Category: DM Resources

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Adventure Builder Workshop: Henchmen & Antagonists

If you’ve started to notice a trend of overlapping topics in the Adventure Builder Workshop series, today’s post will come as no surprise. Henchmen and Antagonists are closely related to the villain and there is bound to be some overlap. However, henchmen and antagonists are separate enough topic that they deserve their own post and place of discussion.

Your players will face off against the villain’s henchmen far more often than the villain himself, so it’s vital that you be prepared. Henchmen and antagonists is the fourth installment in our series inspired by the Adventure Builder Workshop run by Wizards of the Coast at this year’s GenCon. The previous posts discussed:

Today we’ll look at how henchmen and antagonists interrelate with these other aspects of adventure design.

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DM Resources

Adventure Builder Workshop: The Story

Story is the driving force behind any good movie. The movie can be loaded with action, special effects and an all star cast, but without a good story it falls flat. The same is true of your D&D campaign. You can craft the most intricate combat encounters, reward your players with the best treasure, but without a great story to tie it all together expect that your players may soon become bored and tired with the campaign.

This is the third instalment of the Adventure Builder’s Workshop that was held at GenCon this past August. The previous entries include information on the villain and creating locations.

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DM Resources

Adventure Builder Workshop: Location

Movies and television are great for portraying fantastic locations. I can still recall the sense of wonder I first felt when I saw the Argonath while watching The Fellowship of the Ring. With equal wonder I recall the first time I saw Naboo and the massive waterfall that cascaded away from the city. These two scenes fill me with wonder and a sense of adventure. Of course movies and television have the advantage of being primarily visual mediums. As a DM we use words more than visuals, this doesn’t mean we are limited in what locations we portray to our players. We are merely limited by our imaginations.

This is the second in a series that focuses on the Adventure Builder Workshop held at GenCon this past August. The first in the series focused on the villain, today we turn our attention to locations.

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DM Resources

Adventure Builder Workshop: The Villain

Every adventure has a purpose and more often than not that purpose is stopping the villain from completing their malevolent agenda. The central villain of an adventure is perhaps one of the most important design decisions a DM makes. If the appropriate time and effort is put into designing the villain, the rest of the adventure will form around him, creating memories you and your players will remember for years. However, if you don’t take the appropriate time to craft your villain you may find your adventure sessions shallow and lacking a clear sense of purpose.

What was the Fellowship without the evil of Sauron and the One Ring? Sherlock Holmes has Professor Moriarty as a nemesis and Batman has the Joker. All of these villains provided the requisite motivation to keep the hero working towards the success of his quest or mission.

This is part one of a series based on the Adventure Builder Workshop held at GenCon this year. Part one will focus on the villain, what you will receive in this series is a breakdown of the seminar that was led by Rodney Thompson from Wizards of the Coast. Earlier in August I posted a high level review of the Adventure Builder Workshop, what this series will do is go into much greater detail about the individual sections.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

How Difficult Is It To Sneak Past A City Guard?

Assigning difficulty checks (DCs) for skill challenges can be a frustrating experience. Some checks have set DCs that are provided for the DM. Examples of this are traps and locks that have a predetermined level of difficulty. A skill check that doesn’t have such an obvious DC is Stealth for sneaking past a guard. Why is this check less obvious? Because it’s opposed by the guards passive Perception. The tougher the guard, the higher his Perception.

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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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DM Resources Skill Challenges

Skill Checks vs. Skill Challenges

“I know you guys write a lot about skill challenges at Dungeon’s Master. What I’m wondering is, what is the difference between a series of skill checks and a skill challenge? If I fail a skill check I’ve failed, but the skill challenge allows the party to make multiple mistakes and still succeed. It seems to me that the individual skill check is the tougher scenario, so why do we have skill challenges?”

An excellent question recently raised by one of our readers. I’ve played far too many scenarios where I’ve asked myself the questions “How does this skill check or skill challenge add value to the campaign? How is the story being advanced?” In short, things just seemed tacked on. I’ve also played too many adventures that had a series of skill checks required, but no skill challenge attached. It’s left me questioning the point of these skill checks? Could the eventual goal be reached another way?

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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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DM Resources

The DM Is The Key

GenCon has come and gone. In its absence is the burning desire to play D&D 24/7. Since that isn’t a reality that is going to come into being any time soon, I want to look at the one element that every D&D session needs in order to progress. The DM is the key essential ingredient that all D&D games need. There may be plenty of players but without the DM they have nothing to do.

With this said, my thanks to all the DMs, not only the ones who ran sessions I attended at GenCon. You made the experience great. This isn’t to say each gaming experience was perfect or that each DM was perfect. For the record I am actively looking for blue lightning as I write this article.

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DM Resources Eberron

Secrets of Eberron Revealed (Part 8)

King Boranel an impostor? Impossible. Or is it? And just how are so many criminals avoiding the well trained soldiers of House Deneith. In this installment of the Secrets of Eberron Revealed we look into a possible conspiracy within the royal house of Breland where a king might in fact be a changeling and House Deneith tries to solve the mystery of how its soldiers are being detected. Is there a traitor within the house or is it something else all together?

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