Thanks to a couple of unrelated experiences and some psychobabble, I’m looking at D&D Inspiration again. But that’s just an excuse to tackle a bigger issue. And to write a really upsetting Long, Rambling Introduction.

Figuring out when to fling a random encounter in the path of your hapless is the easy part. The hard part is designing good random encounters. Which are neither random nor encounters. Except they are encounters. Just don’t call them that.

Lots of GMs have given up on random encounters. And I can’t blame them. Random encounters suck. But throwing them out completely means throwing out a lot of useful stuff. Maybe we can build a better system instead?

Character arcs are really awesome things that movies just don’t believe in anymore. But I sure as hell do. And you should to. And you should want them in your D&D game. Let me tell you how to get them.

Remember how I made an awful armor table three weeks ago? Well, let’s turn that AWFUL into AWESOME with two simple words: elegance and extensibility.

Some GMs just don’t know when to stop. And, lucky for you, I’m one of them. What started as a simple effort to reskin some armor for my upcoming campaign turned into a massive overhaul of the D&D equipment system. And here’s where that overhaul began.

It’s all well and good to think through a whole bunch of conceptual bulls$&% when you’re designing a new rules system. But there comes a time when you have to sit down and actual write the rules themselves. So lets give that some thought.

Creating new rules isn’t as simple as coming up with a fun idea for a system and then making it. There’s a whole thing in the middle where you actually spend a bunch of time working out how not to accidentally make a turd. Too bad WotC didn’t know about that step when it came to their crafting rules.

Surprise! Here’s a preview of an upcoming article. It’s a set of rules I built for crafting nonmagical herbal items in D&D 5E using the herbalism kit (and proficiency therewith). Feel free to check out the rules and then come back soon to find out how and why they were created.

Have you ever wondered why players let their characters die? And why every fight must be a fight to the death? Its because hit points are stupid and people don’t die at 0 HP anymore. But don’t worry. I fixed it.

Why is a short rest one hour long? Can you change that? Can you change the resting rules to change the structure of the game? What other stupid questions can I can answer about resting mechanics in D&D.

You know what’s only a problem if you’re a completely obsessive nitpicker who’s overly critical of the way RPGs handle every tiny detail? Race in D&D and Pathfinder. That’s what. Fortunately, Pathfinder gave us a great tool to correct this utter and complete non-issue as long as we’re willing to spend way more time than it’s worth. Lets spend five thousand words discussing it.

Just because I hate the very idea of something doesn’t mean I can’t analyze it, deconstruct it, and put it together better. Here’s a deconstruction and reconstruction of Inspiration in D&D along with 11 options for using it better.

After revealing that I was using Speed Factor Initiative in D&D 5E, I got a number of constructive questions and criticisms. So, I wrote this article to explain what the f$&% was wrong with me and why I didn’t deserve to die of cancer in a fire, thank you.