Day 3 of this hash tag thing, and the second post on time! Two out of three ain’t bad.

Let’s jump into today’s theme and my thoughts inspired by it.

This theme was a no brainier for me. Only one thing came to mind and it was a book.

That book being The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters by Keith Ammann.

The book “unpacks strategies, tactics, and motivations for creatures found in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.”

What I like about the book is that it allows you as a DM to make combat with the monsters feel “real” and unique. Almost giving them a personality. And hopefully stopping the encounters feeling samey. No more relying on two tactics of run away or fight to the death. Which is important to me. Not only am I keeping the players on their toes, but hopefully keeping things fresh, and authentic.

Obviously as the quotes dotted throughout the post point out, things change once a combat begins. You have to react to changing events known as the players. But that doesn’t make this book pointless. It makes it more important as it allows you to have the monsters react authentically to the unfolding situation. You basically have a framework to make decisions against.

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing can be bought either as a physical book, ebook, and audio book. Sadly I have all three versions of the book.

There is a sister book aimed at players called Live to Tell the Tale: Combat Tactics for Player Characters (only available as an ebook or physical). Which provides “beginning and intermediate D&D players the tools they need to fight back. Examining combat roles, class features, party composition, positioning, debilitating conditions, attacking combinations, action economy, and the ever-important consideration of the best ways to run away”.

I can’t speak for this book as I don’t own it. I did point my players in its direction, I have no idea if any of them bought a copy. I hope they did.

Then this December we get a follow up to the original tome called MOAR! Monsters Know What They’re Doing. This new book “analyzes the likely combat behaviors of more than 100 new enemies found in Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes.” Like the original it is available in the same formats. Amazon is taking pre-orders now. Which I have taken advantage of.

In the meantime there is a blog that you can go to as well by the author. Click HERE to read it.

Day 2 already?!

Well it’s hardly unexpected considering the day 1 catch up post that just went up.

Ok let’s get on with the main reason you are here, today’s theme for #RPGaDAY2021…

I enjoyed creating my first ever dungeon map the pirates lair for my homebrew D&D campaign. It was used in the very first session. As were my first ever town/village maps in the second session. I’ve not given up creating my own maps. I just decided to work smarter!

By smarter I mean using other peoples hard work to lessen the work load I have to do. Below are some of the giants shoulders I stand on when it comes to maps.

A good source of maps to use in your own adventures is the Dyson Logos blog. He has a load of maps on there that a free to use (non-commercially). You can get even more by supporting him on Patreon.

Sly Flourish (who along with Matt Colville I mention all the time) talked about having a go to map that you could use at a moments notice for those unexpected moments thrown at you by the players.

I’ve used town/city maps from published adventures (something Matt Colville suggested in a video). I used the map for Alhaster (from an old Dragon magazine issue) as Mintarn in my campaign.

I keep the Lazy Dungeon Masters Workbook handy because it has 10 generic map locations that can be used in any campaign. I’ve used the docks map for a session, and had another couple lined up if the players followed particular plot hooks.

I have a couple of the Battle Map books (a fantasy one and a cyberpunk one) that I can use. These are generic enough that they can be used with any system. Always handy to have a round.

Map & Dice Playing Cards, and the Deck of Many Dungeons are great for generating dungeons on the fly. Especially if you don’t have the go to map to hand.

I also have a couple of maps of real life locations that are local to me to hand also. In my home town there are some underground tunnels in the town, and an underground part of the “castle” (more town house) known as the vaults (iirc). I thought these would be fun to use in a campaign at some point.

Plus in the DMG Appendix C: Maps you have maps you can use! There are also 7 monster lair maps in Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

I like that what I have above allows me to save time when preparing for a session. But that also if the session goes off in an unexpected direction that it doesn’t matter because I can cover it with at least one of the above.

Nearly missed this completely, but a day late isn’t too bad. Unlike last year when I missed it completely and ended up doing it much later in the year all by my lonesome.

This will be my third year doing #RPGaDAY. I like the creativity it inspires in me. It certainly isn’t for the views and followers.

So that you have a heads up on what I’ll be rambling on about for the next month below is the graphic showing the themes we have to inspire us.

So there will be two posts today, one for yesterdays theme and the other surprisingly for todays.

The theme for yesterday was Scenario.

Unless you are following a published campaign such as the excellent WotC ones for D&D 5e. Probably one of the hardest things to come up with no matter which system you are using are scenarios.

Luckily there are lots of sources of inspiration out there that can fire the imagination.

In a recent post I listed 5 basic quest models that could be used as the basis for a scenario.

In the past I have used my Map & Dice Playing Cards, and the Deck of Many Dungeons to generate a map that acts as inspiration for a scenario.

Sometimes I “borrow” ideas from other media for inspiration. Look at my notes here that I made to remind me at a later date of some ideas for some horror scenarios.

Another tool in my arsenal for generating scenario ideas is these quest decks I backed as a Kickstarter. I didn’t get them all (finances and all) just those I thought I could get the most usage out of.

There are lots of sources of tables to roll against to generate scenario ideas. It could be the Roll & Play book, the DMG, the Sly Flourish Adventure Generator, the Tome of Adventure Design just to name a handful. Actually before I forget there is a rather nice system in the Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk sourcebook for the Genesys RPG for generating scenarios.

One or two of the above suggestions can be used on the fly at the table if need be. But all work really well when preparing your next session.