It's All Levers

Your game is just a bunch of levers. Everything in it, every single thing, is just a lever that your players pull. Your prep work going into a session is a list of levers you know are in your world and what you know will happen if they're pulled. During the session, you'll see your players pull some of those levers and the answers in your prep notes will be useful. You'll also watch them discover levers you didn't know are in your world. If they pull those levers, then the effect may be obvious. But more likely, it's a conveniently delayed effect. Delayed until the next session begins, when you've had some time to think about what happens when that lever is pulled.

You go into every session with a list of known levers and answers. Your Players discover more, you write them down and stall until the session is over, and then go into the next session with answers for those levers and some other new ones.

The game is just levers.

-Dwiz

The Points Don't Matter!

That's right, the points are just like advantage on your check to attack Cthulhu!

People like being rewarded bonus points. Behold below and see the evidence of my claims! And then see my own method of serving this base, vulgar, hubris-laden need.

Hollow Advice

[This post is inspired by this comment]

Heard joke once: Man goes to RPG forum. Says he's confused. Says rules seem intimidating and contradictory. Says he can justify multiple interpretations of a mechanic in a system that's vague and uncertain. Forum says, "Ruling is simple. Great clown Dungeon Master is in charge. Go and talk to your DM. That should clear it up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But forum... I am Dungeon Master." Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

-Dwiz

Medieval City Sizes

Paris in the year 1300. At 150,000 people, it was the largest city
on the continent, rivaled only by Constantinople. It was also about
1.5 miles across. Compare to Paris in 2020, closer to 6 or 7 miles
across. But a typical "city" in 1300 would really have had a
 population closer to 10,000. Think just how small that must be.

Medieval cities were very small. Like, even the really big ones were small. Something that makes it tricky to research is that "size" of urban areas is almost universally measured in population (which for the vast majority of anyone's purposes is a lot more useful) but I am deeply interested in "size" as measured by actual physical area. I think it's important to making maps, and I like using maps when running adventures in urban areas. Not for most activities. It doesn't matter for shopping or carousing or even investigating, for the most part. Or it doesn't have to. But what if you have a battle happening in the city? It's being attacked, raided, besieged, whatever. Mapping out the specific parts that have been taken is useful. And even those other activities can be enhanced by map elements. I like using tables of random encounters and locations the PCs would run into, but being able to divide them by district or neighborhood or whatever would break it up some and give the city as a whole a better sense of identity.

Flatter Me, Mortals

I've noticed a trend in fantasy art in this hobby, especially in "fan art" (i.e. not really something I've ever actually seen printed in an RPG book but still prevalent around the hobby). Sometimes people like drawing themselves and their friends in their D&D world. They want art of their group. But they don't want to leave anyone out, so they try to find a way to include their DM in the picture. And of the many examples of this I have seen over the years, I am at once both intrigued and modestly offended at the approach they consistently employ in this task. Here are some examples: