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Elves are calm and graceful, dwarves are drunken craftsmen, and halflings are some cross between nomadic riverfolk and burrow-dwelling chubbos.

Simple, but a little boring.

One of the more interesting DMs who has run a game for me set-out to personalize the races a little more than the standard stereotypes. While he kept most, he wanted to add more of a culture-shock element to the various races, and give them different standards of etiquette and manners.

This is a tricky, finicky experiment. If you write too much the details bog down the race and the player’s eyes will glaze over. If you make it too simple or specialized the detail will be forgotten. It’s all about changing how the players interact with the races and how they act around them. The standard stereotypes of demihuman

I often use television as a basis for designing campaigns.

Good television can have many parallels with D&D: you have good guys and bad guys, events unfold periodically, there are multiple characters competing for attention, and at the end of the day all that matters is that you enjoyed it.

Depending on your game, you might play like Lost or like Gilligan’s Island. You might have a set story that unfolds session-by-session on a large tapestry or you can have episodic loosely-connected adventures with familiar characters. Or even Fantasy Island where things change from week to week and anything goes.

Ensemble shows where there are multiple prominent and important characters are the best sources of idea theft. Shows that focus on a single central character should be used carefully

No, this is NOT a blog entry about rolling dice while rolling joints or DMWI: Dungeon Mastering While Intoxicated.

Admittedly, I have tried the later. DMing while drunk turned out to be a very, very bad idea and being the only sober person at the table was equally terrible. Since then I refuse to DM for anyone who is above the legal limit. A beer or two while playing is fine, but more than that and we get silly.

I’m mostly blogging about drugs inside the game world, rules and mechanisms for consumption and addition.

D&D has always had a very poor relationship with illicit activities. Despite newbie adventurer’s first impulse often being to hit a brothel and famous T-shirts announcing the character “spent their reward on ale and whores” there’s been precious little ink spent

As an amateur writer who enjoys a good plot, I always have to fight the urge to pen lengthy, complicated stories for my D&D campaigns.

No matter how story-lite my players want to be I always have this epic tale going on in the background or plotted out in my head and this vision of how I’d like events to unfold, with heroism, dramatic action, noble self-sacrifice, with die-rolls that match how the action should happen.

Even now I have two or three epic plots brewing in my brain that span a tier or two and might show-up for a future campaign. I have ideas for grand and dramatic villains with evil and/or misguided schemes. I have scenes and fights sketched-out. All this and more.

I purposely didn’t plan-out my current campaign. It was started as a one-shot adventure for a bunch

I just sat down to continue my work on converting the old Tomb of Horrors adventure by the late Gary Gygax, may he rest in peace, to 4th edition when it struck me: how will I portray the major deities in the campaign I'm running? I know, a bit off topic, and I apologise for not having written another mapping post yet, but I will! All in good time.

You see, my campaign is extremly deity rich, and will incorporate a nice chunk of the pantheon. My characters will, in their epic levels (and somewhat in their paragon), interact directly with the gods themselves. This is something entirely new to me, as up until now I've been able to just answer questions about gods and let the players make their own interpretations as to their personalities (if they even bothered). But now I have to do that

My first 4e adventure as a DM has occurred and I believe was a success.  It was a re-write of an adventure I have done so for all editions of D&D, so my vision and concept of the adventure is strongly engrained in my brain and makes for an excellent test for each edition.  Except for being caught up in the moment and letting the wizard's sleep (which should really be called drowsy to prevent the obvious assumption) spell effectively act as if the kobold horde had failed its first saving throw immediately instead of just slowing them, it all worked out.  The coup de grace attacks I allowed were balanced out by forgetting to apply the 10 vulnerability to area attacks, so no harm done there.  The modified kobold horde (Level 2 Elite Skirmisher - thank you Monster Builder for making that

If you remember in one of my earlier posts I wrote about how I prefer to stick to boxed text, but I decided tomorrow when I DM "The Black Knight of Arabel" I am going to try to free myself from that. Since I've run and played it a few times before already, I'm familiar with it enough that I can just wing it. I will be studying the module tonight and tomorrow morning as a refresher.

I want to try this because I want to see how well I do just improvising and not confining myself to the scripted text. I think doing that might also help me improve my DMing ability in general.

One thing that's also cool is today I called the DM hotline for some advice on running skill challenges.  That has been one part I've had trouble doing effectively. I mean, when my players hear "skill challenge," they

So I can say in a way I feel out of place. I decided to join WoTc's community to meet like minded gamers, and make new friends. I'm new to the world of D&D. Currently reading through the 4th Edition of D&D. I can say at one time I mocked those who played the game yet I never understood why. After reading through the PHB I could really see myself getting into the game. The Social aspect of it is what I really enjoy. Meeting new people and forming friendships along the way, and not to mention crawling through dungeons and slaying monsters. I have never played a session of D&D yet. I'm currently reading through the DMHB and found some people who play locally, I just hope that I can run a decent game. If anyone has any points or advice I would greatly appreciate it.

Let the good times roll.

I've been a Dungeon Master for almost as long as I've been playing. I played twice before I broke-out my DM screen and have probably clocked three times as many hours as monsters than I have as a PC. But I started a good eight years before Robin published his laws, so I made a few mistakes (read: a few horrible, unforgivable, ninth-circle worthy betrayals of mistakes).

The biggest mistake has always been related to sticking to my plots. As a writer-at-heart (like 95% of all DMs) I have a story I want to tell, and the campaign is merely an outlet. What they players want has sometimes been a hurdle or impediment to my grand and glorious epic.

Sometimes, no matter what the PCs did, it had no impact on the story. As a result my players responded with grander and bolder acts of defiance in