GM Resources

A collection of 21 posts

GM Resources

What To Do During Downtime?

I've always loved the "home base" parts of games. When I played Knights of the Old Republic, I wanted more time aboard the Ebon Hawk. I wanted more space combat, something to do aboard ship. When I played Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, sailing around

GM Resources

How to Build a Mystery: Rumor Cards

Back in February, I ran a one-shot session of Vaesen and absolutely loved running it. As I start thinking about putting together a more complete campaign using the same system, I've been thinking about how to support designing more mysteries. While I think that the system provided a

GM Resources

Talking About Talking: Languages in RPGs

I've been reading a lot of other RPG blogs about the way that they tackle the topic of languages in their game. Dungeonfruit began this iteration of the conversation about language, and Murkdice followed it up with a really great article as well. But something that Murkdice neglected

GM Resources

Flying with a Co-Pilot

💡There is one week left to back the Kickstarter that I wrote about last week. If you haven't backed the project yet and want access to a really fun RPG about legacy and how heroes are remembered, you should do that this week! Today, even! The post comes

Worldbuilding in Five Glasses

Worldbuilding Beverages: Coffee and Tea

This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. This is part four of my "Worldbuilding Beverages" series. Click here to see the whole series! This week, we'

Worldbuilding in Five Glasses

Worldbuilding Beverages: Liquor

This is part three of my "Worldbuilding Beverages" series. Click here to see the whole series! This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. This week, we'

Worldbuilding in Five Glasses

Worldbuilding Beverages: Wine

This is part two of my "Worldbuilding Beverages" series. Click here to see the whole series! This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. This week, we'

Worldbuilding in Five Glasses

Worldbuilding Beverages: Beer

This is part one of my new "Worldbuilding Beverages" series. Click here to see the whole series! This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. One of the

GM Resources

Making Better House Maps for D&D

A shorter post this week, as a real-life wave of weddings to attend and other commitments have given me way less writing time over the past month. I stumbled upon the image below while exploring the previews about the new "Bastion" system in the 2024 Dungeon Master'

GM Resources

Lessons in Building Factions from Frostpunk 2

Since its release in September, I have been playing a lot of Frostpunk 2, a post-apocalyptic survival city-builder video game... so excuse me while this blog briefly becomes a video game blog. And while Frostpunk is an entirely different genre than most TTRPGs, except maybe The Quiet Year, it still

GM Resources

Rethinking the Recap: the Mission Report

I'm taking a week off from your regularly scheduled Guide to Goblins series content to bring you another piece of GM advice. The last major GM advice article I wrote was about backstories; this time, we're going to be talking about something that I actually think

GM Resources

Build Better Backstories, Part 2

Last week, we talked about backstories. Be sure to read that post before this one, if you haven't already. It might even be worth it to reread it. Today, we're going to focus on tools and resources that can be helpful in generating backstories. This is

GM Resources

Build Better Backstories, Part 1

Today, I want to talk about backstories. This is pretty much a pure RPG post, not a history post, so if you're only here for the history content, this is your warning. Depending on your experience with backstories, you may have strong feelings. Some people love writing backstories

History

Rethinking Alignment: the Great Chain of Being

One of the most ignored parts of D&D's core rules is the idea of alignment. I get it, I ignore it too! For those who aren't familiar with it, D&D gives every creature--PC, NPC, monster, beast--an alignment on two axes. One axis

History

Varying Religious Culture in TTRPGs and Worldbuilding

The focus on bone magic that has dominated the blog for the past three weeks has made me start to think more about how we treat religion in D&D and other TTRPGs. Because of the "real" nature of the gods, who go around and directly intervene

History

Jesters & Fools: History & Myth

Happy April Fool's Day! To celebrate this holiday, I wanted to write about the history of court jesters, a staple trope in popular imagination about the medieval European royal court, as well as share some resources for this classic image for use in your Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Review

Review: The Marketplace by Phalanx Games Design

I spent 2600 words last week trying to explain the basic principles underpinning the medieval feudal system. One big area that I did not really tackle was the existence of trade in the medieval world. The short version: there certainly was trade, but far less than the massive, globalized trade

History

Captain Ludd: History & Myth

This post is all about a pretty major social movement in the early 1800s. While that is certainly a bit later than the medieval-ish historical epoch that a lot of fantasy draws from, the larger social point of the Luddites is one that can pretty easily be adapted for a

Design with Me

Spider Broodmother: Design with Me

CW: Discussion of Spiders, Discussion of Body Horror This post is a part of an ongoing Upgraded Monsters series. Click the link to check out all posts in the series. I'm hoping to expand beyond just showing links to work that I create. For this sort of article,

History

Worldbuilding Elements of a Western

Readers of the blog may have noticed that both of my newly published homebrew work is centered very much on the Wild West. This is because my current home game is set in a fantasy version of the American West, so it has been dominating my personal homebrewing for the

Supplements

Now Live! Rogue's Gallery: the Tusall Gang

This article may include affiliate links, which allows me to get a small portion of the price you pay, at no extra cost to you or the creator. My newest product is now available for download on DriveThruRPG. I would really appreciate your support – your purchases support the upkeep of