One bard's take on D&D and other things
Hey Dungeon Masters, how you run combat? Do you use grid maps and miniatures or online tools to represent the battle map? Or, do you rely on description only?
If you go with the latter, you’re running “theater of the mind” combat! Let’s talk about it.
Continue readingThe great thing about published adventures is that, generally, the maps are already drawn. The important areas of the adventure already have their requisite furnishings and encounters placed. You don’t have to worry about visualizing the space around your adventurers; the adventure designers have done that work for you.
But, how do you use these maps? More than that, how do you run these maps? Let’s talk about it!
Continue readingD&D is really fun! But DMing is hard, and sometimes a session falls flat. Something happened, and you walk away feeling less inspired and maybe even disappointed. That’s okay!
Nobody is perfect, not even the greatest DMs with the best player group have 100% perfect sessions all the time.
So, let’s figure out what to do and how to improve from a less-than-ideal session.
Continue readingFirst good squad session of the new year! And, really, the first session of the good squad working together since the party split! Let’s talk about what happened.
Continue readingHey! This year, I’m trying to get better at session prep, so we’ll be talking about it every time I run a session.
For last week’s Curse of Strahd session, I didn’t have a ton of time to prep stuff. But, here’s what I did.
Continue readingWhen I first told myself, “I’m going to Dungeon Master a game,” I had no idea what I was doing. I’d listened to one campaign and played in another, short one, but that was all the D&D experience I had. I wanted to be a good DM! I had no idea how. Thus, I found myself scouring the Internet for guidance. Among others, I found Matt Colville’s channel and his “Running the Game” series. And so, I started following his videos and other content.
Strongholds & Followers was funded by a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign that launched in early February 2018. In December, backers received the PDF in its finished form (with acknowledgement that typos would be fixed before the first printing). It is also available for purchase from the MDCM online store.
After getting the chance to read it cover-to-cover, here’s my review!
Continue readingWell, hope everyone’s first few days of 2019 have been good! I’m not much for making resolutions, but there are a few things I want to focus on improving this year. And those are basically resolutions? Regardless, I hope they will help me continue to grow as this year unfolds!
This year, I want to…
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