DM Advice & Resources
If you have been playing RPGs, especially DnD, for a while (or maybe you just started) there is a good chance you have at least considered creating your own setting. I started work on my personal setting back when 2E was the DnD of the day, and through the years it has undergone some permutations …
Culture is a strange thing. For example it is particularly hard to identify the things that make your culture what it is without having another culture with which to compare it. In DnD campaigns this manifests in cultures becoming homogenous, it is simply easier to have one pervasive culture than to create many unique cultures. …
Continuing with my discussion of art in DnD, this week I am taking a look at art for monsters and not just any old enemies but rather the sorts of epic threats that have been handled so poorly by DnD in the past (4E included). Epic Threats Epic threats need to be just that, epic. …
As you likely know Mike Mearl’s brought up the dreaded save or die mechanic on the Legends & Lore column this week. This article gives the thoughts of @paulbaalham and @obsidiancrane about this matter. Save or have no fun? The classic argument against save or die is that save or die effects are not fun. …
Last week when I posted about art that I liked Rich Green asked about landscapes and it is a fair question that deserves a longer response. In visual media such as computer games and movies the environment is a critical element. For fantasy computer games and movies the environment needs to be designed from the …
4E is a game full of complexity. It is often complexity of the good sort, it makes the game more dynamic, challenging and exciting all of which are desirable. However sometimes things are a little too complex and something similar is desired. Looking at the 4E rules for PCs the answer is clearly found in …
Ability Scores and Crunch Ability scores are a rather arbitrary way of establishing a range of bonus and penalty around a median set of values. Essentially they are a way of using 3d6 to establish a bell curve of ability from a certain negative value to a corresponding positive value. That derived value has been …
A few days ago, Monte Cook posted two short paragraphs and a poll to his page on the Wizards of the Coast community. Those few words stirred up a lot of conversation about race in Dungeons & Dragons in the comments and on Twitter over the weekend. For me (Draco), it brings up a long …
Long ago where the great Durnwood Forest rises into the Crystal Mountains there lived an elven wizard. Some legends say that he was an eladrin and dwelled in the feywild and his doom brought him to the mortal world. Regardless all the legends agree that his name was Estarias and that he was a mage …
Loot is a key part of the gaming experience. Its role is ever so eloquently summarised in the maxim “kill stuff & take its loot”. RPGs dress things up, they put the trappings of story around that, but in doing so they ensure that loot is often part of that story; be it the magic …