The Dungeon’s Master Holiday Dungeon Contest is currently accepting submissions. Read all the details at the official post for the contest:
We are looking forward to reading all the entries and wish everyone the best of luck with their submission!
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When it comes to character creation you have a lot choice. If you take into account the current number of races (35) and classes (22) presented in character builder you can create over 770 different possible combinations. If you throw the Hybrid class into the mix the number continues to grow exponentially. And as more classes and races are introduced, the number of variations continues to increase. So if there are currently 770 different possible race/class combinations, why do we keep seeing the same ones over and over again?
November was a great month for Dungeon’s Master. The site got a shout out from Wizards of the Coast. They linked to two of our articles in the November News and Reviews on November 18. We were thrilled to discover that the folks at Wizards read our site and liked what they read enough to send new readers our way. Readers new and returning found many great articles in November. And as always we want to thank you, the readers, for visiting us and returning day after day. If you happened to miss any of November’s articles, here’s a recap.
“What would the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise look like if they were D&D characters?” I’ve asked myself this question numerous times over the last few weeks as I’ve watched old episodes of Start Trek: The Next Generation. It’s an interesting exercise, and it got me thinking about what it would take to play these archetypes in an ongoing camping.
Over the years I have participated in games that borrowed famous characters from familiar stories. It was an interesting way to create new characters and the games were a lot of fun.
Living Forgotten Realms games are great. As a DM you just select the adventure you want to run and download it from the Wizards of the Coast website for free. All the prep work is done for you. All you have to do is read the adventure. As a player you can use the same character at any sanctioned LFR event (provided you are of the appropriate level). You also know that if you complete the adventure you’re in for some fairly good rewards.
Christmas is coming and you’re likely looking for a great gift to pick up for that good friend, sibling or yourself. With that in mind I took a look at my bookshelf and selected my top 5 fantasy books of all time. It was tough narrowing it down to only 5 titles, after all I’ve enjoyed most (if not all) of the fantasy novels I’ve read over the years.
I quickly realized that I could stretch the list to 10, 15, 20 books or more very easily. With that in mind I needed to define my criteria for selection. I decided the book had to have had a large impact on me. It had to be a book I had read more than once over the years. Finally, the book had to take the genre in a different direction for me.
There are tasks in D&D that are deemed so trivial or non-important that they happen off screen. You just assume stuff happens and the game proceeds. In many cases no checks are even required. Then there are the tasks that are a little bit more important and the result of the check will have some kind of impact on the game. Nothing life-or-death, but some noticeable effect. And then you have full blown skill challenges with all the structure and XP that comes with it.
From time to time it’s interesting to take some of those marginally important tasks and turn them into skill challenges. These are opportunities to encourage creative role-playing. There is structure and there is XP, but the real objective of the encounter is to have fun. If the PCs happen to earn some XP along the way then that’s just a bonus.
What do you do if you need healing and none is readily available? You’re in the thick of battle and you realize your hit points are getting dangerously low. You call out to the healer for help, but he’s got nothing to offer. He’s already expended this encounter’s allotment. Or worse yet, maybe your party doesn’t have a leader? No problem, you use your second wind. But what if you’ve already done that too. Now you’re in a situation with no healer and no way to easily expend a healing surge. What now?
If your gaming group is anything like mine, rituals are the most under utilized aspect of 4e. Since the release of the newest edition of D&D, I’m not sure if one of our PCs has ever used a ritual. For me, this is because I’ve played PCs who aren’t trained in ritual casting for our long term games. When I have played PCs who have the feat, it’s been for one-off Dungeon Delves, which don’t normally require the use of rituals to progress through to the end.
Recently I’ve been considering skill challenges from the perspective of a PC and how players can make skill challenges more fun for themselves. You can only make so many Diplomacy or Perception checks before you start getting bored. If your PC is heavy on knowledge skills you may find that you have nothing to do or don’t feel qualified to fully participate in the majority of skill challenges. So you settle with assisting those PCs who are trained in the relevant skills.
It’s that time of year when elves and gnomes come out from hiding and begin mingling with the common people. This active participation in our world keeps them safe during the other 11 months of the year. As these creatures of the fey mingle with us common folk, we thought we would invite you to design a dungeon centered on this joyous time of year.
The Dungeon’s Master team presents the Design a Holiday Dungeon contest.
We want to see what you can do with fat men in red suits, elves, gnomes, goblins, trolls and anything else that might fit in with the holiday theme. After all, the milk and cookies are really a greed trap… aren’t they?