If given the choice, people’s preferred superpower is flight, and even before Icarus humanity dreamed of taking to the skies. I’m not saying you need a world with no rules, that would be chaos. But when you present a magical world full of fantasy and adventure, a lot of people are going to want to fly, even at low levels.
Things in the world change according to player decisions and their indecisions. When it comes to roleplaying games, every game must be unique. Not simply because of changing variables like time, snacks, players, and social distancing; but because of the way in which different players interact with dynamic consistencies, as I like to call them, and the chain of events they set in motion.
As the Dungeon Master begins their prep for the upcoming session, they load their favorite playlist. Suddenly the ambiance of adventure echoes around their workspace. The introduction of music into your Dungeons & Dragons game is not a an optional element; it is a vital ingredient to immersive storytelling.
Interested in playing D&D but don’t know where to begin? Here's a guide for how to find games to play in, along with step-by-step instructions for starting your own D&D campaign. We also explore the opportunities out there for becoming a professional Dungeon Master and how you can get paid to roll dice.
You’re sitting around a dinner table covered with papers, laptops, electric candles, and WAY too many dice (as if that's a thing). You’re surrounded by your longtime friends, and perhaps some new ones, as your Dungeon Master begins Session Zero for your new campaign. Each of you has spent hours before this crafting the perfect character, and now you get the chance to share this character with your friends! As each person explains their backstory, your final party member clears his throat, stands up and says “I shall be a Chaotic Evil warlock!” The groans from the rest of the party fill the room.
One of the greatest things about D&D is the ability to adventure with your friends. It provides a safe environment for you and your friends to explore a world (or multiple) and all from the comfort zone. In addition, D&D gives us the ability to play in a setting for an undisclosed amount of time. Those features are what attract many to the open-world MMORPG genre.
Your Dungeon Master calls you together to kick off the campaign with a session zero. After discussing the setting and their expectations for the table it comes down to the part that you’ve been waiting for, creating your character and your party. For the sake of this we will say there are four players, a pretty standard D&D party size wise. You all start blurting out what you want to play, and discuss the party composition. What is the party composition?
As you finish the final word of the lengthy monologue from an important NPC, you hear a shout from across the table: “INSIGHT CHECK!”. You roll your eyes as they proceed to roll their dice, add their modifier and tell you their score. The frequency of call-out skill checks really depends on the players at your table and your style as a Dungeon Master.
About three years ago, five co-workers and I were chatting when one of my coworkers mentioned out of the blue that they’d heard of Dungeons and Dragons and always wanted to play. In unison five "Hey me too!!"s sounded off across the room. The response; "Now we need a DM," and five heads—for some reason—swiveled instantly to me…
Dungeon Mastering is a hobby which can end up costing quite a bit of money. If you are a collector, like me, you are constantly trying to acquire anything you think will improve your game. There is a whole library of books you “need” to have, along with your dungeon tiles, an entire dragon’s hoard worth of minis, a DM screen, a custom initiative tracker, a dice tower, a D&D Beyond subscription, and the countless other resources you find to help run your game.
As Dungeon Masters, it is up to us to give our players a wonderful and memorable experience with each session. This can be done with a memorable NPC, your plot arc, it can be a unique magical item, or you can have your players encounter a previously unknown creature. In this article I’m going to discuss the last two, outlining how to create them for your campaign or one-shot session.
