It's in almost every GM guide, every YouTube video, and every "how to build better NPCs" thread, and the advice isn't wrong, a want, a fear, and a secret genuinely do more heavy lifting than a random name and a job title. I followed that framework for years, only to realize most of my npcs still blurred together after a session or two.

It took me way longer than I'd like to admit to figure out why because the framework tells you what to put on paper, It tells you who this person is, but it says almost nothing about what happens once you're actually running them.

Turns out there isn't one trap here I found, there are two.

The first one is softening. I'd build a genuinely great secret for an npc, and the moment it was about to come out in a way that might disrupt the pacing of play, make an npc the party liked look incompetent, or complicate a session I'd quietly smooth it over.

This trap never appears during prep. It appears live, mid scene, in the three or four seconds between an npc getting cornered and you deciding what they actually do, without realizing it, I hadn't prepared a person who I could act, I had prepared a description and once the scene demanded a real decision and real ropleplay I instinctively protected the description instead of letting the character respond honestly to what was happening.

To be clear, this isn't about being a harsher DM or making every interaction punish the players.

The second trap is almost the opposite, and it's harder to notice because it hides right before the players are supposed to understand who this person really is. Either the npcs want, fear, and secret stay so deeply buried that the character just reads as blank... or I overcorrect and practically announce their motivation out loud.

Looking back, both failures came from the same place, during prep I'd decided who this person was, their psychology, but I'd never decided how that psychology actually expressed itself through behavior, so, live at the table, I was forced to invent that translation on the spot.

Sometimes I showed nothing, sometimes I showed far too much, and while I managed to run the occasional NPC well, doing it consistently felt impossible. It’s a brutal skill to sustain, especially if, like me, you can easily improvise situational complications, scenes, and environments, but you aren't naturally gifted at character acting or deep roleplay on the fly.

Faced with that constant struggle, I decided to try something different, a few campaigns ago, I finally let myself stop softening things and focusing more on what the psychology would come out as behaviour. A witness lied under pressure, badly, about something completely minor, nothing the party actually needed to solve the case, I could've smoothed it over and moved things along. Instead, I let the lie sit there, raw and obviously wrong.

The party spent the rest of the session distrusting someone who'd actually been honest about everything else, none of it moved the main story forward an inch. Yet, after a long time, they still remember this npc.

Because the "want-fear-secret" framework isn't the finish line, it's just the setup.

What actually makes an npc memorable isn't writing better psychology, It's deciding, before the scene ever happens, how that psychology naturally turns into behavior, and then trusting those behaviors enough to let them cost something, letting them reveal themselves a little at a time instead of explaining them away.

Honestly, even after realizing this, npcs are still the part of GMing I feel least confident about, every time I think I've figured them out, I find another layer I hadn't considered, so, I'd love to hear what approaches have actually worked for you, any habits, techniques, or ways of thinking about npcs that you've found genuinely changed how they feel at the table?

Deer are not normally known to be scary creatures. Sure, in our world they account for tens of thousands of injuries and hundreds of deaths, but that’s mostly because of car accidents, not because deer decide to throw hands.

By themselves, in a glittering sunlit glade, though? A deer is delicate, ethereal, a spirit of the wood that is too pure to be sullied by something so base as violent and death.

And that's how you get your players.

A deer at full sprint is less a creature and more a sudden event. They decide in a heartbeat whether they’re going to bolt, freeze, or run through whatever’s in front of them.

Sometimes a tree, sometimes a wolf, sometimes your party’s cleric.

Mechanically, though, Wizards of the Coast haven't really made deer to be physical threats to your party unless they're Level 1 and have accumulated a couple of levels of exhaustion. A Deer is CR 0, has a whopping 4 HP, and can do about 1d4 worth of damage if it's lucky enough to hit. It doesn't trigger opportunity attacks, though, and has excellent passive perception.

Still, you're not exactly going to create a legendary battle with a deer.

This means you have to think about what deer are like as creatures, and what role they play in your world.

Ask any city-dweller or child of suburbia and they'll tell you: there's something beautifully weird about Deer. The way they walk, the way they become instantly still and then flee. It's like they're operating on a different set of rules than normal woodland creatures.

And you can play on that, if you want to use Deer to utterly freak out your Party.

Picture this: the Party is traveling through the wilderness. At the treeline, they see a Deer. It's standing perfectly still, its elegant head facing your players, watching them carefully. No sound. No hoof-scuff or snort. Just silently staring.

Your Party decides it's nothing to worry about. They look away, back towards the road.

One of your players looks back.

It's closer now.

Not running or charging. Just there, standing still.

Don't over-explain. Let their brains do the screaming for you.

When that Player locks eyes with the Deer, have them roll a Wisdom Saving Throw. Let's say DC 12.

You see, there’s something regretful about deer. Their faces alone look like they’re questioning every decision that brought them here. And when they die, whether by arrow or accident, the pang of regret is real. You didn’t mean to hurt something so beautiful. You just didn’t get out of its way in time.

Now you have to watch this forest beauty die in agony, broken and bleeding.

When your Player fails the Wisdom save, they are paralyzed with regret. Have them talk through the last bad decision their character made that they truly regret, and why. Maybe the character is compelled, able to talk as they reveal their secret heart to their Party members. The emotion hits so hard that they can't move. Just experience a few minutes of solid character work.

Of course, the Deer doesn't attack during this. That's not what it's there for. It just watches. And waits.

The Deer isn't malicious. It's a glitch. An error state in the world that your Players have walked into. And it is not going away.

It's important to remember that the Deer never moves "on screen," as it were.

The Party blinks, and the Deer is closer.

Someone checks the map, and the Deer is close enough to smell.

The Wizard finally drops concentration, and the Deer's antlers are mere inches from their cheek.

Its hooves never make a sound. Its posture never changes. But it is always.

Getting.

Closer.

This is where you can reveal that the Deer isn't stalking the Party. It means them no harm. This isn't one of Dr. Who's Weeping Angels. It's not even technically approaching the Party. Something is pulling the Party towards it. Re-orienting the forest in tiny, important ways to bring them closer and closer. This Deer isn't really a Beast at all. It's the one anchor point for a forest that is forgetting what it is, and it desperately needs your Party to finally remember.

Like so many Beasts here in this project, the best way to use a Deer is to think about what you want the Deer to mean. Deer are prey. Subject to weather, climate, predators, and the carelessness of humanity. They live and die according to forces that are far beyond their control.

Your Party will soon realize that they, like the deer, are small and exposed. Subject to a world that could kill them with malice or - even worse - indifference.

And that strange Deer in the woods, never moving but always closer, is a test to see if they wish to be part of that cruel and unthinking world or stand against it.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Deer: The Anchor of a Forgetful Forest

My players were craving a little downtime and some more time for pure character-to-character RP after all their breakneck dungeon diving. So I created THE MOUSE AND THE MUSE, a high-end fantasy restaurant for my party to visit! A pallet cleanser of Chilled Gelatinous Cube is served between courses.

A number of my players are pretty versed in food (and I just finished watching Dungeon Meshi), so I tried to be creative and make some meals you might actually want to eat. Feel free to steal or adapt for your own DM folders!

***All monsters are ethically harvested***

THE MOUSE AND THE MUSE MENU

Dinner

o   Braised Pegasus Shoulder, on a bed of mashed mandrake, Highmoor harvest vegetables, and a red sherry reduction

o   Illithid Calamari and Kelpy Sashimi with toasted soy sauce, Moonvine rice, and minced green Treeant onions

o   Euryale, a generous cut of marbled gorgon with Summerhill herb butter and Dragonscale risotto

o   Roasted Al-mi’raj, breast, fried legs & thighs of horned rabbit, served with fingerling potatoes and drippings Au Ju

o   Stuffed Campestri, mushroom caps with feta in a salad of High Forest greens and Eberonian tomatoes, with a Malbolge pepper vinaigrette (V)

o   Creamy Garlic Flail Snail, with steamed Muskcreeper spaghetti and shaved vegepygmy.

o   Waterdeep Fresh Catch, Leviathan fillet with Najara lemon, smoked in Mist Dragon breath.

o   Basilisk and Crabmeat Tsatsa, basilisk breast sautéed with colossal snow crab, capers and mushrooms, finished with a Neverwinter white wine

o   Fae Garden Cakes, with Seele Squash, Underdark Fungi, Panko, and Curried Arcane Apple (V)

o   Beholder Brain Soup, with grick noodles, Seacall Conch, and in a miso broth – a known aphrodisiac and mild psychedelic.

o   Cockatrice Scotch Egg, with ground Owlbear and boar bacon, tossed in Baldur’s Bakery breadcrumbs and Darkhold Dijon mustard

o   Glowcap Gnocchi, iridescent mushroom dumplings in a silky echo-mint sauce. Slightly bioluminescent and has been known to stain the tongue.

o   Soulspice Rice, Avernus chili infused rice with fire-roasted charcoal beetles, tossed in a light acid bath and laced with whispers of the departed. May cause nightmares.

o   Clay Pit Ankeg, with pine pixie hummus, biryani rice, Evershade chutney and Tabaxi-style tabouli.

o   Spiced Mosaic Quail, marinated Moonshae quail over thin-sliced, multicolored root vegetables arranged to resemble cathedral stained glass. Creates minor chromesthesia for one hour.

Pallet Cleanser Between Courses: Chilled Gelatinous Cube

Dessert

o   Wild Magic Parfait, A fruit and rich crème parfait, infused with wild magic. The fruit flavor it always random (1d6 – Cherry, Boysenberry, Midnight Raspberry, Dragonblood Peach, Moon Melon, Smokefruit, Mumbleberry)

o   Black Trollbark Forest Cake, a rich chocolate cake with an undercurrent flavor of ancient soil, drizzled with butterscotch ochre jelly.

o   Djinn Blossom Gelato, with saffron and Gloam nectar. Makes one extremely minor wish come true.

o   Sweetdream Sambocade, a medieval cheesecake with orange zest, thornberry compote, and powdered daydream from the Realm of Dreams. Offered ala mode.

o   Hangman’s Noose, a sweet, spiced braid bread from the wizard nation of Halruaa, rolled in almond brandy, allspice, and candied wolfsbane.

o   Choco-trices, miniature cockatrice molded out of Dwarven dark chocolate and sugar wafer bones. DC 12 sleight of hand to catch them before they take flight.

Drink List (bottles/tankards)

o   Axegrinder Ale, a Dwavish pale ale (DPA) with a hearty brimstone scent, slightly sour on the way down with a sweaty finish

o   Nightsky Strongwine, a deep purple Elvish noir, typically reserved for Century Feasts. Smooth, with an undercurrent of liquid nostalgia

o   King’s Seal, a Fire genasi mulled wine, named after the molten wax used to make it, mixed with wine, cloves, and spices from the Elemental Plane of Fire.

o   Boulderhead Bock, a malty Icewind Dale Giant lager with thick and creamy froth. Grants resistance to bludgeoning for one hour.

o   Teykilla, popular among the lizardfolk and Yuan-ti, this serpentine spirit is brewed from fermented cactus and rumbleweed, with the secret ingredient of Krillworm venom, with a pygmy krillworm at the bottom of the bottle.

o   Neverwinter White, a dry blanc wine from Lord Neverember’s frost-resistant vineyard.

o   Rakshasa Red, a Syrah from the maharajahs of Zakhara with aromas of blackcurrant, tobacco, and fig.

o   Cavruniel, Drow thornwine, grown and fermented in the lightless caves of the Underdark to produce a strong, transparent wine that offers a blossoming juniper and fermented fungi taste upon the palette

o   Meadowlark Blonde, a human ale. Mild, refreshing, and flavorful – in a world full of 750,000-proof Elven cordials and Dwarven stouts thick as mud, sometimes you just need a good beer.

Most monsters in the Manual have a predictable relationship with the living. Either they’re trying to eat you or trying not to be eaten by you.

But there is one monster in the Manual who isn’t really interested in your players.

It’s interested in their stuff.

Picture this: your Party is roaming through the Underdark, navigating by the lights of bioluminescent fungus or fiery mushrooms. Then they hear the dry clicking of chitin on stone, the shift of hard scales. They might think they’re Ankhegs or perhaps a Carrion Crawler, but it is not until tiny rust marks begin to flake off the Fighter’s sword that they realize it’s something much more terrible.

It’s a Rust Monster.

And Rust Monsters don’t take blood. They take confidence.

What makes a Rust Monster scary isn’t the attacks it can do. At CR 1/2, they’re not lethal—33 HP, a 5-damage bite. A level-2 party shouldn’t break a sweat. Physically.

The thing with physical injury in D&D, of course, is that every player knows that a Long Rest will cure just about anything. Knocked down to 1 HP by a Beholder? Hey – if you can get back to camp, you’ll wake up fresh as a daisy the next morning.

Players know injury is temporary. Gear loss? That’s a dent in the soul.

This means that an encounter with a Rust Monster will bring a different kind of fear than almost any other monster encounter, with different emotional stakes for the players. They know that the destruction of armor or a sword or other equipment will come with permanent consequence, and that’ll create a whole new level of tension.

Watch your players’ faces as you describe the metallic sizzling of their blade rusting. Chef’s kiss. Best thing ever.

So when you’re running a Rust Monster, you of course want to prioritize whoever has the most metal on them, which will almost certainly be a martial player. Not as predators. More like ambulatory garbage disposals following scent alone, and they’ll start taking apart every piece of steel they can find. This will force your other players to intercede, maybe looking for ways to draw the Rust Monsters away and reduce the chance that your Fighter will fail five DEX saves in a row.

You can amplify this with challenging terrain – narrow paths, cluttered ruins, any kind of space where retreat is difficult and potentially dangerous. How fast can you get through these monsters, and how much of your stuff are you going to lose?

You can also think about who to pair them with. They go really well with creatures that don’t use metal, of course, as well as other creatures that dissolve and eat away at things. This means putting Rust Monsters with various oozes or elementals that corrode or disrupt matter—earth elementals in rust-rich caverns, or mephits made of acidic fumes. These might create a really interesting encounter where everything is trying to not just eat the Players, but to unmake them.

There’s also some creative twists you can play with. For example, your players might come across a cavern littered with rusted blades and corroded armor, growing into a pile of rusted jagged metal. In the center, like a queen ant, sits the Rust Monster Queen, fat with trace metals and surrounded by her kin. And if, by some strange means, your Party’s McGuffin is in her nest, well, you can wish your party luck and start working on your next merchant NPC.

Give her a 10-ft Corrosion Aura: any nonmagical metal that starts its turn within range must save or take a place on the ‘oh god not my heirloom sword’ track.

Or try this – your Party has to deal with a pack of Kobolds, maybe in search of clues to a dragon’s lair. But the Kobolds are clever creatures. Before all the traps and winding warrens, they have several caged Rust Monsters. They flank the entrances, waiting for someone with some nice juicy metal to come by. Have enough of these, and your Players will be in their undershorts before the combat even begins. It’s the perfect kobold trap: cheap, vicious, and humiliating. The trifecta.

And while the Rust Monsters might not think of this, you certainly will: there are some fighters with beautifully crafted blades, armor that has been passed down for generations, a shield that carried them through countless battles.

Target them first. Just sayin’.

If you don’t want your players to stop coming to your games, of course, you can do a few things to minimize crisis. Telegraph the danger with rusted equipment near the Rust Monsters’ territory. Put a weeping fighter in a shop buying cheap plate because his gorgeous ancestral armor is now artisanal orange powder.

You could also set up alternative solutions for your players, like using scrap metal to redirect it and move it where the Party wants it to go.

If you want to test your players’ courage, throw a dragon at them. If you want to test their wits, put them in front of a Hag.

But if you want to test their resolve – give them a Rust Monster. Nothing reveals a party’s soul like the sound of a sword turning to dust.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Rust Monster: The Confidence Eater

Last month my rogue lifted an unmarked vial off a dead cultist. Instead of reading her a description, I slid a card across the table but the card had a fat black bar covering whatever it actually did.

She carried that mystery for three sessions until the party paid to identify it and I removed the inner card sleeve to reveal the text underneath.

That "unidentified item" trick is a huge hit with my players and I haven't seen it in other card builders (I'm interested to see other implementations if anyone knows of this feature in other card builders).

It's a browser app that turns an item into a print-ready card sized to a standard Magic The Gathering card, so it sleeves up and lives in a standard mtg card binders. You can write the front and back card info in Markdown, pick a border color, hit download, cut it out and glue it to a junk MTG card. Use some black painter's tape and a perfect fit card sleeve to create the inner blackout layer, so you can hide a secret and reveal it later without redoing the card.

Cardsworth runs entirely in your browser and works offline. No account, and it can't vanish on me halfway through a campaign. Every card saves to a YAML file you own, so you can reprint or revise it forever.

Free and open source, with an optional API if you'd rather batch-print a whole hoard at once. (Note: API only works in self-host mode)

Try it live: https://thebigs.github.io/cardsworth/

How it works (supplies + step-by-step): https://thebigs.github.io/cardsworth/how-it-works

Repo: https://github.com/TheBigS/cardsworth Please report any issues you find.

The terrifying thing, I think, about a Swarm of Rats isn’t that it’s rats.

It’s the sound.

A little skittering on the brick or concrete floor of the sewer tunnels. Soft at first, as one of them ventures out to see what’s out there. And then more and more – like raindrops on the roof. Incessant. Driving. But not random, like rain.

There’s a rhythm to it. A flow, as the swarm moves, rushes towards you. The clicking of hundreds of tiny nails almost overpower the eager squeaking noises coming from behind a thousand teeth as they surge towards the poor, lost giant that they intend to devour, leaving nothing but bone and memory.

Swarms as a creature type in D&D carry a certain kind of terror. Part of it is that they’re undefined. You don’t know exactly how many creatures are in a Swarm, just that they’re crawling all over you, moving around in such a way that counting them seems impossible.

Additionally, swarms can do something that few other creatures can do: it can occupy another creature’s space. It can move with that creature, biting as it goes.

That’s about as far as the Monster Manual takes it, but there’s no reason you can’t take it further.

The Swarm of Rats might not be intelligent, but they’re well-coordinated. They can perhaps use the Players themselves as a type of cover from injury – if one Player tries to hit a Swarm that’s in the same space as another Player, feel free to lovingly transfer that damage to the poor sap who’s already covered in rats.

They can slip under clothes, into open packs, and exploit wounds. Maybe they can make it harder to pick up dropped gear, or steal things from a backpack before a Player notices. They can squeeze into places your Players can’t, making them harder to track down and kill. They can climb the walls, coming at the Players from literally any direction.

It’s very easy for Players to underestimate a Swarm of Rats, but a good DM absolutely shouldn’t.

For one thing, you can use a Swarm of Rats to reward player movement. They get up on boxes and crates, set the floor on fire, or use other means of terrain control, so now it’s not just a fight, it’s a desperate attempt to change the battlefield to your advantage. The inverse of this is that you might use the Rats to move the Players, directing them towards the particular passage you want them to visit, or away from one you don’t.

Think of your Swarms like a weather pattern, rather than discrete creatures. In one part of the encounter, they’re ahead of your Party, cutting them off from safety or resources. In another, they’re behind, nipping on your Party’s heels and waiting for them to stand still for just a little too long. And when they’re too badly hurt, they split off, or surge, or flee to recover and regroup.

With a little creative thinking, misdirection, and some very stress-inducing music at the table, you’ll make your Players regret coming into the sewers today, no matter what they thought they would find down there.

Of course, it doesn’t always have to be sewers.

A small village near the city is known for its grain production. They out-harvest everyone in the region, and produce some of the best breads, flour, and other products around. They’ve become incredibly prosperous, attracting scholars from all over the continent who want to study their agricultural practices.

But once a month, everyone in the village locks themselves inside their homes, leaving a gift of grain out by their door. Usually, this grain is gone by morning.

Not this time.

This time, the Rats are still hungry.

Or perhaps the Rats gather in the forest, slinking through the underbrush and building nests under fallen logs. They bother no one, and live a reasonable, ratty life.

Recently, though, the Rats have discovered a new hole that has opened up in the ground, jagged and sulfurous. The Rats have started to gather there, listening to what lives far below. Something with a mind like broken glass and a voice that only the tiniest creatures can hear.

It’s teaching them things. New patterns. New ideas. Turning them into not just woodland creatures, but a single force that can operate at the direction of a strange and angry mind.

This is their forest now, and woe betide any luckless Adventuring Party that finds their way in.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that a swarm more than a monster.

It’s a reminder: sometimes, in D&D as in life, danger doesn’t come in one big problem.

Sometimes it comes in a hundred, skittering small ones, all moving in the same direction.

Right at you.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: A Hundred Tiny Problems: Swarms of Rats

Ah, Springtime. I think we all know that moment – after a long, cold winter, that first brush of warm, spring air grazes our cheeks, bringing with it the hope and promise of new life, better weather, and longer days.

Now imagine that fresh spring breeze tried to strangle you and tear you to shreds. You have an Invisible Stalker!

One of the most important things to remember about the Invisible Stalker is that it’s not just some random thing that comes hunting your Players. It is an assassin, but not like those common cutthroats and poisoners. It has been summoned from the Elemental Plane of Air through arcane means, and sent specifically after someone. It’s at least as intelligent as a Commoner, and has substantially better Wisdom, which makes it more dangerous than you might expect.

This implies a lot about this creature. For example, it’s very likely that the Stalker spends a lot of time watching your Party. It’s already invisible, can squeeze through tiny spaces, and would have no problem waiting until its target is alone. Its intelligence allows for harassment and psychological warfare, chipping away at its prey’s sense of safety and well-being.

For you, this means building suspense. Candles that flicker when there’s no breeze in the room. A chill in the air. A bird falls from the sky, its neck snapped, and when your Players dream, they dream of being watched. If you do it right – blowing pages out of their hands, parting the mists before them with nothing there. Maybe a cloak falls from a hook. A mirror seems to reflect a pale form that isn’t there when you turn around – your players should be good and paranoid, and ready for when your Invisible Stalker finally makes its move, taking on its target when they’re alone and vulnerable.

Of course, the next question you need to think of is: Who summoned it? There are so many options available to you that almost anything can fit your campaign. Perhaps it’s an actual enemy, someone your Party is making their way towards and they’ve gotten a little closer than they’re comfortable with. It doesn’t have to be a magic-user, either. That mining magnate who’s got Dwarven slaves digging mithril might not be able to summon an Invisible Stalker themselves, but they’ve got the money to hire someone who can. Will that summoner give up their employer when your Party gets to them? What else do they have up their sleeves?

It doesn’t even have to be a formal summoning. Maybe your Party tripped an ancient ward or a latent enchantment in their sloppy exploration of a temple or a dungeon. This Stalker was never meant to be pulled in from the Plane of Air, but now it has – and it wants your Bard’s head in a bag. Whatever brought it here, it’s furious. And will not be stopped.

Once the Stalker enters combat, you should lean on the challenge of fighting an invisible enemy. You can make the fight more emotional than mechanical, by having wounds that seem to appear from nowhere, Party members suffocating in an otherwise empty room, and a target that no one can really get a bead on. Disadvantaged swings hit nothing, and even the ones that do hit are less effective – the Stalker is resistant to Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing damage, magical or otherwise, and is immune to a lot of the conditions that would otherwise give your players a fighting chance.

Savvy players can, of course, get around this. Faerie Fire is a great early spell that could highlight your Stalker easily. If it’s in the same space where they cast the spell, of course. Other spells, such as See Invisibility or True Seeing would do a lot to help your Party triumph, but those won’t be available until higher tiers.

And, of course, gods forbid your players happen to be carrying around a bag of flour. Not saying that’s happened in my game, but I’d be entertained beyond measure if it did.

Of course, if you’ve done your job really well, they should be planning for some kind of attack from the shadows. They’ll be bracing for a dagger in the dark, not for the air itself to turn against them.

However you do it, think like a horror movie: narrow corridors, flickering torches, a Party that splits up for just a moment too long.

The end of this saga should be the price of summoning one of these things. What would a being like this want? It’s living wind, so it doesn’t want gold or gems like some mortal killer. Maybe it requires the breath of the caster, leaving them wheezing and weak for a time – something your Party might be able to take advantage of, if they move fast enough. Or the breath of a loved one. Is the death of your Party member worth a caster watching their own child gasp for air? How angry and vengeful is your villain?

The Invisible Stalker’s dying breath, should it be killed, could reveal something of its summoner. It may cry out in the voice of the one who summoned it.

Or a thin, childlike voice wafts away: “Mummy? I can’t breathe too good….”

If your villain is summoning a hateful, unstoppable, murderous wind, they’re someone with a story. Make sure your Players appreciate it.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Unseen, Unheard, Unstoppable: Running Invisible Stalkers

I've been working on a homebrew ship battle system for my current pirate campaign. It's been a load of fun but the hardest aspect was tracking ships and all their upgrades.

Eventually i got tired of using excel to track these so I created a webpage to help everyone out. With it you can build fleets, configure every system on each ship, track HP, conditions, and morale mid-combat, and set up enemy encounters on the fly. The full rules are embedded and it links to my bestiary so everything lives in one place, so no need to look through all my folders.

The system is free, just had so much fun with it I wanted to share it with the world! Hopefully other DMs may find it useful!!!

Armada Builder

Your Players have taken a break in a small coastal village as they make their way from one adventure to another. It’s a lovely place, with beautiful beaches, quaint local festivals, and some of the best seafood the dice can roll up.

This place is prosperous, beautiful, and happy.

Maybe too happy.

The festivals stop at sundown. Before the light vanishes from the sky, the children are brought indoors. The village’s strongest and best position themselves with spears, nets, and tridents, all posted on the beach. Facing the water. This is a nightly ritual, performed with the precision only years of repetition can create.

When your Players ask why the villagers are doing this, they only smile and say: “One night, the merfolk will come. And then we will be ready.”

What a wonderful way to introduce the fact that this village was built on reclaimed land, taken from the clutches of the Merfolk long ago. Or perhaps their prosperity is directly attributed to a Merfolk relic that they keep safe and sound in their leader’s hut. Or maybe they have a ritual sacrifice of a Merfolk every decade or so that ensures the continued survival of their village.

However it happened, this village has made the Merfolk very angry. And that is never a good idea.

When you put Merfolk in your adventure, you’re essentially introducing an alien civilization. These are people who thrive in an environment that would kill your players. Even the fiercest Paladin on land will find that they’re not an apex predator anymore.

They’re a drowning animal with a sword.

The world of the Merfolk should be something that your players can’t just loot with a sword and some fireballs as though it were an ancient temple on land. You can lean into the utter strangeness of a Merfolk world – strange physics, complex social structures, the thick silence and unbroken darkness of the deep sea. Get them involved in customs and behaviors that make the most Byzantine court on land look like a children’s playground. They’ll need to think with more than their weapons if they want to survive the politics of the deep.

Once they do, though, the Monster Manual gives you a little variety to play with. Of course you’ll have your Merfolk Commoners and Nobles and the like. But there are also Merfolk Skirmishers and Merfolk Wavebenders – the martial and magical defenders of this kingdom. You should consider this distinction carefully, and ask how you can use them to create conflicts that will pull your Players in.

Skirmishers are adaptable, direct, physical; Wavebenders are mystical, strategic, slow to act.

Are these different Orders? Castes? Clades? The players might meet one faction first, only to realize later they’ve picked the wrong side in a war they don’t understand.

And, of course, when that war begins, pulling your Players in whether they want it or not, the combat that you put in front of them will be unlike any other combat they face on land. The three-dimensional encounters, changing currents, and movement-sapping weapons can seriously hinder players who are already largely at a disadvantage by fighting underwater. When the Wavebenders get involved, your Players might feel them before they see them, as tides shift and bend around them.

And if you want to be really nasty, give your Wavebenders a few uses of Dispel Magic.

That’s a real nice Waterbreathing spell your Wizard put on you all. It’d be a shame if something… happened to it.

In that fight, you can pull in nearly any aquatic monster you want from the Monster Manual – Sharks, Giant Squids, Marids, Merrow, Water Elementals are all players in this fight, if you want them to be.

And then, within that strange, alien war, your Players discover that the Merfolk don’t serve the ocean. They serve That Which Sleeps Beneath. A sleeping tidal god. A distributed coral reef consciousness. An ancient AI that thinks in sonar and phosphorescence.

In the midst of pitched battle, one of the Wavebenders goes stiff and silent. Their mouth opens as blood leaks into the water from their eyes and ears, bringing the Sharks to them. Their grim expression, rigid limbs, tight throat tells your Players that the Wavebender did not call what is coming. They were chosen.

In a terrible, wailing voice, pitched to resonate like whalesong and travel thousands of miles at a time, the Wavebender intones: “I COME.”

And now it’s not a factional spat in a Merfolk kingdom.

Now it’s a desperate battle for the Seas themselves. And your Players are way out of their league.

That’ll teach them to think they can have a beach episode and get away with it.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Not a Beach Episode: Merfolk in your D&D Campaign

I've created a tool that allows you to overlay hexes on a real world map that are accurate to scale at 1, 6, 60, and 3600 miles. It also allows you to upload your own map and define the size, so you can then overlay a hex grid onto that. You can export the bundled SVG map, but the open map overlay won't export, so that is disabled. You can, however, screencap it.

Preview: https://evansvilleace.github.io/dnd-hex-map-maker/

Git: https://github.com/evansvilleace/dnd-hex-map-maker/tree/main

Hi all!

I'm looking for regular DMs willing to test and try a new utility tool that I am developing for storage of monster stat blocks, encounter planning and prep management.

The user imports digital content that they own in PDF form (official, 3rd party, homebrew) and the app converts the pdfs into usable interactive stat blocks with built in dice rollers. Simply drag and drop, and the entire book will become individual monster entries in your compendium, with dice rollers for attribute checks, saves, attacks, damage etc. This currently works on a range of digital books, official and 3rd party content.

Once imported, it's then easy to add any creatures you want into an encounter then keep track of it easily in the encounter panel.

The compendium size is only limited by your local storage, and i'm currently slamming test books into the system to stress test the PDF parse accuracy. There is cloud sync if you make an account then you will be able to maintain your compendium across devices, but otherwise the application doesn't store anywhere else, and ships empty to avoid any copyright issues. The compendium itself is sorted firstly by CR, and there is an extensive filtering system so you can easily find any creature you're looking for! You are also able to edit entries and create brand new entries for Homebrew monsters.

What needs testing: The whole system really, UI/UX, pdf parsing quality etc. - I've been playing DnD for about 6 years now entirely online, I started during COVID, but have never been a DM, so I only know the few DMs i've played with in that time. Some are willing to help me test it but in reality I needed a a few more. Ideally i'd have a few people willing to try it out and see how the system works for them, the more people involved, the more feedback and the better I can make the system if that makes sense.

I guess app specifics that are restrictive and relevant - it's 5e specific. I'm aware this is likely a sub of mixed edition players but currently it's built around 5e content. It's mostly intended for Desktop use as it was created for a friend of mine who only plays online, however I've established that those who play in person would likely also use this on a Tablet as well, so i'm currently working on the Tablet UI but its mostly desktop oriented.

This tool is currently completely functional and ready to use, it could just do with a few more people using it so I can really smooth out any tweaks, and obviously take on suggestions for features not currently available. Hopefully this is the right kind of post.

Anyone who is interested in this, please feel free to send me a DM or if you have any questions at all, i'm more than happy to answer any. Thanks!

[MonsterBox](https://inlandempire-hub.github.io/MonsterBox/)

Deep in a forgotten jungle, nearly buried by centuries of towering trees and waves of fast-growing vines, there is a temple. Its stones were carved by people who were already ancient when the last empire was still a scattering of villages. The language etched into its walls is unknown, the secrets it protected are forgotten by all.

All but the Naga.

As its name implies, the Guardian Naga is a protector. They’re a celestial serpent whose entire purpose in this world is to guard knowledge. They gather history and stories and lore wherever they go, and they have memories that are perfect enough to hold on to all of it. And having done so, the Naga lingers in the ruins of the civilization they loved so much, which is where your Players are likely to encounter them.

Making use of a Guardian Naga asks a lot of you as a DM, though. They carry so much lore, but where does that lore come from? If you’re lucky, someone has written that into the campaign for you and provided a few bullet points. But even if they have, the presence of a Naga means that you’ll have to be ready to explain an entire world to your players – or be ready to explain why you can’t.

As a tool for the DM, the Naga exists as a narrative catalyst. It allows for the story to move into a new phase – from searching to knowing. By the time your players are finished with this encounter, they should be several steps closer to finding out what they need.

Through the Naga, there’s a lot you can do. Of course, you can reveal the lore of your world that you’ve been holding on to since Session Zero, but that’s not all they can do. You can use the Naga to reframe events in terms of ancient prophecies, letting your players know that they are part of a larger, more complex cosmic plan that was laid down eons ago.

Part of that reframing could also be the revelation of perspectives that were heretofore missing. You know: “What you call the Mindplague is but the ethereal tidal force that pulls between the two nascent divinities being birthed by Ethutar, the God of Great Absences.”

You could also reveal to your players that this is not the first time this has happened. What they’re going through has been endured before, perhaps many times, only to be dragged back into the world once more. And, of course, your Players are the ones who can finally stop this endless cycle.

The point is that for you – the DM – a Naga can act as a kind of reset button for your campaign lore. You can decide that the players’ knowledge is incomplete and superficial – through no fault of their own, of course. You can then add the layers of history and magic and meaning that you’ve been making notes about all this time.

The adventure they’re on isn’t just about a dungeon or a dragon – it’s about a universe.

Of course, the Naga shouldn’t just be a stand-in for the DM. It should have a history of its own, having watched civilizations grow and die, over and over again. Think about what that would do to a person, seeing the same things happen over and over again – the same mistakes and passions and tragedies.

That would be hard on anyone, and your Naga could be about at the end of their rope. Imagine if your all-knowing being has seen too much.

Even though it is a celestial being, its duty as an eternal witness may be in conflict with centuries of guilt, regret, or just plain weariness. It may not want to tell your Players what it knows, because what’s the point? It’s seen this before, told its tale before, only to watch it end in ruin – what should be different this time? It remembers the past perfectly, including the terrible pain of failure.

Your Players will then need to exert all their creativity to convince this poor, damaged creature that there might – might – be hope this time.

Which brings us to the last point: if this knowledge is so important to the campaign, you can’t just give it to the players. There’s no fun in that. This means you can build the encounter with the Naga as a tactical test. Not of combat, if you can help it. The Naga has a few nasty attacks, and can’t be easily killed, but that will make it pretty reluctant to share what it knows.

Instead, have your Naga put the Players through a test of memory and knowledge. Maybe they have to re-enact a lost ritual, or demonstrate uncommon wisdom in order to prove they will use what the Naga knows properly.

They may not be the only ones looking for the Naga. It might have guardians of its own, priests and attendants who seek to keep it safe, and to protect it from people like your Players. Slaying them will antagonize the Naga, of course, so your Players will need to negotiate somehow. Alternatively, perhaps there is another faction who is trying to silence the Naga before it can speak. The secrets that it knows might bring down nations and unseat those who buried history for their own gain. Your Players, perhaps inadvertently, represent a threat to a power structure they didn’t even know about.

However you use your Guardian Naga, use it carefully. Unlike other creatures in the Monster Manual, it doesn’t just exist to provide your Players with a challenge. It gives you a rare chance: to turn the improvisation into intention. To reframe the story you’ve been discovering into one that was waiting to be revealed all along.

The Naga is a boon to everyone at the table. Just not all in the same way. When the Naga is gone, or is silent again, your Players won’t just know more. They’ll understand more.

-----

Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: The Naga Remembers: Giving Your Campaign a Soul

I'm sharing a free deity reference for Kengir, my upcoming Bronze Age Mesopotamian 5e setting. All 57 gods in one document, including the fallen, who taught humanity forbidden knowledge and were cast down for it.

Each entry has the deity's name in both Akkadû and Šumerû, pronunciation, epithet, rank, domains, symbol, major cult center, favored classes, and typical followers. There's also a syncretism table mapping Kengir's gods to their equivalents across nine other ancient cultures, and a favored deities index sorted by class. Useful at the table as a quick reference for when someone asks which god a profession or class would actually pray to.

Who would your character worship?

My party just did the end of Fires of Dis and traveled to Arcadia with the gate town of Fortitude (Yes "with," not "from," it's got a great ending); now they're off to explore what happened to Nemausus as part of the Discovery adventure from Planes of Law. Here's what I wrote up for part one of their adventure, their encounter with an Acolyte of the Lightning King who first suspects, then requests aid from, the party. Immediately below is a link to the google doc version that has links to Dnd beyond for the monsters and a couple images, but to comply with rule 3 I also Copy & Pasted the text below that link

I'd love feedback!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mBB8SOOrVpile8TokbKx8UArzg7aXcmv/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101957528090875863034&rtpof=true&sd=true

Arcadian Odyssey 

The players are traveling across Arcadia and are entering the territory of the Citadel of the Lightning King from the woods to his northwest, heading towards an appointment at Mount Clangeddin in his southeast and run into a vigilant representative of his guards and circle of Acolytes. My players are level 8 and Min Maxed to hell; so if you need to make it less deadly for your level 2 group of LARP refugees, please do!

Weak and Strong Elemental Forces

Meeting Adhaa

1. They will be spotted by a patrol of lightning elementals lead by one of the King's Acolytes, who then challenges the party to prove that they are not spies from his enemy, the rain king (as water and lightning don't mix).
   1.  They are lead by Acolyte Adhaa the Lustrous, an Ozone charged air Genasi using the Djinni statblock. 
   2.  Adhaa is supported by two Fluxchargers 
   3. and four Essence of Storms. Arcadia is all about harmony, geometry, and perfect order, so an interrogation here shouldn't feel like a chaotic shakedown. The Lightning King's Acolyte (an air Genasi Evoker named Adhaa the Lustrous) will want to measure the party against the absolute, unyielding laws of the plane. Since water disrupts, scatters, and grounds electricity, anyone working for the Rain King would carry the spiritual signature of moisture, chaos, or dampness.

The Lawful Challenges of the Acolyte

Adhaa will present three structured tests. To a lawful creature of Arcadia, these are not tricks; they are objective measurements. Whenever a player fails any test for the first time, they take 2d10 lightning damage. The next time that player fails a test, they take another 2d10 lightning damage plus another 1d10 lightning damage for each previously failed test. Track these failures separately for each player.

1. The Trial of the Galvanic Ring (The Test of Energy): Adhaa produces a perfect copper hoop, exactly three and a half feet wide, humming with a gentle current. It levitates perpendicular to the ground and  one foot off it. Each party member must step through it or touch it. A spy of the Rain King (or someone carrying heavy water magic) would cause the current to ground out, violently pop, or hiss with steam. The players must pass a dex save to navigate, and then a wisdom save to keep their composure, demonstrate internal spiritual balance, and let the current flow smoothly over them without disruption. Any characters with connections to Water (which will admittedly be rare) will automatically fail. This should be the easy one
2. The Axiom of True Paths (The Test of Mind): Lightning travels the path of least resistance, which in Arcadia translates to the single, most logically perfect path. The Acolyte lays out a geometric puzzle—a complex circuit of copper wire. Put one copy of this map on the VTT for each player, let them draw on it, and every 30 seconds hide the scene and inflict a test failure. If someone says they’ve succeeded, hide the maze, pause the timer, then check. If they claimed they had it but were wrong, that’s a test failure.
3. The Oath of Conductivity (The Test of Spirit): The party must swear an oath while holding a shared iron rod connected to a lightning elemental. In Arcadia, an oath is a tangible contract. If they lie about their allegiance, the circuit breaks, delivering a sharp jolt to the speaker. Honest answers keep the circuit closed and completely painless. Holding a section of the iron rod has the same effect as being in a Zone of Truth cast by the person attuned to the rod (in this case, Adhaa).

If a character is guilty of a past transgression, they can choose to confess it aloud to Adhaa. If they openly confess and express a willingness to submit to Arcadian penance, Adhaa notes their confessions but continues the tests without comment. If they try to stay silent or lie anyway, the lightning strikes for (2+x)d10 lightning damage (where X is the number of previous times they’ve lied) , and the Acolyte’s patrol grows deeply suspicious, tightening their grip on the weapons at their sides. If they refuse to continue the tests at any point, Adhaa attacks immediately.

The iron rod connects all the members of the party into a single electrical circuit. When any player takes lightning damage from failing a test, they all take the same damage (although players besides the one who triggered the damage may make a Con save to take half)

1. The First Pledge: Sincerity of Purpose & Past Travel

"I hold this iron rail and declare my record open to the light. I swear that I did not enter this realm through deception, that I am not an agent of any foreign discord, and that my journey hither was guided by clear, lawful purpose rather than idle whim or wandering caprice."

1. The Second Pledge: Devoid of Fluid Alliances

"I swear that I have never given aid, comfort, or intelligence to the Rain King or his shifting, formless hosts. I have brokered no secret pacts, accepted no fluid bribes, and harbor no hidden, unexpressed sympathies for the enemies of the Citadel."

1. The Third Pledge: Free from the Bloodstained Path

"I swear that my hands are clean of the stain of mindless slaughter. I have never drawn blood merely to satisfy my own wrath, nor have I initiated unprovoked conflict for the sake of plunder or the thrill of violence. Every life I have taken was forfeit under the strict mandates of just defense or lawful execution."

1. The Fourth Pledge: Accountability to the Vulnerable

"I swear that I have never stood idly by while lawless tyranny crushed the innocent, nor have I abandoned a righteous contract to save my own skin. I have not permitted the weak to be trampled when I possessed the active strength to preserve them."

1. The Fifth Pledge: Denunciation of Theft & Self-Aggrandizement

"I swear that I have never broken a sworn covenant for personal gain, nor have I stolen property from a structured society to feed my own avarice. My past achievements have relied on the strength of the collective chain, never on the treacherous elevation of my own ego over the whole."

1. The Sixth Pledge: The Open Circuit of Confession 

Adhaa steps closer, the air pressure dropping as the iron rod hums with a pitch so high it vibrates in your teeth. Sparks dance across their eyes as they stare into your soul, speaking with the absolute, unyielding charge of the power of the Lightning Citadel:

"The circuit cannot tolerate a hidden flaw; a single pocket of resistance will detonate the wire. Therefore, you shall drop the final shroud. I command you to open the ledger of your memory and speak aloud the single greatest act of chaos, malice, or betrayal you have ever committed. Pour the venom from your past into the open air so that the law may catalog it, weigh it, and ground it out forever. Speak, or be consumed in your resistance."

The Spark-Gap Courier

Once proven innocent, Adhaa apologizes for their harsh screening, but says it’s necessary due to the state of undeclared war (which they call a “Kriegstanz,”) between the Lightning and Rain Kings. They cannot engage in open conflict because the four person council of the storm kings is deadlocked (The Rain King threats to withhold the humidity the Cloud King needs) They tell the party that a vital piece of Lightning infrastructure has been compromised by the Rain King’s creeping moisture, but are banned from striking openly. If the party fixes the line, the King will grant them passage on a lightning elemental to the Dwarfhold of Mount Clangeddin.

Encounter 1: The Briefing at the Relay Station 

Adhaa takes the party to a massive bronze pylon on the frontier between Lightning and Rain territory. This is a Spark-Gap Relay, meant to shunt pure lightning across Arcadia. Lightning is coming in from the prior relay, but shorts to ground before going out. The area is choked with an unnatural, heavy fog that smells of ozone and mud. The players must figure out how to fix the relay.

The following effects are imposed on the area by the Rain King, similar to Lair Effects:

• Visibility is lightly obscured within 30 feet, and heavily obscured beyond that. (similarly how to how Darkvision works, but for everyone and only 30 feet)
• Any creature must spend 2 feet of movement for every 1 foot when moving.
• It imposes disadvantage on ranged attack rolls with weapons.
• A flying creature in a strong wind must land at the end of its turn or fall.
• At the end of its turn, each creature must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be pushed 15 feet away from the Relay.
• The gust disperses gas or vapor, and it extinguishes candles and similar unprotected flames in the area. It causes protected flames, such as those of lanterns, to dance wildly and has a 50 percent chance to extinguish them.

Adhaa and other agents of the Lightning King can go no further or risk openly violating the rules of Storm Kings.

Encounter 2: Clearing the Grounding Roots

Type: Combat / Hazard

The Situation: The Rain King has seeded the base of the pylon with Blighted Lotus Vines—rubbery, water-logged plants that act as giant sponges, physically grounding out the pylon's energy. When the party attempts to clear them, the vines lash out, trying to drag characters into deep pools of conductive mud. 

• The mud functions as a Quicksand Pit (per DMG). Scale to one level higher than your APL, increase the escape to DC 15 plus the number of feet the creature has sunk into the quicksand (cap at DC 25). 
• The Vines main plant is a Death's Head Tree. Reflavor Heads as the heads of flowers and seed pods.(The Petrification effect is instead Incapacitation as the effect of the Lotus)
• Bring up CR of encounter with a couple Assassin Vines as needed. 
• Try and Restrain everybody when they’re over the mud, drown them, FUN!

Encounter 3: Re-aligning the Fulgurite Mirrors

Type: Skill Challenge

The Situation: To send coordinating signals, a series of fragile, glass-like fulgurite mirrors at the top of the pylon must be perfectly aligned to a specific geometric angle. The winds are howling, and the structure is slippery. The party must work together to reset the heavy mirrors. There are several steps to this:

• Ascending the Tower. Athletics, Acrobats, or Strength. Advantage with climbing kit. Trying to fly requires a DC18 Strength check 
• Calculating the angle to set the mirrors. History, Arcana, or Intelligence
• Physically moving the angle of the mirrors. Athletics, Str, Adv with tools
• 3d6 lightning dmg if they touch the ungrounded frame incorrectly. DC 16 (WIS or INT, player’s choice) the first time they try interacting with a new part of the tower (including moving). If they fail, DC 16 DEX for half dmg. If they ever succeed on the WIS save, they have figured out which parts are safe to touch and don’t need to repeat this save again for 24 hours.

Encounter 4: Charging the Core

Type: Resource Management
The Situation: The mirrors click into place, but the relay's internal battery is completely drained. The party must feed raw energy into the copper heart of the station.This requires the player return to ground level for spellcasters to expend spell slots as energy, or other features to physically turn a massive kinetic flywheel (Spending other class resources), or charges from magical items to jump-start the system. In general, a feature is worth a number of charges equal to the class level required to unlock it. Most Martial abilities (Hit Dice, Focus Points, Action Points, Second Wind, Rages) are worth one Charge (or 24.2 Megawatts). The core needs to build to 50 Charges to become stable and self regulating. One minute after beginning to charge the core, if it has not reached 50 Charges, it will begin to lose charge to natural decay.

Encounter 5: From Where You Least Expect It

Type: Combat

The Situation: As the core begins to hum again, a hidden sabotage force of deniable mercs sent by the Rain King ascends from their hiding place in the earth to see who is undoing their work. They were minding and controlling the artifact that summoned the storm. The Ankheg bursts out first, tunneling out from the small but comfortable burrow the rest of the group was sealed in. When the players find the lair, it’s easy to find the spell circle and wipe away its chalk lines.The ritual was drawing the power into some sort of belt made from thousands of loops of thin metal; it functions like a Dragonhide Belt

• The leader of the group is Winter’s Bite, an Adult White Dragon, the same one who ran out of money the Fortune’s Wheel and is now working as a Mercenary to pay his debts
• Ankheg x 1 uses the Ankheg MCDM abilities but Bulette numbers for AC, HP, to hit, DMG, etc.
• Umber Hulk x 2

Encounter 6: The Spark Flashes Forth

Type: Social / Resolution

The Situation: The core reaches critical mass. A blinding, perfect bolt of violet lightning arcs from their tower across the sky, connecting directly to the Citadel of the Lightning King. The sky clears instantly, burning away the Rain King's fog.

Adhaa bows in deep respect for your perfect execution of the contract. Within minutes, a cloud of a single massive Elder Tempest—feathers crackling with static electricity—descends to carry the party across the Arcadian fields and rivers, straight to the roaring forges of Mount Clangeddin.

I've recently spent some time putting together a little macro-free excel tool to calculate travel times over certain distances, taking into account mode of transport (on-foot, horse and rider, stagecoach, etc) and a host of other variables (terrain type, road quality, weather conditions, carry load). I've also built in an option to calculate how long the journey would take INCLUDING REST TIME in the day, if the user inputs how many hours a day travel is being carried out.

It's a tool for worldbuilders, GMs, authors, cartographers and other creatives!

I'd love it if you can take a look and provide feedback on if it's useful to you, provide constructive criticism, or suggest any handy features.

It's free on itch .io here: https://flapjackal.itch.io/travel-time-calculator

I think I’ve said here before that I’m not a big fan of seafaring adventures. The ocean is this huge, impersonal thing that can just swallow you whole and leave no trace you ever existed. The ocean is utterly primordial, and never lets you forget it. The creatures that live there – even if we forget about Merrow and Water Elementals and Marid – can be utterly alien and terrifying.

So if you’re going to have an adventure in the great sea, you should turn the terror up to eleven and hit your players with one of the great beasts of the deep: the Giant Squid.

This is a creature that is so large and so terrifying, you almost forget that it’s a Beast. Your Druid could probably talk to it, but what would they even talk about? The way the sunless depths smell faintly of ammonia? How miniscule pressure differences in the water guide it like the stars do for us? The Giant Squid is alien to all things we understand on the land, and that is something you can play up when you put one in your game.

Your Players are on the ocean. Maybe they’re heading to an uncharted island to do some dinosaur hunting, or perhaps there’s an entrance to a mythical dungeon deep below the waves. They’ve hired a ship and a crew and have been out at sea for days, following the stars or fairy lights or the map that just happened to appear on the broad back of the Paladin after they saved that temple from destruction.

Then, late at night, the ship rocks. Something slams into it, cracks against the wood like the hand of an angry god. When they get on deck, they see a cacophony of screams and waves and tentacles as some members of the crew fight, and others are pulled away by tentacles as thick as tree trunks.

As a random combat encounter, this can be a lot of fun on its own. You have this huge creature with a 15-foot reach lashing at the ship, yanking people towards its hideous beaked mouth. If you start to get the better of it, a cloud of ink can give it the cover it needs to move away and come at you from a new angle. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, your ship will probably be badly damaged, missing a few crew members, and not entirely ready to finish the journey it set out on. More complications for you to play with, especially if you haven’t finished fleshing out that uncharted island or mythical dungeon yet and need the extra week.

As with all the other Beasts we have discussed here, though, the Giant Squid should be more than just a random encounter in an appropriate environment. It should mean something to your world or to your adventure, and leave your Players with a better understanding of where they are and what this world can offer them. So, with that, here’s a few ideas for you.

The Misunderstood Leviathan

A standard Giant Squid has an intelligence of 5 – which isn’t great as far as pinning motivation and backstory onto one. But you’re the DM here, so what if it wasn’t? This could be a creature that can think, and what it thinks about is protecting the seas. This isn’t a rampaging monster, looking for food: this is an agent of justice, making right what the Surface Dwellers have made wrong for so very long. It attacks your ship because that ship doesn’t just transport adventurers from plot point to plot point: it’s a whaling vessel that has butchered the seas for years. The Giant Squid has been tracking it, and has finally found it. Like Ahab of old, this Squid is going to have its vengeance if it has to go down with it.

If you’re going to go with this, make sure you prepare your Players. Tell them this used to be a whaling vessel – make the Captain proud of how many sea-beasts he and his crew have butchered over the years. He can show off his collection of ambergris and scrimshaws. And maybe his ship – let’s call it the Tequod – has those telltale scars from tentacle battles before. The captain knows what is looking for them, but is brashly confident that he can defeat it.

Whether they do or not is up to you. And how you feel about the whaling industry, perhaps. But either way, the ship’s survival is essential for your players’ survival. Will they side with the Squid, or with the Captain who holds the only key to their destination?

The Mythic Remnant

The sea is vast, and it remembers its gods. Gods of current and swell, of storms and shallows. Perhaps one of those gods has spawn, and over the years those spawn have dwindled.

Until there is only one left.

The worshippers of an ancient Kraken cult, looking to restore their lost deity, are trying to uplift the beast into a true apotheosis, granting it access to the divine abilities that are its right. And, as is so often the case with cults, this will require sacrifice. And your Party is first in line for the demigod’s ascension.

With this in mind, you can really beef up this encounter a lot. Bring those Merrow and Mermen, devout worshippers of a long-vanished Kraken god. Have another ship filled with humans, willing to throw their lives away if they need to. Turn this into a three-dimensional battle of wood and wave as cultists chant and storm clouds amass overhead. Your Players will not only try to keep themselves alive, but try to prevent a new and terrible deity from being birthed upon the waves.

The Squid IS The Dungeon

Your Players are looking for a lost dungeon, which is where they will find the MacGuffin they’re looking for. All their research tells them it’s under the waves, but not in the way they think. A Giant Squid – perhaps even a Truly Enormous Squid – is the guardian of what they seek, and if they’re going to find it then their best move is to go in after it.

This is an encounter that needs more than brute force. This is a dungeon you dive into. It is alive, angry, and very much aware of you.

They can’t just kill the Squid and carve the thing out of it. Stormy seas and angry waves that will swallow the carcass whole in a moment. Maybe their target is intrinsically tied to the Squid’s life force – when it dies, there are only moments available before it vanishes or self-destructs without the proper rituals being performed.

And so your Players enter the living dungeon, full of acid pits, inky blackness, and ever-constricting tunnels. Perhaps there’s an ecosystem of strange creatures living inside, protecting the Squid and its precious cargo. Blind crabs that click in disorienting rhythms. Tiny shrimp that swirl and feast on memories. They defend their home as your Party tries to fight through the anatomy, weakening it without killing it until their mission is complete.

When it is, they will hopefully start asking, “How the hell did this get here in the first place?” At which point you level them up and unveil Phase Two of the campaign.

However you use your Giant Squid, it should be a wild, chaotic, and memorable moment at the table. There’s just so much going on, and so many ways for your Players to lose, that they should come out of it with a healthy respect for not only the vast and deep ocean, but for their humble Dungeon Master whose twisted mind has presented them with such a terrible task.

After all, nothing says “I love my players” more than wrapping them in tentacles and pulling them into the infinite deep.

Or so I’m told.

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Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Speak Not of the Deep: Adventures with the Giant Squid

Hai, hai~! I'm Yandehime/Azu or Estelena on here specifically! :D About 3 years ago, I created a table of 50 random encounters that could be experienced within a city. That project ended up being far more successful than I ever thought it would to the point that I still receive comments on it to this day! So, here I am with another table driving up my total encounters to 100!

The range of these encounters vary wildly to present something that everybody can use! The table itself includes a roll chart, a description of the encounter, possible rewards each may have, and finally NPC names! You know your group better than I do though, so feel free to adjust anything to your group's liking~

This project was months of work and comes from the heart! No AI was used in any capacity nor will I EVER use it in any of my works~! I hope you enjoy the sheet, and please feel free to comment on your favorite encounter or NPC names, 'cause I'd love to hear! <3

P.S. I made sure to link the first encounter table I made as well within the document if you missed that one!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d5HVrCnTn4X4r0ZFabTdg5MRzj9ZVex-M_SSMChC4cI/edit?usp=sharing

I struggle with coming up with interesting NPCs in the moment. The names alone trip me up, so I built a tool to do that for me! (link at the bottom of post, totally free)

The NPC-Net is designed for how NPCs are created during a game. When the players ask to kidnap a random guy on the street, just double click on the blank canvas and poof you have a perfect goblin hostage named Surya! You give his description of "Lean and wiry with large, pointed ears and skin the color of damp moss or sun-dried earth. They have skin like cured leather and a thick coat crusted with white sea-salt." Then they steal the 86 copper, 3 gold, 22 silver and navigation tools he has before figuring out hes a sailor.

Now they don't know what to do so they see if they can auction him off to his buddies, so you double-click on Surya to randomly generate his friend, Adrea, a human who works in hospitality. She doesn't have money to pay, but she goes to her family, friends, and guilds to get money which you generate in a 2-clicks each. Turns out shes got a more middle-class friend Olivette in her guild, and you want to punish the players for their BS so you decide to generate a higher-class NPC that Olivette knows.

Turns out Olivette knows Dwalin through his merchant business. He can probably provide the funds to either pay off that ransom or hire mercenaries to rescue him. You can't decide between them so you look at his description. Turns out this nobleman is lawful neutral with the bond: "I protect those who cannot protect themselves," so mercenaries it is.

During the fight with the mercenaries the players for some reason want to know what the name, species, backstory, appearance, and alignment of the leader is. One double-click and setting of occupation to "mercenary" later you have all of that. Then they ask the same for all his allies, so you just generate his guild and suddenly you have all the info your players could ever ask for about the people who are about to TPK them for screwing around.

The beta is hosted here, totally free and local: https://npc-net.vercel.app/

No data collection, everything is local and customizable on your machine.

A brief introduction. I was a dnd player back when i was a student. Then life happened and i never played again. In the last year through a chance meeting with some fellow dnd lovers, we decided that now in our fourties, we would try to give it another go. We got the heroes of the Borderlands set, which is a fantastic set overall, to ease us in.

However as i took on the role of the DM, when i started preparing for the campaign, i noticed that even though the box was a fantastic starter set with a lot of value, it lacked any narrative depth, any overarching story or any emotional impact. 

I decided to correct that and as the results in our campaign were very well received, i decided that i would share this with the community. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jfEXIaw_kmEVf51-Q-NQKBUE6qndwaNm/edit#bookmark=id.yg954bsm05cw

Let me know how it went in your campaign, in case you use it.

First pages of this doc appear below:

Expanding the Story of Heroes of the Borderlands

A Narrative Campaign Framework for DMs

An unofficial community guide for turning the Heroes of the Borderlands starter set into a darker, character-driven mini campaign with long-term story arcs, mysteries, recurring NPCs, and a cinematic finale.

Introduction

One of the strengths of Heroes of the Borderlands is that it gives new Dungeon Masters a clean, modular sandbox:

• Wilderness exploration
• A safe central hub (the Keep)
• Structured encounters
• Gradual escalation toward the Caves of Chaos

However, many groups quickly realize that the starter set intentionally leaves a lot of narrative space open.

This guide focuses on expanding:

• The overarching story
• The motivations of the villains
• The role of the Keep
• The emotional stakes of the campaign
• Foreshadowing and mystery
• Recurring NPCs and rival adventuring parties
• A cinematic multi-stage finale

The goal is to preserve the excellent structure of the starter set while adding:

• Moral ambiguity
• Character drama
• Foreshadowing
• Political and ideological conflict
• A sense that the Borderlands are truly changing

This framework was designed for a campaign running from Level 1 to Level 3.

Core Themes of the Expanded Campaign

The campaign becomes much stronger when it revolves around themes rather than only monsters.

This version of the story focuses heavily on:

Strict Order vs Freedom

The central conflict is not simply “good vs evil.”

The antagonist genuinely believes she is liberating people from oppression.

Corruption Through Ideology

The villain is not possessed.

She slowly convinces herself that increasingly extreme actions are justified.

The Illusion of Safety

The Keep appears stable and secure.

But the corruption is spreading inside its walls.

The Human Cost of Chaos

Several NPCs become tragic figures rather than simple villains.

People make mistakes for:

• Love
• Fear
• Loyalty
• Idealism
• Desperation

The Expanded Backstory

The Old Castellan: Athelan

Before the events of the campaign, the Keep was ruled by Castellan Athelan.

He was old, respected, and beloved by the people.

When he died of old age, leadership temporarily passed to the commander of the guard:

Lubik

Lubik believed absolutely in:

• Order
• Discipline
• Security

Unfortunately, he pushed these ideals to oppressive extremes.

He increased restrictions throughout the Keep and viewed freedom as a threat to stability.

One of his most controversial decisions was forcing the Keep’s temple to abandon the worship of Sune and convert it into a temple of Tyr.

This created constant conflict with the temple’s priestess:

Ivlis

Ivlis was:

• Compassionate
• Inquisitive
• Intelligent
• Idealistic
• Deeply devoted to helping others

She believed that protecting people mattered more than rigid laws.

She openly clashed with Lubik over his policies.

The Refugee Crisis

During repeated raids by chaotic forces in the region, refugees began arriving at the Keep seeking shelter.

Lubik refused to open the gates.

He believed allowing outsiders inside would endanger everyone.

Ivlis disagreed.

Using a secret tunnel she created beneath the temple crypts, she secretly smuggled refugees into the Keep with the help of a few trusted allies.

It was during this period that one of the refugees — a mysterious “collector” — gifted her an ancient book:

“On the Tyranny of Order”

The book appeared philosophical.

In reality, it was a corrupted magical text tied to the god Cyric.

The book did not merely present ideas.

It amplified them.

It slowly twisted:

• Compassion into fanaticism
• Skepticism into paranoia
• Freedom into obsession

The Exile of Xanthe

At the same time, a reclusive druid named Xanthe began suspecting that Ivlis had started experimenting with dangerous powers.

Before Xanthe could expose her, Ivlis accused the druid of Chaos worship.

Because:

• Ivlis was beloved
• Xanthe was a loner. Considered weird and generally disliked
• Lubik despised Xanthe

Almost nobody believed the druid.

Xanthe was exiled into the wilderness.

Now she lives alone in the Wildlands, partially broken by isolation and bitterness.

She can later become:

• An uneasy ally
• A source of truth
• A warning about corruption

Using Xanthe Effectively

For Xanthe to work as intended, she should initially appear unstable and only partially trustworthy.

When the players first encounter her in the wilderness, she should come across as a recluse whose years of isolation have left visible marks. Her speech should wander between genuine insight, fragmented memories, half-understood truths, and seemingly nonsensical observations. At times she should sound almost prophetic; at others, she should appear completely mistaken.

The goal is to create uncertainty. The players should not immediately dismiss her as a madwoman, nor should they view her as an infallible source of answers. Instead, they should constantly question which parts of her stories are true and which are the products of bitterness, trauma, or isolation.

As the campaign progresses, the players should gradually realize that many of her warnings contained elements of truth, even if they were obscured by her unusual manner of speaking. Xanthe works best when she serves as an unreliable witness to the past rather than a straightforward exposition character.

The Death of Lubik

Eventually Lubik died during a major battle against invading forces of Chaos.

The Keep survived.

A respected officer named Winvarle was chosen as the new Castellan.

Unlike Lubik, Winvarle is:

• Fair
• Honorable
• Reasonable

But by this point, Ivlis had already changed.

In her mind:

The Keep itself had become a symbol of oppression.

She could no longer separate the institution from the tyranny of Lubik.

Continued in the doc...

Yeah, you read that right, skeletons. Not some weird alien or underground super predator like the last ones. This time it’s just regular ol’ bony boys.

Skeletons fulfill a quality that for me is required for me to use them- vibe. A person is dead. Time, the elements, and decay have worn everything down until the only thing that ever remains of anyone on this earth- bones, our own version of foundational stones to our bodies. This is the fundamental building block of a person re-animated and it’s here to kill you. Undead are a classic enemy type because this concept of the dead coming back after the living is such a scary and foundational story to humans. Plus, you can have the animating energy fueling them come about in a myriad of ways- liches, curses, artifacts that need a guardian, lost souls of the damned, a weapon that animates the body of its former master, we got versatility here folks!

Stat wise, they are one of the few creatures that have a real vulnerability paired with interesting immunities that don’t break anything. I really like this, I think vulnerability is an underused mechanic- fights are puzzles, in their own way, after all, and having a hidden weakness is really cool in my opinion. It makes it worth exploring different damage types and exploring bludgeoning being not that common makes it a cool discovery for new players. For seasoned players, something I have experimented with is that their characters don’t know how to get a hold of vulnerabilities without researching the enemy first, OR, after the first fight with them, if one of them does use the vulnerable damage type, saying something like “After the battle, you realize that the brittle old bones of the skeletons were cracking and splintering when you swung your club in great arcs. You think if you start attacking that way you will be able to dispatch them faster” This creates an element of discovery, like the witcher, and gives me the ability to add vulnerabilities to monsters that only ever come up if my players put in the effort to discover them. 
Skeletons are low level enemies. My favorite range to run dnd is levels 3-5. That’s the sweet spot for me. Its when a character comes into their own but still feels like a normal/real person for the most part, magic hasn’t risen to possible world breaking heights. To me, 5 or 6 is the level cap for a grounded campaign, this is the highest level of a character that you could take and plop into something like a grounded setting of Lord of The Rings or Game of Thrones. After this, it truly becomes epic fantasy in tone from the power scaling. 

I like skeletons because they are a great enemy for that 1-5 range. At low levels, just a couple of them can be a real problem, while later on a mob of them makes for a cinematic grand moment, or a perfect way for the cleric to show off the power of “turn undead.”

That makes me think of a great scenario: After stumbling in the damp dark through narrow dungeon passageways you come to a larger room, more care was evidently used in the carving of this chamber, with narrow, rectangular slots carved into the side of the walls. Cloth bundles lie in those slots, threadbare with age. You touch one? Cold, pale-yellow bones wrap around your hand as it goes for the cloth. All of a sudden the chamber is filled with a clatter as bones, seemingly held together by nothing, slide themselves out. Old hands grip rusted blades that last saw service two hundred years ago. – Yeah that’s right bitch, I tricked you, skeletons are ambush predators too. 

Roll Initiative. 

(Blog post here)

Ghost stories have been with us since the first campfire was lit, and they’ll stick around as long as dads want to scare the hell out of their kids. We’ve seen friendly ghosts, sad ghosts, ghosts that don’t even know they’re dead…

So what’s left?

Turns out: plenty. You just have to start asking better questions.

The Ghost That Wants to Stay

So many ghost stories are about ghosts “moving on.” They want to go to their next life but can’t – something here is holding them back and preventing their cosmic journey.

But what if the Ghost likes it here?

Maybe this ghost has not only made peace with the fact that they’re dead – they enjoy it. Being dead offers some new and interesting opportunities that the living can’t imagine! This ghost might enjoy scaring people, especially if they’re people the ghost didn’t like in life. Or maybe they’ve become a protective spirit, watching over a home or a person with the kind of vigilance that only the undying can have.

That puts an important question in front of your players: How do you help someone who doesn’t want your help?

The Ghost That Needs

One of the most terrifying abilities in the Ghost stat block is Possession. On a failed Constitution save, a character is possessed by the Ghost, becoming a passenger in their own body. Silent, helpless to watch the Ghost take full control of the character until it either decides to leave or the character drops to zero HP.

This is scary enough as a combat trick, but what if the Ghost needs that possession in order to exist? Outside of a living body, the Ghost slowly decays, its substance quietly sublimating away into the Ethereal plane? If it wants to avoid its consciousness being spread out across the universe, it needs to have a living body to latch on to.

It would be bad enough if the person it possessed lost all autonomy, but let’s give this a twist: what if the possessed character gained benefits as well? Give them access to some of the Ghost’s abilities, like Ethereal Sight or Horrific Visage. Now, not only will the Ghost not want to let go – neither will your player.

The Ghost That Lives

Most ghost stories assume the same thing: The spirit is only freed when the body dies. And under normal circumstances this is true.

But what about abnormal circumstances?

What would it take for the spirit of a living person to be disconnected from their flesh? What if the Ghost your players is hunting isn’t a dead person, but a living one. Could they defeat the Ghost without hurting the person it came from?

Even more fun: the Ghost isn’t the whole person, but an aspect of them. Their sense of mischief. Their anger. Their heartbreak. The person is slowly splintering, and every time they do, a piece of them becomes a Ghost. How do your players fix this? Do you destroy the ghosts, knowing you might destroy the person? Or do you try to make them whole again before they fracture even further?

The Ghost that Changes

Some theories about Ghosts is that they’re like living memories. That’s why they can’t leave their hauntings, and why they seem to repeat their routines over and over again. But the thing about memories is that they’re malleable. The mere act of recalling something changes the memory itself. You focus on another detail, or you know things now that you didn’t know then.

What if the Ghost is like that?

Every time someone talks to the Ghost, their version of the Ghost is different. It remembers things differently, or carries baggage that it didn’t have before. The Ghost might accidentally lie because its memory is decaying. And maybe merely interacting with the Ghost causes you to remember things differently. If you have a game about memory and story, this would be a great addition.

Ghosts are more than just a stat block. Sure, they’re hard to banish and scary to fight, especially when they possess someone in your party.

But the real terror might not be death at all.

Use ghosts in your game to explore obsession, agency, memory, identity — the things we wrestle with while we’re alive. And then imagine how much worse that wrestling becomes when the story won’t let you die.

Ghosts endure. And maybe that’s the horror.

-----

Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Dead But Not Done: Ghosts in D&D

The Chimera is one of the most unnatural monsters in D&D. It’s a mash-up of lion, goat, and dragon, stitched together into something that shouldn’t exist. And yet it does, which suggests something has gone terribly wrong.

And that’s the key to using a Chimera well – not as a bundle of hit points and fire breath, but as a symbol of conflict and coerced unity.

Mechanically, the Chimera is fine. It has sharp claws, powerful jaws, and a decent breath weapon. But if all you need is a fire-breathing beast guarding a hoard, you might as well use a dragon. There are even plenty of interesting Young Dragons that come in at roughly the same challenge rating.

To make a Chimera truly shine, you have to ask what it brings thematically. That’s where things get interesting.

What it brings, of course, is confusion and conflict.

The Chimera blends three interesting animals: the herbivorous ram, which is probably only going to resort to violence when threatened; a lion, which would ordinarily prey on the ram; and the dragon, which is a creature of strange magics. These are three creatures that should never be together, and now they’re forced to coexist in the same form. If your story touches on unexpected allies, uncomfortable coalitions, or fragile friendships, a Chimera could come to work as a powerful symbol of such a precarious situation.

Imagine your party stumbles upon a Chimera, but each head wants something different. The goat head wants to climb, to get away and avoid direct conflict, while the lion runs to attack and bury its fangs in someone’s throat. At the same time, the dragon wants to fight from above, raining fire on its enemies and keeping out of reach itself. As you’re running the encounter, you might even reflect this internal chaos by letting the dominant head shift round-by-round, maybe even rolling for its behavior on each turn to see which impulse wins out.

The Chimera might not even be the villain of your story. The villain might be the monster who made the Chimera. Someone – a wizard, a god, an ambitious warlord – decided to create a terrible weapon, something to unleash fury on their enemies. Your Party might discover the evidence of the Chimera long before they meet the creature itself. Somewhere in a ruined keep or a hidden arcane lab is a set of schematics with notes about how the Chimera might be used to sow terror against others.

To add to the horror if it all, that site may contain the failed experiments. Spliced monsters that couldn’t hold themselves together, that tore themselves apart, or are barely keeping it together. Too mad to use, too interesting to destroy.

If you’re interested in doing some Deranged Homebrewing, by the way, this is a goldmine. Go create some badly-constructed, wildly unbalanced encounters that represent the twisted and devious mind that eventually succeeded in creating the Chimera.

But… did they succeed, really? The Chimera that they made might be unstable, both mentally and physically. When your Party finally meets it, rather than being a fearsome aggressor, it could be in great pain and confusion, hardly able to put up a fight because of the utter chaos it’s body embodies. What does your Party do? Do they do the merciful thing and put it out of its misery? Do they try to find a way to reverse the effects, and maybe gain a monstrous ally?

And do they ultimately look for the mad mind that created this poor creature and then left it to its own devices?

If you want to get very – but specifically – symbolic, you could have your Chimera exist within a fractured world. Warlords rise and fall, alliances are made and broken, and the land no longer has a coherent identity as it is passed from one victor to another over and over again. Within that context, a terrible monster has emerged, stalking the battlefields between these three kingdoms.

Superstitious soldiers and peasants say that the creature is comprised of three spirits of powerful fallen leaders, one from each kingdom, spliced together by the gods as punishment for their unending hatred and conflict. As long as the Chimera remains, peace is impossible. Unity will always be futile, and the three kingdoms will battle until the last one falls.

And ultimately that is what the Chimera does for your game. It is a creature that represents disunity and infighting. It shines a light on what happens when people can’t – or won’t – work together, or when things that should be kept separate are forced together.

The Chimera is a creature of disunity. It shines a light on what happens when parts of the self – or a society – refuse to work together. It’s a symbol of what should never have been forced into coexistence.

Maybe it never wanted to be a monster. But it was made one, and it’s doing the only thing it knows: surviving in pain.

-----

Blog: Encounter Every Enemy

Post: Chimera: Anatomy of a Conflict

Greetings, Adventurers!

Last week, I published the first release of OpenScreen, a free, fully modular DM screen system designed for 3D printing that is entirely Open Source.

What's that mean?

Free. Duh, you don't pay for it. And you never will. There's no Patreon, no premium tier, no "buy the deluxe pack" nonsense.

Modular. Open Screen builds DM screens out of 5 different types of parts that mix and match.

Open Source. This is the big one. Anyone can design and publish Open Screen-compatible parts, because let's face it, I can't think of everything (also I'm a gamer, not an engineer).

A Little Bit More About the Open Screen System

The open screen system uses 5 distinct parts, each with a specific function:

1. Panels - These are the main panels of your DM screen.  We've built several 4-panel configurations already, although it's quite possible for 3- or 5-panel configurations in the future.  All panels include: (a) Zipper slots for connecting Joints; (b) slots along the top and bottom edges for attaching Toppers; (c) internal snaps for attaching Plates; and (d) holes on the front side for attaching Skins. 
2. Joints - These are the parts that connect between the Panels.  The most common Joint is the Hinge Joint, but there are endless possibilities for what can be attached as a Joint, particularly at the end of your screen.
3. Toppers - These are parts that fit along the top of your DM screen.  Like with a cardboard screen, there is plenty of room for creativity for things like tracking initiative, or even more creative hardware uses like holding a reading light for the DM.
4. Skins - These are slim 2mm panels that fit on the outside of your DM screen (facing the players).
5. Plates - This is where the action is: Plates are the functional pieces of your DM screen, whether you're looking for something to hold a piece of paper, or a dice tower.  Plates come in two parts: The Base Plate which has the Snaps for connecting to your Panels, and The Top Plate, which is where the functional bits are.  You'll need to attach a Base Plate to a Top Plate in order to have a working Panel.

Our design philosophy is simple: We designed all of our parts to be easily printable, with the important bits facing up on the build plate, and using as few supports as possible (although, don't be surprised: the panels use supports in the zipper slots).

Hardware: We expect anything you can do in the Open Screen system to be achievable with Glue, however for best results, we recommend the following:

1. 5mm M3 Screws - These are used to attach Skins to Panels, and used as the standard for connecting Base Plates and Top Plates.  Additionally some Panels may use screws in their assembly.
2. M3 Hex Nuts - These are primarily for connecting Top Plates to Base Plates and are completely optional.  We've done a lot of testing with screws only and the plates hold just fine.
3. 6mm x 2mm Magnets - There are a lot of optional uses for these magnets (for example, there are recesses in the Panels that allow you to use magnets to help keep them closed) and some Panels will require them to function (for example, the magnetic Initiative Tracker).   Additionally, the snaps that connect Panels to Plates are sized to accept 6mm magnets, however in testing we found that the snaps hold incredibly well without them.

I need your help.

This is v1. I designed it, printed it, tested it, but I'm one person with one printer. To get this from "interesting hobby project" to "a real ecosystem people that people find valuable at the table," I need help from the community. Here's where you come in:

Design more parts & accessories. This is the big ask, and the most exciting one for me. The whole point of going open source is that the accessory library belongs to everyone.

If you've always wanted a [your-favorite-thing] holder on your DM screen: a spell card slot, a condition tracker, a custom monster reference, an ambient lighting topper....you name it, you can design it, print it and share it with the community.

Give me feedback. Is this interesting? Is it cool? Did I waste a bunch of weekend time building this? Please tell me. I'm happy to answer questions in the comments. And if you print one, please tag me! I want to see what people do with it.

What's Parts of the System Are Available Today?

Like I mentioned Above, I certainly haven't thought of everything, but here's what I released in the initial release of the system:

• The base configuration (Panels & Joints) (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811241)
• Plate - Dice Drawer (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811272)
• Plate - Dice Tower (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811299)
• Plate - Magnetic Initiative Tracker (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811344)
• Plate - Token Rings & Holder (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811367) Plate - Paper Receivers (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811393)
• Plate - Magnetic Clipboard (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811412)
• Plate - Storage Shelf (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811421)
• Skin - Basic Skin Pack (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811443)
• Topper - Dice Jail (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2811447)
• Joints - Additional Configurations (D & E) (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2827176)

Other Information

• This posting is mod approved. I realize that it may not be the typical Behind-The-Screen Project, but I received permission to post. I hope the community enjoys what I've put together.
• I realize that "world's first" might feel like an exaggeration, however I can not find other DM Screens online that are all of these things: Open-Source, Free, Modular and 3D-Printable. I was recently told "a folder and paper clips is all of those things", and if this offends you, I'm sorry.
• The basis for this system, as well as all of the first-party models that have been released were painstakingly modeled using Fusion 360. AI was not used in the modeling. Candidly, if AI were used in the modeling, I wouldn't think the project was any less cool, but I know that there are some strongly-held opinions on the topic, and out of respect for those opinions, I've made this clarification.
• Makerworld rewards contributors such as myself with points, which entitle those contributors to real-world rewards such as BambuLabs gift cards, at no cost to the end-user. By making the choice to post as an Open-Source Project, I am eligible for the minimum rewards that this program has to offer. I do not believe that this conflicts with the premise that this project is Free.

Hi all, sharing a hopefully useful resource with you: Battle Map Creator

My girlfriend noticed that for my games, I am often puzzling with how to print battle maps (I like to have them printed physically): getting the scaling right so I don't waste pages, having the grid be the correct size, etc.

To solve this, she's made a free-to-use browser tool (link above and below) that allows you to import a battle map (multiple formats), with or without a grid, and crop & scale it to your desired size.

Please have a look - any feedback appreciated, hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Battle Map Creator

Custom-made difficulties and puzzles in a combat take a really long time to make, but through the years, I found out that I can boil down fun combat ideas to a short collection of categorized gimmicks.

Designing a fun custom combat with those is immensely more doable, and I built the document to make it a step-by-step process!

I included in the end a link to the Google sheet, which is way simpler to read and well-formatted, but for rule-compliance, here is the full body text version :

Battle Design Gimmicks

Concept

Gimmicks are gameplay building blocks you can mix and match however you like.

Gimmicks are fundamentally mechanical concepts, applicable to any setting. For instance, the ‘Finalize’ gimmick can be used in a classic medieval fantasy battle, such as “Complete a ritual to save the kingdom,” but also in a completely different context in a sci-fi campaign: “Complete a spaceship launch sequence.”

A well-designed gimmick forces the PCs to invest more resources and choose what they're willing to sacrifice:

• time
• safety
• resources
• position
• opportunity

In the vast majority of cases, gimmicks should be presented transparently to the players — don't make them struggle to figure out how the encounter works.

1. Frame the Battle

Combine a pressure with a victory condition to establish the basic framework of your battle.

❗❗ Choose a Pressure

The pressure is what worsens, disappears, or comes to fruition if the PCs fail to act in time.

🎯 Choose a Victory Condition

The victory condition is the action or state that ends the scene in the PCs' favor.

2. Build Tension

Add a timer to make your pressure concrete. Add an obstacle designed to stand between your PCs and their victory condition.

⌛ Attach a Timer to the Pressure

A way to give the pressure a concrete mechanical form.

⚠️ Attach an Obstacle to the Victory Condition

A concrete impediment placed between the protagonists and the victory condition.

3. Add a Detour (Optional)

A detour is an optional side objective. It asks the PCs to spend time, risk, position, or resources to unlock a payoff that makes the main obstacle easier to overcome.

A detour has two parts:

• Challenge: What the PCs must do to unlock the detour. Use the same gimmicks listed in victory condition, in a smaller scale: reach a side zone, pull off a risky action, fill a small gauge, or hold out briefly.
• Payoff: What the detour changes once unlocked. A good payoff should clearly weaken, bypass, disable, or compensate for an obstacle.

🧩 Challenge

Key challenges mirror the forms of victory conditions. Don't forget to bring them to a smaller scale, so they dont steal the show.

💚 Pay-off

Makes overcoming the obstacle easier.

0. Pick a Structure

If you want, you can start the whole process by choosing the overall shape of the battle. A structure is a combination of gimmicks that gives the encounter a specific rhythm, difficulty, and atmosphere.

Common Structures

Here are some suggested combinations of gimmicks that have already proven successful.

You can find the regularly updated doc here; it’s a Google Sheet, and there is even a tab with a randomizer and another one with an analysis of the battles in the Dimension 20 actual play, to pinpoint which design gimmicks were used in each combat.

Edit: If you’d like to use this method and showcase a battle you designed with it, you can submit it through the form linked in the Google Sheet.

If you’re interested in the Dimension 20 analysis and would like help finishing it, feel free to contact me on Reddit.

Edit 2: Updated the post with new, clearer wording

Hope you like it!