Is DnD 5e too lenient? Almost boring? Usually yes. But these Sithicus Ashes of the Black Rose adventures are HUMBLING me. Watch me and @dmdavid.com run from DM @d20play.bsky.social and try to survive!

How our Crows game with @d20play.bsky.social went: Check out our tokens after just travelling to the dungeon. Those skulls mean everyone is either boned or double boned. Later: Many dead PCs Crows is brutal and fun

Down into the dungeon Not sure where to stow my 10-foot pole

The first public playtest of Crows is live! www.patreon.com/posts/crows-...

Anecdote from Bulgarian tour guide: My son, he says to me, “We don’t get old anymore; we just level up.” I know that’s via video games, but it still has me thinking about the reach of Dave & Gary’s creation.

Belogradchik Fortress in Bulgaria dates back to the Romans and substitutes natural rock formations for some walls. Real world D&D inspiration

Today, playing a Druid, I turned into a horse and attempted a test of strength by saying, “I will pull the woman from her wax prison using horsepower!” That’s living the dream

Here are our planning notes for the 2012 D&D championship GEN CON. I had so much fun with the opens and championships. We took that shit serious!

I saved 4 characters from the 2012 D&D championship at Gen Con. Here’s a shot of the final showdown. I love that the DM came equipped with at least 2 Balors!

In 1977, kids grew up seeing few movies. Most cities had 3 or 4 channels. Video stores were years away. Only Disney made much for kids and the studio was mired in a 2-decade slump. Star Wars had yet to plant the idea of making special-effects movies for kids on summer break.

I’m shopping monster books for foes. Stalking, nightmare creatures that do things like tap on windows at night and cause people to disappear seem compelling to me, but they’re never legendary, so I know the adventure’s last scene would be an anti-climactic 5-to-1 ass kicking.

Today for an adventure, I need to decide how a low-level warlock could murder someone and leave a body that clearly and creepily suggests that a warlock did this. I mean, what does the aftermath of murder by toll the dead even look like?

This Sunday I’m playing Village of Hommlet with @d20play.bsky.social in the DM chair. I’m excited for my first visit. All I know is Gary dutifully stashed coins in every home like the village was a goddam dungeon for murderhobos. 🤣

Fascinating read. I never realised the Mike Mearls and I were in agreement about a 5thEd (2014) design goal and am sad to see something I didn’t know existed disappear.

After Mike Mearls left the D&D design team, the group stopped focusing on speed of play in their design. In an essential new post on playtesting, he talks about speed of play.

You may have seen videos of North Korean defectors setting foot in western grocery stores for the first time. Those folks were less over-stimulated than me walking into a Japanese Mega Don Quijote store for the first time

This life-sized unicorn Gundam statue proved way cooler than I expected

Today I get to talk about adventure design and testing with @alphastream.bsky.social @shawnmerwin.bsky.social and @dmdavid.com! Lots of great topics to cover including this nugget from @mattcolville.bsky.social. I hope you can join us in the chat on the d20play YouTube! 7pm EDT.

2024 monsters reevaluated based on adventure I just ran: Assassin - brutal Kraken - rough Bone devil - good match for cr Evoker wizard - also just right Chain devil - weak and sad

In the early days of D&D, players liked saying, “I ready my sword” or “I nock an arrow.” I witnessed it all the time. This helped counter DMs who might otherwise insist players spend a turn drawing a sword or preparing an arrow.

The @slyflourish.com trick of improvising the reveals of secrets & clues during play keeps gaining my favor. The technique helped me remix an adventure that would have run well short of my 4-hour con slot. I gave leads to the mod's written encounters until time came to reveal how to finish the quest

I’m one of those who loved playing Fall of Blackbottom because of a real sense of peril and choices that made the difference between success and failure. Plus the villains did bad things so I loved taken down.

Gateway error Service unavailable Dndbeyond is having a night Guess I’ll have to reference books like a caveman

Bitter Sweet Draw Steel game today. Only 2 of 5 heroes made it to the safehouse. But, they saved 8 other souls. Real. Hard. Choices.

Your action pose! Tks for bringing @ghostfiregaming.bsky.social s The Grim Hunt to life for all your players.

I’m counting down hours until I get in the car and drive to Fort Wayne to the Winter Fantasy convention!

I’m prepping to run 3 Grim Hollow adventures at Winter Fantasy. In my own adventures, I add “Leads” sub-sections that list the players’ likely next steps after a scene. In these GH mods, I’m thrilled to see “Moving On” sections that serve the same purpose. So helpful!

Remember when the pages of the original 2014 D&D books all fell out of their bindings? I put the pages in these comb bindings, but I suppose it’s time to recycle.

My adventure's timeline: 1. Party of evil NPCs visit a dungeon and start waking a threat. 2. PCs learn something's up and go to investigate. Me at 2am: Wait! Why hasn't team evil finished when the PCs arrive? Finally, D&D's 5-minute work day *aids* storytelling.

I love books of random tables, but few reach the heights of The Creative Game Masters Guide to Extraordinary Locations by Duncan Rhodes. This book keeps adding ways to prove invaluable, including dispensing advice, inspiration, and adventure seeds. It’s rocket fuel for your imagination.

I picked up Sign of the Labrys (1963) because it features a megadungeon-like underground that Gary cited as an inspiration. Also, it’s post apocalyptic like Gamma World.

TTRPGs have avoided higher tariffs on games due to an exemption for printed, hardbound books. Reminds me of 2003 case where a judge ruled the X-Men non-human, gaining their action figures the reduced tariffs for toys rather than dolls. So on the nose for the X-Men's themes.

I'm working on a level-12 D&D adventure and facing the usual challenge of finding enough high-level monsters that are (a) plausibly found in a group and (b) reasonably simple to run as a group. Once again, the answer is fiends. #FeelingDevilish

Wow! This interactive map makes a great way to explore the Realms.

New post: How a Roleplaying Game like D&D Could Make Rounds Play Better • Making retreat practical like in 1974 • "Join me, and together, we can rule the galaxy" • 6 seconds of simultaneous effects, just like AD&D dmdavid.com/tag/rpg-desi...

My Winter Fantasy judging schedule Feb 07 - Saturday (9AM - 1PM) Grim Hollow #7 - Blood & Poison Feb 07 - Saturday (2PM - 6PM) Grim Hollow #5 - Requiem for the Living Feb 08 - Sunday (9AM - 1PM) Grim Hollow #6 - Worse than the Disease Feb 08 - Sunday (1PM - 5PM) Grim Hollow #7 - Blood & Poison

If you are curious about running Draw Steel and are hesitant to get in the system, I recommend this discussion between @d20play.bsky.social and @dmdavid.com Tom has put a lot of time and effort into the system and has some valuable insight into running Draw Steel.

Grammar mavens: Should I be writing, "The fifth-edition designers opted to skip all that rules baggage," with or without the hyphen?

New post: Making the most of cyclic turn order in games Like D&D and Pathfinder. dmdavid.com/tag/making-t...

My group started our #Dragonbane mini-campaign last week. Here are some thoughts and highlights (very mild spoilers). #ttrpg #dnd

My new discovery in the AD&D DMG: Gary explains hp and poison saves. "Damage is not actually sustained—at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch." (1/3)

Turns out that Steve Perrin is behind the initiative rules in Holmes Basic and thus cyclic initiative in 3E

This classic RuneQuest/Glorantha supplement changed the way I design RPGs. The "cult initiate" concept in RQ became the "wizards' houses" of Ars Magica, then Vampire's clans, then all the factions in the '90s-era RPGs. Hard to part with. Lots of old stuff on eBay. www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_...

Interesting read as always from David! I keep coming back to the fact that two of #dnd 5e's three pillars of play (exploration and social interaction) use "player-driven" turn order and everyone's fine with it, yet when a game tries it for combat, some folks just totally lose their s***.

New post: Making the best of roleplaying games like Draw Steel and Daggerheart with player-driven turn orders

If you have a wand of magic missiles with 7 charges and a DM who lets you pass it from character to character, then you can fire 21 missiles in a round. If you just fire once with all charges, then you only get 9. Work for hirelings? (Check out my latest post on the awkward necessity of turns.)

Recently, I saw a post name a cinematic martial arts RPG with a dialogue phase that gave combatants time to threaten, banter, and so on. Now I can’t find the post or remember the name of the game. Can anyone help me out?

Talking about initiative in TTRPGs with @dmdavid.com tomorrow night. What is the best way? youtube.com/live/idJP7L6...

New post: Turns and Turn Order Are the Worst, so Why Do Roleplaying Games Make Us Spend So Much Time Deliberating Them? dmdavid.com/tag/turns-an...

When a character attempts an action and then rolls the dice, does the roll tell how well the character performs and nothing more, or can the roll reveal something about the world? Monte Cook breaks down an essential concept for RPG designers and GMs. montecook.substack.com/p/roll-the-d...