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What to Expect on This Blog

 My goal here is to provide you with components to enhance your gaming experience at home. Whether you're brand new to RPGs or you want to step up your game, I'm here to help. I'll be handing out advice and opinions from my many years of experience to improve your GM skills. I also write TTRPG supplements that I will post here. You can find my supplements on my Ko-Fi page at the link below. Check out that page for new products and occasional free content! This is just the beginning and I aim to grow this blog into an interactive community for gamers. If you have any questions or requests, you can contact me on my social media:  Twitter: @Flayer85 Tumblr: Dungeon Doctor  Ko-Fi: PlayerFlayer85

More Than Adventure

Alright, you've got your adventurers traveling across a kingdom of your creation fighting bad guys, earning treasure, exploring dangerous ruins. What more could you ask for? While the adventure is the main goal and doing that well is a big achievement, have you considered what fun could be had outside of the main adventure? It can be easy to get nervous as a GM and think that if your players doing quest related action all the time that people won't have as much fun, but you might be surprised at the simple things your players can enjoy role playing. Now maybe you stick very closely to action scenes because you and your group are not very comfortable or practiced in role playing. That's totally fine. I want to suggest some simple ways that you spend some time outside of the main adventure and still have fun. Whether you've created a world the PCs have known all their lives or if you've taken them to a new land of wonder, remember that these environments should have a

Character Creation and Power

 When starting a new campaign, there is always the question of how generous you should be with character creation. Specifically, people have long discussed the creation of overpowered characters and average characters that must struggle more. Overpowered characters use to be the norm, at least for me in my younger days. Slowly people started to value the struggle more and not having these so easy. These are all great ideas. Today I would like to promote a middle of the road approach.   I definitely think that characters shouldn't perfect, all powerful, or able to do everything, but they should be exceptional. This opens up what I feel is flaw in the character creation process in most ttrpg's. A hero or character of any sort should be exceptional at their "thing." That thing may be defined by an attribute, a skill set, or a particular power. In the standard creation, you may take the chance of not being exceptional at all in your area of expertise or may have to choose

Rules and When You Should Break Them

 If you have a fair amount of experience with ttrpg games like Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Vampire, Cthulhu and more you've definitely figured out that there's a small set of rules you need to understand to start playing the game but there are many more rules to understand that help with more complex issues. So, a couple questions come to rise out of this dynamic. Do you need to know ALL the rules in order to be a GM? They say the GM has the final word, so can or should you break the rules? Whether you need to know the all the rules is really determined by the group's expectations and general consensus. When I was a kid, we would all take turns being the GM, but my one friend John clearly understood the rules better than the rest of us. As long as you know enough to get through all the common actions and checks and your group is just expecting fun then there's no need to stress over all the rules. On the other hand, if you tell people that you're going to put

Don't Bluff as A Game Master!

Being a game master is hard! No one said it wasn't. There are so many things that you need to keep track of during the game while remembering all the prep you did before the game. It's easy to get mixed up, especially if you're not experienced. Today, I want to help you avoid a big awkward mistake as a game master, and that is bluffing the danger in an encounter.  So, what do I mean by "bluffing the danger?" In any TTRPG there comes a time when your players face a challenge or danger that carries consequences or benefits depending on how successful your players are. Let's imagine a scenario your players have become wanted by authorities for any reason. They are now on the run. You want to turn up the tension, so you send in cavalry and put your players up against a formidable force who are under shoot to kill orders. The dilemma comes when your players fail some important roles and their chances of getting away turn to near impossible. Maybe they've run ou

Your Description Matters

     So, you're about to lead another TTRPG game. You've done your preparation and you've got some great ideas. Now comes the slightly harder part, and that's translating your world to others and letting your players interact with it. Given the way all TTRPGs work, how you describe your world impacts the game greatly. So, let's talk about some do's and don'ts.       What type of things do your players need to know about the setting? The most important are a general layout, distinct features, awareness of other people and the tone or "vibes" around them, a detailed awareness of a 6 foot radius around them, and a chance to pick up special interests around them. This sounds like a lot, but let me provide an example:      You step into an L shaped tavern. The bar follows the inside wall from entrance where you stand to the other around the corner. This is the type of place you would never eat food you dropped, you may shine your own mug, and don't

Why You Should Create A Calendar For Your TTRPG World

     Have you ever noticed that most games you play seem to be during summer by default? If you sit down at the GM starts describing your surroundings you mind probably starts with summer. That's fine, but as you continue with the campaign a lot of GMs forget to progress the seasons or include cultural events that come with the seasons. This may not seem necessary to some people, but I want to talk about how this adds to your game and why you should include it.      Let's say your game is not focused on role playing and you're more about the action. Great, that can be tons of fun. A calendar with diverse seasons can really add some spice to that action. What monsters, animals, or demons show themselves in different seasons. Does the natural death of fall bring out specific enemies? Does it weaken or empower certain creatures? In the fall the cover of the trees is lost, the forest can be harder to trudge through because of two feet of leaves, and when it rains the leaves bec

Introducing My First TTRPG Supplement!

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      In 2022, I am chasing my goal of becoming a TTRPG content creator. I just completed my first supplement. This is a product for game master to include in their world no matter what game they're playing.       Red Rook Inn is a supplemental bar/hotel made to fit into any TTRPG. Red Rook Inn is a legitimate front for a criminal enterprise run by Helga, The Red Queen. Helga is in the import/export business with any illicit products that fit in your world. The bar is where the best chess players in the nation come to play, and everyone else comes to drink and bet. It's such a rough place that a painting over the bar displays the last person to die there. The Inn caters mostly to the underground and holds some deadly secrets. The Inn also hosts the most unique marketplace around.   Red Rook comes with rich description, a cast of characters, internal drama, secrets, quest suggestions, unique marketplace, variations, and maps. Thirty pages of content! You can get this supplement