Author: Ameron (Derek Myers)

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Player Resources

Get a Real Job

What’s your PC’s profession? I don’t mean what’s his class; I want to know what your PC does for a living. Have you even given any thought to this question before I just brought it up? Probably not. They’re looking to hit it rich by plundering lost dungeon hordes or by slaying monsters and claiming their loot. In short, PCs don’t have real jobs.

Very few classes are in and of themselves professions. I assume you could argue that Clerics and other divine classes generally work for a church, but I don’t think your PC should show up and demand a pay cheque for spreading the good word.

When D&D campaigns begin they usually start after the PCs have chosen to “go adventuring.” But have you ever wondered what all the adventurers did before they threw caution to the wind and sought out this new calling? Has that adventurer always wanted to be an dungeon-delving Sorcerer or an undead-battling Paladin all his life?

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Month in Review

Month in Review: October 2009

October saw some significant changes throughout the RPG blogging community with the announcement that the guys currently running the RPG Bloggers Network are stepping down and handing over the reigns to someone else. The Dungeon’s Master team followed the posts and emails that ensued and decided to see where the dust settles. Until then, we’re going to just keep on doing what we do best, post great articles about 4e D&D.

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Humour Player Resources

Survive a Zombie Attack by Using the Zombie Survival Flowchart

Are you prepared for a zombie attack? Would you be one of the poor schlubs who gets eaten in the first hours of the zombie apocalypse or are you one of those fanatics who is ready for this unlikely, worst-case-scenario? If you’re anything like the team at Dungeon’s Master then you’re probably not going to survive very long if zombies ever rise up and attack humanity.

In case of a zombie attack, be it in your next D&D adventure or in real life, we want you to survive. To ensure that the human race stands strong when the undead rise, we’ve created a flowchart outlining what you can do to survive a zombie attack. Things will no doubt be chaotic when the zombies come for you, so the flow chart only covers the absolute essentials. Good luck!

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Player Resources Skill Challenges

Skill Focus: Religion

The most common use for knowledge skills is to identify monsters and perform rituals. The knowledge skills tend to take a back seat to social and physical skills during most skill challenges. The knowledge skills are so tightly focused that most players assume these skills have a limited scope. But this doesn’t mean that they have limited uses. It’s up to players to be imaginative and creative.

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DM Resources Editorial

Using Fear: Scare the Player, Not the Character

How do you scare a PC? It’s not as simple as you think. With any role-playing situation, the emotions of the PC need to be separated from the emotions of the player running the PC. So just because something scares Delian the Paladin doesn’t mean it’s going to scare me the player. It’s up to me to role-play my PC’s actions and emotions accordingly. The more I’m willing to get into character the more effective this kind of situation will be.

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Editorial

Changes are Coming to the RPG Bloggers Network, Update Your Blogroll

Following up on Wimwick’s thoughts On the RPG Bloggers Network from this morning, I wanted to add a few additional things to the discussion. To the guys behind the scenes, thank you. Your hard work did not go unnoticed. The RPG Bloggers Network has been very good to Dungeon’s Master, and we’d like to think that we’ve returned the favour by driving readers back to the Network. I credit our involvement in the Network as one of the big keys to our early success.

The RPG blogging community is a fantastic fraternity of enthusiastic gamers who feel so passionately about RPGs that they use their free time to write article, create resources, and share their ideas and experiences with other gamers. We may not all see eye-to-eye on every topic, but debates that stem from these disagreement often give all of us a better understanding of a given situation.

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Player Resources Skill Challenges

Skill Focus: Diplomacy

After Perception, Diplomacy seems to be the skill used most often in my games. Any time your PC finds himself in a social situation you know that you’re going to end up making a Diplomacy check. But Diplomacy is more that just talking the talk. It’s usually about knowing what to say and how to say it. Your PC’s body language can also have as much of an impact as the words coming out of his mouth.

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DM Resources Player Resources

D&D Party of One: Solo Adventuring (Part 3)

As we continue our look at solo adventuring we shift our focus from tips for DMs to tips for players. No matter how many hours of D&D you’ve played, taking on a solo adventure for the first time is a real eye-opener. Most players find it challenging yet highly rewarding. For players new to the game who may not have tried this approach to D&D, we’ve provided a few tips that should prove useful. We encourage DMs to check out D&D Party of One (Part 1) and D&D Party of One (Part 2) for the flip side of this series.

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DM Resources Editorial

Benefits of Random Treasure

The way DMs determine what’s in a treasure horde has vastly improved since the advent of 4e D&D. In previous editions the DM would open up a random treasure table, roll some dice and the PCs would get a mish-mash of random loot. The power level of the items in question weren’t taken into consideration – nothing was. It was totally random. Without a good DM to apply some common sense and adjust random treasure accordingly, things often got out of control in a hurry.

Enter 4e D&D. The DM no longer assigns magic treasure randomly. Random treasure is dead. In its place are treasure bundles. A balanced system in which the party loot is doled out in carefully divided portions. The power level of each item determines whether or not it’s suitable treasure for these PCs at this particular level. No more rolling dice and no more unexpected elements. The inventory of every treasure horde is now chosen by the DM one item at a time. But is this a good thing?

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Humour Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge: Battle for the Remote

How often do you think of real-life situations in game terms? A recent “discussion” in my household inspired me to put together this skill challenge. It’s played from the male point of view. I’ve discovered that in real life whenever my wife needs to make a skill check she uses her at-will, wife paragon path ability to re-roll checks until she gets a result that she feels is favourable.

Background

You’ve worked hard all week and now all you want to do is kick back and enjoy the game. But your significant other has other plans. Her favourite show is on at the same time and she plans to watch it on the flatscreen TV. If you haveany chance of watching the game you’d better act quickly and whatever you do, don’t give up the remote.

Setup

You want to watch sports; she wants to watch something else (not sports). You’re already on the couch with the remote in hand. The game is already on and the kick-off, first pitch, tip-off or puck drop is happening in the next few minutes.

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