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

  We all have tools that help us dungeon master. They might be source-books, loot tables, or monster guides. They help us with our preparation, and often make our work lighter and faster to get through.  One of the newer tools in a DMs arsenal is AI. It’s something I’ve started really investigating this year. One thing that is key when using AI as a DM is to remember AI is a tool that can help you do your job, it cannot do your job for you. AI is a multitool with a lot of uses for dungeon masters and in particular I’ve found...

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...

If your players have completely de-railed your campaign then congratulations! This happens to pretty much every DM at some point and is a perfectly normal (if stressful) part of running a DnD game.

It may feel uncomfortable right now but you will be riding this wave to another really awesome story line in no time!