The Wild Beyond the Witchlight Review: Should You Buy It?
Between its fantastical flavor, cultural resonance, and DM-friendly structure, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight may be 5e’s best official campaign thus far.
Between its fantastical flavor, cultural resonance, and DM-friendly structure, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight may be 5e’s best official campaign thus far.
Character backstories are often too sparse or bloated. Learn to invent quality details for your backstory without writing a novel.
Combat should should feel dramatic, engaging, and deeply personal—a heart-pounding experience (not a slog). Make your players feel like they’re watching a scene unfold on a movie screen. Let’s explore how DMs can develop this experience!
Any player can and should try to resolve problems as they arise. Even so—whether for good or ill—DMs are widely expected to be their table’s mediator. But how?
In a perfect world, you have clear, concise information at your fingertips. But official campaign modules for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition are often written in a free-flowing, narrative style that’s difficult to quickly reference. Read tips from master DM DragnaCarta for preparing your sessions for adventure modules.
Dungeons & Dragons 5e teaches players a lot about the nuts-and-bolts of dungeon-, character-, and encounter-building. It offers oodles of options for spells, feats, and mechanics. However, it does little to teach DMs how to engage their players with dramatic quests and encounters. If you’re looking to keep your D&D players engaged—and if you’re looking to build a satisfying combat encounter or non-combat scene—we must first explore a fundamental concept of storytelling: the dramatic question.
Like many games, D&D 5e is a strategic and tactical experience—but character-building guides can only take you so far. With these basic tactical options in mind, however, even the most unoptimized PC (or the weakest NPC) can play a powerful role in combat. In isolation, a character sheet and a D&D party are just disparate, lonely pieces. Taken together, however, the integrated whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.
The Dungeons & Dragons horror campaign setting that has enraptured DMs and players since AD&D. While DMs may buy this book expecting an encyclopedia of Ravenloft lore, Van Richten’s Guide is best viewed as an expansive guide to tabletop horror, supplemented with Ravenloft elements and atmosphere.