Dungeon Master, there are things you’re better at than others. For instance, I’m excellent with pacing and I bring stories from zero to epic in mere minutes. (I once ran a game from character creation to driving A moon-sized dragon into a planet core to […]
The Jungle Island of Loot, Part 3
After a very bloody round of combat , my players became aware that I wasn’t planning to parcel out encounters in tidy, balanced packets (especially since I didn’t have the Dungeon Master Guide at the time). They rapidly started looking for alternatives to becoming monkey chow. Franky: Mush will use Minor Illusion to create the sound […]
The Jungle Island of Loot, Part 2
Redbeard, Mush and Jack sailed out of Ereborn and set for Volcano Island. I started things with a sailing challenge, asking for roll. I forget if it was Wisdom, Intelligence or Dexterity. I was clear to let them know that they wouldn’t get lost, as the volcano’s plume was visible from anywhere in the archipelago. Flubbing the […]
The Jungle Island of Loot, Part 1
If you’ve been reading my recent posts, you know we managed to create new D&D characters and the basis of a campaign settings in less than two hours. When we were done everyone was ready to go, excited to see how the game would go. I dove right into it and grabbed the setting’s index cards into a stack. […]
(Re)Genesis of a D&D Campaign, Part 2
A few weeks before the 2014 end of year holidays, I made my usual group a double proposal: Give D&D 5e a honest try and invite my 12 y.o son Nico to play with us. (Remember Nico?) I had no adventure ready, my plan was to slum it one-shot style with pre-generated characters, like I did […]
(Re)Genesis of a D&D Campaign, Part 1
This is an excerpt of my second blog post, published in July 2007 This fall, after a 2 year campaign characterized by many missed games and a DM that finally decided to tackle and recover from a severe depression, we decided that we needed to start a new one. I’m pretty excited by the new […]
Like a Virgin… for the 5th time.
(Trying something new here. I’m challenging myself to write 3 short articles a week about D&D. If you like the idea, please let me know!) I’ve been playing RPGs for more than 30 years. I’ve been a Game Master for 95%+ of that time. It’s the role I like most, for reasons that have evolved over the […]
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