D&D Has Too Many Options (And They’re Ruining Your Game)
We’ve all seen it happen at the table. You’re in the middle of a high-stakes combat encounter. It’s your Fighter’s turn. You expect them to do something heroic – swing from a chandelier, tackle an enemy into a pit, or flip a table for cover. Instead, they stare down at their character sheet for two…
10 Blazing-Fast D&D Alternatives (That Don’t Suck to Learn)
It was supposed to be a simple tabletop skirmish, but it drags on past the two-hour mark. Your players are staring at their phones, the tension has evaporated, and D&D feels less like a heroic adventure and more like wading through a gelatinous cube. You’re ready to try something else, but the thought of learning…
DCC Combat Is the Chaos D&D IS Missing
Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) is a wild ride, and if you’ve been feeling like modern gaming has turned into a predictable slog of encounter balancing, this game is the wake-up call you’ve been looking for. Goodman Games has put together a system that perfectly nails that gritty, pulp-fiction vibe from Appendix N, but they’ve cranked…
D&D Forgot How to be Gritty. Is This Game the Fix? (w/Reaper’s Joe Wolf)
Modern fantasy TTRPGs – including D&D – have drifted away from the gritty, “mud-under-your-fingernails” spirit of classic pulp fantasy like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Conan. Instead, we are often left with characters who feel more like superheroes. In this week’s video, I sat down with Joseph Wolf, the lead designer for Reaper Miniatures’…
D&D Magic is Broken. Draw Steel Fixed It.
Spell lists. Spell slots. Spell levels. If you’ve spent half your turn mid-combat trying to remember if you’re allowed to cast that spell at a higher level, you know the pain. D&D’s Vancian magic – the “fire-and-forget” approach – has been the standard for decades, but let’s be honest: it’s an accounting exercise. It’s ammunition…
Draw Steel Flips D&D’s Most Boring Mechanic: A Conversation with James Introcaso
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with James Introcaso, the lead designer at MCDM Productions, to discuss the philosophy behind their game, Draw Steel. We talked about how they subverted traditional mechanics and fixed what many consider to be the most boring part of D&D: resting and resources. The Problem with Resting When…
5 Sci-Fi RPGs Worth Skipping D&D For
If you’re tired of repetitive traditional fantasy loops and wading through bloated rulebooks, shifting your campaign into the cosmos gives you high-stakes space exploration, tactical mech combat, and gritty survival without the standard D&D tropes. Dungeons and Dragons is a classic, but sometimes your table needs to shake things up. There is a massive multiverse…
Why I’m Giving Up D&D for Nimble (And You Should Too)
If you’re tired of unending combat slogs and wading through 900 pages of rules, Nimble gives you deep tactical combat and tons of character choices without the traditional D&D bloat. Dungeons and Dragons 2024 is a marked improvement over 5e in many ways. But there is another game that delivers exactly what a lot of…
Is This the Death of D&D?
How’d we get here? Dungeons & Dragons originated from war games, which are adversarial by nature. When you combine that history with two creators who had a rocky relationship, it’s easy to see why conflict’s baked into the DNA of the hobby. Over the last couple of years, the community has felt more fractured than…
How to Build Random Dungeon Maps Fast with This Dice Hack
Generating unique settings for your tabletop sessions doesn’t have to be a chore. If you’ve been looking for the fastest and easiest way to create random dungeon maps for D&D or your favorite TTRPG, I’ve found a fantastic hack in the ShadowDark rulebook. It’s a clever method that turns a handful of dice into a fully fleshed-out…