blogs

Just by itself, the Sly Flourish blog would be considered a great resource for those 4e DMs out there. Written by Mike Shea, the posts are concise, well-written and accompanied by excellent pictures. The monster optimization series alone is a great resource. Not only does it give DMs monster combos to place into their own campaigns where appropriate, but he explains what it is about the combo that makes it awesome, effectively providing a learn-by-example tutorial on encounter design. It definitely makes you look forward to Mondays.

Recent Posts

• Three D&D Tips I Learned From Dragon Age
• Monster Optimization: Foulspawn Mangler + Foulspawn Seer
• Powerhouse Dragons
• James Bond Encounter Design
• Monster Optimization: Ghouls and Deathlock Wights
• Evernote for Dungeon Masters
• Giving 4e an Old School Feel
• Monster Optimization: Shadow Dragons
• Ten Ways to Challenge Powerful Parties
• Scaling 4th Edition for Six Players
• Magic Gems for Item Reward Flexability

If you need your fix more than once a week, fear not, Mike gives out great ideas throughout the week through Twitter. Followers of the @SlyFlourish twitter account are treated to small nuggets of DMing and story telling wisdom.

Recent Twitter D&D Tips

• Cross-train your RPG reading with King's "On Writing", Tharps "Creative Habit", and Edwards' "Drawing on the Right Side o/t Brain"
• Try out a Stephen King style and foretell coming events: "That was the last time you saw your home town before it burned."
• When using published adventures, don't be afraid to replace NPCs with those already known and loved (or hated) by your PCs.
• Give your players a lot of different quests, each with a well-designed quest card so they can keep track of them.
• Does a PC have a big moment coming? Try using a music playlist based on that PC selected by that player.

In addition to the blog and twitter account, Mike created a really nice 4e blog aggregation site, 4eBlogs.com.

The At-Will blog provides inspiration, techniques and more for D&D 4th Edition. The blog is maintained by a team of 6 contributors. I particularly enjoy the focus on 4E content since that is my preferred game. The posts are well researched and are often aimed at the Dungeon Master, giving the DM items they can incorporate into their campaign. Recent post categories include: skill challenges, music, advice, game mastering, wave and rules.

Contributors

Gamefiend, a.k.a. Quinn Murphy

He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of the site. Considered a jack of all trades he is an aspiring game designer/freelancer. He can be reached on twitter @gamefiend.

Gentian

Gentian is Gamefiend's wife.

Ethan

Ethan has been DMing since 1996, originally using secondhand AD&D materials. He has run a number of D20 campaigns.

JackofHearts

He was first introduced to D&D during summer camp when he was 8.

Milambus, a.k.a. Jake Fitch

Jake is a lifelong player of video games, card games and board games. Like me, he didn't start playing tabletop RPGs until the release of 4th edition. He can be reached on twitter @Milambus.

Rudolf Kraus

Rudolf began playing D&D when he was 9.

Recent Posts

• The Wave's the Thing: Scheduling your game
• 4e and the art of the Limit-Break: Divine Limit Breaks
• The Wave's the Thing:Intro Screencast
• Fluid 4e: Gridless Combat
• The Path to Victory - Special

Musings of the Chatty DM is a blog written by Philippe-Antoine Ménard, an extroverted gamer geek with over 25 years of game master experience. He aims to capture that feeling many get when they enter their favorite gaming shop and are enveloped by conversations from people who love to talk about the games they are in and the ones they wish they were in. He is doing a lot of cool stuff and I enjoy reading his posts on his blog and on Twitter. In addition, I can't wait to hear more about a number of new projects he has in the works. If you need further endorsement, Wil Wheaton recently gave him a big thumbs up on Twitter.

@wilw: @ChattyDM Have I told you how much I love your blog? If I haven’t: I love your blog.

Some Recent Posts

• Campaign Weariness: Ending a campaign before its time
• Turning D&D 4e's Economy on its Head
• Mouseguard Diaries: The First Duel
• City of the Overmind: Nipples of Chaos, Part 2
• City of the Overmind: Nipples of Chaos, Part 1

Additional Writing

GM-fu: Session Prep
In addition to the great advice on his blog, you can get even more great advice from this free booklet.

Successful session planning requires inspiration and execution. We will help with both! Learn how to foster ideas, mine tropes from TV and movies, and tailor content to your players with this workbook from the GenCon 2008 workshop. We will also explain how to take those concepts and compose your session notes by creating a development cycle and packing your notes with the essential elements.

From Here to There: A Collection of Nine Traveling Adventures

From Here to There. Because no PC should ever relax.

Published by Goodman Games, this collection is aimed at giving game masters encounters to throw at the party during their travel to or from other locations, such as dungeons. They are meant to be challenging for parties while not taking away from the overall campaign.