Matthew Perkins

Kobold Krafts

Kobolds are masters of their environment. They are renowned for defending their lairs with deadly traps of improbable design. Their knack for traps helps them catch a variety of dangerous vermin which they build into their deadliest inventions, traps for larger creatures like adventurers.

As a player of a kobold, you’re probably excited to bring these kobold  proclivities into play. However, ...

2021-11-22 21:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Eyestalk Wands

Players love harvesting monster guts... It's gross, but true! So when they encounter a floating mass of tentacles and eyeballs, each with their own special power, you can imagine the grisly trophies they'll collect. This supplement provides rules for crafting special eyeballs into a range of wands, all balanced for players, while exploring the broader dimensions of floaty eye-monsters, giving them a place of greater promin...

2021-11-08 21:46:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Battle Map: River on the Autumn Ley

Hey everyone!

Here are five A4-sized versions of this river in the Feywild with the central log in different positions, each with a full-inch, half-inch or no grid. I had a play with some watercolours last night on my Twitch channel and ended up with something I'm kind of happy with. 

I want to try doing this more often, but I'd love some feedback on whether this kind of thing is useful to you at all. I think I need to zoom out my perspective a bi...

Bi-annual Shareholder's Report #003: 20-21 Financial Year

Every six months I try to share some insight and updates into how your support helps me run the YouTube channel and its overall financial position. I actually love writing these breakdowns and reflecting on the business, because I believe being introspective in always worthwhile. I made this YouTube channel in April 2018 to promote my DriveThruRPG products, then launched this Patreon in May 2020 – it's come a long way, but there's still a lot further to go.

Some changes compared to previous reports is how I'll be timing releases with...

MPDM Player Role Cards

Hi everyone!

This is the companion piece to this video which I just released on my friend Anto's channel. This video was prerecorded ages ago – I promise I'm not working during my break from YouTube!

These are silly little cards for assigning roles to players at the tables. Get THIS player to track initiative and get THAT player to take notes. If you have any suggestions for other roles we could outsource, let me know in the video comments and I'll add them. 2021-08-13 19:30:59 +0000 UTC View Post

MPDM Conversation Combat

Inspired by Critical Role... When the Mighty Nein faced off against a friend-turned-foe, Matt Mercer let the players use their Persuasion skills to leverage their former friendship and sap their opponent's Legendary Actions. This ruleset provides a more robust framework for social interactions in combat between former friends and bitter rivals, so the players' words have the power to distract and dissuade, draining their d...

2021-08-04 16:44:55 +0000 UTC View Post

Gnarly Options for Gnolls

Gnolls deserve love too! This supplement aims to provide some extra tools to help you flavour gnolls, turning them from malicious hyena people to malicious hyena people with even more deadly options! These are options you can swap out with a gnoll to alter how they operate in battle.

Now, even though these gnarly options are flavoured for those spotted, chompy boys, there’s nothing stopping an uns...

2021-07-05 22:46:57 +0000 UTC View Post

The Giant Attack, Giant Commander statblock

Hey friends!

Here are the generic stats I'm suggesting you use for your assault on the starting town in Chapter 2 of Storm King's Thunder. This is a combat against the Giant Commander and a number of minions equal to the number of players in your party.

The reason I've done this via Patreon rather than embedding it in the video or the Giant Attack PDF is because I expect these stats to change. As a flippant DM, I find I have a lot of freedom in the way I tell stories, but the tradeoff is I'm bad at mechanical balance, so I'll be ...

The Giant Attack, Chapter 2 of Storm King's Thunder

One unlucky town in Storm King's Thunder is about to get wrecked by giants – that's just a fact. But this campaign doesn't have to be difficult to run! This PDF explains how to run an opening session where the players defend a town under siege by breaking the story into five simple scenes.

Scene 1: Cold Open. In this scene, you will give each player a brief solo scenario to play o...

2021-06-22 11:15:36 +0000 UTC View Post

Expanded Stat Blocks

The official stat blocks are too cramped! These are A4 D&D 5E stat blocks expanded to include tick boxes for spell slots and legendary abilities. Expanded to include all skill scores and resistances — not just the ones the creature's proficient with. Expanded, so every element has a designated place, and you can visually cl...

2021-06-07 04:31:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Alternate Villains of the Lost Mine

If your villain dies early, replace her! Iarno has written to the Black Spider, indicating he's betrayed her and set her in opposition against the players to get her out of the picture. King Grol has written to the players, threatening them and commanding them to leave the region because they want the Wave Echo Cave. Harbin has written a note to himself, indicating his madness under the control of Mormesk the wraith. 2021-05-25 11:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Treasures of the Deep

Here are six magic items for your water-world adventure! The fun of an underwater campaign relies on the authenticity of the setting. While the rules are easy to adapt to the new environment, imaginations are not so easily transported beneath the waves. The players’ features and spells play out mostly as they did before. However, for having a third dimension in combat, only the descriptive tools you apply will remind pla...

2021-05-10 22:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Character Breakdown: The Storm Preceptor

Your villain is important!

Think of it this way: the story is happening because of the villain, so you might as well know who they are. Any energy you can put into deepening your understanding of your villain is worthwhile.

In Storm King’s Thunder, the villain is an ancient blue dragon disguised in the storm giant court as the royal advisor. She’s not entirely responsible for all the thre...

2021-05-04 11:33:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Index Post: The Pea Pod

This is an index of every MPDM Patreon post relating to the Perkins Patreon Podcast, lovingly known as the Pea Pod.

All episodes in reverse-release order

Index Post: Lost Mines of Phandelver

This is an index of every MPDM Patreon post relating to the Lost Mines of Phandelver. You can find all the videos about LMoP here. Even though the video series is finished, I'm still developing and updating resources for the Starter Set.

All posts in release order
Companion wolf guide
2021-05-01 18:32:45 +0000 UTC View Post

SKT Exposition Checklist

This is a checklist of every piece of information in Storm King's Thunder, incremented by level of detail. The idea is to print this out and cross off items once you're sure your players have discovered that information.

At the moment, this list is far from complete. It turns out boiling an entire book into its core components is a lot more difficult than I would have thought, so I'm going to have to read the module again and take more notes to get this to where I want. But this is a living document I'll regularly update. 

M...

Index Post: Storm King's Thunder

This is an index of every MPDM Patreon post relating to Storm King's Thunder. You can find all the videos about SKT here. I will add and edit this post with resources as they're posted.

All posts in release order
Battle Companions [full patron version]
2021-04-27 13:29:26 +0000 UTC View Post

MPDM Battle Companions [free preview version]

Every combat encounter can be its own story—a tale with its own heroes and villains, its own tension and plot. And like any good story, a good combat can be ruined by poor pacing. When combat has too many combatants taking too many turns, it can slow the whole session down into a slog, and allied nonplayer characters (NPCs) can exacerbate that problem.

The rules here model a new, faster way to include such NPC allies. These battle companions’ abstract mechanics keep them from slowing the action, while their radical-and...