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In addition to hand-drawn aids for the players, I'm also a big fan of empowering PCs to draw their own stuff. When I DM in-person I like to throw down a big sheet of butcher paper over the entire table for PCs to doodle on. It's awesome not just for seeing how they envision their own characters...

I had no idea about the previous "Volo's Guides"- these look great. And those unique city settings with Vornheim and Hollowfaust are very, very helpful. Thank you!

Will definitely look into these, thanks! I've heard of the Nentir Vale setting, but am not really familiar with it, so will be interested to check it out. And I have need of a robust dwarven hold in the very near future, so that Hammerfast resource could be gold.

I'm a relatively new (~2+ years) DM currently running two different homebrew campaigns set (loosely) in different areas of the Forgotten Realms. For the more recent one, I found the campaign guide from the D&D Next "Murder in Baldur's Gate" adventure to be a fantastic resource, giving lots of...

Arcana Domain 21 Death Domain 11 Forge Domain 19 Grave Domain 3 +1 = 4 Knowledge Domain 23 Life Domain 18 Light Domain 21 Nature Domain 4 -2 = 2 Trickery Domain 16 War Domain 21 Genuinely curious: Why all the hate for grave domain? I think it's an interesting concept as a gatekeeper...

I tend to feel the same way- as a DM you can feel when the players are all engaged, and feed off of that to make things better for the whole table. When I see that not happening, getting feedback on what I (as a DM) can do to fix my pacing or make things more exciting is always helpful. I've...

I recently had this conversation with my players. A few of them were advocating for the DM (me) rolling for stealth, so that if they rolled poorly they wouldn't immediately know the repercussions of it. While I can sort of understand that approach, the way I see it is that if a character...

Off the top of my head, I would recommend: Pregen character sheets: The ones on the WotC site have a good variety or race/class combos for the first few levels, but I find them a pain to read the way they are formatted. I might recommend transcribing these over to a more traditional character...

Not familiar with FATE, but I'll check it out! The idea (for our group) came out of a session zero prior to the new party forming. We used modified Fiasco rules to set up the characters backstories, relationships, and some details about the starting location. The group seemed to really be into...

Something I've learned from my (relatively short) time DMing, is that no matter how rich I try to make the world, those dastardly party members will always throw a wrench in things. The well thought out backstories- they'll never see the light of day! That merchant with the rich, detailed...

I'm preparing to start running Out of the Abyss with one of my groups, and have been thinking about how to implement two gameplay mechanics that seem like they will be core to (at least the first half of) the campaign: 1) madness and 2) the Drow hunting party chase I want these to be meaningful...

My core group has played LMoP (though very heavily modified), but it's taken them a few months to make it through the full adventure. I'm definitely looking for something shorter and more self-contained for this game. I'll definitely look into the Goodman Games recommendation. It looks like...

Hi all, I'll be heading to a cabin next weekend with about ~15 people, and about half of them are in my bi-weekly campaign. I'd like to offer up a one-off adventure over the weekend for any of them who are interested, as well as a few of our friends who've expressed interest but aren't a part of...

I really like this idea, and think I will try it going forward. Sounds like a good way to get the PCs invested.

Croesus said this much better than I did :) Back story is great, but mostly as a driver for motivation. Try to hook into that, and keep in tune with how that motivation may change over time.

In my starter set campaign, the PCs didn't use the pre-gen characters, but I took inspiration from that to try and incorporate plot hooks for each PC that tied into their backstory. Throughout the campaign, each character got a moment in the spotlight, either through an NPC, encounter, item or...

I know this is hugely subjective and dependent on the group, but would anyone be able to give a rough estimate on # hours (not # sessions) it's taken your groups to get through Sunless Citadel, or any of the other Yawning Portal adventures? I've been thinking about running Sunless Citadel on an...

I'm looking to have an upcoming campaign enemy accompanied by some warfogred henchman. The UA: Eberron (which is the only official 5e material as far as I can tell) is pretty slim, and outside of a few homebrew items I haven't seen too much for using them as NPCs. Before I re-skin something from...

This is a great idea. I tried the same thing (set the nothic up as a major threat, have it try to convince the PCs to feed it glasstaff) bit unfortunately my players opted to capture him i stead and missed out on the trade for the weapon. But it does help to give them a better chance of fighting...

I made a "custom" DM screen that's one of those cardboard tri-folds, some binder clips, and sticky notes. Prior to a session, I'll write out most of the relevant info I expect to need on sticky notes and put it on the tri-fold for quick reference. Of course the players go off the rails 10...