10/19/2023

This week, we are looking back a couple of years to some custom items that my group and I have made for our D&D games.

1st, I made a fantasy calendar to use for our games. You can find it here. This uses the zodiac for the months with a week in between the change of seasons. Giving your world a custom calendar that you reference brings life to your game. Are there special holidays for your player’s gods? Add them to the calendar. Celebrations of past events like famous battles or city founding? Put it on the calendar!

2nd, allow your players to help build up the history/lore of your world. You can find that post here. Instead of coming up with all of the background history yourself, allow the players to add to it. As DM, you get the final say, but when your party enters a small village on their way to their destination, ask the players what they see. Small children playing in the streets? Men working on constructing a new building? Things like this add to the scene without changing anything about the adventure and it makes it feel more real to the players. More people adding to the story lightens the load from the DM.

3rd, create new monsters for your home games. Every gaming group has someone who is either a DM or has all of the books. They know most of the monster’s stats and weaknesses so when you say there is a troll, they respond with “Everyone, use fire and acid attacks on the monster”. A way to combat that is custom monsters. I talk about it here and show off a custom monster I made from a miniature I had.

Keep on gamng!