Hook and Chance

Make your players feel like masterminds, plan for the spells that threaten to throw a wrench in your mystery, and avoid groans at the final reveal. Also, we chat about the essential traits to help build a great detective character.

A good D&D game always benefits from rising tension, heightened stakes, and a grand finale. Knowing how a mystery story typically works and having some idea of where the party can go, who they can talk to, and when things are gonna start getting intense is essential. Without these story beats as a starting point, its easy to streamline to the solution, or have things drag out far too long.

Mystery adventures are some of the most complex you can run. This series of three episodes simplifies the process as much as possible while still allowing for mysteries that have the potential to surprise and feel like a great ride. In this first one we look at the essential ingredients you need to create in order to run a grand whodunit.

The lumbering hulk of rotting plant matter known as a Shambling Mound can be so very misused. Usually, it is simply used as a large block of hit-points to chip away at, at worst, it is a TPK waiting to happen. So how do we avoid this?

Keith Ammann, author of Live to Tell the Tale and The Monsters Know What They're Doing is here to explain how players can think a bit differently about their characters and their desire to survive. Using new concepts like Ability contours he explains how characters can lean on their strengths, position themselves in combat, and know how to escape deadly situations.

Friends is an often overlooked and criminally misunderstood spell, and it's easy to make this mistake. It doesn't sling poison or prevent certain death or create illusions in the minds of your foes, but the versatility of this spell deserves a second look. It can make your charming character an ace in the hole for every talky part. As a reminder, Friends gives you advantage on Charisma checks for...

Dragons deserve the dramatic and complex fights that keep parties talking about the time they barely escaped alive. How would you go about writing such an encounter? Sounds like art. Could amazing encounters be systematized? Also, the Unbreakable Anthology is awesome... that is all.

Dragons are fearsome, dragons are big but that doesn't inform how they behave. Preparing and knowing the personality traits of your dragon will will inform their portrayal and ultimately insures your grand reveal doesn't fall flat. Taking a look into some of the core traits exhibited by dragons in fiction and breaking down those common behaviors allows us to study how they might behave.

Dragons have an incredibly vast history, mindbogglingly big. But if we look at the fact that dragons are pretty much an amalgam of all the real animals that have scared humans forever, then we've got something to work with, and draw ever more details from.

What if we didn't just drop puzzles into D&D, but played it a little more like the great puzzle games? By taking some simple rules from game design, we can improve our encounters, giving players the satisfaction of overcoming some seriously tricky situations.

There's a lot of baggage around puzzles, and many players have some serious beef. In presenting them as a DM, you risk players that get angry, lose interest, or table flip and light a fire in their pure rage. Well, In this episode we address the reasons behind this fury, and provide guidelines that help you put enjoyable puzzles into D&D.

The options seem binary when writing; spend less time and carefully avoid dodgy tropes or sterotypes or write a truly unique piece of fiction and spend more time writing than playing in your unique world. Too bad there is no better options... or is there? Wonder not, we have a solution!

It's challenging to choose the right flaw for your character. This is because character flaws range from a humorous quirk like hiding weapons around the office to a representation of everything they fight against like being afraid that they can't protect their loved ones. In this episode we cover different types of flaws, what ties them to your characters story, and how to run them through a quick...

The Umber Hulk is far more than just a stat block. This humble entry in the massive tome that is the Monster Manual is easy to underestimate. An encounter with this beastie should feel like going mano a mano with the most fearsome people gnasher around and it all comes down to setting the tone and mood.

The choices appear to be only two as a DM, run a game on rails and remove player choice, or run a sandbox game where anything can happen but finding meaning in the story takes some digging. Well taking inspiration again from John Trubys book The Anatomy of Story, we can drop in some simple structure to campaign or even adventure planning.

What is four corner opposition? Well, it's a writing method that allow the creation of messy interweaving webs that are fun and interesting to explore. DM's and players everywhere deserve rich worlds that feel dynamic and evolving, and this system provides the best results!

Monks are among our favorite classes, but the question of how to avoid playing a cliche (or hella problematic and groan worthy) monk is always top of mind. The Shaolin monks have an incredible history, one that is worth exploing and paying respect to as the primary inspiration for D&D monks. That or we can reskin a monk into something nobody would expect!

Getting everyone invested in the story seems like a challenge sometimes, and as soon as you see them cell phones, you know it's game over. It's tick But as soon as everyone feels like they have a hand in directing the game, they jump right back in. We can get everyone on board a lot easier with a little more crafting of character choices.

Presenting an antagonist that your players care about can be maddening. To release your brainchild of a baddie complete with haunting eyes and a tragic tale to your group feels fantastic! Right up until a player asks "Who's this? Are we supposed to kill them? Will this level us up?" Well, we've been there, and that's why we spent time figuring out what we were missing. This episode takes you throu...

Think D&D needs more maps and minis? Theatre of the Mind, or more simply, playing D&D with only a character sheet, can be daunting, especially for such a math and map driven game. So the talented GMTim joins us to teach how to try Theatre of the Mind and all of the benefits it brings with none of the challenge or fuss.

There's so much out there on character creation that makes you think you're creating the ultimate hero. It's creative, fleshed out, nuanced, detailed, and has a killer backstory. We've made our fair share of those, and we usually find that once you try to roleplay those characters, they don't have much to say or do. We lose interest fast. This episode is about fixing that. If you define three prob...

The most satisfying part of using a Doppelganger is that glorious moment where they shapeshift to their true form and everyone at the table gasps, Gary is screaming "Oh, Pelor, Why!?" and Susan slams her first through the table. Well, this only happens when you plant the proper seeds of mystery and intrigue. Join us, and run your next Doppelganger with vigor.

Google “5e Ranger” and all you’ll find is a lot of people talking about how underpowered they are. But what if playing them with a few key ideas in mind and a tweak here or there made them tremendous? If you’re considering playing a Ranger, playing with one or DMing for one, this is an episode for you.

The spell Vicious Mockery has created some of the funniest moments at our gaming table. That's why we wanted to start this episode with some fun looking at hilarious inspiration for insults. We also take a look at the more dramatic side and talk about how your character can really get inside the head of their enemies with a few words. But it wouldn't be complete without talking about how a DM can...