Bocoloid from Southern Edge

 Like many others, I started my TTRPG journey with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition . I ran games, I played in games, and I fudged a lot of dice. I pulled punches. I softened outcomes. For nearly two years, I ran a long campaign where no player character ever died. Everyone was happy. It was safe, fun, and predictable. We all kind of knew that death wasn’t really on the table—just failure at best. Then I joined a new table, one run by a veteran DM I knew from Magic: The Gathering . He made one thing clear from the beginning: “All my rolls are in the open. No fudging.” We were playing Lost Mine of Phandelver , a starter module, with a mostly new group. In our second session, everything went to hell. The goblin boss had a great stealth roll and ambushed us. Several goblins dropped our wizard immediately. The hobgoblin leader rolled a natural 20 and downed another party member. We decided to flee. My dwarven cleric used magic to hold off the enemies and bought time for the other...

    I have a lot of friends who play TTRPGs, and many others who were always curious about trying them. After years of GMing, I realized that what I enjoy the most are open, sandbox-style campaigns. Over time, I gradually let go of railroading and over-preparing, which I found often narrows the path players will take. Eventually, I decided to surrender to the will of the dice gods. At the same time, I had been reading a lot of blog posts about West Marches and it felt like the perfect fit for my gaming style. So I started putting together a West Marches-style campaign using my usual group and expanding it to include several friends who were either new to RPGs or came from different systems. For the system, I chose Forbidden Lands , which is ideal for exploration and resource management. I loved how it uses abstract dice to track supplies—rations, water, arrows, torches, etc.—represented by a die (d12 → d10 → d8 → d6). Each day, players roll the relevant die, and if they rol...

A while ago, I started experimenting with faction systems in my game—cult hierarchies, inner circles, secret handshakes, that sort of thing. One of my players had a character who was rising through the ranks of a shady cult, and I had set up rules for access levels and promotion rites. It was going great… until he went insane, betrayed the party, and got executed. I barely had time to test anything. Luckily, another player stepped in with a brilliant pivot. He’s playing a big orc warrior, and after getting sick of paying tolls to the endless stream of bandits in my dungeon, he thought: what if I join them instead? He had already discovered their surface headquarters and decided joining would be cheaper than constant extortion. Thus, a new opportunity opened up: the orc’s slow initiation into the local thieves’ guild. What We Know So Far At that point, the guild wasn’t very fleshed out. All I knew was that they controlled the first underground level of the dungeon. They run the toll ...

 In the last session of my campaign, something curious happened: my players were fascinated. There was betrayal between characters, an unexpected romance, a mystery that left them on edge, and a tactical, exciting combat. In the end, they congratulated me and commented that it was evident how much I had prepared the session. The irony is that I hadn’t prepared anything specific for that session. What I actually do is "planned chaos: laying the groundwork for an organic story." This concept may seem contradictory, but it’s an approach that allows me to offer complete freedom to my players without losing narrative coherence. I don’t design sessions with a rigid script; instead, I build a solid foundation before the campaign begins, ensuring that I can improvise with ease. This method requires a lot of preparation beforehand, but it significantly lightens the load between sessions, making the experience much more enjoyable for the GM. How I Prepare Without Preparing My style as ...

 In the previous session, one of my players, a devout follower of the god Mythris, discovered a strange sanctuary to his god in the city. It was the headquarters of a secretive and elusive order. He asked to join and undergo the trials required for initiation. Since we were nearing the end of the session and I wanted to make it interesting, I told him we would resolve it in our next session. Over the course of the week, I had time to think about it. The order, I told him, had several levels, each with its own trial. However, only one trial could be attempted at a time, and each trial could only be undertaken once the initiates returned to the surface. They couldn't take all of them in the same "city phase." The first trial needed to be something that could be completed quickly, so that the character would enter the cult and feel motivated to level up. First, we set the trap, and then the bait. For me, the god Mythris is akin to the vengeful god of the Old Testament: powe...

 The dungeon in my campaign is created by a Dream Worm , so I thought it would be a great opportunity to experiment with a modular dungeon . The idea is that every time the players leave, the dungeon reconfigures itself based on their dreams and fears. Additionally, random events can trigger shifts in the module layout during exploration. Designing the Modules To simplify the process, I decided to make square modules . I then had to determine how many rooms each module should have and how many modules would make up each floor. Module and Room Count I settled on 12 modules per floor to ensure a good variety of layouts without making the combinations too predictable. Each module contains between 8 and 15 rooms . Initially, I considered 30 rooms per module , but that would result in 300 rooms per floor , making exploration too slow. I want my players to move through multiple levels, so I reduced the number. For reference, adventures like The Hole in the Oak and Against the Cult of...