Running One-on-One D&D Games
Though typically played with four to six players and one dungeon master, D&D works perfectly well when played with one player and one DM. In fact, this style of D&D offers many advantages over...
View ArticleWatch the Time
"The key to becoming a great GM, more than anything else, is an understanding of pacing." - Monte Cook, Your Best Game Ever Understanding the pace of your game may be the most important skill you...
View ArticleAdd Dreadful Incursions to Wild Beyond the Witchlight
Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is one of my favorite 5th edition D&D books. I think it's really well put together and it packs tons of setting material for many different worlds all in one book....
View ArticleBuild Resilient Campaigns
What if your campaign jumped 14 months into the future in the middle of a session? Would you be able to keep going or would your campaign shatter under such a change? This happened to me in my...
View ArticleWhat I'd Love from the Next Iteration of D&D
I love 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. Many have complaints, some justified, and some making mountains out of mole hills. But none can ignore how successful D&D 5th edition has been over the...
View ArticleRunning a Dungeon Crawl
I love dungeons. Whenever I find the story of my campaigns leading to a dungeon, I feel a great sense of relief. Not everyone feels this way. Some DMs dread running dungeons. Different DMs approach...
View ArticleImmerse Yourself in D&D
Playing a D&D game is a magical experience. Where else do we get to sit together with our friends and all share in an imaginary world of fantasy and wonder? This experience becomes stronger the...
View ArticleVillainous Titles
Give cool titles to your villains. This is a trick I picked up from an excellent post on Reddit about stealing tricks from WWE and from playing Dark Souls and Elden Ring (the From Software developers...
View ArticleImprovise D&D Monster Abilities
From this moment forward, consider yourself given the freedom to change monsters as you see fit for the fun of your game. You, of course, had this freedom all along but I suspect some DMs feel like...
View ArticlePause for a Minute
Sometimes we need a way to quickly break character and check in with the players. This might be part of a set of safety tools to make sure everyone's ok with the content of our game at any given point...
View ArticleConvert and Scale Published D&D Adventures
With thousands of adventures written before the release of the 5th edition of D&D, we have a huge legacy of content we can use in our games. All it needs is some conversion. Luckily, converting...
View ArticleDealing with D&D Pre-Game Nervousness
We all feel it. It's game night and your friends are coming over (either in person or online). We feel it in the pits of our stomachs. Will this be the one? Will this be the game we drop on the floor?...
View ArticleTwo Years Playing D&D Online
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I went from running D&D exclusively in person to running D&D exclusively online for more than two years. Though the circumstances are terrible,...
View ArticleReach Satisfying Campaign Conclusions
K. Ivan R., a Patreon of Sly Flourish, asked: Most of the games I've run and played did not have a satisfying conclusion. This jives with what I've heard talking to every gamer I've brought this up...
View ArticleWrite Down Page Numbers on D&D Prep Notes and Character Sheets
Add page numbers to your preparation notes and character sheets. This is a tip for both D&D DMs and players. For 1,500 years people have learned how to create the equivalent of digital hyperlinks...
View ArticleBuild Cities Around the Characters
Introducing cities can be tricky in D&D. Even small ones have lots of locations and lots of NPCs. Big ones, like Waterdeep, can have hundreds of notable locations and thousands of NPCs. How can we...
View ArticleRunning Dragon's of Stormwreck Isle – The 2022 D&D Starter Set Adventure
Wizards of the Coast released a new D&D Starter Set with a brand new adventure — Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. This article intends to help DMs, both new and veterans, make the most of this...
View ArticlePrep Lazy D&D With Handouts
Handouts are a valuable and under-appreciated element of D&D game prepration. Building and delivering handouts for our D&D games serve many purposes. They help us focus on what's important in...
View ArticleReinforce the Theme of your D&D Campaign
Campaigns like Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Rime of the Frostmaiden, and Descent into Avernus all have themes to them. Your homebrew campaign has a theme to it. We can best try to articulate this theme...
View ArticleWhat Does Challenge Rating Mean in D&D 5e?
If you take nothing else from this article, consider this: A monster's challenge rating is a loose approximation of a monster's difficulty. Many factors not included in challenge ratings often affect...
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