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D&D Encounters DM Resources

It’s Here! – Lair Assault: Kill the Wizard

In this Lair Assault you’re are part of a special Drow “murder squad.” Your team must travel to the surface and kill a Wizard. It sounds straight-forward enough but failure will have devastating consequences. The Wizard has created a construct that he plans to mass produce and then set loose throughout the Underdark. These constructs have one purpose: kill all Drow. Your job is to Kill the Wizard, destroy the prototype, and ensure that no one can recreate it. Simple, right?

Lair Assault is part of Wizard of the Coast’s public play program. It’s intended to provide a whole new kind of D&D experience. There is very little role-playing in these adventures (by design). They are extremely combat heavy and reward smart play and clever tactics. It’s a power-gamers dream.

Knowing the kind of players these adventures attract, Wizards has made them exceptionally difficult. They fully expect that some or all of the PCs will die the first time they try any new Lair Assault. In fact they said at the outset that they estimate 80% of all groups will suffer a TPK in their first run-through. With the gauntlet thrown down you have to decide if you’re brave enough (or dumb enough) to accept the challenge and try to Kill the Wizard.

This is the fifth season of Lair Assault and the second that is part of the Rise of the Underdark theme running through all Wizards of the Coast product lines right now. One thing that makes this installment unique is that the players get to play the bad guys in this adventure. Not only that, but as Drow every player at the table should watch his back because you never know if another member of the squad is going to stab you in the back.

The new season of Lair Assault runs from September 1 – November 30. (I realize it already started, but I didn’t get the materials until last week and I’ve needed time to get this report put together.) Below I share some of the high-level details. I’ll try to keep it spoiler-free. Some of my suggestions and observations may seem a bit spoiler-y but most of my points are pretty obvious or fairly common sense things so I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’m certainly not going to give away anything that will give players an unfair advantage.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

5 Adventure Hooks: Happy Birthday

Today is my birthday. Sunday is Wimwick’s birthday. So it seemed appropriate to write an article that was in some way birthday related. The solution: birthday-themed adventure hooks. Each of the hooks provided below are tied to someone’s birthday.

As a DM I find that I’m always trying to come up with a good reason for why something happens at a particular time in the adventure. Tying it to someone’s birthday is as good a reason as any.

I’ve tried tying key events in my campaign to a PC’s birthday but I usually experience two major roadblocks. 1) We don’t track time accurately (or at all) in most games. 2) Very few players ever bother to specify when their PC was born. In the end we just say that a PCs birthday falls when it’s important to the story or whenever the player wants it to happen.

In campaigns where tracking the passage of time (and by default birthdays and other milestones) was important we used to say that every PC you play has your birthday. However, in our group there are five Virgos so all the PCs ended up having their birthday within two weeks of each other. In the end we just let the power of plot drive PCs birthdays and that’s worked pretty well over the years.

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D&D Encounters DM Resources

In Anticipation of GenCon: 8 Things I Learned at D&D Encounters

With only three days to go it’s safe to say that I’m super stoked about GenCon. For many, GenCon will be their first time playing D&D in a public-play event. And for many DMs this will be theri first time running an event outside the comfort of their own basement or living room.  No matter how experienced a DM you think you are, I’ve got news for you, DMing a public-play game for total strangers is very different from running your home game.

With that in mind I’d like to share some tips that I’ve picked up playing D&D Encounters every week at my FLGS. Running one encounter a week at my FLGS may not be exactly the same as running a full adventure at a Con, but I’ll bet that you find yourself facing many of the problems, issues and challenges I’ve faced on a weekly basis. When these things happen (and they will) just keep these eight tips in mind and you’ll be fine. Many of these tips will be especially relevant if you happen to have younger or brand new players at your table. Good luck!

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DM Resources Player Resources Top 10

In Anticipation of GenCon: Convention Tips 6 for Players, 6 for DMs

GenCon is less than two weeks away and we want to do our part to help make your con experience great. We’ve searched through the Dungeon’s Master archives to find articles that provide tips for players and DMs that are specifically related to conventions and public play. Of course these tips are often just as valid in your home games so even if you’re not going to GenCon we think you’ll find these tips applicable. You’ll likely see some trending throughout these articles because some tips are relevant regardless of context. In the end, we hope you find something in one of these articles that you can use to make your game and your con experience better.

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DM Resources

Only Ten – Ameron’s List

“If you could only keep ten of your printed RPG books, which would you pick?”

This is the question Brendan from the gaming blog Untimately asked on Monday. He then proceeded to share his ten. Many of his readers shared their list in the comments section of the original post and I’ve seen more than a few bloggers post their essential ten list around the blogosphere. Today it’s my turn to join in this show and tell exercise and share my list.

Yesterday I looked around my gaming room to try to narrow it down to just ten books. After giving it some consideration I finally narrowed it down to just ten (which was a lot harder than I thought it would be). I’ve actually cheated in a few instances and grouped a few books together as one entry, but the reasons will be apparent as you read through my list.

You’ll notice the absence of any PHB, DMG and MM from my list. This was a deliberate choice. In my opinion some iteration of these books should be on everyone’s list; after all they’re called core books for a reason. I approached this task with the assumption that the core books were a given and these were the next ten I’d choose after those.

Rather than struggle with ranking, I decided instead to list the books alphabetically. I want you to see my list as a collection. Theses all made my list and that’s all that should matter, not which one is more important or useful that the next.

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DM Resources Editorial

The Things We Do Not Talk About in D&D

Warning: This article discusses topics that are for mature readers. The ideas presented herein are intended to encourage a frank and mature discussion about adding darker, seedier topics to games with mature players. These ideas are being presented in the context of an imaginary, fantasy, role-playing game and are in no way intended to encourage, promote or glamourize them.

Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, Slavery. These are not the kind of things you generally think about including in a typical D&D game. After all, in a fantasy world why not preserve the fantasy and keep things idyllic? The only Evil (with a capital “E”) in most D&D campaigns are the monsters and NPCs bent on ruling or destroying the world. These are things the heroes can deal with, often at the end of a sword. Throwing more complicated Evils into a campaign setting, problems like substances abuse and slavery, for example, are not generally the kinds of things that can a) be handled by the PCs alone, or b) resolved in a single adventure. These are “big picture” problems that would just muddy the waters of most D&D campaign settings. Yet they are problems and issues that would certainly be present in most campaign settings. After all, these are problems that almost every society on Earth has faced and still does face in one way or another. So why not add them to your role-playing games and give the players a chance to try to do something about it?

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DM Resources

Minions: Full Disclosure

Is the DM obligated to tell the players that monsters are minions? I never do. Players don’t treat minions like they do other monsters. They don’t see them as threatening. And why should they, after all a minion only has 1 hit point and will fall with any hit that inflicts damage. In my mind the minion was one of the best additions to 4e D&D.

DMs can throw lots of monsters at the heroes, and as long as a bunch of them are minions then the PCs will just mow through them. They still have to target and hit them, but if a hit is scored the monster falls. There are, of course, some variations and exceptions to traditional minions – some minions explode when killed, some get a final attack and others still will rise from the dead to fight again after they’ve been killed once. Here at Dungeon’s Master we’ve introduced two-hit minions that, as the name implies, need to be hit twice to finally kill them. Regardless of what kind of minion you’re facing the commonality is that it doesn’t make a difference if you deal 1 point of damage or 100 points of damage with a single hit, you just have to hit them.

Minions are great and I encourage DMs to use them regularly, but DMs need to be careful how and when they reveal that some monsters are minions. As soon as player know that some for their opponents are minions they use this meta-knowledge to influence their PCs’ actions. For this reason I never disclose the fact that monsters are minions. I let the players discover this fact when their characters do. And if they make some poor assumptions I rarely correct them.

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DM Resources

Be a Good DM: Show Me, Don’t Tell Me

“Show me, don’t tell me.” It’s some of the best advice I ever received when I was taking creative writing courses. This is a way of letting the reader draw their own conclusion about what’s happening rather than the storyteller hitting them over the head with blunt and direct descriptive terms. It’s good advice for writers and it’s good advice for DMs.

The best DMs I’ve played with are masters of “show me, don’t tell me” even if they don’t realize that they’re doing it. The key is in the details. When you’re trying to convey emotion don’t just say “The man was sad,” describe the character and the body language and let the players draw their own determination of the NPC’s mood. “Although most people think the man at the next table is passed out, you can just make out the sounds of soft whimpering and sniffing as tears no doubt rolled down his hidden face.”

Describing the scene in this way requires a lot of little details. It takes longer to write and longer to read. You need to decided when it’s worth slowing things down to add these details and when it’s better to just tell it like it is. There’s no hard and fast rule, it’s something that comes with practice and experience.

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DM Resources

Staying Alive: 8 Ways to Keep Wounded PCs in the Game

One of my biggest issues with D&D is the five-minute work day. This is when PCs expend all their best powers and burn through their healing surges so quickly that they’re useless unless they take an extended rest. The game is designed for PCs to have four or more encounters before they should need to take an extended rest but I suspect that many DMs rarely push through more than four encounters before calling it a day. However, there will be times when this just isn’t possible – either because it doesn’t make sense given how the story is progressing or the printed adventure doesn’t allow it. In these cases the DM may need to get creative to keep the PCs alive until the end of the day.

Assuming the PCs can still take short rests then output isn’t usually a big deal if the party continues on past four encounters. Sure they may not have those awesome daily powers at their disposal into the fifth encounter but they will have all their cool encounter powers. It’s healing surges that usually become the biggest problem.

Strikers generally have the fewest surges to begin with, and unless the player has a reasonable Constitution score or the Durability feat they’ll run out of surges quickly. What makes the problem worse is that as soon as monsters (intelligent monsters anyway) see a striker mowing through their ranks they’ll target the biggest threat (the striker). Unless you’ve got advantageous tactics or a decent defender at your side, strikers end up taking damage every fight.

So what’s a DM to do when this kind of thing happens? How do you keep a wounded party in the game and convince the players to push those PCs forward? It may just be a game, but players get emotionally attached to their PCs quickly and no one wants to enter a combat encounter knowing that their PC is likely to die. It’s a delicate situation that requires some careful manipulation. The key is not to do so in such a way that it insults the players or belittles the game mechanic. Players want to do well but they don’t want the DM to just give them an easy, unearned victory. It’s a real balancing act and here are 8 suggested ways to pull it off.

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DM Resources

Epic Level Encounter Design – Part 2: Developing Challenges Appropriate for Epic Level Characters

At the epic level the PCs are capable of acts that can change the path of history forever. The aim of this article is to help you embrace the capacity of the party and set a stage appropriately large for their abilities. This article is about spectacles that are just as big as PCs who can come back from the dead every day.

Enter: The Renascence Man, Woman or Child

In order to challenge the PC you need to respect their capability. By level 21 the party has a bag of tricks so deep that attempting to anticipate them is a fool’s errand. There are things that the PCs had to tackle at low levels that are, by now, tasks that are beneath them. The PCs at this point should not have to make Diplomacy checks to convince people that their task is important. Epic level characters shouldn’t have to make knowledge checks to recall simple details, their experience and access to information is so vast that such checks are just a waste of time and any attempt to withhold such information won’t add difficulty or strife, but will just annoy. The only time an epic level PC should be forced to make such checks is to demonstrate how far above such tasks they are.

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