I agree with nearly everything in this post, save one point: that every encounter in your adventure has to further the plot of the adventure.
I’ll clarify my position by saying that every encounter should have a specific purpose, but I don’t think that that purpose must be attached to the current plot. [...]

The latest session report is up. It’s the last one for that adventure, and I’m taking a break from being the DM so that my friend Dean can step into the role. I’m going to play a witch in his game (druid multiclassed into infernal pact warlock), and I’m super-excited.

Okay, two things that have been occupying some of my brain space lately. The first is the role of rehearsal in preparing for DMing a session of D&D. It strikes me that I do this all the time; whenever I have a free moment and I start thinking about the upcoming session, I [...]

In the next D&D session–which is on Sunday–I’m going to try a couple of new things.
The first thing I’m going to try is a new system of tracking initiative and conditions. I’ve heard about this on other blogs (namely Sly Flourish, Critical Hits, and Newbie DM), and I figured I’d give it a try. [...]

The latest session report is up, a few months late.
It was a good session, and ended with a dragon fight. It was my first dragon fight, and I learned a few things. First, dragons are complex to run, and it’s easy to forget some of their abilities. Second, dragons should be mobile; [...]

I’ve been reading Spirit of the Century recently in preparation for a freelance project that I’m about to start working on, and it’s giving me ideas. Specifically, I’ve been coming up with ways to incorporate some of the ideas and mechanics in Spirit into my regular D&D game. I’ll try to explain this [...]

The most recent session report is up. The encounters in this session got me thinking about ways that you can use encounters.
The first encounter of the session was just a fairly straightforward fight against some gnolls. It was fun, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The second encounter was where things [...]

Critical Hits is working on something that I’d really like to see happen, and would really like to be a part of. Go check it out.

The first session report of the new adventure (the first adventure for 4th Edition written entirely by me, and not adapted from a published adventure) is up. Also, there are some new NPCs and locations on the main page of the campaign wiki.
The recent session got me thinking about some stuff. One fight [...]

As, I’m sure, many of you who have run, or are currently running, Keep on the Shadowfell, I modified the adventure as written. I added in a bunch of stuff at the beginning in order to get the PCs to Winterhaven, and I made numerous minor modifications to various encounters throughout the adventure. [...]