August may be gone, but it is certainly not a month to be fogotten. We ran a lot of great articles and brought you our highlights and opinions about this year’s GenCon. Dungeon’s Master continues to grow every month and August was no exception. Thanks to all of our readers, especially those who comment regularily. Your feedback helps us improve and often gives us ideas on what kind of articles to write moving forward. So to all of our readers, thanks for making August great and we look forward to providing you with a lot more to read and talk about throughout September. For those who are new to Dungeon’s Master or if you missed some of our articles while you were on summer vacation, here are the month’s highlights. Enjoy.
Highlights
GenCon 2009
In the days leading up to the convention we got a sneak peak at Ameron’s GenCon Schedule. In preperation he created The Ultimate Character for the Ultimate Dungeon Delve and then on his very first day we got his report and feedback on the Ultimate Dungeon Delve. Over the next few days we followed Ameron’s progress through the D&D Championship qualifying round, D&D Championship Semi-Finals and D&D Championship Finals. And when it was all over Ameron wrote An Open Letter to Wizards of the Coast on the D&D Championship.
Skill Challenges
We added two new skill challenges to our skill challenge library.
- Back to School – The PCs need to accomplish a very specific task and require formal training to do it.
- Protect The Caravan – Why just ride on the caravan when you can be paid to protect it. But things are rarely that simple.
Wizards of the Coast
The Monster Builder was release through DDI in August. Suddry speculates as to what tools we may yet see from Wizards when he looks at Adventure Tools Through a Different Lens. Ameron shares his thoughts on James Wyatt’s fantastic novel Dragon War. By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Wizards is releasing Dark Sun as the 2010 campaign world, but don’t overlook the other great products coming out in the next 12 months. Here is the Wizards of the Coast: 2009-2010 Release Schedule.
DM Resources
We published a lot of great articles for DMs this month. Wimwick provides guidance to DMs on how to handle a PC who’s min/maxing disrupts the game in Your AC Is What?!?. Wimwick provides some ideas for DMs who realize that the Game Starts In One Hour And You Aren’t Ready. He also provides some great suggestions for how to get your game back on track in Has Your Campaign Stalled? (Part 1) and Has Your Campaign Stalled? (Part 2). Your Coin is No Good Here looks at the idea of introducing foreign currencies to your D&D campaign. The encounter, Snakes On An Airship, provides DMs with an interesting challenge they can literally drop into their existing camping.
Player Resources
Most groups have representation from all four roles in 4e D&D, but here’s how things played out for Ameron when he was Playing In An Unbalanced Party.
Eberron
We introduced the first of what we intend to be an ongoing series describing places of interest in Secrets of Eberron Revealed. Wimwick shares his opinions on how changes to Dragonmarks in 4e Eberron may impact your game in his commentary On Dragonmarks.
Editorial
Ameron describes a player who truly is The Gaming Jerk. As the monthly updates for character builder continue to make the tool more robust we had to ask Does Character Builder Limit Creativity?
A Look Ahead
Coming in September we’ve got an interview with Eberron creator Keith Baker. We’ll (finally) get back to our Skill Focus series featuring Acrobatics, Nature and Streetwise. In just a few weeks we’ll have another D&D Worldwide Gameday in support of the DMG2’s release. We’ll bring you our review of the book and our impressions of this gaming event (from the DM’s point of view). By month’s end we’ll hit our 200th post so watch for another Top 100 list to celebrate that milestone. September already looks like another exciting month here at Dungeon’s Master so be sure to visit us every day.
Looking for instant updates? Subscribe to the Dungeon’s Master feed!