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. [...]

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; [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

Ok, I’ve thought about this idea some more, and I’ve come up with the following.
Each character has a personal quest, some sort of long-term goal that he/she can work toward over the course of the campaign. It doesn’t have to take the whole campaign, but it should be long-term enough that it should last [...]

I just had a thought, and I felt I needed to get it down before it escaped from my head. I’m short on time, so this’ll be a quick post. In 4th Edition D&D, players are rewarded for completing encounters not only with XP and treasure, but also with action points. Action [...]

During the last D&D session, I used a few custom monsters that I put together with WotC’s Monster Builder. They worked out so well that I thought I’d post them here for your perusal and potential use.
Shadow Ghoul
This is really just a modification to the base ghoul in the Monster Manual; I wanted a [...]