Hi there! I’m Lars, a Dungeon Master for multiple campaigns for about 4 years now. My interests and inspiration has evolved all over the place during that time: From 5e to PbtA to OSR and beyond. On this blog, I’ll share my ideas about being a DM with the world, and hopefully add something useful to your personal DM toolbox!
Recent Posts
The Things We Find Along The Way – Filling The Gaps In A Hexcrawl or Pointcrawl
Here I aim to flesh out the step between “you are traveling” and “you found a dungeon” in a hex- or pointcrawl, in a way that hopefully feels natural and like actual exploration. I’ve taken some inspiration from, yes, Skyrim. It aims to add a bit of risk-reward to the process: discovering new locations might … Continue reading The Things We Find Along The Way – Filling The Gaps In A Hexcrawl or Pointcrawl
Dark Souls-inspired Weapons for Into the Odd/Cairn
Next up in my series on Cairn-inspired writing, weaponry! I love the quick combat of Cairn, so I don’t want to slow that down too much, nor do I want the character sheet to be filled with a load of special maneuvers. The main goals for this project, which I’ve given the working title of … Continue reading Dark Souls-inspired Weapons for Into the Odd/Cairn
Time, Gear & Skill: A Different Approach To Skill Checks
The following was written with Cairn in mind, but would work just as well for Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland and heck, D&D 5e if you’re doing a complete revamp. Performing actions involves time, gear, and skill. Generally, if you have none or one of the three, a task is impossible. If you have all … Continue reading Time, Gear & Skill: A Different Approach To Skill Checks
Dodge, Block & Parry for Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn
An attempt to combine Dark Souls mechanics with minimalist OSR gameplay
Super Simple Stress/Horror Rules for D&D
Horror, dread and stress can add a lot of flavor to roleplaying. However, when nosing around, I found that a lot of mechanics (such as Mothership, Call of Cthulhu)… Take away player agency at one point or another, to represent them losing control. This is a neat idea, but a hard sell in a heroic … Continue reading Super Simple Stress/Horror Rules for D&D
I Have No Memory Of This Place: Navigating The Underdark Through Your Senses in Dungeons & Dragons
What This System Tries To Do The Underdark is vast and dangerous. To try and map it, is folly. Navigation must be done differently; by using all of your senses. Tunnels twist and turn, and may not lead into the direction you were hoping for. This system tries to capture the vibe of the Fellowship … Continue reading I Have No Memory Of This Place: Navigating The Underdark Through Your Senses in Dungeons & Dragons
We Cannot Get Out: Giving The Underdark A Mines Of Moria Feel with Noise & Alerts in Dungeons & Dragons
“Quietly now. It’s a four-day journey to the other side. Let us hope that our presence may go unnoticed.” Gandalf This is a specific implementation of my Noise & Alert system, applied to travelling through the Underdark. Part II of this post is up here: I Have No Memory Of This Place: Navigating The Underdark … Continue reading We Cannot Get Out: Giving The Underdark A Mines Of Moria Feel with Noise & Alerts in Dungeons & Dragons
Books, The Best Weapons In The World: Simulating The Process of Reading Dusty Tomes in Dungeons & Dragons
What This System Does Implement books with benefits into your D&D campaign Make the experience of reading a book in D&D a bit more like reading a book in real life Have the relevant attributes provide relevant benefits How It Accomplishes That It makes Intelligence an important reading stat It makes progress through a book … Continue reading Books, The Best Weapons In The World: Simulating The Process of Reading Dusty Tomes in Dungeons & Dragons
18 Amazing Online D&D Resources You Might Not Have Heard Of
The popularity of Dungeons & Dragons 5e means that it’s really attractive to produce content and tools for the game. This creates a self-propagating cycle of sorts; it’s the most popular because there’s so much tools and tutorials available, causing more people to get into it etc. Over the years, I’ve gathered a lot of … Continue reading 18 Amazing Online D&D Resources You Might Not Have Heard Of
Have A Little Faith: A Religious War in D&D in 9 Simple Steps
Meet Myra Myra is a kind-hearted 6th-level Human Cleric of Finrimbel, God of the Sun, with a problem. She just arrived in Khobai, the City of a Thousand Sins, and the people here don’t really worship Finrimbel. Apparently, daytime temperatures of +40 Celsius make a people unlikely to see ‘sunlight’ as a positive. Good thing … Continue reading Have A Little Faith: A Religious War in D&D in 9 Simple Steps
Now I’m A Believer: Run A Religion (Or Cult) In Dungeons & Dragons (Or Other TTRPGs)
What This System Tries To Do Provide possibility for emergent storytelling through progress. Starting a real-life religion is probably pretty tricky (I never tried it), but just as Adventurers are capable in combat, I’m assuming that player characters setting out to spread the good word are also remarkably capable. I find it far more interesting … Continue reading Now I’m A Believer: Run A Religion (Or Cult) In Dungeons & Dragons (Or Other TTRPGs)
Straight To The Moon: Adding A Stock Exchange To Your Dungeons & Dragons Economy
What This System Does Basically, we’re going to generate a table for stock prices of past and future. Players simply buy a stock for the current market price, and can sell it at some point in the future for the new market price. This system takes type of stock, volatility and general market tendency into … Continue reading Straight To The Moon: Adding A Stock Exchange To Your Dungeons & Dragons Economy
Enormous Locations & Alert – The Amazing Versatility of Mothership’s Panic Mechanic
How to add meaningful gameplay decisions to big, dangerous environments.
4 Homebrew Rules To Make D&D Follow Fiction, Not Rules
I’ve been using the lockdown for, you guessed it, a lot of tabletop rpg’s. All this time has given me the opportunity to explore more outside of the boundaries of strictly D&D. As I’m about to return to D&D, I want to include mechanics that I’ve fallen in love with from systems such as Dungeon … Continue reading 4 Homebrew Rules To Make D&D Follow Fiction, Not Rules
Right Behind You: Building A Combat Encounter Around Teleporting
Short-range teleporters can make for awesome combat encounters! Here, I use Dungeondraft to create some quick examples.
“How Were We Supposed To Know That?” – Introducing Fair Gameplay Twists in D&D
What can we learn from video games to introduce interesting gameplay twists (“gimmicks”) in a fair way?
Using Storytelling Conflicts To Create A Captivating Campaign
A central conflict inherently provides themes to structure your campaign around, and can provide motivation and background for one or more Big Bad Evil Guys within your campaign. These conflicts provide context to narrative choices made by your players, and will (hopefully) have them think about their choices and consequences until long after the session.
The Whispers: A Madness-based Patron for Warlocks
One of my players wanted something… different… for the short campaign I was running during the Corona crisis. We ended up with a rather interesting mix of abilities.
