Welcome to Mastering Dungeons, a blog about being a Dungeon Master, with tips, ideas, suggestions, recommendations, and other stuff that may or may not be relevant to your game, but it's free to read and you can do with it what you like.
Today's topic is just a simple 'getting to know me' post, and an introduction to what's to come.
I started playing D&D back in the early 80's, with the version that's currently called 0D&D, but back then was just called D&D. It was the basic red box set, with two paperback manuals, six polyhedral dice that you had to color in the numbers with a crayon to see, and back then elf and dwarf and halfling were character classes, not races. We also didn't have Wizards or Mages. Our spellcasters were called magic users, and the only weapon they were allowed was a dagger, and they couldn't wear armor at all! Our clerics could not use edged weapons, and if I remember correctly, our thieves could only wear leather armor. Ah, the good old days. Even with such restrictions, we still played for hours and hours and loved every minute of it. I was always chosen by the others to be DM, mostly because they wanted to be PCs, and I was the oldest in my group of friends so I accepted that mantle.
Over the years, I progressed through all the various editions, starting with the Blue Book "Expert" Rules set, to Companion, Masters, and Immortal rules, into AD&D (now called 1st edition), to 2e, 3 and 3.5, and briefly to 4th edition, but by then I was married with children and didn't get a lot of time with it. Now the kids are grown and just in time for 5th edition, which, for the record, I love! But this blog won't be just about 5e. I'll try to keep my ideas and topics less edition specific and more open, maybe even including ideas that can be crossed over to other genres and rule sets.
I've played tabletop, by email, by forum post, and even snail mail (wow, talk about slow!) and I'm currently DM for a group of teens, I run two online forum games, I play in three online forum games, and I'm a character in three email games, including one Shadowrun by email game. The only thing I haven't tried is Skype, mainly because any free time goes into my tabletop game.
So that's my backstory. But enough about me. Tell me about you! What are you looking for in this blog? What ideas or topics would you like to read about? I've got plans to talk about character creation and development (i.e. NPCs), plots and plot hooks, scaling traps and encounters to various CR levels, using props, battlemap vs. 'theatre of the mind', and worldbuilding, just to name a few. But this isn't meant as a lecture hall presentation. I'd like it to be more of a discussion, with back and forth banter, so please feel free to comment, ask questions, offer suggestions, and make this about your wants, needs, and desires. After all, that's why a Dungeon Master exists. We don't do this for ourselves. We do it for you!
Well met, and good journeys!
-Infinitum3D
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