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 Index Card Method Codex, Part 2
A stack is a great inspiration tool when you’re looking for what happens next, especially when you run a no-prep style game. When you’re thinking about what comes next in play, just pick up your stack and go through it. You might find something that inspires a whole scene, especially if you keep up-to-date notes.
The Index Card Method Codex, Part 1
I’ve been using index cards as a GMing tool a lot this last year. In July, I posted about using them to create adventures in your downtime. I’ve since found new uses for them and brought everything together in this post.
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 […]
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