#dmadvice

Mark S. Cookman

Mar 17, 2016
3 min

20 Weapons Hidden on Captives

At first glance it may not seem like today's post follows the theme we began on tuesday of this week, but it does. Sometimes when the battle goes your way, you cannot just slay the evil monsters outright; you are forced to take prisoners. Such is often the case with bandits and river pirates. These vile outlaws must be brought to justice in front of the populace, if you truly hope to curtail the spread of their vile kind across the growing frontier. Bringing them to justice m

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Mark S. Cookman

Mar 16, 2016
3 min

Encounters While Sailing on a River

Following the theme of river pirates, today's tables are a small collection of tools for creating river encounters. No matter whether your PC's are exploring some vast river in an undiscovered country or just travelling a few days up-river to another town in their own country, this set of tools should be useful to you. The small toolset presented below has options for weather, time, terrain, animals, monsters, and people to dress out the basic events also listed below. The to

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20 Things to Find on a River Pirate's Ship

Mark S. Cookman

Mar 15, 2016
4 min

20 Things to Find on a River Pirate's Ship

Today's subject matter is river pirates. River pirates are usually much different than their seaborne bretheren. The main reason for this is the difference in terrain. Seaborne pirates primarily live on their ship, but river pirate ships are rarely big enough for the crew to live on. Usually these vessels are little more than a barge or a large, flat-bottom canoe. River pirates routinely live more like bandits, hiding away in secret camps or inside concealed caves near the ri

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Mark S. Cookman

Mar 14, 2016
6 min

10 Diabolically Cursed Magic Items

Welcome back to One-Armed Sal's Nautical Trade Emporium and Pawn Shop. Today's magical items do not identify as cursed because they do provide a positive magical effect, yet the cost to access the magic is far higher than most care to pay. Sal openly admits that these are some pretty shady pawned items that are now available for sale because their loans are in default. His prices are low, but he ain't a charity. Sal doesn't do buy-backs or returns so if you don't like what yo

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The Island of Lost 5e Monsters: Strangle Weed and The Su-Monster

Mark S. Cookman

Mar 10, 2016
3 min

The Island of Lost 5e Monsters: Strangle Weed and The Su-Monster

Welcome back my friends to the Island of Lost 5e Monsters. The inhabitants of this mysterious and dangerous island are creatures of legend and yore. Beasts too bizarre and terrible to be included in the 5th Edition D&D Monster Manual. Monstrosities so dangerous that you'd likely never survive the trip without a grognard guide. Today we will examine a surprisingly dangerous low-level water creature and an absolutely deadly mid-level jungle dweller. I sincerely hope that you en

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Mark S. Cookman

Mar 9, 2016
2 min

20 Curses from a Roma Matriarch

Yesterday, I inadvertantly offended some people and I want to apologize. It was never my intention to offend; I was unaware that "gypsy" was a derogative slang for the proud Romani people. I believed the term "gypsy" to be a generic description, not unlike "mercenary" or "pirate". My intention was to illicit colorful images of a specific sort of nomadic people that might be found in any number of gaming multiverses under any number of names. I share these small tables to hel

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Mark S. Cookman

Mar 8, 2016
1 min

20 Things to Find Inside a Gypsy Wagon

Keeping with yesterday's fortune teller theme, today's list is an odd collection of items that your PC's might find in a gypsy wagon. The items detailed below come from traditional human gypsy wagons, but there's no reason that other races couldn't have gypsies as well. I'm not really sure what would be on orcish gypsy wagons, but I will leave that for you to consider. For now, here are 20 Things to Find Inside a Gypsy Wagons. Happy Gaming! A hand-crafted violin 2 sets of b

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Fortune Teller Double Feature - 20 Ways to Tell a Fortune and 20 Future Mysteries Revealed

Mark S. Cookman

Mar 7, 2016
6 min

Fortune Teller Double Feature - 20 Ways to Tell a Fortune and 20 Future Mysteries Revealed

Some feel it's best to have nothing to do with fortune tellers and their ilk, believing that nothing good ever comes from it. Others feel the need for weekly, or even daily, readings to provide advice to their daily routine. Whatever your personal feelings are on fortune tellers and the fortunes they give, they are a fundamental trope of story telling. Today's tables are to help provide you with some fortune teller fodder so that you might be better prepared the next time you

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Mark S. Cookman

Mar 3, 2016
6 min

20 Strange Discoveries in Remote Places

Today's post is about unexpected finds. Perhaps your group is scouting a new area of the world or finds themselves waking up in an unknown location not sure where they are or how they got there. Maybe they are remote border guards or are travelling through a foreign desert. Whatever the case, these are not the kinds of things people see every day, in fact quite the opposite is true. These are things that few people will ever see. Feel free to use them however you like. Happy

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The Island of Lost 5e Monsters: The Hippocampus and The Morkoth

Mark S. Cookman

Mar 1, 2016
3 min

The Island of Lost 5e Monsters: The Hippocampus and The Morkoth

It is time once again time to brave the shores of this dangerous island in search of more monsters either too dangerous and deadly, or too wild and weird, to be included in the 5th Edition D&D Monster Manual. Wait!?! Was that a thump? Oh my, it looks like today we won't even have to make it to shore to meet the monsters. I sincerely hope that you enjoy sharing both the Hippocampus and the Morkoth with your players. Happy Gaming! Hippocampus Rare Number Appearing: 2-8 AC: 15 H

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20 Reasons for PC's to Adventure Together

Mark S. Cookman

Feb 29, 2016
4 min

20 Reasons for PC's to Adventure Together

On Leap Year Day, I wanted to create something a little different for you. Something that you may not need often, but hopefully something you'll find useful never the less. This is a table for starting a new campaign, shaking up an old one to introduce new characters, or giving you a premise for your group in a one-shot game. Additionally, sometimes the players create such a diverse group of characters that the GM has difficulties trying to make them all fit into a group. For

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10 NPC Distractions to Allow Villains to Escape in a City

Mark S. Cookman

Feb 26, 2016
3 min

10 NPC Distractions to Allow Villains to Escape in a City

Today's post contains a table I created to help resolve a problem that I have had come up more than a few times while game mastering over 30+ years. The problem is the PC's have decided to chase someone and the GM doesn't want them to catch that someone. As DM, you can simply state that the target gets away, but I prefer to have a story element to blame so that the PC's don't feel railroaded. I also use these same sorts of entries for "missed" perception rolls, so that the pl

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Mark S. Cookman

Feb 25, 2016
4 min

10 Minor Magic Items That Rock

Honestly, this post should be entitled "10 Minor Magic Items That Are Rocks", but I shortened it for at least 2/3 of a pun on today's content. Not all magical items are flashy and powerful, some are just simple items that help out in minor ways. Today, One-Armed Sal is having a sale on some cold, hard magic items that you or your PC's might like. Take a look and let Sal know if anything strikes your fancy. Soup Rock -- A roundish common looking stone approximately 2" in diame

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Mark S. Cookman

Feb 24, 2016
3 min

20 Weaknesses for Villains and Henchmen

We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. When building a villain or major henchman, it is important to remember that they will have some weakness, too. Adding personality to your villains and henchmen makes the game more fun and the story more memorable. Below are twenty suggestions for bad guy weaknesses that can help you to develop some of your own. I have kept them generic using only male and female pronouns, but switch them up and change them to whatever you enjoy th

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Mark S. Cookman

Feb 23, 2016
3 min

20 Pieces of Idle Gossip

Sometimes your PC's are trying to gather information. They are trying to find out about what is going on in the town and you suddenly realize that your adventure has TONS of gossip about what you really want them to follow up on, but NOTHING about anything else. This is for those times. This is a collection of hot air. Words spoken in front of, but not necessarily to, the PC's. It's probably all just bunk and nonsense, but something in it might be true. I leave it to you to d

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Bard College of the Shanty Master for 5e

Mark S. Cookman

Feb 19, 2016
2 min

Bard College of the Shanty Master for 5e

Today, I decided to post a link back to a piece that I did for Tribality a while back. There are two reasons for this. First, I think that you should be aware of ALL of the great gaming resources on Tribality and second, because I am working on something special. So, if you have a 5e Bard character and you are looking for a different college, then you might like the link below. However, I encourage you to check out Tribality, even if you don't give one song about sea-faring B

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The Island of Lost 5e Monsters: The Ear Seeker and The Titanothere

Mark S. Cookman

Feb 18, 2016
2 min

The Island of Lost 5e Monsters: The Ear Seeker and The Titanothere

Once again we will brave the shores of this dangerous island in search of monsters from times forgotten, monsters too dangerous to be included in the 5e Monster Manual. This week we have one monster smaller than tiny and another large one most dangerous in herds. Have fun torturing your PC's with the Ear Seeker and the Titanothere. Ear Seeker Very Rare Number Appearing: 1-4 AC: 11 HP: 1 Special Attack (See Below) Alignment: Neutral Size: Tiny (< 1" Long) Speed: 10 feet (walki

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Mark S. Cookman

Feb 17, 2016
2 min

20 Treasures Better Than Gold

On Wednesday, I am often thinking about the rewards of the coming weekend and those thoughts led me to treasure. Treasure is often the motivation for RPG adventures and I have talked about treasure twice before, once in Treasures That Aren't and again in Troublesome Treasures. Neither of those pieces contains a list of 20 items however, so I wrote this one to add to the set. I hope that you enjoy it. At low levels, most old school PC's crave gold, gems, and magic for treasure

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One-Armed Sal's Nautical Trade Emporium and Pawn Shop

Mark S. Cookman

Feb 16, 2016
3 min

One-Armed Sal's Nautical Trade Emporium and Pawn Shop

Do your PC's need a (reasonably) trustworthy place to buy spell components, potions, and minor magic items? Do they need a fence to sell arcane items to? Perhaps they just need a person to cast spells (like identify) for them. Maybe they need a contact into the seedy underworld of the docks or maybe they need a low-level quest giver or a place to learn of rumors or arcane lore. Perhaps they could use a 30 day loan on some magic item that they possess. You could also use Sal a

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20 Lines of Bad Guy Trash-Talk for RPG Fights

Mark S. Cookman

Feb 15, 2016
4 min

20 Lines of Bad Guy Trash-Talk for RPG Fights

There are numerous elements that go into creating a memorable RPG fight. One of the best ways to get players more engaged in a fight is to use trash-talk. Trash-talk has been used by fighters and athletes for generations, both to build themselves up and to tear their enemies down. Sure, it's always fun to kill the bad guys and take their treasure, but it's even better to beat down a trash-talking bully and take their stuff. The victory is more personal and sweeter somehow whe

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BLACK SHARK ENTERPRISES