Author: Ameron (Derek Myers)

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DM Resources Player Resources

Make Magical Item Identification Harder

In its attempt to simplify things and keep the game and the players focused on the important details, identifying magical items in 4e is something any PC can do during a short rest. I think it’s time for this to change. This is something that they had right in previous editions of D&D.

In this week’s Legends & Lore column Magic and Mystery, Monte Cook talked about the wonder of magical items. He focused mainly on the idea of magic being too commonplace in most campaigns, but he also brushed on the idea that some magical items should have hidden properties that are only revealed when certain conditions are met. This really got me thinking about the whole mechanic of magic item identification.

Based on the current rules all a PC has to do to identity an item is spend time handling and examine it during a short rest. After the five minutes are up they know that the sword is a +2 Frost Weapon or that the boots are Goblin Stompers. They know the exact nature and properties of the item. I realize that this makes things simpler but it also makes things boring.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Lost Crown of Neverwinter (Week 9)

The party rested briefly after their battle with the crocodile and the rats from last week. They spotted foot prints and realized that the Dead Rats hideout must be close. The foot prints led deeper into the sewer, and as they rounded the next bend they saw light. As they crept up to the next turn they saw a lowered portcullis and header the sound of voices. They’d found the Dead Rats hideout.

We had a good turn out this week, 12 people in total. That gave us enough for two solid tables. The party at my table consisted of a Human Wizard, Eladrin Cleric (Valenae pre-gen), and three Tieflings, a Bard, Battlemind and Warlock.

Taking a few steps back from the portcullis the party quietly decided on how to proceed. The Battlemind noticed that the portcullis, although rusted and old, had a brand new lock securing it. Any attempt to open the gate would be a lot more difficult if the lock wasn’t dealt with first. And even if the lock was bypassed opening the gate would surely create a lot of noise.

With some not so subtle hints, I reminded the party why they were here in the first place: they sought information. Killing everything would make it harder to question them about the Lost Heir or the Sons of Alagondar. Realizing that diplomacy might be their best approach, the Bard and Warlock decided to approach the gate and see if the Dead Rats were willing to talk.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

7 Adventure Hooks for Making the Loot Part of the Plot: RPG Blog Carnival

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival hosted by Campaign Mastery is “Making the Loot Part of the Plot.” As they describe in their overview article, this topic can be applied broadly to a lot of games in a lot of ways.

It’s been my experience that most D&D games revolve around items and loot. They may not always be at the heart of the adventure, but they are usually a significant part of the plot. If you’re looking for a way to kick-start your next campaign may we suggest you use one of the adventure hooks provided below. All of them involve making the loot part of the plot in one way or anther.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: September 2011

September was a great months at Dungeon’s Master. We started the month by hitting the very significant milestone of 1,000,000 Page Views. During September we welcomed two new contributors, we brought you weekly write-ups of D&D Encounters and shared our first attempt at Lair Assault: Forge of the Dawn Titan, and we also shared 100 Beta codes to the new Facebook game Heroes of Neverwinter. The month in review is your chance to get caught up if you missed any of the articles we ran in September.

We want to thank all the readers who visit Dungeon’s Master day after day and month after month. It’s because of your continued support and your comments that our website continues to flourish. As always, we welcome your feedback and comments so keep them coming. You can always email Wimwick or me if you have one-off questions or ideas for articles.

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Editorial

Lair Assault – The New Gold Standard for D&D Adventures

During the past week I had the pleasure of experiencing Lair Assault: Forge of the Dawn Titan as both a player and DM. Not only did this adventure live up to the incredibly high expectations I created in my mind, but it exceeded them completely. In my opinion this is one of the best, most entertaining D&D adventures I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing or running. This is the standard by which I’m going to compare all future adventures from Wizards of the Coast. They’ve almost done themselves a disservice by setting the bar so incredibly high. Topping this is going to be tough.

Before continuing I want to assure those of you who haven’t yet played Lair Assault that there won’t be any spoilers herein. I don’t think the details and observations I present will shock anyone or ruin their experience the first time thorough. My intent is not to provide a play-by-play of what happened. If you’re interested in that, check out the actual play podcast below. (Warning, this podcast reveals a lot of Lair Assault’s secrets). Today I’m going to share my overall thoughts on the adventure now that I’ve actually had a chance to play it.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters – Only On Wednesday

I was contacted by Wizards and asked to clarify and correct some details I recently posted in my D&D Encounters articles and the follow-up comments; specifically details about playing on nights other than Wednesday. I was asked to post a correction and clear up any confusion my comments might have caused.

During the D&D Public Play seminar held at GenCon this summer there was some discussion about playing D&D Encounters on nights other than Wednesdays. I wrote in my articles that although D&D Encounters happen in most locations on Wednesday, Wizards understand that this will not always be the case for every store. Where I was mistaken was in saying that Wizards was ok if your FLGS runs D&D Encounters on a different night. Apparently I misunderstood the intent of what was said.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Lost Crown of Neverwinter (Week 8.)

We began this week’s encounter after the party completed their short rest in the boathouse. The PCs easily found the trapdoor under a dirty old rug in the centre of the room. When the party was fully recovered from the previous encounter they ventured down into the sewer pipe.

When I read this chapter I realized that the encounters for weeks 7 and 8 were both very straight forward and wouldn’t take very long to complete. Forearmed with this knowledge we ran back-to-back encounter last week which certainly provided added continuity.

I was unable to play in my Monday night game so we’re back to following the exploits of the Wednesday night group at Dueling Grounds in Toronto. The party was made up of a Deva Wizard (Necromancer), Halfling Bard, Halfling Rogue, Eladrin Ranger (archer), and Genasi (Watersoul) Swordmage. Some players had extensive D&D experiences while others were fairly new to the game. This kind of mixed experience level always makes for interesting encounters.

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DM Resources Editorial

Traps: Challenge the Players and the Characters

Sometimes it’s difficult to separate what the player knows from what the character knows. The reverse can also be true, in a manner of speaking. There are going to be times when the character would have certain knowledge or information that the player would never ever know themselves. This is just part of how the game works. You have to accept it if you’re going to play RPGs.

When it comes to combat there’s rarely any concern between the separation of player and character knowledge. Combat has clearly defined mechanics that involve a lot of dice. It doesn’t matter that I’m not proficient with a great sword, if my PC has the appropriate proficiency then the mechanics account for that and I keep on rolling my dice.

Where this becomes more troublesome is outside of combat. During the non-combat parts of role-playing games players have to be more mindful of separating what they can do from what their character can do. This situation can be troublesome when playing characters with exceptionally high ability scores or playing characters with exceptionally low ability scores.

During the past couple of weeks I’ve come face to face with this conundrum. I’ve been working on some articles about traps and puzzles for Dungeon’s Master with Dungeonmaster Johnny, one of our new contributors. He’s come up with some fantastic ideas. However many of his puzzles challenge the players and not the characters. I personally enjoy a good brain teaser, but I don’t want to spend an hour of real-time while the real-life me tries to figure out how to escape from a trapped room. I’d prefer to have a way to solve a puzzle that involves at least some mechanics that relate to my PC’s numbers.

This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with challenging the players. It all depends on what kind of game you enjoy. Both approaches have merit and both have drawbacks, as we’ll discus below.

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Player Resources

Say What? – Languages in D&D

What languages does your character know? How about the other PCs in your party, any idea what languages they know? More importantly do you even care? During character creation everyone always pays close attention to class, race, ability scores, feats and powers. Little thought is usually put into choosing languages. By dismissing language as an insignificant part of the character creation process you may be overlooking a little detail that could provide you and the party with advantages you hadn’t considered.

In order to make things simple it’s assumed that all PCs are fluent in Common (the human language). Other non-human races are usually fluent in the language associated with their exotic heritage. Depending on the race, class and background you choose for your PC you might even be trained in a few additional languages right from level 1. However, few players that I’ve gamed with give much thought to this important choice.

So what should you consider when choosing your PC’s languages? I know from my own experience I usually select the language spoken by the monsters I suspect we’ll encounter or I take the language associated with the races that make up the rest of the party. This way relies more on mechanics and less on character development. For that angle I suppose you should carefully consider the languages that make the most sense with the character’s back story. Regardless of how you make your decision once you’ve selected your PC’s languages it’s time to look at how to put that knowledge to its best use during the game.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Lost Crown of Neverwinter (Week 7)

After a thrilling bar brawl (the second in four sessions) the party took a much needed extended rest upon completing last week’s encounter. However, before we proceeded with this week’s adventure we first needed to resolve some of the outstanding issues that still lingered from week 6.

The problem we faced last week was a lack of information which caused players to struggle with motivation for their PCs. I had to try to answer the repeated question “Why are we doing this?” Based on the fantastic comments left here and on the Wizards forums last week along with details I managed to pick out of the adventure after re-reading it, I think I managed to get the train back on the tracks. (A big thanks to Erik Scott de Bie, author of Lost Crown of Neverwinter, for replying personally to some of the comments left here last week.)

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