Month: December 2011

Categories
Humour

Dungeon’s Master Presents: Christmas with the Gamer (Encore)

With Christmas less than two weeks away I felt it was a good time to dust off this holiday-themed article from the Dungeon’s Master archive and give it an encore performance. First published last December, this D&D holiday-themed tale was inspired in part by real events that happened in my household over the holidays. Merry Christmas.

Originally published on December 15, 2010, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Christmas With the Gamer.

I’d rather be playing D&D. But it’s Christmas and my family is coming over for a big holiday dinner. So I’m forced to settle for the banality known as real life for the next few hours.

I lumber downstairs from my bedroom, making no effort to be stealthy. Anyone in the living room or kitchen with a half-way decent passive perception knows I’m on my way. As a triggered action when I reach the bottom of the staircase my mother, the controller, starts giving me orders. I have to clean the basement, playfully called the dungeon, before company arrives.

As I pass by the living room I notice my father watching football. My dad is the epitome of the Warlord class. He’s a generous leader who constantly gives up his actions to let other act in his place. Whether that action is taking out the trash, cleaning the basement, or mowing the lawn, he’s always been very generous and giving. He’s just that kind of guy. Even when my mother asks him to do something he takes advantage of his class features to give up his action and let someone else do twice as much on their turn.

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Categories
Technology

Heroes of Neverwinter: Adventure Bundle Giveaway

Heroes of Neverwinter continues to enjoy success on Facebook. As part of the ongoing promotion of the game Dungeon’s Master is pleased to offer 25 Adventure Bundle codes to our readers.

If you’d like to receive one of these codes all you have to do is leave a comment below telling us which Dungeon’s Master article you’ve most enjoyed and why. With over 800 articles in our archives there are plenty to choose from.

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Categories
D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave (Week 3)

Last week’s encounter had the party battle an Echo Spirit and an Ochre Jelly. When the combat was over the party took a short rest, searched the cavern for treasure and then found The Oracle. The Oracle directed the party deeper into the cavern if they wanted to find Juliana and Orlando.

This week I was only able to play at one FLGS. I was in Seattle at the Wizards of the Coast head office for the last few days and by the time I got home Wednesday I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to do more than one session. I’ll be making up the missed session for the Harry T North crew next week. Anyone who’s been listening to our podcasts should note that I’ll still record and post the other week 3 encounter, but it won’t be up until next week.

This party consisted of a Half-Orc Barbarian (Berserker) [Unseelie Agent], Hamadryad Druid [Fey Beast Tamer], Human Assassin, Eladrin Sun Elf Warlock (Hexblade) and two of the pre-gens Belgos the Drow Ranger and Jarren the Human Wizard.

The heroes continued through the caverns and following the sounds of rushing water eventually came to a large cavern partly filled with a large muddy pool. The water feeding the pool originated further into the cavern. In the centre of the pool were three large mounds of mud.

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Categories
DM Resources

No New Magic Items

What if it was no longer possible to make new magical items? We don’t often focus on the magic item creation side of the game; we just assume that somewhere in the background new items are being created. When your PC needs new magical items he can usually got to “Ye Olde Magic Shoppe” and purchase what he needs. But if the supply of new items stopped how would the economy of D&D change and what would that mean for your campaign?

How things play out really depends on whether or not you’re introducing this idea to an existing campaign world where magic used to be plentiful and is about to dry up, or if you’re establishing this as the norm for a brand new setting. If the PCs and other inhabitants of the world don’t know any differently then this is just going to mean a shift in the way your players think about acquiring items. If items have always been rare then the world’s mentality should reflect this. The idea of a party walking around and each PC having 10 or more magic items would be absurd. But if this is a sudden change then the only way to acquire new magical items is to find them in a treasure horde or take them from someone else. Both situations present interesting challenges and both could make for a very interesting long-term campaign.

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Categories
DM Resources Player Resources

Nationality and Character Backgrounds

Most players select a background for their PC during the character creation process. In many cases it’s done for purely mechanical benefits. Being from this location may give you a resistance to fire, while this one may give you a bonus to your initiative. In all cases it also gives you access to a new skill or a bonus to one specific skill. When it comes to power gaming, no one overlooks a background benefits.

The background options that I see taken most often are the geographic backgrounds from the Forgotten Realms. Usually the player doesn’t really care that his PC is from Waterdeep, Akanul or Cormyr, they just want to additional benefit that being from those places provides. And that’s fine. It’s not the ideal reason to choose a background but it’s well within the rules. Any character can have any background.

This season during D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave the adventure strongly encourages the DM to insist that the PCs choose one of the three backgrounds provided. This helps give the players a good in-game reason as to why such a rag-tag and mismatched adventuring party would work together. Being from one of the three areas directly impacted by the happenings in the adventure gives PCs a strong motive for accepting the mission.

While at first a few of the players in my group resented being told they had to choose one of only three options (none of which they felt provided particularly appealing benefits) after only two sessions these same players really started working their background into the way the characters behaved. Without any prompting from me, the players instilled within their characters a sense of national pride.

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Categories
DM Resources

Gaming in Silence

Playing D&D is a social experience. It’s often as much about getting together with your friends as it is about killing monsters. But I’ve noticed that we spend a lot of time talking about stuff that isn’t even related to the game. This has really become a big problem in public-play games at my FLGS. I’ve noticed that over the past few sessions of D&D Encounters I’ve had to ask people (with alarming frequency) to stop talking when it’s not their turn and pay attention to what the other players are doing, and that got me thinking: what if you weren’t allowed to talk during an encounter or an entire gaming session? How would things change?

To begin this kind of gaming experiment, the DM must make it clear to the players right from the outset that anything they say, anything at all, even if it’s something that their characters obviously wouldn’t say, is going to count as an utterance by their PC. Absolutely everything the player says his character says. No exceptions. Silence is going to be the key to success. Excessive noise will either force the PCs to fight something they know they have no chance of defeating (hence all the sneaking around) or it will lead to a final confrontation that is a lot more difficult because the PCs kept talking. In either scenario, the stakes should be incredibly high.

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Categories
DM Resources Editorial

Keep PCs Grounded – A Look at Flying in D&D

The Pixies are invading D&D! With the release of Heroes of the Feywild it seems like everyone wants to play a Pixie. I don’t think that everyone finds the concept of being a Pixie all that appealing, rather I think a lot of players believe that being able to fly gives them a huge advantage over all other PCs races. And you know what, they could be right. However, after seeing a bunch of Pixies in action during numerous gaming sessions I feel the need to review some of the rules about flying. After all, until now flying was limited to monsters (with very few exceptions). This meant that players didn’t need to worry about how flying worked. But now that everyone and his mother are playing flying PCs it’s time to review the rules and clear up a few of the misconceptions abut flying in D&D.

I began by looking in the glossary at the back of my Monster Manuals. Upon reading the flying rules I realized that there are a few very important details that we’d overlooked. A quick double-check of the DMG confirmed it. At least I thought it confirmed it – until I looked up flying in the Rules Compendium. That’s when things really got confusing.

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Categories
D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave (Week 2)

I don’t know what it is about the week 2 encounter but for the second season in a row it’s been exceptionally difficult and nearly resulted in TPKs across the board. Last season the PCs faced a White Dragon in week 2, this time around it was two elite monsters that hit hard. This was easily one of the toughest encounters I’ve ever run for D&D Encounters. It didn’t result in a TPK at my tables but it easily could have. Instead we have more than half the PCs down to two or fewer healing surges.

As I’ve mentioned before I run two different D&D Encounters sessions most weeks at two different FLGS in my community. In some cases the adventures play out pretty much the same way. In cases where they don’t I’m going to try and summarize the highlights of each to show how different the same encounter can be with different groups. I’ll also explain any change I might have made after running it once before.

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