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10 July 2026
Greetings, fellow weekend warriors! Let’s glide into this glorious weekend by sharing DM Ben’s dungeon master prep plan for a birthday-edition home game and see if we can inspire y’all for your next DnD sesh!
When we play here at the office or at the homestead, DM Ben literally opens up the latest “Hey, Hey, It’s Game Day” diary and uses it as his personal guide for the players and our continuous ongoing 5e campaign. New DMs might pick up a couple of tips and tricks, and veteran dungeon masters might grab a 3D print idea, insert one of our colorful NPCs, or even lift a particular encounter for their game. And that sort of community-sharing just warms our souls. 🙂
So, last we left off, our adventurers were traveling deep into The High Forest and zeroing in on the Night Hag’s house-of-horrors hideout. They faced numerous adversaries to get here, including some Venus Flytraps, a stunning arrow barrage (15 d20s rolled with arrow targets randomly assigned to the players), a tantalizing cheese trap, and even freed the witch’s cursed husband, Jack Shaw (who now frantically searches for his soul bag).
Once past all those obstacles, the players cautiously approached her tiny cabin in the woods, only to see a frail old woman dawdling in her yard before heading back inside. What happened next was a bit of a surprise to DM Ben. Only three of the characters knocked on her door and went inside. Yes, you read that right…they…they split the party. The other three remained back on the side of the house. #OhNo
The Night Hag had been watching them approach her stronghold the entire way in – first with her buzzard familiar and then with her spying eyes. When the witch realized the group’s bumbling tactical error, she locked the front door telekinetically. She then threw those five mysterious keys in the air and screamed, “Let the games begin!” From there, everyone drew swords, and she activated her mimic guardians.
And that’s exactly where we left off! As soon as everyone takes a seat at our Wyrmwood gaming table this Saturday, we’ll immediately be in combat. Now, since the home gamers are behind the office gamers, yet playing the same campaign, DM Ben gets precious more time to do something different for these encounters the second time around. He chose the key prop. Originally, DM Ben made five key cards and used simple, different-colored glass beads to indicate where each fell in the room.
Turns out we’ve had really good luck finding gaming gems on Temu lately, so lo and behold, they had a set of 10 key charms for like $2. These quaint props would be perfect and way cooler than some boring glass beads on our beautiful game board. We simply tied various colored strands of yarn to each one to differentiate which key was witch (pun intended). We also love the re-usability of these props in future encounters.
We spent the better part of this entire week rebuilding the cavern in the lower portion of our Wyrmwood gaming table, and man, was that tricky. Our office table and our home gaming table are a bit different in overall size. So, recreating some of the gameboards the second time around is darn tricky at times.
Unfortunately, we didn’t snap a pic before we covered everything up and placed the next three encounters on top of it. No worries, we’ll snap a photo and include it in a future update so you can see the quirky differences.
Since we’re celebrating several birthdays on the team this session, DM Ben is more than prepared for what they could encounter next. His hunch is that the players will complete the battle inside the single main cabin, do the backyard hedge maze encounter, and then even go down into the basement to save another one of the kiddo hostages.
So, lots of nailbiting combat, cheesy pizza, and delicious ice cream cake on the horizon for us! We wish you the same good gaming fortune vibes this weekend too.
Until next time!
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