I was talking to Variant Roles friends yesterday about GM prep tools and thinking about the ones I have found the most useful. Woodweaver's Puzzleknot by Volkan Baga Five Room Dungeons: This basically comes down to structuring encounters and making sure you have variety and some rising action with a climax. This incredibly useful tool … Continue reading The GM tools I find most useful
As a session, this mostly consisted of connective tissue. Were this campaign a trilogy, we would have just concluded Act II and enjoyed a relatively low-intensity segue before starting Act III in the next session. Narrative As the party had just eliminated an Elder Evil cult, they went back to the clock tower where their … Continue reading Krevborna – Session 12 review
So right now, Into the Odd has my attention. This game has a super light rules framework inspired by older versions of D&D (even lighter than you probably think) that also lends itself well to episodic play. Each session consists of a self-contained "expedition" to recover strange magical devices called Arcana. The author, Chris McDowall, … Continue reading Delving Into the Odd
This session started with the most exciting of feelings for me as the Game Master: I had no idea what would happen. Given the conclusion of Session 10, it could have gone a few different ways. I asked the player of the Paladin two questions before the session: Was this "I cut myself" or "I stab … Continue reading Krevborna – Session 11 Review
Normally, we play this game for two hours per session, because it's a week night and that mostly eliminates pressure from my family since I can still give them plenty of attention. This time, we ran about half an hour over, but I really dislike pausing in the middle of combat. And I think even … Continue reading Krevborna – Session 10 Review
Originally, I wrote this post to talk about all the things I dislike about the changes to the Adventurers League rule set. Most of it comes down to treasure. Magic item counts in the previous rules had their problems, but folks could understand; now you need a cheat sheet just to understand what you get. … Continue reading Outgrowing Adventurers League
As often happens, this article started as a conversation with smart friends. Mat Westhorpe tweeted about Roll20 vs D&D Beyond in the context of D&D 5e character sheets. https://twitter.com/Freebooted/status/1090005226034266113 We discussed a bit further and of course his post on character sheets has a lot of thoughtful comparison that you will almost certainly find useful. … Continue reading Going optimal with online RPGs
