My 2025 TTRPG Reflections
As the year closes out I wanted to take some time to reflect on my TTRPG experiences.
As the year closes out I wanted to take some time to reflect on my TTRPG experiences. This year was big for me. I started running in-person games regularly, made a lot of friends at my FLGS, and even began publishing adventures.
The Vault of Marvels Video Walkthrough
I've recorded a walkthrough video of my adventure Baldur's Gate: The Vault of Marvels. This was a really fun adventure I wrote for the DMsGuild Baldur's Gate game jam that was run with Storytelling Collective, the course I was taking for adventure writing. I walkthrough the overview of the adventure to give an idea of what to expect if you buy it.
Check out the video on YouTube and the adventure on DMsGuild!
Session lessons
Lessons and tips from this week’s session
The big lesson this week is to trust your gut on encounter balance and improvise when needed especially when you have not designed the encounter yourself. I ran the Dragon Delves first adventure for the 2nd time and I felt like the Yuan-ti included was too strong for a level 2 party. I had run the adventure before and made a modification that ended up being too deadly, so this time I tried to run it as designed and ran into the same issue. I should have trusted my gut (and my encounter balance tools) that it was simply too strong and should have been nerfed or replaced. I ended up running it without a multi-attack and slightly reduced HP and that helped make the final fight challenging while not overly deadly.
Deck of many links
Resources I found useful this week in running games or learning new skills as a DM
The holidays are coming up and I found these fun resources really insightful for supporting indie RPGs for the TTRPG fans in your life. I'm particularly excited to pick up Roomino to play with my niece.
That's all for me this week and for this year, I'll be back with a new newsletter in January!
Kenny
