Annabelle's Nerdy D&D Blog — Dungeon Master Tips

There are a lot of rules around in Dungeons and Dragons. If you have new players who want to play spellcasters, then they’re going to have even more learning to do! As their Dungeon Master, you’ll probably want to check in regularly with them, and to tailor your DMing to reduce some of the overwhelm that so many players face when first playing a spellcaster. We want our players to feel like epic badasses striding into battle, not unprepared students dragging their feet into an exam! ;)  If you haven't already, I also highly recommend you check out my post explaining how spell...

Note: 12th September 2026  This blog post was written mid 2023. It's since become out of date, though perhaps still useful. Also, since then, some quite pressing problems with AI have since come to light.  In other news, I have joined a real life faction! It's called Pause AI. We are a grassroots movement helping to bring about an international treaty to pause the development of Superintelligence. Superintelligence is not just a very good Chat GPT. They are trying to "summon the demon" here, and we need to stop them before it's too late. An international treaty is the way...

Creating fun, interesting and balanced combat encounters can be a real struggle for Dungeon Masters. It can be hard to gage whether your going too easy or too hard on your party - especially at the beginning. Add in trying to manage initiative order, stat-blocks, environmental changes and remembering extras like reactions or legendary actions ... it's no wonder it gets a little overwhelming at times! I'm a big fan of using Dungeon Master tools to make DMing easier and I find the D&D Beyond Encounter Builder genuinely does make running combat much easier for me.   What is the D&D...

  The Challenge Rating (CR) system in Dungeons and Dragons is essentially like levels in a video game. A CR 2 encounter is meant to be “of medium difficulty” for a party of level 2 adventurers.   Nine times out of ten the party will be able to walk away from an encounter of that challenge rating with no casualties beyond expended resources. A party can usually handle around six to eight encounters with the same challenge rating as themselves within a day. Assuming the party is able to take a couple of short rests of course!   This system...

  Although there are a lot of cool accessories out there, you can definitely learn how to become a great Dungeon Master without spending a penny. The only investment you really have to make is your time! Truth be told, you don’t need all the books or mini figurines or cool terrain to be a good DM (and I say that as someone who’s livelihood is based around making cool terrain!). What you really need is to understand your role, the rules, and the kind of story you want to tell - all of which you can do for free. Check...