After I watched “Social Encounters: Decoded” by Runehammer, I’ve been thinking about how to apply the logic of changing social encounters from a situation where the NPC holds a single important piece of information that will only be revealed if the players ask the right question (s). I often do this and it ends up with the players dancing around trying to get to that singular piece of info. Runehammer suggests that instead any social encounter should have 3 possible outcomes driven by what the players do, rather than what information the NPC holds: Favourable (Epic, fun, gratifying) As Written…

I saw a Youtube video by Jim Murphy where he want through all his stored hobby stuff. At the same time I’ve been packing away my own hobby collection in preparation for moving back to Denmark after 21 years in London. And the things got me thinking: If I had to start all over with Dungeons & Dragons, what minis would I paint and what scenery would I build. Out of curiosity I asked Jim where her would start and his reply was: Characters, a band of Orc/Goblins and Skeletons/Zombies. Then every adventure add something new. That’s how I did…

I had been playing roleplaying games since mid 80s, but stopped when I moved from Denmark to London in August 1999. However, in Feb 2018, I started the campaign War of the Triplets with 5 adults who barely knew each other or Dungeons & Dragons. In a few months I will move back to Denmark after 21 years in London and as such, I have now stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons in preparation of the move, so I want to share some thoughts from DMing for a group of adults over the last 2.5 years as it has been a…

As we are facing a global pandemic, I find myself in self-isolation due to the government enforced lockdown. Not only does the lockdown mean we can no longer get together to play our monthly D&D game, which is a shame as the lockdown also means we have more time on our hands to play D&D. With that I took our game online, but I did it without losing the ability to use my terrain and miniatures following the 3 simple steps documented in this article. They are: (lo-)Technical set- up (connecting players and terrain). Simplifying the game. Remove complexity that doesn’t…

I’ve been listening to Mainframe 53 – Binary Agency on the Runehammer Patreon, which I highly recommend you join if you are a Dungeon Master. I agree with Hankerin’s philosophy of only preparing one game session at a time to allow for the players action to influence how the story progresses, but his admission that he is sometimes struggling to stick to it made me think about how I actually do it, which I have captured below using our current campaign as example. What is a workshop and what is workshop facilitation? An important piece of background information is that…