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ayyylienlmaufo
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xanth-the-wizard-blog

Dungeon Master Essentials

I decided to make a list of DM stuff that I personally use or think are important to know when it comes to being a DM. So here’s my list:

Medieval Fantasy City Generator: This generator is now my LIFE. It generates incredibly complex cities with good customization. (Thanks to plantkat for sharing this site in their post here)

Naming Your Towns/Cities: Now that you’ve made your city, time to name it and give it some character! This post contains lots of great information.

Index Cards Rule: Fuckyeahdnd shared a SUPER convenient way of keeping track of turns and HP in combat. I use this system now for every single session I run.

Tricks & Traps: I am AWFUL at coming up with good Dungeon traps and challenges, this PDF includes some incredible ideas. The original poster, Courtney C. Campbell also runs a blog where she shares tons of great stuff. (Thanks to we-are-rogue for sharing the PDF in their post here)

Playing Different Types of Characters: Writeinspiration has a masterpost on how to write/play lots of different types of characters.

Unique NPC Jobs: Lauraharrisbooks wrote a list of different Fantasy Jobs which can help populate your world with some unique characters! Another similar post by Thewritershandbook also covers Common Occupations in the Middle Ages. 

Developing Characters by Threes: Monticusrex’s method of creating characters help you really flesh out who they are. Useful for Players and DM’s.

Troublesome Players? Speak Up: Dicebound brings up an incredibly great point. If someone is being a jerk, speak up and call them out. This is especially important and relevant now to crush awful behavior before it even has a chance to show it’s ugly face.

List of D&D Resources: And finally, pretty much anything you might need for D&D.  (Character stuff, spells, online communities/ways to play, etc..) A lot of people contributed to this post but thank you Mushroomancy for posting the original list.

Donjon: And finally, this site is a great resource for looking up Spells and Monsters along with tons of other generators. Not every single Spell or Monster is on here, but most are listed.

(I tried to give credit to the original posters or the actual URL for websites, unless those sites or URLs were no longer active)

Definitely going to be using some of these.

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asforetold

Favourite narrative tropes:

  • “That was ONE time!”
  • “Due to an administrative error”, or any major plot point which is caused almost entirely by bureaucratic fuckups
  • “Contrary to popular belief” appended to something that’s either really obvious or completely subjective
  • A character makes an assertion, then cut to the narrator contradicting it (‘“Everything’s fine!” Everything was not fine.’)
  • First-person narrators who call a specific character by a series of increasingly convoluted nicknames
  • Unusual narrative euphemisms. I still hold that describing around a curse word is almost always funnier than just using the word.
  • Establishing character moments which subvert your expectations right from the get-go. The best example is in the Brooklyn Nine Nine pilot, where Jake’s fooling around at the crime scene before revealing that he’s already solved the case.
  • Montages. Just montages of any kind, for any reason, anytime. I actually think they work better in text form because you can do so many creative things with them.
  • Side characters with a level of fourth-wall awareness / quasi-supernatural ability which is never quite certain, like the janitor in Scrubs.
  • Double meanings in narration that take a while to make themselves clear.
  • Really, really specific similes.