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Month in Review

Month in Review: June 2009

For those counting, it’s been five months since we launched and we’re still going strong. We continue to get comments form new readers almost every day. The Dungeon’s Master team wants to thank all of our readers for continuing to visit regularly, helping the site grow and improve.

Tomorrow is a holiday in Canada and the Dungeon’s Master team is taking the day off to celebrate our country’s birthday. We have a special Canada Day post in store for tomorrow so we’re giving you the month in review for June one day early. For those of you who might have missed some of the articles we published in June, this is your chance to get caught up. Here are the highlights from June.

Highlights

Announcements

Wizards of the Coast announced their role-out plan for the new materials we’ll eventually get in the Players Handbook 3 next summer. Upon hearing this news we had to ask Is The DDI Now A Must Have? With GenCon quickly approaching we provided some tid-bits of information in our GenCon Preview (Part 1).

Eberron

June saw the release of the first 4e Eberron materials. We shared key information about the races, classes and paragon paths in the Eberron Player’s Guide Review (Part 1). In the Eberron Player’s Guide Review (Part 2) we posted details about how Dragonmarks work in 4e.

Skill Challenges

Mid-June, we decided that it would be a good idea to have a skill challenge week. During that time we published seven new skill challenges.

  • The Dungeon Crawl – Making the trips between rooms more exciting and dangerous.
  • Prison Break – It doesn’t matter how you got there, now you have to get out.
  • Stormy Waters – Braving rough waters can be quite an ordeal.
  • Maintaining the Karrnathi Army – Our first Eberron-specific skill challenge, easily adaptable to any campaign setting.
  • Fixing The Lightning Rail – Another Eberron-specific skill challenge. This time the PCs need to keep the train on the tracks so to speak.
  • The Princess Bride – You’ve seen the movie, now run the skill challenge. Beware of the Dread Pirate Roberts.
  • Research – Here’s a way to reward PCs who have training in knowledge skills.

To finish off Skill Challenge week we posted Skill Aide: Dragonmarks which gives suggestions about how choosing a Dragonmark feat might help a PC during a skill challenge in Eberron.

With the release of the Monster Manual 2 and Eberron Player’s Guide with thought it would be a good idea to provide a Skill Matrix Update.

Class Discussion

In June we discovered that The Most Powerful Fighter is a Battlerager Fighter and followed that up with a look at Big Bad Weapons. Despite the incredible damage output from the Fighter, Wimwick discussed Role vs Roll: Why I Play A Rogue.

Character Development

To help players flesh out their PCs, we explored Character Motivation. The importance of role-playing came to light in Screw Morals, Just Keep the Game Moving. We presented the value of Adventuring Company Symbols. In Playing Two Characters we looked at the pros and cons of working multiple PCs.

Humour

On the lighter side of things (no pun intended) we looked at what gamers eat when they play and asked the gaming community Are All Gamers Fat?

DM Resources

The argument was made that Fighting One Monster is Boring so we provided some ideas on how to make things more exciting. In anticipation of another useless D&D supplement we asked Is Deities and Demigods a 4e Necessity?

A Look Ahead

Just because summer is here doesn’t mean that we’re taking a vacation from gaming. We’re still going to post new articles every weekend throughout July. Expect our review of the Eberron Campaign Sourcebook and more Eberron-specific articles. We’re going to get back to our skill focus series and provide new and alternative uses for more skills. Keep visiting Dungeon’s Master through July and be sure to tell us what you think of each and every article. We also welcome your suggestions if you want to see something that we haven’t already covered. If we can help improve your D&D game, we will.

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