One bard's take on D&D and other things
These posts are just talk, not related to any particular campaign or adventure.
The world of D&D would be pretty empty without NPCs (non-player characters)! These people give a voice to your campaign. They’re the personalities that your players will interact with throughout the game. Your players will clash with, negotiate with, protect, fight, and stand beside these characters.
But what makes a good NPC?
Continue readingMy thoughts on homebrew (custom content) have changed a lot over my time playing and running D&D! This is something that is unique to each person—some DMs start out ready to take on anything the players bring to the table, whereas I was pretty wary of any option that wasn’t from the core books. I’m more confident in running (and making) homebrew content now, since I (like to) think that I’ve got a good handle on the game as a whole.
Let’s talk about using homebrew content on both sides of the table—Dungeon Master and player.
Continue readingIt’s fun to mix it up sometimes and play a class you’ve never played before! On the other hand, delving into an unfamiliar class can also be intimidating. On Friday, I posted about playing a spellcaster. Here’s the counterpart—playing a non-spellcasting class when you’ve never done it before!
Obviously this isn’t as much my strong suit, so I talked to my husband + Dungeon Master, who’s played a lot more of the martial classes than I have. These tips are some of the things we talked about!
Continue readingDistract and charm your enemies! Protect and heal your allies! Roll a bunch of dice, do a bunch of damage! Raise the dead! Make a wish!
Magic in Dungeons & Dragons is great! It’s crazy and weird, and you can use it in super creative ways. Or you can just cast fireball on a horde of monsters, I’m not judging, that’s fun too.
I have a huge bias towards spellcasters, since that’s most of what I play. If you’ve avoided magic classes so far, I’d encourage you to pick one and give it a try! I’ve got some tips here that might help you out.
Continue readingHey 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 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…
Continue reading2018 has been a great year for Dungeons & Dragons! Let’s look back on everything WotC-side that’s happened this year.
Continue readingIf you haven’t seen it already, the new Unearthed Arcana came out this Monday. This month’s UA is about “Sidekicks,” creatures who end up tagging along with the player characters during their adventures. “Sidekicks” offers a system for leveling up these creatures in a streamlined way.
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