Heidi Jiang

A native Hoosier her whole life, Heidi Jiang discovered her love of gaming at an early age. She’s a big fan of the Super Mario series ... and any book with a mushroom on the cover. In all seriousness, she loves reading and playing just about anything when she finds the time. I am Spartacus! I am a wage slave! I am Paul Bellow! She currently resides in Indiana with her husband, a dog named Lucky, a cat named Oliver, and a couple children rapidly heading toward being teens. Over the years, Heidi Jiang has been a book reviewer, freelance copy editor, editor at a small publishing company, and executive editor at her school’s literary magazine.

LitRPG Audiobook Tropes Readers Love and Hate

Readers cheer when the narrator growls “Level Up!” like thunder in a tavern, but groan at stat sheets longer than dragon tax codes. Give us loot, snark, and stakes—not 17 minutes of +0.2% sock durability.

Random Encounter Tables That Are Not Just Wolves Again

Retire the wolves: let the road cough up a tax-collecting ghost, three goblins in a trench coat selling soup, or a suspiciously polite boulder. Your random encounters deserve weirder shoes.

5 LitRPG Protagonists Who Actually Use Their Brains Instead of Brute Force

LitRPG is full of heroes who see a problem, scream loudly, and solve it by turning their strength stat into modern art. Fun, sure. Subtle, not exactly. But every so often, a protagonist shows up who looks at a dungeon, a boss …

Fixing the Too Many NPCs Problem in D&D: The 3-Connection Rule

We have all been there as Dungeon Masters where you realize your campaign has slowly turned into a chaotic name soup. You stare at your notes and realize you have introduced thirty different shopkeepers, five rival adventuring parties, and a dozen minor …

How to Build DND Villains with Long-Term Campaign Payoff

One of the most frustrating experiences for a Dungeon Master is spending hours on D&D villain design only to watch the players shrug when the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) finally appears. You create a cool backstory, a menacing look, and a …

Are AI Art and RPG Tools Ethical for DND? My Take as a DM in 2025

The question of whether AI art and RPG tools are ethical for Dungeons & Dragons is perhaps the single most volatile topic in the tabletop community right now, sitting right alongside the OGL controversy in terms of sheer heat. As a Dungeon …

The 10 Most Abusable DND 2025 Multiclass Combos (Ranked by Power)

The release of the revised 2025 ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons has shifted the optimization landscape. While the core philosophy of 5th Edition remains, changes to feat progression, weapon masteries, and the rebalancing of spell lists have opened cracks in the system’s …

The BEST DND Class Combos in 2025 NOBODY Is Talking About (Ultimate Multiclass)

Unconventional multiclass builds in DND offer a thrill that standard optimization guides often miss. Most players are familiar with the “Sorcadin” or the “Hexblade dip” because these combinations rely on obvious mechanical overlaps like Charisma synergy. However, limiting yourself to the most …

How to Effectively Play a D&D Rogue in 2025: Breaking Down Common Archetype Misunderstandings

Shadows slithered beside the adventurers as they pressed deeper into the lamp-lit labyrinth, every footstep echoing through memory and myth. Even before the dice tumbled, the table’s eyes always turned to the Rogue: would he steal the priest’s purse, desert his comrades, …

9 Influential Female Creators Who Shaped the History and Evolution of Tabletop RPG

In the dim-lit corners of early game shops and cluttered basements where players huddled over graph paper and polyhedral dice, women quietly dismantled the foundations of possibility. Their names, whispered across fanzine pages and half-forgotten at publisher tables, hid behind initials or …

Moral Dilemmas in D&D: How Curses Challenge Your Character’s Ethics

Curses in Dungeons & Dragons rarely linger in memory when they’re just numbers on a D&D character sheet. An itching rash, a night of bad dreams, a sticky -1 to attack rolls. These fade from the mind, handled by a spell or …

How to Build a Long-Range Spell Sniper with Sorcerer and Warlock in D&D 2025

Picture this: you stand, veiled in shadow at the far edge of the battlefield, every movement deliberate, every spell loosed with surgical precision. The spell sniper isn’t just another arcane artillery piece—no, this is a master of distance and devastation, a caster …

How to Design Overpowered Weapons in D&D Without Breaking the Game

Every Dungeons & Dragons group eventually daydreams about that one weapon—the legendary blade, the unbreakable hammer, the staff brimming with untold sorcery—that could tip the scales in epic fashion. The allure of overpowered (OP) weapons is woven into the DNA of tabletop …

Ultimate Tiefling 5e Player Guide: Traits, Subraces, Class Builds, and Roleplay Tips for 2025

Tieflings are the children of two worlds, embodying the tantalizing collision of mortal ambition and infernal power at the heart of Dungeons & Dragons 5e. Born from the lingering touch of fiends in their bloodline, Tieflings are at once alluring and unsettling, …

How to Build the Most Powerful Damage-Dealing Wizard in in D&D 5.5e 2024 (Step-by-Step Guide)

There’s an undeniable thrill in mastering the arcane, an electricity that crackles in the imagination whenever you hear the words “high-damage wizard.” With the launch of D&D 5.5e in 2024, the spell-slinger’s role feels more dynamic and dangerous than ever. For many …

Maximize Your Bard: Effective D&D Multiclassing Strategies for 2025 Campaigns

Multiclassing in Dungeons & Dragons has always been a siren call for bold, creative players; for bards, it offers even more. The allure comes from an endless promise of versatility—a tune that can be remixed over and over without ever growing stale. …

5 Unique Homebrew Campaign Settings to Inspire Your Tabletop D&D Game

Let’s be honest—most D&D campaigns, no matter how lovingly homebrewed, tend to orbit the gravity well of classic high fantasy. Noble elves in leafy courts, greedy dwarves carving mountain keeps, and the ever-present, dragon-haunted horizon: these things are so beloved, but they …

Eberron: Forge of the Artificer Everything We Know About New DnD 2024 Campaign Book

Eberron: Forge of the Artificer isn’t just a new supplement. Nah, it’s a collision of arcane imagination and relentless innovation, a world where magical invention thrums through every cobblestone street and shrouded alley. This release returns D&D’s most avant-garde setting to center …

New DND Hexblade Warlock Explained: Spell Focus, Hex Reliance, and Lost Weapon Powers

The Dungeons & Dragons community is no stranger to controversy, but the latest revision of the Hexblade—a Warlock subclass beloved for nearly a decade—has ignited a storm of criticism rarely seen since the last time Wizards of the Coast dared to “fix” …

He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon: Full LitRPG Review and Spoiler-Free Verdict

Every once in a while, a book barrels onto the fantasy scene with enough raw momentum to topple genre expectations—and He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon (Travis Deverell) has not just rolled, but bulldozed its way into LitRPG stardom. If you’ve …