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D&D Planescape creator Zeb Cook and designer Colin McComb graciously answered my questions for the following article about the evolution of Tieflings from 2e to 5e. The article also links to the full text of our interviews, where they share their insight into the race and the design decisions...

Thanks, this took a lot of time and is not the type of article I'll be able to write often. I was struck by how helpful and responsive everyone I contacted was. I coldcall contacted Colin and Zeb on Twitter and Facebook, then sent them questions, and they gave so much of their time to help a...

I wrote up the best trap I’ve ever created for a Dungeons and Dragons game: The Exploding Rolling Boulder Trap. The article has a diagram and detailed description on how to run the trap, which is appropriate for PCs of any level (though higher level PCs are more likely to get around it)...

This is a great point. DND can be whatever you want and whatever you make it, but it was designed to be heroic fantasy. Setting genre expectations at session 0, and then reinforcing them through the setting and NPCs, is probably the best way to prevent torture from happening in the first place.

Wow, that's got to be the ugliest post ever on these forums. Really sorry about that. But couldn't fix the formatting no matter what I tried.

Sorry, having serious formatting problems and unable to quote the previous post, but I agree with the idea that this relates to how information is disseminated in D&D. I would add the that the rules and norms of D&D shape the default play style in a defined way. Of course the DM should change it...

I very much agree with this, and this was more or less the conclusion that I came to. (Because of Formatting problems, continued in next post).

If you haven't run into this problem, great--my goal with the article is to help people who have experienced the problem find a way to solve it. And no, definitely have not run any scientific polls or controlled studies. But I have listened to a ton of different actual play podcasts and played...

http://theplanardm.com/torture-should-not-work-in-dungeons-dragons/ Torture doesn't work in real life. But in #DND games, the PCs' primary means of gathering information often is leaving one enemy alive and then torturing them. In this article, I explain why torture why it shouldn't work in...

I updated the Horizon Walker sub-class for the Ranger that was published in the 5th edition book, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, to give it more abilities (and a new spell) specific to the Outer Planes. Whereas the standard Horizon Walker protects the Prime Material Plane from Planar threats...

Reposting in full the following article from my blog, here. New and Improved Rules for Running The Deck of Many Things In this article, I create an alternative ruleset for running one of Dungeons and Dragons’ most iconic items: the Deck of Many Things. These alternative rules heighten the...

This post consists of two related articles from my blog. In Part I, I describe how adding moderate and extreme wings to Factions, particularly the factions in the Planescape Campaign Setting, helps players engage with them and helps the DM create NPCs. In Part II, I develop moderate and extreme...

I mostly agree, but would add that, if there's a situation where a character would obviously know he is gravely overmatched and thus appropriately terrified, I would tell that to the player. Or better yet, just tell the character something like, "you think one of these monsters would be...

Thank you for pointing out the black on black issue, which I was not aware of. I am sharing posts that were created for another source, and that explanation makes clear that direct copy and pasting risks this kind of issue. The downside is that the solution--using the remove formatting...

Yes, it is designed for 5e, characters of level 1-4. The DM may have to adjust the number of monsters and damage of traps depending on if it's level 1 or level 4 characters, but the adventure itself shouldn't need to change.

Losing Face in Sigil’s Slums: A DND Planescape Adventure for 1st-4th Level PCs Here is a homebrew adventure I posted here on my Planescape blog. It's a good starting adventure for a Planescape campaign, or a way to introduce Planescape to a game that uses a different setting. The PCs search...

It's a different take on my original post, but I fully approve of ANY lessons learned from Gilligan's Island!

What Gilligan’s Island Teaches us About Dungeons and Dragons I am posting the following article from my blog: www.theplanardm.com. Typically I write about Planescape, but this is a general advice article. A movie star, a professor, a millionaire (and his wife) and a lovable fool band together...

Weather Table for Planescape’s Sigil: Roll for Random Misery I published the following article and the accompanying Weather Chart on my blog here. If you use it and your players get upset, feel free to blame me. Weather Table for Planescape’s Sigil: Roll for Random Misery [This article uses...