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Making Monsters Interesting
Friend and fellow contributor to the Tome Show Joe Lastowski wrote an interesting criticism of monster design in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. Here's a quote: I feel like most of the monsters in...
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D&D Environmental Effects: The Unhallowed Pillars
The 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons doesn't focus on building detailed set-piece encounters like 4th edition did but the same techniques work just as well with this new version of the game. While...
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Random Tables of the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide
The 5th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide is packed with useful information for your 5e Dungeons and Dragons game. One of its most useful features is the huge amount of random tables. Random tables are a...
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Refined Five Minute Game Preparation
In the Lazy Dungeon Master we try to narrow down adventure preparation to 5 minutes on a single 3x5 note card. If we DMs have only five minutes to prepare our game, what would we spend the time? What...
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Battling Armor Class
In Joe Lastowski's worthwhile criticism of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition monster design, he shines a light on the focus on armor class as most likely target for monster attacks. Here's a quote: Now,...
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Prince of the Apocalypse: Running Chapter 6
Princes of the Apocalypse is Wizard of the Coast's second major campaign adventure after the two Tyranny of Dragons adventures, Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat. It's also the first...
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Ancient Monuments
In ages past, magic was plentiful. The world was young and the gods were filled with righteous energy. Powerful archmages and high priests surrounded their lands with artifacts bursting with...
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Creating High Level Swarms in 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons
Even with the fast combat of the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, we might still need some tricks up our sleeves for running large piles of monsters against a number of PCs. Luckily, 5e D&D has...
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Starting Strong
When we consider the elements we should prepare for our regular D&D session, a list that is considerably smaller than we might think, there is no item more important than understanding where the...
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Things Worth Preparing
In the Lazy Dungeon Master and in the article Five Minute Game Preparation we talk about eliminating less useful activities while preparing for our D&D game. What parts of our preparation is worth...
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Unsuck My Vampire
As a combat opponent, the vampire in the 5th edition Monster Manual doesn't pose a strong threat. Comparing it to the beholder, another challenge rating 13 monster, the beholder is ruining mages with...
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Going There
The older we get the harder it is for us to fall back into our dreams and really go there. As children we seem to be free to let our imaginations run wild. A cardboard box can become the palace from...
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Handling Group Skill Checks
Skill checks are one of the main interfaces between players and the stories they create. It is the random seed that steers things off course and builds unexpected outcomes. Individual skill checks are...
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Dungeons and Dragons Tips From Gencon 2015
During Gencon 2015, I had the opportunity to play in twelve 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons games over four days. I had ten different dungeon masters of all different skill levels. Many of these games...
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Empowering Player-Driven Storytelling
Note: This article has been updated since the original published in September 2013.* In a D&D Next playtest video from July 2013, Mike Mearls ran the D&D R&D team through the classic...
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Empowering the War Mage
Of all of the monsters in the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons, few are as complex as the mage. The bulk of the mage's capabilities lie in their spells. Use the right spells and the mage can be a...
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Gems of the Dungeon Master's Guide
The 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide has a lot of material to love. For those of us who have been playing D&D for years, decades even, we might not give it a full...
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Adventure Seeds: The Night of the Decimation
This is a short adventure summary intended to give DMs the skeleton for a one-shot adventure based loosely on the story of Seven Samurai. This adventure skeleton has loose summaries of events,...
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Tying the Threads of Princes of the Apocalypse: Red Larch through Rivergard Keep
The official D&D 5th Edition adventure Princes of the Apocalyse is built as a large sandbox adventure with a lot of freedom to let the PCs wander within and throughout the physical locations and...
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A Troll Named Handbag: Player-Driven Monster Identification
"Four hideous trolls rise from the fetid water. One of them has three arms. One of them has two chattering heads. One of them is badly scarred from fire on one side. What does the fourth look like?"...
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