HeyJaredMage Advice
Mage Advice is a weekly substack offering free content and ideas to get you playing D&D and take your game to the next level.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 15, 2026
Latest issues
How to run a Traitors style sweepstake (opens the original)
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I’ll start with a quick disclaimer: my office doesn’t run sweepstakes for money.That’s not to say you shouldn’t, but in a world where no-one carries cash I find doing a sweepstake by bank transfer a little stressful.Instead we play for a fun prize, organised by whoever runs the sweepstake. It takes some of the pressure out and makes the whole thing more relaxed.And given what I’m suggesting below, it also probably prevents a HR investigation.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="htt
How South Park will make you a better GM (opens the original)
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You probably associate South Park with jokes before great stories - and certainly before D&D.<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="540" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XK82!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progr
What’s the best weapon for an Orc? (opens the original)
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Orcs do not make weapons, they take weapons.That was the overwhelming conclusion to my recent Note asking for an iconic ancestral weapon for Orcs that could sit alongside a Dwarven axe or an Elven bow.Which poses a problem for my quest to create such a weapon for every core species in 5e - because picking swords off your fallen foes doesn’t lead to a single, culture-defining blade.But then a curious idea hit me: what if you took a weapon, then made it your own?<div class="captioned
What's the best weapon for a Halfling? (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="728" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Lwy5!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2892daaf-0eb5-4122-9834-13eaad127328_1500x750.jpe
Cliffhanger: a climbing mini-game (opens the original)
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Lets face it - most table top climbs are pretty boring.The player asks if they can climb something, the GM offers an Athletics check (probably to hear: “can I use Acrobatics instead?”) and then they succeed or fail.It hardly offers the drama or excitement of scaling an epic cliff or a crumbling tower like in the Tomb Raider series, or other exploration games.Today I’ve attempted to answer the problem with a simple minigame you plug directly into most systems.<a class="image-link imag
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