This post looks at the differences between a fantasy world that’s driven by characters’ internal state or external circumstances. In it, we also ask some deeper questions: What do you believe about D&D or other RPGs? About literature, fiction, storytelling? What kind of stories do you think the world needs more of?
For DMs
Resources for New DMs: Researching an Encounter
In this post, I walk through a few resources to get you going on your journey as a DM. These are the pages I found most helpful when I was starting out. I also talk about how I found them, going through which search terms I used to find what I was looking for.
How to Negotiate DM and Player Preferences
It is no secret that there are many different playing styles when it comes to D&D and RPGs. When you’re playing in a duet, however, the style preferences of the player and the DM become even more important, which opens up the fun and possibilities for both people involved.
Scheming for Accidental Villains
Continuing our series on different types of NPCs for your duet, this post looks at accidental villains and the new possibilities they can add to your game. An accidental villain is an antagonist of the central party who you did not originally intend to play that role and whose conflicts with the party tend to be more personal than ideological.
Customizing Magical Items based on Character Class
One of my favorite things to do as a DM is create a magical item for one of our main characters, either my PC or one of Jonathan’s DMPCs. Since he’s the primary DM for our two-person game, I try to avoid pulling anything from the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and I also steer away from […]
Avoiding Combat-Induced Conflict
Combat can be both a time of high excitement and high stress, especially during a boss fight or new challenge. This post examines why combat can sometimes incite out-of-game conflict between the two people playing. We also work through some strategies for avoiding it if possible and dealing with it if it occurs. At the end of the day, avoiding combat-induced conflict comes down to trust and communication between the player and DM.
Announcing Grove Guardian Press!
We are so excited to let you know that our parent project of sorts for this blog, Grove Guardian Press, is now live! Grove Guardian has evolved out of our project here, seeing a wider interest in the community for worldbuilding, writing homebrew campaigns, and publishing on DMsGuild. We wanted to be able to speak to those areas without distracting away from what we’re doing on D&D Duet.
Forging Relationships with Allies in Your Duet
To continue our discussion about different types of characters to incorporate into your games, this post covers allies! We’ll talk more in depth about allies in general first, but then we’ll look more specifically at high-level allies and what they can do in and for your campaign. At the end, we’ll spend a bit of time with low-to-mid-level allies and what they can bring to your worldbuilding.