...now where did I put the glue? . Confessions Of A Dungeon Master Building Bad Guys, Or, The Search For A Serviceable Villain I'll confess right now, I mine the hell out of books and movies for NPCs and villains. Professor Moriarty? Gave him a new name and look and used him many times in … Continue reading Pieces Of Broken Dreams →

...short version: DO IT! . Confessions Of A Dungeon Master Maps, Or, Not Quite On A Road To Nowhere Of all the jobs connected to DMing/GMing, creating maps has always been one of my favorites. Back in the early days, it was me, my colored pencils, graph paper and my very VERY limited artistic talent. … Continue reading Uncle Doc Talks To You About Being Fully Vaccinated →

...it tasted grassy . Confessions Of A Dungeon Master Canned Adventures? NOPE!, Or, I Did It My Way In all my decades running RPGs, I have only twice used pre-made modules, and even those two were heavily altered for convention games. This does NOT include scenarios I was writing/playtesting for publication, of course. What I … Continue reading Green Rain →

...it'll get messy, folks . Confessions Of A Dungeon Master Self-Typecasting, Or, George Is Playing Another Stoner The very excellent Robin D. Laws wrote a great book about game mastering (Titled “Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering”), in which, among other things, he talked about various kinds of players. Players like the Power Gamer or … Continue reading Cupcake Gnomes VS Ice Cream Dwarves: Battle Of The Century →

...romantic, but dangerous . Confessions Of A Dungeon Master How I Learned To Think Fast, Or, Players: Chaos On Two Legs One of the very first things every Dungeon Master/Game Master learns is to think fast. By about your third session, you'll learn to pull everything from monsters to names to entire cities out of … Continue reading Razorsnake Tango →

...but you have to buy me one to hear the talk . Confessions Of A Dungeon Master I DMed my very first game of D&D here in Sacramento back in late January of 1978. That first session, contrary to what 95% of D&D groups were doing, was not a dungeon crawl. It was pretty much … Continue reading Uncle Doc Talks To You About Beer →