July was a great month month for Dungeon’s Master. We saw our traffic and our readership rise steadily. This was helped in no small part by our early reviews of the July releases from Wizards of the Coast. We welcome the new readers who may have only discovered us in July and thank all of the loyal readers who found us earlier and keep coming back. With all of the great article published in July it’s possible that you might have misses a few. Here are the highlights.
Highlights
Skill Challenges
We continued building our skill challenge library with the addition of these three new skill challenges.
- Negotiations – You’re competing with the Dragonmarked Houses for a lucrative contract.
- Find and Repair the Warforged Scout (Part 1) – A Warforged thought destroyed during the last war needs to be found and reassembled.
- Find and Repair the Warforged Scout (Part 2) – After finding the scattered components of the Warforged you need to get him functional again.
Eberron
- We shared our Eberron Campaign Guide: Review, and on the day of the book’s release we provided some suggestions on how How to Get Your Eberron Fix.
- What if the popular TV show Lost was set in Eberron? We speculated on what a few of the main characters might look like in Lost in Eberron: Profiling Jack, Sawyer and Locke.
DM Resources
- Being the DM isn’t easy, as Wimwick discovered in Be Gentle, It’s My First Time… Being the DM. Out of Wimwick’s experience we created the Condition Tracker to help keep things organized.
- We looked at the concept of a campaign based on familiar story in D&D Lego and in The Hangover: The Movie That Begs to Be a D&D Adventure we put this practice to use.
- For those returning to a campaign after a long hiatus, we presented DM Tips for Restarting a Retired Campaign.
- In Speed Up Your Game: Know When to Call the Fight we suggest that every combat encounter doesn’t have to be played out until the bitter end.
- If you’re interested in adding really unique magic items into your game, we look at the pros and cons of Intelligent Magic Items.
Player Resources
- Sometimes you want or need to play something different. We share our suggestions for the best way to do this in Riding Off Into the Sunset: How to Retire PC.
- Your magic items are unique and should be treated as such. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you have to answer the questions What’s +1 Sword?
Class Discussion
- Wizards of the Caost released an update in early July that had us asking Have Battlerager Fighters Been Fixed?
- We looked at the new options, classes builds, paragon paths, and rules for divine classes in our Divine Power: Review.
- With GenCon just around the corner Ameron does what he can to prepare by putting out A Call for Heroes – Ultimate Dungeon Delve.
Editorial
- With the release of the second psionic character class, Ameron shared his (unpopular) opinion on the subject and proclaimed that Psionics Suck!
- Although we weren’t among the lucky few, we congratulated everyone who received ENnie Award Nominations.
- Wimwick felt that Wizards is making good by Keeping Promises: PHB3 First Look.
Housekeeping
- Have you answered any of our poll questions? Here are some of the Poll Results.
- We share Staff Picks we think you might enjoy if you missed them the first time around. Check them out in the left navigation.
- Recognizing that our audience is worldwide, on Canada Day we asked From Where Do You Hail?
August will no doubt be another great month at Dungeon’s Master. Ameron is attending GenCon and will have lots of great things to share while at the convention and upon his return. We’ll continue to provide resources for campaigns set in Eberron, we plan to get back to our popular Skill Focus series and we will provide more DM resources. We welcome your feedback and suggestions if you have an idea for article or if there is a particular topic you’d like to see us tackle. Be sure to visit Dungeon’s Master every day in August as we continue publishing new articles five days a week.