Things I’ve found to use lately:

Diseases are an often underutilized tool in the DM’s box of fun tricks.  Typically they come about as a side effect of throwing in a monster that hasn’t been used in a while – such as a lycanthrope.  Only after the rules complications enter play does the DM remember why they don’t use them. – DND Corner

Valiant is a setting based on realism and historic data so disease is a huge issue for my game as feudal Europe had some serious bugs running around, so when I saw the title of this post it was a must read! While written for 4th Edition D&D, his advice about how to challenge a party, as well as how to prevent accidentally wiping them out, is good advice for any fantasy setting. In addition, mthomas768 posted a link to an adventure arc that prominently features disease.

…I always hoped to get something started with finishing this part of the preparation series. Get Dungeonmasters inspired to go for something new, unknown ground and, as sure as the infinity of the Abyss, something risky… – The Lemming

The Lemming finished his series on Epic Preparation, very useful to any GM using an epic storyline in their game. Epic games are difficult and challenging to pull off correctly given the sheer amount of work involved and this series can only help you. There are 9 parts and I plan to go through each with a comb to see how I can apply them.

Taking a brief break from adventure design, I present a related topic:  100 jobs NPCs in your game-world might have.  Helps with creating those random NPCs — pick a job, then add a name, race, gender, and a quirk or two. – Scott

Coming up with interesting, realistic NPCs that will get involved with your characters can be one of the hardest things a GM does and yet… it’s also one of the most important for a game of good roleplaying. Knowing what the NPC does for a living helps but it can be hard to break the cycle of always coming up with the same old thing – merchant, cleric, soldier. If you need that kind of help, and I do, print this list from A Butterfly Dreaming and keep it handy during games.

I’m a big fan of using an episodic structure in the games I run, even when dealing with a long-term campaign with my regular play group. In my experience, many long-term campaigns bog down with the minutiae which an episodic approach is great at preventing. – MJ Harnish

If your campaign is drifting aimlessly, read over this post at Gaming Brouhaha for some ideas of how you might be able to get back on track. That isn’t why he wrote the entry, but I could definitely see it being used that way. I’m going to add it to my list of “solutions when we’re all bored” to reference as needed.

One of the most difficult tasks for any DM is to get players to suspend their disbelief. Doing so helps the players to roleplay their own characters and be absorbed into the campaign setting. In those brief hours, the gaming table seems to disappear and the world unfolds before them. There are few things more engaging than seamlessly introducing characters with which the players can interact.  – Mark Alexander Clover

This ties right in with the list of NPC jobs provided by Scott. About halfway down this page, Creative Mountain Games details an extremely interesting system for giving NPCs a three-dimensional personality. I plan to jot down the categories, then randomly roll for the levels of involvement, dropping the keywords, when my players encounter NPCs I haven’t fully fleshed out. Which is probably about 75% of them. It looks like a fast, easy way to improve cardboard encounters.

These small magical objects are found in sets of four, five, or six. The exact form the items take varies, depending on the maker. Typically they are cubes of Dark Wood inlaid with silver or mithril symbols of power. – Mthomas768

Reading this post from RPG Dumping Ground reminded me of Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni series with it’s system of warding magic. I’ve always enjoyed those books and this post presents something very similar in a consice easy-to-use format. My only issue with it is the reliance on the idea of Good so I’ll be changing it before I use it.

Lovely Charts is a free web-based tool for creating flow charts, site maps, network diagrams, and other visualizations with a drag-and-drop interface and a look somewhat upscale from black-line boxes and polygonal boxes. – lifehacker

This looks like an interesting alternative to freemind and other similar software. Looks kind of bloaty though so I don’t know if I’ll use it or not. If anyone else tries it, let me know how it perfoms. Very pretty, though!

Last but not least, link love: The Lemming, Questing GM and 6D6 Fireball.