Author: Ameron (Derek Myers)

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Against the Cult of Chaos – Preview

against-the-cult-of-chaos-coverAfter a short break in January the D&D Encounters public-play program returns with season 12, Against the Cult of Chaos on February 6.

This season the format returns to the familiar one encounter each week. All character begin at level 1 and by the time they’ve completed the adventure they will reach level 3. Characters get a short rest at the end of each week and an extended rest at set times throughout the adventure. It’s a regular 4e adventure, there aren’t any strange modifications to the rules. However, Wizards of the Coast is offering the opportunity to convert this 4e adventure into a D&D Next play test.

During the week 0 character creation session, everyone involved with D&D Encounters at your FLGS (players and DMs) should discus whether they want to return to regular 4e rules this season or if they’d prefer to try out the new D&D Next rules. Groups that decide to play test need to sign the NDA. It is possible to run some tables as 4e and some as D&D Next but once you pick one or the other you’re expected to stick with it for the season.

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DM Resources

Passing Notes at the Gaming Table

passing-notesOne thing that has always been challenging for D&D players is to have their character do something that none of the other players know about. This might be something harmless like visiting an NPC from the PC’s past, or it might be something devious like stealing from another character in the party. Passing notes has always been the way that one player let the DM (or other players) know that their character wanted to do something that the rest of the party should not be aware of.

The problem with this approach to secret communication is that as soon as one player does it the rest of the players get suspicious. They have their characters do things that they shouldn’t have any reason to do. Things like checking all their pockets to ensure nothing’s been stolen, or keeping an extra close eye on the note passer’s character during the night watch.

The reason we find it necessary to pass notes is that a lot of players (most players in my experience) can’t separate player knowledge from PC knowledge. If they hear one player say “My Rogue picks the Fighter’s pocket and takes the jewel,” the player running the Fighter will often get upset with the players running the Rogue, even though his PC has no idea anything inappropriate has happened. Because the player knows out of game what’s happened he’ll often change the way his PC acts as if the character knew this detail.

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DM Resources

DMs Are the Worst Players

They say that doctors make the worst patients; well I truly believe that DMs make the worst players. After DMing for long stretches DMs get used to having something to do all the time. They’re used to tracking initiative, running all the monsters, adjudicating rule disputes, playing the NPCs, and basically controlling the world. But when they give up the DM’s seat and go back to being one of the players all they have to worry about is running one character. For some DMs it can be a difficult transition. And for the new DMs it can spell disaster.

This is not to say that all DMs are bad players. Some DMs make the transition gracefully. This is especially true with a close-knit group where everyone takes a turn behind the screen. It’s the DMs who run the show for extended periods of time, especially during public-play or games with newer players that the transition from DM to player causes problems.

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DM Resources

9 Ways to Improve 4e D&D

For the past few months my regular gaming group took a break from D&D. Now we’re gearing up to return to 4e D&D. However, some of my players are again talking about why they wanted to take a beak in the first place. They were getting bored. They felt that 4e D&D was too much of the same week in and week out.

One of the objectives of this blog has always been to talk about ways to improve your gaming experience. We share a lot of ideas and insights about gaming in general with an obvious focus on 4e D&D. Personally I like 4e the way it is, but I do recognize that there are opportunities for improvement. In fact I encourage creativity if the players think a change will make any part of the game more fun, or more exciting.

With this in mind I opened the floor to new ideas. I asked my gaming group what we could do differently to win back the players who were bored. They came up with a lot of great suggestions. Some of these we’d tried before with varying levels of success, others were things they’d read on the Wizards’ forums that we thought sounded fun. In the end we came up with a list of 9 things that we felt would jump-start our 4e D&D games.

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Editorial

2,000,000 Page Views

Although Christmas was last week, I received a wonderful present this morning. When I logged into the blog I saw that Dungeon’s Master hit 2 million page views. It took us 31 months to reach our first million page views; it took only 17 more to reach our second million.

We’re approaching our fourth anniversary on February 1, and I honestly never thought that we’d ever have this kind of readership. You hope that people will find your website, read what you have to say, and enjoy it enough to come back again to see what you have to say next. If you’re really lucky they tell their friends and your readership continues to grow. We’ve been very fortunate because this is exactly what’s happened.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: December 2012

December was a month for reflection here at Dungeon’s Master. The only brand new articles we posted were the weekly D&D Encounters reports and the season 11 report card. However, for the last two weeks of the month we ran our 2012 greatest hits.

Even though I haven’t been playing as much D&D over the past couple of months as I used to, going through our archives and revisiting some of the articles we published this past year really served as a good way to get recharged. I remembered a lot of the great games that inspired me to write so many of the articles. Reading the comments our readers left reminded me how much we’ve contributed to the gaming community and hopefully how much we’ve helped along the way.

I’d like to thank everyone who visited Dungeon’s Master in December. For newer readers I hope that you enjoyed a look back at our greatest hits from 2012. I think they provided a good cross-section of the kinds of things we strive to accomplish with this blog. We welcome your comments and feedback as well as any ideas you might have for future articles.

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DM Resources

Greatest Hits 2012: Don’t Fight to the Death

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

When PCs get hurt in combat you have two options for staying alive: heal or flee. Monsters don’t usually have the option to heal. They can’t use their second wind like PCs and very few monsters have powers or magic items that will allow them to heal. So when a monster is bloodied and approaching 0 hit points what do you think it’s going to do? Logically the answer should be flee, but if you’re a hardcore gamer you expect it to fight until it’s dead-dead.

This has always been one of those aspects of D&D that seems to make sense initially but makes less sense the longer you play. After all, if the objective of a combat encounter is to kill the monster why would the DM have it try to run away? How can I win if I don’t kill it? But as you play more D&D you start to realize that it doesn’t make sense that every single monster, especially those with high intelligence, would fight to the death.

I guess what it really comes down to is the kind of game you and your DM want to play. If you see combat as a zero sum game where the victors are the only ones left standing than keep fighting every monster until it’s down for good. But if you see victory as one side overpowering the other it doesn’t have to mean all of the other side is completely destroyed. Leaving opponents alive or letting them flee can create new problems down the road but it will add a certain amount of realism that is missing from a lot of games.

From January 4, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Don’t Fight to the Death.

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DM Resources

Greatest Hits 2012: Collaborative Dungeon Design

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2012. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Two heads are better than one. Yet in D&D the DM almost always flies solo. It’s rare that the DM will ask any of the players for help, especially when it comes to designing encounters. After all, the DM doesn’t want one player knowing where the traps are or what kind of monsters that will attack the party around the next corner. So most DMs go it alone.

This can lead to problems when you have one DM doing all the work for extended periods of time. Most DMs have a certain style. They might use or avoid using some monsters. They might throw in lots of minions. They might overuse traps. The point is that the group may be bored or even sick of having the same DM give them the same things over and over again. My group rotates the DM to help avoid these problems but I know this is not the case for all groups. If you’re stuck with the same DM and you’re not wild about his DMing style what can you do? Insist the DM get help from the rest of the group.

In most groups each participant brings a different specialty to the table. For example in my group we have one player who loves to create new monsters. We’ve learned to draw on this skill when we need something unique (usually a big boss monster). Sure that player will know the monster’s vulnerability or lowest defense, but he’s good at not letting that affect his play. Another player is great at designing traps, so again the DMs will tap him for help to really make the next dungeon deadly.

The point is that DMs shouldn’t feel that they need to do all the heavy lifting by themselves. You’ve got a table full of gaming geeks that are all creative. Let them add their 2 cents to the design of an encounter. You don’t have to use what they provide exactly as they’ve provided it, but you should be open to the wealth of knowledge your gaming group can offer even when they’re just the players.

September 25, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Collaborative Dungeon Design.

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DM Resources

Greatest Hits 2012: Minions: Full Disclosure

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2012. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

We’ve written a lot about minions here at Dungeon’s Master. We like minions… a lot. As DMs, as players, and as bloggers, we have an unhealthy obsession with minions. There’s just something to be said for monsters that fall with a single hit.

As a player when I see that the party is outnumbered 2:1 I know we’ve got a tough fight in front of us. When the combat ends and the party stands victorious it feels good. We did our job as heroes and defeated the bad guys. So what that some of them were minions, they were all out to kill us. And therein lays the heart of this article.

A monster is a monster and it has the power and opportunity to kill the PCs if they do nothing. The fact that it’s got only 1 hit point shouldn’t matter. If you see an Orc with a sword running at you do you really care if he has 1 hit point or 100? No. You get out of the way or try to stop him before he can reach you. If a single arrow drops him, great; if it takes seven arrows that’s less great.

The point is that players need to try and put themselves into their characters’ shoes more often. Stop looking at the map and minis as a player and look at it as a character. Don’t assume that some monsters (minions) are less important or less threatening than other monsters. As long as the monsters are standing consider them a threat and don’t let up until every one of them, minion or otherwise, is down.

DMs try using some of the tips we mention in the article below to disguise your minions and keep the players for easily distinguishing them from the more powerful monsters. When the players don’t know which monsters are minions they treat them all equally and consider them all deadly. This mentality makes combat encounters a lot more interesting and enjoyable for everyone.

From June 26, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Minions: Full Disclosure.

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Editorial Humour

Greatest Hits 2012: What Your Weapon Says About Your Character

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2012. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Considering how common laughter is at the gaming table I’ve found that writing humourous articles is really difficult. Instead of going for outright funny ha-ha, I’ve had a lot more success writing observational pieces that demonstrate wit and focus on shared experiences most gamers will relate to and chuckle. In that vein I put together this article on the correlation between weapons and character personalities.

This is clearly a light-hearted piece that may seem a bit silly and simplistic at first glance. However, I’ll bet that by the time you get to the end you’ll agree with many of my observations and see the personality of some of your own PCs accurately paired to their weapon of choice. Think about this the next time you equip a character.

In the original article I asked our readers to add to my list of weapons. Here are some of their contributions. If you’ve got another one please add it to the comments below.

  • Rapier – You have a piercing wit as well as the sword. You also have a flair for the dramatic. (Al)
  • Flail – You enjoy making a mess of things, twisting people’s words or just tripping them up. (Eamon)
  • Tome – You possess a lot of power, but that power is a heavy burden. You have difficulty relating to others because you spend so much of your time inwardly focused. (dmscorpio)
  • Sling – You’re a child at heart, though maybe not so innocent. You try to get your way, and complain or lash out if you don’t. (Zeroarmada)

From March 21, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: What Your Weapon Says About Your Character.

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