4 Pop-Culture Assumptions That Dungeons & Dragons Destroyed
The media keeps telling us how we, the geeks, have won popular culture. A show with dragons became prestige television, and networks keep aiming to produce the next Game of Thrones. A minister I know...
View ArticleGary Gygax’s Dungeon Building Spells (and the Ones He Should Have Made)
Since 1975, every single player of a wizard or magic user has read the Magic Mouth spell, and then chosen to skip it. Prove me wrong.* Who wants to use a 2nd-level spell to put a message on a wall...
View ArticleWhen Megadungeons Ruled Dungeons & Dragons
In the early 70s, as Gary Gygax co-created Dungeons & Dragons, he played the game seven times a week. He wrote, “As I worked at home, I did not schedule play sessions, but when a gamer or two...
View Article5 Reasons Most D&D Players Stopped Exploring Megadungeons
Dungeons & Dragons creators Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax built their campaigns around huge dungeons that grew and changed. Megadungeons span enough rooms and levels to become the focus of an entire...
View ArticleDungeon Masters: Just a Little Attention to Darkness Pays Off
My favorite sightseeing stops include caves and inactive mines. Cave tours inevitably include tales of the cave’s original explorers. I imagine myself in their place, delving by a feeble glow from a...
View ArticleD&D’s Advice for Dungeon Masters Offers Nothing on Running Dungeons
Even as a game with dungeons in the title, Dungeons & Dragons offers zero advice for dungeon masters aiming to run dungeons. The game provides plenty of help for the solo fun of sitting with a...
View ArticleTo Run a Great Dungeon, Write All Over the Map
For running a dungeon, the familiar map with numbers sets dungeon masters up for trouble. Many times when characters enter a dungeon room, I turn to a room’s key, and then learn that the party just...
View ArticleThe Movies and Stories than Inspired Dave Arneson to Invent the Dungeon Crawl
Around 1971 Dave Arneson and his circle of Minneapolis gamers invented games where players controlled individual characters who grew with experience and who could try anything because dice and a...
View ArticleJust Because a Dungeon Numbers Every Room Doesn’t Mean Players Have To...
If I had run Expedition to the Barrier Peaks when it reached me in 1980, the first session might have ended in frustration. Barrier Peaks includes lots of empty rooms. Of the 100 or so rooms on the...
View ArticleThe Neglected Secret to Making Dungeons Fun to Explore
The best dungeons build on the three Dungeons & Dragons pillars of combat, roleplaying interaction, and exploration—a pillar that depends on discovery. Dungeon creators rarely slight two of the...
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