Category: Player Resources

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

Sneak Preview – Lair Assault: Forge of the Dawn Titan and D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave

While at GenCon this past weekend I attended the seminar on Playing D&D in Public hosted by Greg Bilsland and Chris Tulach from Wizards of the Coast. It began with a general discussion about public play and then they provided us with a lot of great details about the next season of D&D Encounters and the upcoming Lair Assault.

Playing D&D in Public

During the general discussion there was a lot of back and forth with the audience. Everyone agreed that there was tremendous benefit to playing in public, most notably that it gives you a chance to meet new people. Together we can all learn from each other about the game. Everyone who participates in public play grows and develops as a player or DM. By playing in public we have an opportunity to portray D&D in a positive light and allow experienced gamers to act as positive role models to younger gamers.

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Editorial Player Resources

The 2011 D&D Open Championship

The D&D Open Championship is a chance for the best D&D players to pit their skills against one of the most difficult adventures Wizards can put together. It’s intended to be grueling and to force players into making really difficult decisions. And to make it even more difficult the players have only 45 minutes in which to complete each encounter. When the clock runs out it’s game over. This is one instance when it truly is the players vs. the DM

This year Wizards had help creating the adventure, The Fires of Mount Hotenow. There was a contest in which they asked people to submit their ideas for killer encounters. The best five were used to make up the adventure. One other important aspect of the D&D Championship that was changed was that this year players were allowed to continue playing the adventure, even if they timed out. However, they didn’t earn any additional points after timing out. In past years if you ran out of time you were done – full stop. But this year it was possible to complete the entire adventure even if you took more than 45 minutes in the first encounter. If, however, the entire party was killed then it was truly over.

I was again teamed up with the members of “The C Team.” We played in the second slot of the second day. Of the 44 parties that went before us only two completed the Championship for real, and five more completed it after timing out. As it turned out, no one else managed to complete the adventure in any of the subsequent slots. So once again Wizards put together an adventure that was brutal. And man, was it both fun and frustrating at the same time!

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DM Resources Player Resources

What are the Best Feats? Final Round, Vote Now!

Before diving into articles inspired by everything that happened at GenCon this weekend, we’re continuing our quest to find the best feats in 4e D&D. With over 3,000 feats available to level 1 characters, narrowing the list down to a cool 10 was no easy task.

We began with 32 feats and asked you to vote for the ones that you felt were the best. After dividing the list in half, we took the sweet 16 and further subdivided the list down to the top 10. Beginning today you can vote for the very best heroic tier feats currently available in 4e D&D.

We began this whole exercise when we realized that an overwhelming majority of players took the same core utility feats for their characters over and over again, regardless of their class or race. It made us wonder if some feats are just better than others. The answer has been a resounding yes.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters: Lost Crown of Neverwinter – Preview

Next week we begin season 6 of D&D Encounters: Lost Crown of Neverwinter. The adventure showcases a lot of the new materials from the new Neverwinter Campaign Setting available at your FLGS this month. So whether you’re a D&D Encounters die hard who can’t wait to find out what’s in store next season or a new player trying to decide if it’s worth the effort to come out Wednesday night, we expect that you’ll find this advanced preview of D&D Encounters: Lost Crown of Neverwinter helpful and exciting.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Game Day: Gates of Neverdeath Preview

Next Saturday, August 6, is D&D Game Day. This year D&D Game Day happens to coincide with GenCon. However, this was an intentional choice made by Wizards of the Coast in order to run Game Day tables in Indianapolis. So no matter if you’re at GenCon or at your local FLGS, everyone can participate in D&D Game Day: Gates of Neverdeath.

Anyone who’s planning to play in the upcoming season of D&D Encounters  beginning on Wednesday, August 10 should make an effort to participate in Game Day. The Game Day adventure, Gates of Neverdeath is a prelude to D&D Encounters: Lost Crown of Neverwinter. PCs run on Game Day can be ported over to D&D Encounters with whatever XP, equipment and magical items they earn.

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DM Resources Player Resources

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

GenCon, the best four days in gaming, begins on Thursday. With less than a week to go before the annual gaming extravaganza we here at Dungeon’s Master have decided to re-run a few articles from our archive that we felt would appeal to all the gamers heading to Indianapolis next week. Between now and GenCon we’ll continue running new articles but we’ll also be sharing some relevant gems from our archives in anticipation of GenCon. Enjoy.

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Player Resources

Confessions of a D&D Camp Counselor: Year II – Finding the Ideal DMs

For the second year in a row I find myself fortunate enough to have one of the best summer jobs in the world – I’m a D&D camp counselor. That’s right; I get paid to play D&D every day!

This year I’ve moved up in the world of D&D; I am now the director of D&D camp. I’m the DM’s DM so to speak. Upon leveling up to my new position as D&D camp director my first task was to hire three DMs to help me shoulder the enormous task of running D&D camp. I began setting out the criteria by which to judge the ideal candidates vying for jobs as DMs for D&D camp.

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DM Resources Player Resources

What are the Best Feats? Round 2, Vote Now!

Today the winners of What are the Best Feats? Round 1 begin vying for the crown of best feats in 4e D&D. It started with a simple discussion. Were some feats better than others? All evidence seemed to indicate that yes, some feats were absolutely, head and shoulders, better than others. With over 3,000 feats available to level 1 PCs we kept seeing the same few appear over and over again on everybody’s character sheet. Knowing that there was a hand full of superior, more popular feats, our next step was to identify and rank them.

Last week we comprised a list of 32 contenders for the best feats in 4e D&D and asked you to vote. The top two feats from each group in Round 1 advanced to Round 2 which begins today. Round 2 will work slightly differently than Round 1. Rather than put the feats into groups of four we decided to just go with two groups of eight. You can vote for up to four feats in each group.

Since many of these feats received a nearly identical percentage of the votes in the first round, limiting the groups to only four feats each might have unintentionally eliminated or favoured some feats based on which ones they were matched up against. The larger field in each poll should give more accurate results as we try to figure out what are the best feats.

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Player Resources

Forget Training Skills; Let’s Go Back to a Skill Point System

We’ve written a lot of articles about skills. One thing that we’ve mentioned repeatedly in recent articles is the reluctance of some players to use skills they’re not good at. It’s a common problem and we’re still looking for the best solution. While brainstorming we came up with a proposal that we think will work and today we want to share it with you. We look at what’s worked in the past and used that as our starting point. We’re proposing that we ditch skill training and return to a skill point system.

When 3e hit shelves, one extreme change from previous editions of D&D was the introduction of skills and the ability for all PCs to spend points in those skills. This was a great way to differentiate two nearly identical characters. It allowed anyone to spend points in any skill they wanted their character to excel at. Now Pick Pockets or Moving Silently weren’t just abilities unique to Rogues.

With 4e D&D the list of skills was reduced to a mere 17. You no longer spent points in each skill; rather you selected a few skills based on your class that you were trained in. All other non-trained skills were just an extension of the relevant ability score. This change had its ups and downs.

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DM Resources Player Resources

What are the Best Feats? Round 1, Vote Now!

As we so often do, Wimwick and I were recently talking about our characters. It began as a discussion on the ones we are running, but quickly encompassed the other characters we’ve run in the past as well as those run by the other members of our gaming group. We realized that almost all of the characters we looked at shared about half of the same feats. It didn’t matter what class or race they were, some feats kept appearing over and over again on everyone’s character sheet.

Our only explanation for this phenomenon was that some feats are clearly superior. Not just better, but far better. The result being that everyone chooses these feats. In fact, characters that don’t have these feats seemed considerably less powerful than those that do. It lead us to conclude that if there are some feats that are practically required for all character why do we have to waste a feat slot choosing them? Why aren’t these feats free to all character?

So we decided that moving forward for our home game we were going to allow all characters to take a few of these “superior” feats for free during character creation and see how things worked out. The challenge now was to narrow down the list and determine which feats should be included in the list of the best feats.

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