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.
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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