Dan takes apart some of his adventures to show how they work. It's also an example for how Climactic Event Structure and Four Act Adventure Structure work in practice. Feel free to take any of these ideas for your home games.

When new GM's ask me for advice on how to build a great dungeon, this is the foundation of it all.

When new GM's ask me how to create great adventures, this is what I go through first. No, it's not the hero's journey.

We're back! Story Structure is one of my favorite topics and I've spent more time studying it than probably anything else. If there's anything I can give to new GM's to help them set up great adventures, it's this basic Story Event Structure.

It's The GM's Guide's Christmas gift: The third and final installment of the epic difficulty trilogy!  Today we dig into the secret of weaving in the benefits of high difficulty adventure design into any campaign, while sidestepping the problems that sometimes pop up. We also answer some listener questions. It's good stuff.

One podcast wasn't enough. Today we dig further into why High Difficulty is the sonic screwdriver of rpg adventure design and how to implement it successfully into a campaign.

High Difficulty is the sonic screwdriver of RPG design. While not technically necessary, it does SO many things, comes with SO many advantages to make your games extremely difficult that I can barely imagine a running a game without it.

Don't set your encounter in an empty box. 

Why does D&D's own Creative Manager include "Throw out what the rulebooks say about building encounters" in his advice to new DMs? Because the rulebooks have been leading us wrong for years. Tune in to find out how you can shake things up and make your players scream. Whether it's in delight or terror is up to you.

DMs have to create tons of characters to fill their world. Here's how to make them interesting and memorable.