“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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
One of the strengths of the Neverwinter campaign setting, as I stated in my review, is the inclusion of character themes. Character themes were first introduced in the Dark Sun setting as a way to tie the PC’s into the world, with a ready to go plot hook for the DM to build stories around. […]
In my previous post on this series, I wrote about Index Cards, a screenwriting app suitable for organizing details of your campaign. Now, I’m going to show you Goodreader, the app I use for reading, organizing, marking, and making printouts of pdf’s in my gaming library. At $4.99, it’s cheap and very useful, and I […]
Last month marked my third anniversary as a full time DM, and I still enjoy it so much that I haven’t passed the baton to someone else. It’s actually pretty incredible that I’ve been able to do it for so long without losing much interest (and the same goes for running this blog), as I […]
Like a kid playing with Legos, I derive a childish glee from clearing off my coffee table and laying out dungeon tiles. I also have vinyl grids and wet-erase pens. When tiles can’t help me, carefully drawing vinyl maps is a close second in the glee department. I’m a busy DM though, I don’t always […]
September 29, 2014 by newbiedm
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