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Friday Favourites

Friday Favourite: Splitting the Party Successfully

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From April 23, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Splitting the Party Successfully.

Experience teaches player to never split the party. However, there are times when it doesn’t make sense for the party to remain together. This might be because there are many tasks to complete in a limited amount of time or it might be because some party members have skills or powers that make them uniquely qualified to handle a task alone. Yet when presented with any opportunity to split the party, no matter how logical it might seem to do so, a lot of players insist on staying together. It’s a knee-jerk reaction that is not founded in any rational assessment of the situation. It’s an instinctual response based on a previous disaster and a slogan ingrained into them by the Wizards marketing department. Players need to take a deep breath and repeat after me: Sometimes it’s a good idea to split the party.

My gaming group has actually had a lot of success when splitting the party. It’s not something we do very often, but we are certainly open to the possibility when it makes sense. Most often when we split up each group or individual ends up with their own mini skill challenge, but every so often the DM has something else in mind and combat occurs while the party is separated from each other. We’ve found that there are ways to make combat with a split party work. It’s definitely challenging, but our approach to these situations are always fun and rarely result in anyone being left out while their character is off screen.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Murder in Baldur’s Gate (Week 6)

murder-in-baldurs-gate-coverBaldur’s Gate faced a crippling garbage strike during last week’s session. The PCs used magic to summon monsters to eat the garbage and clean the streets. The success of such a creative endeavour endeared Carl the Paladin, the party’s leader, to the residents of Baldur’s Gate and now his name is being shouted from the rooftops as a possible candidate for Duke.

This week at Harry T North in Toronto we ran three tables of D&D Next. The other two DMs each ran tables with five players. Three of my five regulars notified me that they’d be absent this week; fortunately we had two brand new players walk in so I added them to my group brining us up to a very manageable party of four. The party ended up consisting of two Dwarf Fighters and two Human Clerics – sometimes you get balance, sometimes you don’t.

The new players had some previous experience with RPGs, but nothing recent. I gave them a brief recap of what had happened so far in the adventure and then asked them how they saw these characters fitting in to the story. I suggested we just say they already knew some of the previous PCs but they didn’t want to do that (which was fine). They decided that they were wandering adventurers. When they heard the tales of Carl the Paladin they decided to find him and see if he really was as great as the stories made him sound.

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Friday Favourites

Friday Favourite: Give Your Character Personality

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From February 22, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Give Your Character Personality.

When you ask a gamer to tell you about their character they will usually begin with class and race followed by the kind of weapon the PC uses, a list of their best magical items and then finally some really cool attack power or spell in their arsenal. And for most people that’s the answer they expect. But when was the last time you described a character as being a know-it-all, or a suck up, or a dreamer, or manipulative, or unusually arrogant?

Personality isn’t one of the boxes you need to fill in on a character sheet so many gamers, me included, often overlook this important detail when we create characters. More importantly we forget that every character has a unique personality. Looking back at my last few long-term characters I realize that they all had pretty much the same personality – mine.

In my experience, very few of us define our character by who they really are at heart, resorting instead to what they possess and what they can do. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this approach, but if you play a lot of RPGs you realize that a character with a well-defined personality can be a lot more interesting and a lot more fun to play. After all, personality goes a long way.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Murder in Baldur’s Gate (Week 5)

murder-in-baldurs-gate-coverDuring the last session the PCs spent a few days investigating acts of vandalism throughout Baldur’s Gate including the theft of hands from numerous statues around the city. When the hands from the Beloved Ranger statue were stolen the PCs led the investigation to recover them. They eventually captured two young nobles and recovered the hands from the Ranger statue.

About two weeks had passed since the events of the last session. The PCs had already earned a good reputation as heroes after their role in the events that happened on Founder’s Day, but their part in the recovery of Minsk’s hands elevated their reputations even more.

This week at Harry T North in Toronto we ran two tables of D&D Next. One of our DMs couldn’t play this week and his group of six all agreed to just do a double session next week. Another DM ran a full table with his six regular players. I began with five players, but about 15 minutes into the session two more of our regulars showed up. So I ended up running a party of seven PCs: a Dwarf Fighter, Human Cleric, Half-Elf Paladin, Halfling Rogue, Elf Wizard, Human Monk and Elf Ranger.

We seem to have lost a few players over the past couple of weeks. I suspect that has something to do with everyone going back to school. I hope that as they get back into a regular routine we see them come back and possibly even bring a few friends to try our D&D. Most of my players read the weekly posts on this website and on the D&D forums so if they do return I know they’ll have a pretty good idea of what they’ve missed and we won’t have to spend a lot of time getting them caught up.

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Friday Favourites

Friday Favourite: Undead Make the Scariest Villains

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From January 12, 2011, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Undead Make the Scariest Villains.

Would you rather fight a beholder or a zombie? This is a much more complicated question than you might realize. Look at this through the eyes of your character and not through the eyes of a meta-gamer. In-character what is the scariest monster you can imagine? For me it’s undead more than any other.

Most monsters are, well, monstrous. They are clearly different than you and they must be destroyed. The beholder is an abomination. It’s scary, and a big party of what makes it scary is that it doesn’t conform to a physical shape you’re comfortable with. It’s a giant floating ball with eyestalks swirling about. Even if you’d never seen a beholder before and knew nothing about it, your initial instinct as an adventurer would be to attack and destroy something so awful.

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D&D Encounters D&D Next

D&D Encounters: Murder in Baldur’s Gate (Week 4)

murder-in-baldurs-gate-coverDuring the last session the PCs witnessed tensions grow in Baldur’s gate as sumptuary laws were implemented and the Watch and Flaming Fist officers began enforcing it. The PCs got caught up in a street brawl between Flaming Fist officers and a mob of angry Lower City residents. The Fist prevailed and the PCs escorted most of the troublemakers to Wyrm’s Rock for processing.

A few PCs split from the group and met with Rilsa Rael, a member of the Guild working out of Little Calimshan. She provided a different perspective of the recent events happening in Baldur’s Gate and suggested the PCs stop working for the Flaming Fist. She went on to ask them (again) to help her and the Guild do what was best for Baldur’s Gate.

This week at Harry T North in Toronto we had another large turnout. In addition to our many regulars we had 2 brand new players join in the fun. For the first time this season we actually had four DMs ready to run tables.

Since this season began I’ve run massive groups each week (9 players twice and 8 players once). In order to try and fix this problem and speed up our sessions we recruited a fourth DM. Players at the first two tables (6 each) were all punctual so they started on time. That left two DMs and 6 players. Normally I’d just group these folks together and run a table of 7, but we were still expecting as many as 6 more players so we waited.

After about 10 minutes we decided to begin with both DMs running tables of 3. After all, none of the players had called, texted, emailed or Tweeted that they’d be absent, and I didn’t want to start with a table of 7 and have it balloon up to 9 or more. Of course no more players showed up so I ended up running a small group of 3: Half-Elf Paladin, Dwarf Fighter and Human Cleric. You know if we’d started with 7 everyone else would have shown up. Oh well.

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DM Resources Friday Favourites

Friday Favourite: Time in D&D

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From April 7, 2010, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Time in D&D.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever created a level 1 PC, entered a dungeon, killed a bunch of monsters, gained a bunch of levels while still inside the dungeon and then realized that only a few weeks of actual in-game time passed when you emerge. I know I’m not the only one reading this that has his hand up.

Time in D&D is an aspect of the game I find is overlooked way too often. Tracking time in your game may not be that big a deal, but the longer you continue playing that same PC the more important time becomes.

So just how long does it take to go from level 1 to level 2? In 4e D&D it takes about 10-13 encounters or about four gaming sessions. But what I really want to know is how much time passes in-game between levels?

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D&D Encounters D&D Next

D&D Encounters: Murder in Baldur’s Gate (Week 3)

murder-in-baldurs-gate-coverThe PCs, working as agents of the Flaming Fist, closed down two gambling dens during last week’s adventure. During this week’s session they didn’t have any official duties so they took the opportunity to get to know the streets and landmarks of Baldur’s Gate a little better.

At Harry T North in Toronto we continue to see a fantastic turn out for D&D Encounters. We ran two tables, one with eight players and one with nine players. Our third DM knew he would be absent this week so he and his six players took the week off and plan to do a double session next week. Our fourth DM was unable to play this week so we proceeded with the massive tables.

My party was relatively unchanged from last week. Seven PCs returned, one player changed his character, and we had one brand new player. This is how the party shaped up in the end: two Elf Rangers, Human Cleric, Dwarf Fighter, two Human Monks, Half-Elf Paladin, Halfling Rogue, and Elf Mage.

Without any clear direction or orders this session, the PCs were free to do whatever they wanted. This seemed to throw the players off, but as the night progressed they got more into it. They decided to break into smaller groups as they each explored different areas of Baldur’s Gate.

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Player Resources

Back to School Tips for Gamers

Going to college was an opportunity for me, as a gaming and comic book nerd, to try and reinvent myself. I could be one of the cool kids if I wanted to be; after all no one knew me so I could try to pass myself off as anything I wanted. Good in theory, but I quickly realized that I’m a gamer and that I couldn’t change or hide that fact. Instead I took my first steps as a gaming ambassador. I shared my love of games – board games, card games and role-playing games – with all of the new people I met while I was away at school. The key was to ease people into it gaming and let them discover for themselves just how much fun gaming can be.