Dungeon Master of None

Let's talk about and create dungeons! Matt and Rob discuss the essentials of dungeon building: story, theme, ecology, and variation. Your DMs then build a one-page dungeon "live!"  No abusers in our RPG community.  Links:  Rough draft of the one-page dungeon Final draft of the one-page dungeon Link to Dyson Logos' table of random dungeon entrances     Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice Merle Travis -...

DMs Matt and Rob talk about how to design factions, powers, and political groups that will hook your players. Let's build some better worlds! Letters: "What are some strategies to employ between encounters?" "How do I create emotional and cinematic moments for my players?"   Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice The Unicorns - I Was Born (A Unicorn) Ghost Mice - Critical Hit, recorded by DMofNone listene...

DM tips! Learn how to start games good! Practice shutting the hell up! And more! Plus, DMs Matt and Rob answer your letters and get some deserved criticism and critiques!  Tips: playing on the cheap...setting the tone...seeing, hearing,  smelling for your players' characters...using your posture...preparing social situations...listening to your players...how to make mistakes...  Letters: steampunk...

DMs Matt and Rob answer your questions! Then, let us sit upon the ground. And tell sad stories of the death of genres.    Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice Aurra - A Little Love Jeremiah Kane - The Future Past 

DMs Matt and Rob tackle the ultimate question of life, the multiverse, and everything: should there be a new edition of D&D? Spoilers: we don't. But we will get one...eventually. Your DMs then speculate wildly about what might and should be changed.    Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice David Bowie - Cat People (Put Out Fire)

As iron sharpens iron, so one worldbuilder sharpens another. Matt and Rob discuss your homebrew campaign settings and ideas in this special bonus episode! Thank you to everyone who sent us your work!   Music: Roll the Dice - Pac Div  Spirit in the Sky - Norman Greenbaum Big Rock Candy Mountain - Harry McClintock Princes of the Universe - Queen

The professors are in! It's an advanced worldbuilding class focusing on gods, faith, and magic systems.  Links: Brandon Sanderson's Laws of Magic     Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down Gillian Welch - Old Time Religion 

Happy New Year! After alienating every listener from the UK, your DMs of None answer some unwanted advice and then use real historical artifacts to build new magic (and mundane!) items for your campaigns.  Image Gallery Historical Magic Items 2: The Dragon's Maw, the Cyrosiphon, and the Mirror of the Exalted Ancestor    Music: Pac Div - Roll the Dice Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa, and Ty Dolla $ign - Shell...

Happy new year! Welcome to a brand new episode of Dungeon Master of None on Old School Rules and mega-dungeons with special guest Andy.  [00:19:20] What is OSR? Andy discusses what types of campaigns and players work best with Old School Rules. [00:49:00] The art of the mega-dungeon design. Plus, Andy gives his trademarked 1d4 rules for creating a mega-dungeon.   [01:04:45] Matt and Andy riff up s...

It's your mega-episode for the holidays! DMs Rob and Matt review two successful kickstarters that are now available for public purchase: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition  [00:11:05] and Strongholds and Followers [00:44:00]. Then, on to your DM questions and letters [01:20:00]!   Gerard asks, "Will I destroy my game giving my players opposing goals?" [01:21:10] Scott says, "Quidditch is trash." [01:...

DMs Matt and Rob sit down for a deep dive into Tolkien, race, drow, Game of Thrones, and Euro-centric campaign worlds. Listen to a discussion of how to think critically about ideas of race in fantasy RPGs. We hope you will leave with some ideas about to tell anti-racist stories in our games.   You can do your DM of None homework by reading  Paul Sturtevant's article on the Public Medievalist, "Rac...

WARNING: Spoilers for Skulls & Shackles begin at 37:30! Have your players ever wanted to acquire a ship? Pirates are the murder-hobos of the sea, so let them! DMs Rob and Matt discuss how to plan open-ended nautical adventures for your players. Stick around for a review of Skull & Shackles, one of the best pirate modules ever published!   Music: Roll the Dice - Pac Div Black Is the Color - Lucette...

DMs Matt and Rob cover the essentials of building your own world for RPG campaigns: scale, theme, and conflict!  If you want to join us on this worldbuilding epic quest, then join us on twitter . Let's all build new campaign worlds together!    Music: Roll the Dice - Pac Div Drunk as Dragons - The Woodbox Gang Dungeon Master - Visigoth 

It's a mailbag episode! We. Answer. Your. Letters. But first, DMs Rob and Matt chat about surprise Yog-Sothoth as well as the new errata and unearthed arcana for DnD 5e. Here's a link to Matt's homebrew rules for 5e Naval Combat. Also, because we live in Hellworld, we talk more about the Flaming Sphere of Shit that is White Wolf (now featuring Instagram despot Ramzan Kadyrov).  Here comes the lett...

Hoooooo boy. So remember back when the CEO of Hasbro said that D&D was going to be the new "E-Sport?" Well, it didn't take long for someone to try to put that together.  DMs Matt and Rob watched the very first competitive PvP game of D&D on Twitch and are here to talk about it. We aren't saying you can't have competitive RPGs. You can. But, uh, this ain't it, chief.    Music: Roll the Dice, Pac Di...

Matt and Rob review two new releases from Wizards of the Coast:  The Dungeon of the Mad Mage   and  The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica .  NO SPOILERS! If you are planning on playing  Mad Mage , do not be afraid! Your DMs only talk about the adventure in general terms.  Megadungeons! What are they? What types of players and dungeons masters will enjoy this type of adventure? Matt and Rob discuss th...

After some uninformed speculation about what the announced 2019 D&D campaign setting book  will be, Rob and Matt discuss a recent article in Quartzy ,  "Dungeons & Dragons Created the Blueprint Nerd Culture Still Follows Today" by Dave Gershgorn.   Q&A time! If you could DM for any three celebrities, who would they be? What video game needs a TTRPG rulebook? Can a DM metagame? What is your answer...

Put on your masks and get out your account books! Matt and Rob are joined by a very special guest, Dave the Prof ! They discuss Seth Dickinson's groundbreaking fantasy novel,  The Traitor Baru Cormorant . The book's approach to race, queerness, and empire will get your fantasy world-building gears turning like no other novel!  Happy Halloween and happy the Monster Baru Cormorant day!   Links: On T...

Matt and Rob review the newest adventure from Wizards of the Coast, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist!   WARNING! Spoilers begin at 45:10. But first, we gird ourselves for a Tales from the Loop TV series and a Wheel of Time TV series. Matt shares his bafflement with TORG: Eternity . Now, on to Waterdeep ...Dragon Heist is a welcome departure from the all the other 5e adventures...modular antagonists...it's...

DMs Matt and Rob talk about RPGs in the classroom using the Reacting to the Past curriculum and Matt's panel on Paradox Interactive 's video games and history.   Now, on to your letters: Nate writes, "Discord has a dice roller and a macro add-on!" [16:30] Ryan asks, "Is the Dynamic Lighting option in Roll20 worth it?" [21:00] Abstract Figure writes, "I love old school throwing weapons and boomeran...

"7 DM Tips to take your game to the next level...#6 will blow you away!"  "Players hate him! Master the Game with this one Weird Trick!" Matt and Rob are back with some slightly more advanced tips to help you as a game master!  But first, a listener asks, "Can I run a game with two swapping Dungeon Masters?" On to the tips: creating a recap blog...playing to your strengths...you are using your DM...

Matt and Rob discuss some recent drama related to Roll20, a virtual tabletop platform [05:40]. Your hosts then try present both the challenges and opportunities of running RPGs online [20:30]. Last, Matt and Rob try to give you some practical tips for using Roll20 and other online tabletops [41:30].  Have you struggled or had success running games online? Let us know how it went! dmofnone@gmail.co...

Matt and Rob love history. They also love making custom magic items. In this episode, your hosts combine these two loves by using historic artifacts as inspiration to create stats for D&D magic items.  Image Gallery D&D 5e Magic Item Descriptions Music: "Roll the Dice" by Pac Div "Season of the Witch" by Donovan "Blister in the Sun" by Violent Femmes "Nothin' But A Good Time" by Poison "The Magic...

Read the full blog post here. This is a call-to-action for all our listeners! Please, donate your RPG books or buy a manual or two for prisoners in the United States. RPG manuals are on the "most requested" list of almost every prison book donation website and are never stocked by the humorless authoritarian bureaucrats that run what's left of prison libraries. These books are so in demand that wh...

The Celestial Job : A Planescape Adventure for 3rd-level Characters DMs Matt and Rob return to "The Celestial Job," a one-shot Planescape adventure we wrote during Episode 30.  Today, we take a fresh look at the adventure after play-testing it with two groups of players. Your DMs discuss how to run an adventure with an eye towards revision. We look at what didn't work, what was fun, and what was h...