Author: Ameron (Derek Myers)

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Dark Sun Editorial

D&D Encounters Dark Sun (Week 14)

With only two weeks left the excitement really started building. The PCs left the lush mountain foliage where the feywild crept into Athas and returned to the harsh desert environment more familiar to the PCs. With the sun setting on the horizon and long shadows reaching out towards the PC, they move hastily towards Tyr. As the party weaved in and out of the rocky outcroppings they heard a blood-curdling shriek followed by several others as if in response. The Wastewalkers most powerful allies were upon the PCs.

Our numbers continue dwindling. We were down to five this week. Again, I stepped up as the DM and ran the four adventurers through the penultimate encounter. The only pre-generated character in the party this week was Barcan. He was joined by three familiar faces, the Half-Orc archer Ranger, the Human Warlord (archer build) and the Minotaur Seeker. No defender and no strong melee characters. This was going to make for an interesting encounter.

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Dark Sun Editorial

D&D Encounters Dark Sun (Week 13)

This week I was back behind the DM’s screen. We had a full party of six, three players using the pre-generated characters – Barcan, Phye and Castri – while the other three players brought their own PCs – the familiar archer Ranger (who died last week), the Human Warlord and a new Thri-kreen Fighter.

D&D Encounters is doing exactly what it was intended to do, bring in new players. Every week for the past four weeks we’ve had at least one player join D&D Encounters for the first time. Some of these players are 4e veterans who finally came out to see what all the fuss is about. Others are brand new to the hobby. Either way, it’s great to see some new faces coming out to play on Wednesday nights. Now if only we could keep the rest of the participants coming back. Having the new players is great, but we’re loosing members of our core group just as quickly. Our numbers have been holding between seven and nine since the beginning of chapter 2. I suspect that things will pick up again when the summer ends and we move on to Season 3.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: August 2010

August was a big month for D&D and for D&D fans. Most notably, GenCon gave gamers from around the world an opportunity to get together and play D&D. Wizards of the Coast made numerous announcements about upcoming D&D releases at GenCon during their seminars, many of which we wrote about. In August we returned our attention to skill challenges, a topic we’ve always felt strongly about. And of course, we had another report from D&D camp. This time the kids tackled the Tomb of Horrors. August was a busy month for gaming and if you missed any of our articles this is your chance to get caught up.

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Book Reviews

Open Game Table 2

Last week I received my copy of Open Game Table 2 in the mail. For those of you not familiar with this publication it’s a collection of great articles from around the blogsphere that highlight the best in gaming. There is a lot of D&D stuff in here but it’s not exclusive to D&D.

From Blog to Book

Creating OGT2 was a collaborative and interactive process. The articles selected for inclusion in OGT2 were done so after after a long and arduous vetting process. Anyone and everyone was invited to submit the URL of their favourite online gaming article for consideration in the OGT2. There were 376 submissions.

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Dark Sun Editorial

D&D Encounters Dark Sun (Week 12)

Last week ended with the PCs fleeing from the cannibalistic Halfings. Depending on how you fared they were either in hot pursuit or would be as soon as they discovered that the PCs killed all of the guards during the escape. So we literally hit the ground running this week. The DM set the stage and explained that as we fled through the jungle others who had also escaped or avoided capture were hiding in the underbrush. Realizing that there is strength in numbers, we decided to work together for survival.

We made brief introductions before moving on. This let the players introduce their characters. We had seven players this week. Our only new player brought a Human Bard. One player traded in Shakirr for his own Warlord (a Human I think). The Human Ranger (archer) and the Minotaur Seeker (me) returned for another week. The remaining three players used the familiar pre-gens: Castri, Barcan and Yuka.

The DM decided that rather than just jumping into the next combat we should role-play the trek through the jungle while we tried to avoid the pursuing Halflings and at the same time tried to find the best way through the foliage. The ensuing skill challenge was a lot of fun. Everyone tried to make use of different skills even though the DM said he didn’t mind if we repeated actions.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Adventure Hooks: Welcome to the Sun & Moon Tavern (Part 2)

We return to the Sun & Moon Tavern with 16 more adventure hooks. The tavern has been a long-standing staple in D&D. Adventurers head to the local tavern as soon as they return from their time abroad. They regale the locals with tales of their exploits and enjoy a few well deserved pints. Experienced heroes develop a reputation for hanging out at the local tavern, which makes it easy for prospective employers to find and hire them. Aspiring heroes also mull about taverns hoping to find work as a professional adventurer. But the tavern can be so much more than a place to recruit PCs.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Adventure Hooks: Welcome to the Sun & Moon Tavern (Part 1)

If you’re sitting in a tavern and a mysterious Wizard with grey robes and a pointy hat approaches and starts talking about a job offer don’t accept. You should ignore him and curse your DM. This is one of the most boring and overused ways to begin an adventure. Unless your DM is running his very first game, this should never be an acceptable adventure hook. In D&D, a tavern is a social place full of activity and interesting characters. Relying on this kind of boring stereotype is completely unacceptable.

While rummaging through an old stack of papers I stumbled across notes from an old campaign. As I looked them over a series of adventure hooks caught my attention. The notes were in my printing but I had no memory of writing them (probably because they were at least 15 years old). Although the ideas were from a previous edition of D&D many of the adventuring hooks still held a lot of promise. I realized that with just a little bit of editing these hooks would work in 4e D&D (and make a great blog post). After all, the last Adventuring Hooks article we ran was called The Town Meeting and that was over a year ago.

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Dark Sun Editorial

D&D Encounters Dark Sun (Week 11)

As Fury of the Wastewalker chapter 3 began the party was captured by savage Halflings. Among the captives were some new faces as players were encouraged to create their own PCs. How will these new adventurers work with the pre-generated characters? Let’s find out.

Our numbers held steady at nine. Not enough players to run two tables but more than enough for a normally balanced encounter. For the second week in a row, our DM agreed to run the encounter with a party of eight.

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Editorial Player Resources

The 2010 D&D Open Championship

Last weekend at GenCon a new champion was crowned at the D&D Open Championship. Regretfully it was not us. We didn’t even make it to the finals, which was sorely disappointing. However, we still had a lot of fun playing and a lot of fun preparing for the competition. We like to think of this as a learning experience and want to share our findings with you.

This year’s Championship was an adventure called A Hole in the World. Five level 25 pre-generated PCs, were provided. Each team had to complete five encounters, each encounter with a 45-minute time limit. If you didn’t complete an encounter in 45 minutes you were eliminated. If the party decided to take an extended rest you were eliminated. It was designed to challenge the best and most experienced D&D players and it certainly did just that.

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Dark Sun Editorial

D&D Encounters Dark Sun (Week 10)

GenCon is over and now it’s time to get back to our regularly scheduled D&D game. After a two week absence I was back at D&D Encounters on Wednesday night. With our numbers dwindling week after week I wasn’t sure if we’d need more than one table. While I was on the road to Indianapolis last week only six people managed to make it out for D&D Encounters Dark Sun week 9. I was ready to DM this week, but happy to jump into the role of player if there was only one table.

We waited an extra 15 minutes before starting, but in the end we had only nine people – not quite enough for two tables. The other DM decided to run a super encounter with an expanded party. So we got things in order and prepared to play with eight players. All of the pre-gens were represented as well as Yuka 2 and Phye 2 (which I played).

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