Sly Flourish
Building the Better Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Dungeon Master.
Dungeon Master Survey Results
14 May 2012 - Back in late April I created a survey to assess Dungeon Master game preparation habits. I received 804 responses from DMs running many different variants of D&D over many different periods of time...
Running Mini Campaigns
07 May 2012 - Back in 2008, Phil "The Chatty DM" Menard wrote the article Afterschool Tropes Special: The Campaign as a British TV Series that changed how I run D&D. A long campaign can fizzle out for many reas...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: April 2012
04 May 2012 - Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for April 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: A good piece of 250 to 500 word flash fiction in an ...
The Campaign Folio
01 May 2012 - In her excellent book on the process of art, the Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp discusses her use of banker boxes as a way to store all the junk she collects when working on a creative project. During th...
The Mastermind Puzzle
23 April 2012 - Good puzzles are a great way to keep your games fresh and interesting from week to week. A good set of puzzles on hand helps you stay away from simple and continual skill checks. As puzzle games go, t...
Steve Townshend on Adventure Design
16 April 2012 - In mid March 2012, I had the opportunity to spend an hour discussing adventure design with D&D freelancer Steve Townshend, author of Madness at Gardmore Abbey, the Monster Vault 2, the Monster Man...
Battle Map Comparisons
09 April 2012 - Note: This article has been updated from the original article posted 3 August 2009. Today is a glorious day to run D&D games. Long gone are the days of yellowed graph paper as the only option for...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: March 2012
06 April 2012 - Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for March 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Fascinated by this excellent analysis of damage per level and ...
Player Driven Stories
02 April 2012 - Video game bad boy, David Jaffe, recently spoke out against games that force-feed you the story of the writers and directors instead of building a game that lets the player build their own story. For ...
Patience
26 March 2012 - A recent twitter conversation discussed the top virtues of good dungeon masters. One particular trait continued to come up and it was one that struck a particular chord with me: patience. I'm not a p...
4e Damage Dice Calculator
19 March 2012 - While the DM cheat sheet works very well for giving you a nice generic dice damage expression at any level and with a variety of situations, sometimes you want a little more control over the dice you ...
Keep Things Moving
12 March 2012 - Nothing can suck the joy out of a game faster than a lack of action. We DMs love our story. We love the worlds we create and the depth of our characters and our villains. We want to explore them, we w...
Character Driven Dungeons and Dragons
05 March 2012 - Recently DM to the superstars, Chris Perkins, wrote an excellent article, the Storytelling King, on his tips for building character-focused games using the ideas of Stephen King from his book On Writi...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: February 2012
03 March 2012 - Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for February 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! #dnd tip: Remember that being a DM is being a showman. Work...
Gloomwrought House Rules
27 February 2012 - I recently finished running a level 8 to 13 mini-campaign based on the Shadowfell, Gloomwrought and Beyond accessory and the Heroes of Shadow sourcebook. I used a few interesting house rules to keep t...
Inception Skill Challenge
20 February 2012 - Inception isn't a movie you might get right away. On the surface, it's a great thriller and a solid science fiction movie. At its core, however, it is simply a heist movie. Think of it like Ocean's El...
Fiasco-Style Relationships
13 February 2012 - There are few games more different from D&D than the story-focused RPG Fiasco. In Fiasco, a group of players determine backgrounds, relationships, actions, successes, and failures through cooperat...
DM Walk-Away Kit
06 February 2012 - They finally found you. After years of tracking you down, the Company uncovered your secret lair and plan to take you down...tonight! But you got a tip and you're on the way out the door. You have you...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: January 2012
03 February 2012 - Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for January 2012. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Here's to a new year of dice rolling and monster slaying! Ha...
Tile Tools: Toolbox Liner and Acrylic Sheets
30 January 2012 - Overall, I'm not a big fan of dungeon tiles. Dollar for dollar, I find poster maps to be the best quality encounter accessory we can get. That said, poster maps don't include the flexibility we often ...
Monster Group Bosses
23 January 2012 - Boss monsters need help. We've discussed the problem and potential solutions before but it's worth returning to the topic again. Boss monsters; whether they be elites, normals, or solos; all act like ...
Building a Modular 4e Game
17 January 2012 - There's been a lot of talk and speculation about the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, particularly in WOTC's attempt to build a more modular form of D&D. Of course, we'll all be keeping an eye...
Getting the Most from the Book of Vile Darkness
09 January 2012 - This month, Wizards of the Coast released Robert J. Schwalb's Book of Vile Darkness supplement for 4th edition D&D. Today we're going to look at how to squeeze the most use out of this product for...
DM Tips Twitter Archive: December 2011
06 January 2012 - Below is an archive of all of the Sly Flourish DM Tip Twitter posts for December 2011. Get daily DM tips at http://twitter.com/slyflourish! Ran a skill challenge based on Inception tonight. The playe...
Default Feats
03 January 2012 - From time to time you might be called upon to build characters for other players. Whether it's for a one-shot game, a convention game, a guest player, or a player who simply cannot be bothered to main...
Sandbox Gaming Podcast with Erik Scott De Bie
27 December 2011 - Last month I had the excellent opportunity to spend an hour talking with Erik Scott De Bie, fantasy author and freelance game designer for Wizards of the Coast. Erik worked on Shadowfell: Gloomwrought...
Abyssal Plague Environmental Effects
19 December 2011 - This past week, Wizards of the Coast published my second Abyssal Plague article, Abyssal Plague Epic Threats (DDI Subscription required). This article contains four epic-tier Abyssal Plague monsters i...
2011 Poster Map Buyer's Guide
12 December 2011 - The Battle Map Comparisons article on this site continues to be a popular draw. We all love our encounter maps and there's a lot of potential options available. The more we use these options, the more...
Building Great Traps
05 December 2011 - Good traps are hard to find. Using the rules as written, you might expend a monsters-worth of experience from your encounter experience budget and have the whole party avoid the trap completely. Today...
