Month in Review: August 2012

Here at Dungeon’s Master August was all about public play, community and conventions. It was a really busy month for gamer, as many of us made the annual pilgrimage to Indianapolis to game our brains out. In preparation for the con, we re-ran a few relevant articles from our archives to get you stoked. Happening simultaneously in August was the finale of D&D Encounters season 9 and the launch of season 10. Throw in the RPG Blog Carnival and you’ve got a pretty good picture of August at Dungeon’s Master. If you missed any of the coverage this is a great time to get caught up.

Every month I extend a huge thank you to our readers. It was extremely rewarding to actually meet a lot you at GenCon and say thanks in person for visiting Dungeon’s Master. One of our readers actually refereed to me as a celebrity, which I must admit went straight to my head. Our goal has always been to provide articles that people enjoy reading and that help make their game better, any name recognition I’ve earned along the way is just a nice fringe benefit.

Thanks to everyone who visited Dungeon’s Master in August. Please keep leaving your thoughts and feedback in the comments. If you have questions for us, or are interested in writing as a guest author, please email me directly or send me a Tweet.

Highlights

RPG Blog Carnical

The topic for the August RPG Blog Carnival is “What’s in *your* backpack?” In the Dungeon’s Master contribution we suggest you backpack include A Healthy Dose of Reality.

GenCon

It’s fair to say that in August we had GenCon fever. In the weeks leading up to “The best four days in gaming” we ran a series of articles to get you ready for the con.

• In Anticipation of GenCon: 7 Appalling Things I Witnessed at the Gaming Table
• In Anticipation of GenCon: 10 Things I Learned at Worldwide D&D Game Day
• In Anticipation of GenCon: Convention Tips 6 for Players, 6 for DMs
• In Anticipation of GenCon: Road Trip to GenCon Skill Challenge
• In Anticipation of GenCon: 8 Things I Learned at D&D Encounters

Following what was (for me anyway) the best GenCon ever, I wrote two articles sharing some of my highlights from this year’s Con.

• GenCon 2012: Fourthcore Team Deathmatch Champions
• GenCon 2012: The Year I Won D&D

D&D Encounters

August saw the thrilling conclusion to season 9, Web of the Spider Queen as the party rescued Khara Sulwood, found and mended the Pendant of Ashaba, and defeated Valan Jaelre.

• D&D Encounters: Web of the Spider Queen (Week 11)
• D&D Encounters: Web of the Spider Queen (Week 12)
• D&D Encounters: Web of the Spider Queen (Week 13)
• D&D Encounters: Web of the Spider Queen – Report Card

D&D Encounters Season 10, Council of Spiders put the PCs on the side of the Drow. Wizard of the Coast was kind enough to even provide six new Drow pre-gens.

• D&D Encounters: Council of Spiders – Pre-Generated Characters
• D&D Encounters: Council of Spiders – Preview
• D&D Encounters: Council of Spiders (Week 1)

A Look Ahead

September is going to be a big month for Dungeon’s Master and me personally. An article and adventure I wrote for Dungeon magazine are being published in this month’s issue (Dungeon 206). After the articles go live I’ll be publishing a retrospective in which I share the creative process behind these articles and the details of how I got published.

In the month ahead we’ve also got new articles on preparing Epic encounters and the importance of Epic terrain, a look at D&D Camp 2012, new adventure hooks, a D&D Encounters map archive, and of course ongoing coverage of D&D Encounters: Council of Spiders.

Be sure to visit Dungeon’s Master throughout September for your dose of new D&D material.

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