Category Archives: DMing

Campaign Report – Monsters

The monsters for this campaign were weird. When I started in 4E, I wanted to make as many creatures as possible on my own. I didn’t trust the official monsters to be able to do all the things I needed, … Continue reading

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Campaign Report – King Thistle

Dungeons and items are important to a Zelda campaign, but they aren’t enough. A D&D game with dungeons is just a typical D&D game, and even one with a Hookshot is a typical D&D game with an allusion. But if … Continue reading

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Campaign Report – Feelies

Zelda games are about items, second only to dungeons. Without a vast inventory contained inside improbably spacious pants, a Zelda game is more like Mario, where you use a limited, static set of options to deal with ever-expanding problems. So … Continue reading

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Campaign Report – Zelda Maps 2

The Zelda campaign ended during August. Normally I’d do a postmortem of sorts to explain what the campaign was, what went right, what went wrong, and where we go from here. But I don’t think I can compress the lessons … Continue reading

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On Pathfinder

I told you that story to tell you this one: I’m starting to wonder if I’m done with Pathfinder. The more I read about Pathfinder and the more I understand the designers’ intentions and the way players use it, the … Continue reading

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Metathesiophobia

I’ve had Pandora for several years. I’ll have days at works where I have Pandora on pretty much straight through. It’s single-handedly responsible for most of my metal playlist, and thus for my collection of Iron Savior songs, and thus … Continue reading

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Loose Session Design

One of the most daunting tasks for new DMs is figure out how much freedom to give the players. Campaigns operate roughly on a scale from “railroad”, where the DM confines the players to rails and sends them through a … Continue reading

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Session Design Styles

I’ve been pretty head-down these last couple of weeks working on the last dungeon for the Zelda campaign. Final dungeons tend to be pretty serious, but I’m also trying to keep it from reading like a normal dungeon to keep … Continue reading

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Law A – Campaign Songs

I’ve talked about how I use music to help me flesh out story and character dies, but I haven’t shared what those ideas are. I think even my players don’t know a lot of the songs behind the campaigns unless … Continue reading

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Railroading (the Good Kind)

In the process of putting together the world map for the Eight Arms campaign setting, I’ve also learned about some of the things that make a world go. It’s forced me to learn more about geography and politics than I … Continue reading

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