I love electronic stuff as much as the next guy. I have stuff on D&D Beyond (because it’s cheaper than the hardcovers). I use an iPad or laptop while I run the game for tracking combat (seriously … check out improved-initiative.com). But sometimes it’s nice to drop that and get physical. With things. But not […]

I have a number of Spotify playlists for my game sessions. Sometimes I use them, sometimes I don’t. But most of them are somewhat similar-sounding, especially the combat lists. Epic-ish sounding cinematic scores and whatnot. But recently I was a player in a game where the DM put on something totally different for combat music. […]

I have a delightful mutt of a dog (mostly black lab) who adores orange slices. Until today. I was peeling one and offered her a slice, and she refused. Licked it once to make me feel better about myself (presumably), but would. Not. Eat. It. It was odd. Until today, she’s always scarfed them. “What’s […]

Occasionally I’ll hear a DM say something along the lines of “we had an amazing session the other day … it was all roleplay. We didn’t roll the dice once!” And my response to that is usually polite interest. Cause I don’t understand it. I mean … I understand the idea, I just disagree. People […]

As some of you may know, I run an Instagram page related to these emails. Just a couple days ago, that page passed 2,000 followers, which is kinda neat. I also just recently bought the D&D Essentials Kit. I highly recommend it for new or newer DMs–it has a ton of useful stuff in it. […]

I’m currently enrolled in a Modern Fantasy Literature course for my Master’s. I recently finished Peter Beagle’s ​The Last Unicorn​ and just today read ​A Wizard of Earthsea​ by Ursula K. Le Guin. Both are excellent books I recommend, especially for dungeon masters. Neither really has anything to do with D&D per se. But they […]

​Many DMs don’t like random roll tables. They feel like they cheapen the story experience and just make things feel … well, random. And to an extent, they’re right. While it’s perfectly possible to run an entire campaign with nothing but rolling on random tables, it’ll be pretty difficult to string it together into a […]

Let’s say you’re running a combat and it’s a boss fight and the thing has a bunch of fancy stuff and legendary actions and reactions and wording you need to know. You’ll want all the details of Everything Going On for that fight. But more often, the monsters you use are at least somewhat familiar. For […]

It’s been a hot minute! The last month or so has been kind of insane. I’d never tried to balance the end of the school year as a teacher with keeping up something like this, and I failed. Hard. Oh well. Back on the horse! I don’t have any scintillating insight for you today. Instead, […]

​Sometimes our games get into a rut. Sessions start feeling same-y and things start getting boring, honestly. If you do the same thing week in and week out for a while, it really can start dragging on the group. You’ve basically got two options to keep it fresh. The first is to literally change what […]