Wandering DMs

Paul & Dan have a post-Halloween retrospective on using disguises and surprising reveals in games of D&D. How much do classic mechanics support that? Do you need to seed opportunities in advance for your adventures? And what about when a character's entire story has been setup for a heel-turn?

Dan and Paul celebrate Halloween with a look at two of fantasy gaming’s most enduring monsters: skeletons and zombies! What makes skeletons and zombies distinct as monsters? How have they evolved across editions of Dungeons & Dragons? What roles do they play in dungeon design, horror, and fantasy adventure? And how can a DM make even the most familiar undead frightening - or fun - again?

Join us for a Halloween discussion of the undead classics: the rattling bones and walking corpses that just won’t stay buried.

Dan & Paul look back to our favorite covers in classic D&D modules. What makes for a great cover? How well do they balance the tension between showing the most exciting content versus giving away too much of the surprise? Do covers matter in the online streaming environment today?

Paul and Dan chat about Fatigue rules in D&D and other RPG's. It was a key part of the Chainmail progenitor to D&D, and also an important mechanic in modern 5E rules. But it was absent or overlooked in classic rulesets like AD&D and B/X. Doesn't movement and encumbrance make sense without it? Is it too exhausting to track? Or is there some better way?

Dan and Paul talk about mapping the dungeon: how does the DM communicate an unknown physical space to the players as they explore it?

Do you describe the dungeon entirely through words and let the players build a map in their heads? Have one player draw the map as the DM describes each room and corridor? Sketch it out on a battle mat? Use a VTT? Or simply give the players a map and let them figure it out for themselves?

Each approach creates its own challenges. How precise does the DM need to be? How much information should the players get? What happens when the players' map doesn't match the DM's? And when one player becomes the designated mapper, how do we get the rest of the table engaged during exploration?

We'll talk about the practical techniques, tools, and table practices for communicating dungeon layouts, and how those choices affect the experience of the whole group.

• Get Paul's code for fogmap projector play here

Paul and Dan chat about the history of poison mechanics in D&D. Is the classic save-or-die a realistic model, or does it make for lousy gaming? Should we distinguish between ingestible poisons versus animal venoms? Should your PCs have access to poisons, or should they be gatekept by alignment or class categories? We'll figure out the best way to handle them!

Dan and Paul dive into the practical problem of keeping notes and records for long-running D&D campaigns.

Paul is gearing up to run a new campaign in the same world and setting he's been developing since 2010, which means digging back through nearly 15 years of old campaign notes, player-generated play reports, maps, and other records. What information is actually useful when you return to a setting years later? And what should we be recording now so that the next version of the campaign has a useful history to draw on?

We'll talk about the process as well as the technology: note-taking systems, three ring binders, wikis and databases, actual play reports, experiments we've tried over the years, what worked, what didn't, and what we've learned about maintaining a campaign's collective memory.

If you're running a campaign that's been going for years - or hoping to make one that lasts that long - this is a look at how to keep its history from disappearing into a pile of forgotten notes.

Dan and Paul celebrate the 50th anniversary of Swords & Spells, Gary Gygax's 1976 rules for bringing large-scale battles to Original Dungeons & Dragons.

What was the history and reception of what could be considered the final supplement in the OD&D line? How did Swords & Spells attempt to bridge the gap between D&D and its wargaming roots? And how can mass combat work at the table as part of an old-school D&D campaign?

Dan brings his own perspective as the author of Book of War, his mass combat rules designed for compatibility with Original D&D. Together, Dan and Paul take a look back at Swords & Spells and discuss the challenges of putting armies, heroes, and adventurers on the same battlefield.

• Check out Dan's "Original Edition Delta: Book of War" rules for mass combat here

Dan & Paul chat about level titles in early D&D. Did you know in the earliest editions of D&D (original, 1E, B/X), that every class level had a distinct title? You weren't just a 4th-level fighter, you were officially a "Hero". Were these titles diagetic (known by characters in-game), or were they purely a metagame tool for players? Did they have any effect on game play? And why did they disappear along with Gary Gygax in the 1980's? The answers may surprise you!

With Dan still away on vacation, Paul is taking on a solo Dungeon Design Dash!

Inspired by a suggestion from our Discord community, today's challenge is to design an entire adventure built specifically for one Dungeon Master and one player. How does adventure design change when there's only a single hero? What kinds of encounters, puzzles, and challenges work best? And can we build something fun and playable in just two hours?

The goal is to create a complete one-on-one adventure that Paul can run for Dan in a future episode. Join us live as we brainstorm ideas, build the dungeon room by room, and see where inspiration takes us.

With Dan away traveling for the next two weeks, Paul is going solo… so what better time to play one of his favorite solo fantasy games ever? It's Barbarian Prince!

Barbarian Prince is a sprawling fantasy hexcrawl game published by Dwarfstar Games in 1981 and designed by Arnold Hendrick. This game has been a personal favorite of Paul's for decades. It directly inspired his mobile game Road of Kings and continues to influence his current AI-powered RPG project, Hexcrawl. If you've ever wondered where his fascination with sandbox adventures, procedural encounters, and open-world fantasy comes from, this is the game that started it all.

Longtime viewers may also recognize some similarities to Dan's classic Outdoor Spoliation D&D adventure, which adapts the original Outdoor Survival board game into a tabletop hexcrawl. While the approach is different, both capture the spirit of exploring an unpredictable wilderness one hex at a time.

Join Paul live as he explores the wilderness! He'll be keeping an eye on chat throughout the adventure, taking your suggestions, answering questions about Barbarian Prince, solo gaming, and hexcrawl design, and talking about the ways this classic game has influenced his own projects over the years.

• Check out Paul's earlier video, "Can I Play Dungeons & Dragons Alone?"
• Watch Dan and Paul play Solo D&D

Dan and Paul discuss one of D&D's most iconic and surprisingly complicated—spells: Invisibility.

On the surface it seems straightforward, but once players start dropping items, picking up treasure, attacking, casting spells, or sneaking around a dungeon, the questions begin. What can it be cast on? What breaks the spell? How should a DM rule on all the gray areas that the rules leave open?

We'll also explore classic magic items like Rings of Invisibility and Elven Cloaks, discuss how different editions have approached invisibility, and share practical tips for tracking invisible creatures at the table without ruining the mystery.

Whether you're a player looking to pull off the perfect infiltration or a DM trying to adjudicate invisible shenanigans fairly, join us as we make the unseen a little easier to see.

Paul and Dan look back to our marathon holiday weekend playthrough of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, the classic D&D tournament adventure that first appeared 50 years ago! Does the module still stand up today for modern players? What lessons or surprises would we take from our actual-play experience? What's the grade on how well Dan ran this elder adventure from the canon of Gygax?

• Watch our holiday actual play of Tsojcanth
• Read the (forgotten!) review of Tsojcanth on Paul's Game Blog
• Check out the survey of 1E modules at Musings from the Moathouse, which picked Tsojcanth as the very best!

Dan and Paul, the Wandering DMs, are joined by Kelsey Dionne, creator of the award-winning Shadowdark RPG.

Shadowdark has become one of the most talked-about fantasy RPGs in recent years, winning over both old-school gamers and players coming from modern editions of D&D. How did the game come to be? What were the guiding design principles behind it? And how does Shadowdark blend the fast-paced, high-stakes feel of the OSR with the accessibility and familiarity that modern D&D players expect?

Join us as we talk with Kelsey about the origins of Shadowdark, its design philosophy, and why the game has resonated with so many tables.

Find out more official Shadowdark info at Kelsey's site, The Arcane Library

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Dan and Paul discuss the many ways they've brought tactical combat to life at the tabletop over decades of running Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. From classic wet-erase mats and gaming paper to elaborate 3D terrain, projector systems, and modern digital battle mats, every solution comes with its own strengths, weaknesses, and surprises.

What makes a battle mat worth using? When is detailed terrain worth the setup time? Are digital displays finally practical for in-person games? How much tactical detail do you really need to run exciting encounters? We'll compare the tools we've used over the years, share lessons learned, and talk about what works best for different styles of play.

Dan and Paul discuss diseases in D&D and other fantasy roleplaying games. From the surprisingly extensive disease rules found in the earliest editions of D&D to the colorful afflictions found in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, how have RPGs handled sickness over the years?

Does disease create interesting gameplay, meaningful worldbuilding, or just another hazard for adventurers to avoid? Join us live as we explore diseases, plagues, contagions, and other afflictions in tabletop roleplaying games.

• Read Dan's blog on the history of disease in D&D

Paul & Dan are joined by Matt Finch of Mythmere Games to chat about the competing motivations when using legendary references from the real world in your fantasy campaign world. How much do we want players to feel a deep-seated sense of recognition from our shared languages and legends? But, how much can we disentangle those mythological elements from the real-world people and places that spawned them? Plus, a peek at Matt's new upcoming releases for his World of Jordoba fantasy setting!

• Get the free comic player's guidebook to Jordoba at DriveThruRPG
• And join the Backerkit for the new edition of Jordoba here

Dan and Paul discuss the role of physical size in D&D. From adventures set in giant-sized environments to scenarios where player characters are magically shrunk, changing scale can completely alter how players experience the game world.

How have classic D&D adventures used size as a central theme? What happens when spells and magic items like Enlarge or Potions of Diminution change a character's physical presence? How do small ancestries such as halflings and dwarves affect our perception of the fantasy world? And what makes creatures like pixies, giants, and other extreme-sized monsters so memorable at the table?

We'll also tackle one of the trickiest challenges for Dungeon Masters: communicating size and scale in a shared imaginary space. How can DMs help players truly appreciate the difference between tiny and colossal creatures, vast environments, and impossible proportions? What techniques make scale feel meaningful instead of just another number on a character sheet?

Paul and Dan review the 3rd supplement to Original D&D from May 1976: Eldritch Wizardry! An exotic mix of new and challenging ideas for Dungeons & Dragons from a variety of creators, shaped by editor Tim Kask. Introducing options for Psionics, Demons, Artifacts, and Druids as a playable class. Plus a super-detailed segment-breakdown approach to movement and combat. How much of it stood the test of time, how much do we use, and what approaches would we take to the same problems at the time?

Dan and Paul dive into the D&D adventures they would happily run again and again. From classic tournament modules to sprawling campaign epics, what adventures stand the test of time? Which modules keep surprising players, reveal new depths on repeat play, and remain endlessly rewarding for Dungeon Masters?

Join us as we discuss the adventures we'd revisit forever, what makes a module replayable, and the design qualities that turn a good scenario into a timeless classic.