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Paper Minis!

August 31, 2017 by newbiedm

Everyone loves their minis. Everyone loves having a unique mini that represents their character, or in the case of DMs, that represents the monsters that the PCs will ultimately face. Even back in the old days, when I was a player in 1e or 2e games, we had minis there to represent marching order and […]

NewbieDM Review: Encounter Decks 3 by Inkwell Ideas

September 2, 2015 by newbiedm

During Gencon, I saw that my friend Mike, who runs SlyFlourish, picked up a deck of cards with what looked like an encounter and a map on them. These cards intrigued me, so I looked around and picked up a batch from Drivethru RPG. I picked up the bundle that includes the PDF of the […]

The 5e Overland Travel Montage

March 9, 2015 by newbiedm

One of the things I’ve had to deal with in the 5e game that takes place in the 2nd Ed. era of the Forgotten Realms is overland travel. That map is huge! And there are quite a few empty spots along the way (one of the reasons why I’m switching to the 3e map actually, […]

Rethinking Initiative

January 28, 2015 by newbiedm

“You enter a room, the smell in here’s musky. The ground is covered in a fine dust, and you can see footprints, along with a few drops of fresh blood.” “The creatures must have come through here. I want to roll perception, maybe to see if I hear something… 15… Anything?” “You do, you hear soft […]

Converting the 2e Realms to 5e

September 29, 2014 by newbiedm

In a previous post I wrote about setting my home game in the Forgotten Realms around the time period of the 2nd edition version of D&D, which would put us in Faerun in 1368DR. For those of you keeping track at home, the original boxed set of the Forgotten Reams placed the timeline at 1357DR, […]

Campaign building with the Monster Manual

September 10, 2014 by newbiedm

“This bestiary is for storytellers and world-builders.” – Monster Manual introduction The D&D 5th Ed. Monster Manual releases on September 19th for those stores that take part in the WOTC WPN program, and on September 30th for everyone else. A few Monster Manuals saw the light of day at Gencon, and we’ve seen some bits […]

87 DM tips.

July 31, 2013 by newbiedm

I went crazy on twitter last night. I was doing some fiction writing (non rpg) when I suddenly stopped and thought about how I really haven’t been doing my job as “newbiedm”, which basically is to try and help new dm’s do their job right. So I started tweeting tips. And before I knew it, […]

Discussion: Does the game influence DMing styles?

November 15, 2011 by newbiedm

Monte Cook’s Legends are Lore articles are a little puzzling to me. They certainly take an old school approach to D&D that isn’t even present in Monte’s own version of D&D (3.0), but that’s a thought for another time… The latest article asks if “the game presents players with challenges that have pre-made solutions?” This is something […]

Review: Lair Assault – Forge of the Dawn Titan

September 27, 2011 by TheSheDM

Here there be Spoilers: Players wanting to be surprised when they play Lair Assault should steer away now! The other weekend, I sat down to judge my first session of Lair Assault – Forge of the Dawn Titan. In a sort of “slot zero” session, I had arranged for many of the DMs at my […]

Return of the Minicast

September 20, 2011 by newbiedm

So once upon a time I had a podcast called the NewbieDM.com Minicast, and it was nominated for an ENnie and stuff…. and then… poof… it disappeared due to several factors. Well, I want to bring it back. So I’m ready to start production on Season 2 of the show… It’ll be the same format, […]