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Showing posts from August, 2018

Creating enemy champions on a whim

- Ok, your turn! - *Rolls d20* 17! - Ok, you get to attack the goblin with your longsword - Now it's the goblin’s turn. *Rolls d20* 19 against your AC, which deals damage with her shortsword. Boring, isn't it? Combat is something from d&d that, even though is one of its core part, sometimes feels more of a drag than an actual epic moment. A time when roleplay stops or is heavily diminished and players start worrying about the game mechanics above everything else. This isn't something that happens at every table, but in the few groups I’ve dmed in that I saw this happen pretty often. Monsters do have personalities too! Even the most basic ones. You can act as they would being the DM, but that would make the battles way more of a slog than they should (more so if it's just a little encounter with not much to give to the players) After some thought I created this new concept, which I still have got to try out. Let's say the player misses its first hi

Finding inspiration and getting over the DM’s block

Your players are about to arrive to a new city you haven't fully built/designed yet. You realize the dungeon you built for your players lacks some palpable atmosphere or is pretty boring. Travelling from one place to the other seems more of a “get from point A to point B” than a real adventure. Your new NPC looks and feels exactly like the other one you introduced last session. If you are encountering any of those things, you probably are experiencing what some of us DMs like to call “DM’s block”, or just Writer’s block. You can lay on your bed for multiple hours or keep thinking about new things but you will probably not find anything useful to complete this week’s activity on the table. Having experienced this a bunch of times, I’m here to teach you the useful techniques I found work for getting some inspiration and continue creating new worlds/experiences for your players’ next session: Read, watch, listen This one is a classic tip everyone gives when asked how to