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Friday Favourites Humour Player Resources

Friday Favourite: What Your Weapon Says About Your Character

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From March 21, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: What Your Weapon Says About Your Character.

“The clothes make the man.” It’s a pretty common expression. It quite literally means that you can draw a conclusion, and usually a fairly accurate conclusion, about a person’s personality just based on what they’re wearing. In D&D, the type of clothes (or armor) a person wears will usually indicate with great accuracy what class he is but it’s less likely to accurately indicate what kind of a man he is – for that you have to look at his weapon.

During character creation most players I’ve gamed with will equip their character before they determine his personality. I know that’s how I usually do it. But I’ve noticed over the years that the personality of a PC is very often directly related to the type of weapon he carries. It’s like the weapon imprints a specific personality type on the characters wielding them.

So I’ve put together a list of my observations. This is simply my first-hand account of how I see things. It’s not based on any scientific method or precise sampling, it’s just what I’ve seen over and over again in the many years that I’ve played D&D. I think that despite my rather loose methodology the results are surprisingly accurate.

If you think I’ve really missed the mark on any of these I encourage you to leave your feedback in the comments section below. I also welcome new additions to the list. After all, there are a lot of weapons in D&D and my list just scratches the surface.

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DM Resources Humour

A Matter of Perspective – Who’s the Bad Guy?

Every week one of my players does a quick summary of what happened at our gaming table and emails it to our gaming group. It’s a great way for the players to keep the details fresh and it’s exceptionally helpful if a player misses a session. As the DM, it gives me a sense of what details they picked up and on what details they may have misinterpreted. It also gives me a clear idea of which parts of the game left the strongest impression upon my players, and allows me to adjust future sessions to focus on that kind of thing more often.

After reading a recent recap I commented that the players, especially the one doing the write-up, often described events in a way that glossed over their own mistakes or poor judgment, especially in cases where the outcome was not good. In response one of the players provided an alternate summary of the week’s events from the monsters’ point-of-view. It was both funny and educational. It reminded all of us that the heroes and villains of a story often depend on who’s telling the story. Read the two accounts of me last gaming session below and tell me what you think.

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Friday Favourites Humour

Friday Favourite: Eldrick Tont – Defender of the Tiger Woods

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From June 28, 2011, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Eldrick Tont – Defender of the Tiger Woods.

Today Dungeon’s Master presents our contribution to this month’s RPG Blog Carnival: Memorable Characters Inspired From Real Life. The real life person, upon which my memorable character was inspired, is golf icon Tiger Woods.

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Editorial Friday Favourites Humour

Friday Favourite: Confessions of a Gamer

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From March 7, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Confessions of a Gamer.

Are you proud to be a gamer? Or do you hide the fact that once a week you play Dungeons & Dragons? I’m 34 years old, I’m a gamer and I’m proud to admit it.

I’ve been playing RPGs since I was 10, so 24 years now. And during that time I’ve met many different types of gamers. Most, like me, are proud to be gamers. Others are what I like to call “in the closet gamers.” They loved to play D&D, but would die a slow and painful social death if anyone outside of our immediate gaming group learned this terrible secret.

I’m sure this will not come as a shock to anyone reading this blog, but when I was in high school I was a huge nerd. In fact, I’m still a pretty big nerd. As a teenager, I was not part of the popular crowd and I wasn’t invited to parties. But I had a solid group of friends and one of the hobbies we shared was D&D. Every weekend, while the “cool kids” were getting drunk and partying, we were enjoying a night of role-playing games. And as lame as that sounds, I’m not ashamed to admit it.

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Friday Favourites Humour

Friday Favourite: Holiday Shopping Skill Challenge

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From December 11, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Holiday Shopping Skill Challenge.

‘Tis the season for giving and receiving gifts. Regardless of your personal or religious reasons for celebrating during the holiday season, everyone likes getting gifts. This is no secret to retail merchants. They know that you’ll be shopping for everyone on your list at this time of year and they want you to spend, spend, spend.

Shopping for Christmas presents can be a lot of hard, grueling work. It’s the part of the holidays that I like the least. So I decided to look at a challenging, real life situation through my D&D coloured glasses (as I so often do). A few months ago we put together a skill challenge called Battle for the Remote. It’s in that same vein that I present a holiday themed, real life skill challenge called Holiday Shopping.

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Humour

The Dungeon Master’s Guide 5e Disclaimer

dmg-5e-coverWe have the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide. Tomorrow Friday* we’ll be sharing our review of this magnificent book and on Friday many of you will have a chance to pick up your very own copy from select premium game stores. Until then, we thought we’d give you a teaser by sharing the new disclaimer. Enjoy.

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Friday Favourites Humour

Friday Favourite: Embracing the Silly Aspects of Fantasy Gaming

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From October 25, 2011, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Embracing the Silly Aspects of Fantasy Gaming.

Sometimes we focus so much on the serious aspects of D&D that we forget the importance of the humorous and ludicrous. This is a fantasy game in which magic is commonplace. So with that kind of framework doesn’t it seem right that there should be some outrageously silly things that are just accepted as a part of the fantastic world?

That’s not to say that things shouldn’t make sense. There needs to be some explanation for the unbelievable and the unexpected within the established framework, but the players don’t always have to take it so seriously. By throwing in a few humorous things every once and a while the players come to realize that just because they think something seems bizarre and out of place doesn’t mean that their characters feel the same way.

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Humour

Blogging from A to Z Challenge – Preview

a-to-z-2014-badgeWhen the Blogging from A to Z Challenge is over each participant does a round-up posting where they list all the articles they wrote during the previous month. It’s a way to let your readers know what you did just in case they missed any articles. Since all my articles will be about Adventure Hooks this year I decided to share the list ahead of time, this way you know which days you should visit Dungeon’s Master and which days you can skip (although I hope you don’t skip any).

We will still do the post-challenge round-up at which time all the titles will be linked back to the original articles. We hope you enjoy this preview. Let us know in the comments below which day you’re most looking forward to.

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Friday Favourites Humour

Friday Favourite: The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From February 14, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge.

Today is Valentine’s Day so we decided to take a light-hearted look at the day most associate with love. All the members of the Dungeons’ Master team are happily married or in a long-term relationship, so we felt that we should do our part to help those looking for love. However, we are by no means experts on the subject so please take the advice provided below with the good humour in which it is indented.

It’s unfortunate that many envision the gamer stereotype as a lonely guy who’s awkward around girls. Although there are certainly a few gamers out there that fall into this category, in my experience many gamers are not really that much different that the rest of the non-gaming masses. Everyone is looking for someone and hopes to avoid painful rejection along the way. With that in mind we’ve put together some tips in the form of a skill challenge. By framing this advice in a familiar wrapper we hope that it will make it easier for all those gamers looking for love on Valentine’s Day.

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Humour Top 10

100 Things 4e D&D Players Never Say

I’ve played D&D a long time and over the years I’ve heard a lot of players say a lot of things – funny things, strange things, gross things, imaginative things, inappropriate things, and awesome things. I can confidently say I’ve pretty much heard it all when it comes to conversation at the D&D table.

But in all the time I’ve played D&D there are some thing that I’ve never heard players or DMs say at the gaming table, specifically when playing 4e. So I decided to put together a list; a collection of things that you might expect to hear at the gaming table but don’t. What I thought would be a short list of a dozen things ended up reaching triple digits in a hurry.

After culling the list I managed to pare it down to a lean 100. These are things 4e D&D players never say. Some of these quotes are universal and equally applicable to other editions of D&D or other RPGs. In some cases it’s not that the quote is never heard, but heard very rarely. I’ve done my best to rank the list with the best, rarest, and funniest making up the top 10.

I encourage you to read through the list and see if you agree that theses are 100 things 4e D&D players never say. If you can think of a few more examples we’d love to hear them. Please leave your additions to the list in the comments below.