Author Archives: Brent
4 Mistakes Players Make When Creating New Characters
When you create a character in a tabletop RPG, you should focus on creating a character that’s interesting to you. The most balanced party will grow dull and gameplay will become rote if half the players have been coerced into playing characters they don’t care about. (“Who’s going to play a cleric? C’mon, somebody has to play a … Continue reading
Monster Monday: The Ooz of Unnatural Silence
This formless mass of flesh can tear small animals apart with its tentacles and consume an adult human in less than a day. But that is not why it is feared. Most adventurers assume this is just a normal ooze. But the Ooz emits a magical, sonic aura that creates a deathly silence all around it. … Continue reading
Faction Friday: Tolman’s Smart Trolls
Tolman is a halfling with a sense of justice. An ex-adventurer, he now fashions jewelry in a quiet part of a small city. During his adventuring days, he chafed at the sight of other adventurers leaping to kill every creature they stumbled on, ferocious or docile, and the crude jokes they told about the less “civilized” … Continue reading
When to use a “DM PC”
Let me introduce you to Dale. Dale’s a new Dungeon Master, six sessions into running his first Dungeons & Dragons campaign. He’s a nice guy, who wants his players to have fun. Dale has a problem. He needs to introduce an non-player character (NPC) who will stick with the party for a while. However, he’s … Continue reading
Hit Points Don’t Represent Physical Wounds (Necessarily)
What does a loss of Hit Points mean? Some of you already “know” the answer to this, but it bears repeating, and there’s a hidden message. As the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook puts it: Hit Points measure your ability to stand up to punishment, turn deadly strikes into glancing blows, and stay on your … Continue reading
How to Run Practically Any RPG Concept with Risus
Ben has a concept he wants to run as a tabletop RPG, but it doesn’t fit any system he knows. It’s a weird mashup of genres. Ben decides to go for it anyway. Because the players won’t have crystal clear ideas for their characters, Ben ideally wants to create characters during play. He’d prefer to start with … Continue reading
Monster Monday: Heavy Dragonrider Patrols
The feared dragonriders of Elyslanta patrol the skies of their domain, their riders searching for trouble and reporting back as necessary. The Royal Dragonriders maintain both light and heavy patrol units, using younger and older dragons, respectively, for each type. Heavy dragonriders are only used in the skies around the capitol, or when a serious threat appears in a … Continue reading
Faction Friday: Come See Shortfoot’s Stupendous Circus! (And Blood Cult)
A few years ago, the Shortfoot family of traveling halfling tinkers happened upon a clutch of giant lizard eggs (left behind when a group of adventurers attacked a family of giant lizards and both groups perished). They cared for them, hatched them, and turned them into a small traveling circus, which can be used either as … Continue reading
I Ran Tomb of Horrors, and It Was Awesome. Here’s How.
Recently, I ran the Tomb of Horrors for a handful of friends. They had a blast, and repeatedly said so. For what it’s worth, Tales from the Yawning Portal hadn’t come out yet, so I used a 5th Edition conversion I found online, combined with the original module. In pitching the Tomb to the players, I explained … Continue reading
In defense of the Tomb of Horrors
It’s become fashionable to decry the Tomb of Horrors as a paragon of bad design. It’s got things that will kill characters outright. It’s got things that will kill them without a saving throw, even. Surely that’s a sign of bad dungeon design, right? No, it’s not, given the module’s parameters. I’m going to give you two reasons why Tomb … Continue reading