Wandering DMs

Dan and Paul review the Scarlet Stockade of the Bear Druid, the dungeon they designed live with fans at GaryCon during Dungeon Design Dash #7!

After building the adventure in front of a live audience, both Dan and Paul ran the dungeon for different groups at the convention - with very different results. What worked at the table? What broke? And what final changes are needed before publication?

Join us as we compare playtest experiences, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the design, and talk through how we refine a crowd-created dungeon into a polished module.

The finished adventure will be released on DriveThruRPG and shared free with our patrons alongside all our Dungeon Design Dashes.

DriveThruRPG (Wandering DMs publisher page)

Paul & Dan chat about their amazing experiences at Gary Con XVIII! From playing games with some of their personal heroes, to running a bunch of tournaments, designs sessions, and playtests, to fascinating seminars with the elite of D&D gaming history, we'll share of our favorite moments from this year's premiere convention for classic D&D gaming.

Paul & Dan grapple with the biggest of all monsters in original D&D: Purple Worms and Sea Monsters! Why were these beefy guys picked as the apex predators of D&D? What are some alternative ways they could be represented or used in your Dungeons & Dragons games? And what's the best response when you find yourself swallowed up Noah-style?

Dan and Paul discuss techniques for running tabletop RPG adventures that span large outdoor regions and long journeys. From classic hex crawls and wilderness exploration to point crawls and node-based travel, outdoor campaigns present unique challenges for pacing, mapping, and meaningful player choice across wide geographic areas.

How do different RPG traditions handle wilderness adventure? Why did early D&D split dungeon and wilderness play between the Basic and Expert sets? Join us as we explore frameworks for large-scale adventure design, including hex-based exploration, point-crawl structures, and hybrids that combine open wilderness with structured travel routes, plus practical techniques for keeping long overland journeys engaging at the table.

Paul and Dan pull out and analyze Dave Megarry's famous Dungeon! boardgame, developed at the same time as D&D, published in 1975. How much were the games similar, and were do the differ? What changed in the half-dozen iterations over the years? And does the stripped-down dungeon-crawling game still stand up today?