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Dawnfist Newsletter - Solo resilience, magical amulets and a West Marches masterclass
This month's 5 community gems, GM advice and a new shiny thing!
Sebastian Grabne
March 26, 2025
Welcome to the monthly Dawnfist Newsletter where we share community gems, helpful advice and always bring you a new creation of our own! If you aren’t already subscribed, click on the button below.
Our 5 Favorite Community Gems
Every month, we sift through all the goodness from the TTRPG community and handpick our five favorites — the ones we believe are the most useful and valuable.
This month, we devoured 167 articles, blog posts, threads, and videos to bring you the five absolute standouts. Because that’s the purpose of this newsletter, to save you valuable time and help you find some golden nuggets.
Image borrowed from Castle Grief, sharing some valuable solo play tips and tricks.
Castle Grief offers a handful of smart, practical solutions for the toughest challenge in solo play, actually keeping your campaign going. From worldbuilding burnout to over-reliance on tools, system-hopping, and the curse of perfectionism, this post hits every common solo play struggle and gives sharp, realistic advice for solving them. I especially liked the focus on texture over detail, and the reminder that you don’t need the perfect setup—just enough to keep playing. The included “Solo Campaign Checklist” is gold: short, actionable, and built to keep your momentum going from one session to the next.
I Cast Light! explores a creative evolution of the classic encounter table: use them to have the dungeon evolve. Instead of just listing monsters, this encounter table tracks faction progress, countdowns, and dungeon-changing events—all in one place, without extra sheets or prep. Want a statue to eventually fall and create a bridge? Or a faction to grow stronger the longer the PCs linger? Track it with checkboxes directly in the encounter table. It’s a smart, modular approach that turns a static table into a tool that reduces the number of things you need to keep track of in your head. A goldmine for GMs who love dynamic dungeons.
Yochai Gal shares an inspiring look at a two-year West Marches campaign run as a pointcrawl using Cairn 2e. It’s not just a defense of pointcrawls (which worked beautifully, by the way), it’s a behind-the-scenes peek at how the sessions were prepped, how the players shaped the world through their choices, and how simple notes and random tables turned into memorable adventures. From improvised river chases to returning villains. This post is packed with ideas that will make you want to start your own campaign immediately. Precisely the content every struggling GM needs.
Whose Measure God Could Not Take shares a d20 table of magical amulets. It’s not anything revolutionary, but that’s definitely not needed. Some days all you want is simple D20 table with evocative descriptons to spark your imagniation, and this one is a perfect example of that. It’s a reminder that you don’t need a deep subsystem or full supplement to add magic to your game—a single item table can do the job. One of my favorites is the Destus Hand, a hinged iron glove that catches spells and throws them back later. Another is the Rue-Not Vial, a chain-held glass vessel of crushed rose petals that restores a bit of HP when you need it most. Each entry sparks adventure—what else do you need?
Last but not least, this Reddit post became a fantastic resource of video games that evoke that OSR feel. It might not be direct GM advice, but it’s no secret that most TTPRG lovers also enjoy video games. And having a list of games that delivers a specific feeling can be invaluable. Especially since most of our prep as GMs is condensing down our experiences with various media, into a cohesive and exciting adventure, and video games can be just the right media to inspire you when prepping your next adventure!
Monthly Dawnfist advice
Riddles can be great… or groan-worthy. In this post, we explain exactly how to use riddles that make sense in-world and feel satisfying to solve. The key? Place the answer somewhere in the adventure location, and make sure the riddle fits the world the PCs are exploring. Done right, riddles become puzzles the characters can solve through play—not just tests for the players at the table.
The new thing - D12 City Encounters
This month we bring you a D12 table of city encounters, perfect for when the party explores a bustling port town and you need something interesting to happen. These 12 encounters are specifically made to create interesting scenarios, rather than straight up combat or conflict. What group of PCs could resist participating in the “Design the town’s new banner” competition? We all know they’ll get fired up and spend way too much time coming up with design ideas.
D12 | Encounter |
|---|---|
1 | Fruit War! Two rival vendors on opposite corners are locked in a shouting match over who’s been stealing whose fruit display ideas. Before long, one of them chucks a plum—sparking a brief fruit-flinging skirmish. Bystanders are loving it. |
2 | Rooftop Runner. Tiles clatter down into the street just ahead as someone dashes across a rooftop above. A child below looks up wide-eyed and whispers, “That’s the Silver Fox!” |
3 | The Disappearing Proposal. A nervous suitor asks the PCs to help stage a grand marriage proposal. Moments before the big moment, both the intended and the ring go missing. |
4 | Civic Contest. The mayor’s office has launched a public “Design the Town’s New Banner” contest. A clerk begs the PCs to submit something, even terrible art gets them closer to the quota. |
5 | Mimic Market. In the crowded bazaar, someone’s footstool bites them and scuttles off. The merchant swears it wasn’t part of the stock and offers a discount if the PCs “just get it out of here.” |
6 | Rumor Tangle. A local kid offers to tell the PCs “everything” about the city; for a few coins. His tales are 50% lies, 50% prophecy, and 100% entertaining. |
7 | Dust and Drama. A puff of colored powder explodes in a side alley, followed by two actors in full costume chasing each other and arguing about a scene from an open-air play. They beg the PCs to weigh in. |
8 | The Silent Parade. Dozens of people dressed in identical gray cloaks march through the main street in total silence. A confused city guard watches, saying, “They’ve been doing this every week. No one knows why.” |
9 | Book Drop. A satchel of books falls from a second-story window, nearly hitting a passerby. A panicked teenager rushes down, trying to retrieve them before someone notices the arcane titles. |
10 | Post-Auction Panic. A minor magic item sold at a street auction is sparking increasingly weird effects, its new owner runs past the party screaming about “the voices in the soup.” |
11 | Fish Emergency. A desperate chef hires the PCs on the spot: his special ingredient (a huge, live eel) escaped its barrel and is slithering through the streets, shocking tourists and soaking urchins. |
12 | Phantom Painter. Overnight, a detailed mural has appeared on the city wall: a perfect likeness of one of the PCs, mid-heroic pose. No one saw who painted it. The guards are suspicious. So is the PC’s rival. |
Thank you for reading and don’t forget to explore our games, modules and supplements on DriveThruRPG via the button below. See you next month!
///Sebastian Grabne - Dawnfist Games