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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 12)

Betrayal! Our suspicions of Benwick were well founded as the party was betrayed. After risking our lives for Gorn and Benwick we were repaid with violence. But this group of adventurers wasn’t about to fall victim to such an underhanded and evil act. We were ready to fight and expose this wrong doing.

This week our party consisted of seven players: Berrian, Eldeth, Hagen, Merric, Sola, an Assassin and a Wizard. The encounter began with the party retracing their steps through the three previous rooms. When we arrived in the room with the statue in the middle, there was Benwick, Gorn, Sal and Gordi waiting for us. Benwick explained that they were worried and wanted to see if we’d met with success or failure.

We quickly recapped all that had happened. Gorn seemed disappointed that there were no Dwarven relics, but was quite happy to hear about how much gold was collected. After much debate the party decided to give Benwick and Gorn their fair share.

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DM Resources

The 5-Minute Work Day: Solutions

What can you do when the 5-minute work day is killing your campaign? The PCs are a bunch of narcoleptics who need to take a nap as soon as they finish a fight. They can’t believe that you really expect them to keep adventuring after they’ve completed one whole encounter? They’ve already used some (or all) of their daily powers and expended a few healing surges. In their eyes you’re a terrible DM to place these unrealistic expectations on them.

Don’t worry; we’re going to help you. Yesterday we addressed the fact that you should Blame the Players for the 5-Minute Work Day. But if they’re not having any of that and still insist that it’s your problem then we have some ideas to help smooth things out.

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DM Resources Player Resources

The 5-Minute Work Day: Blame the Players

Do you want to know why the 5-minute work day is such a big problem in 4e D&D? The players. That’s right, I said it. The players are to blame. DMs are constantly looking for ways to fix this problem and I’m saying that it’s not their responsibility to fix it. Players are to blame and players need to shoulder the burden of fixing this problem.

There’s been a lot of recent discussion on the blogs about how to eliminate the 5-minute work day, referred to by some as the bed problem. In short, the problem is that players want to take extended rests as often as possible and DMs are finding it difficult to come up with good reasons to say no.

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Categories
Editorial

What’s In Your Inventory?

Take a look at your equipment inventory. What’s there? Magic items, maybe an adventurer’s kit. Anything else? That’s what mine looks like too. In fact most players I’ve met have similar looking inventories. Empty. Bereft of any life or originality. Occasionally, I will see a crowbar or some other interesting tool in a players inventory, but mostly all I see magic items.

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Categories
Editorial Skill Challenges

Really Hard Skill Checks

Have you ever needed to roll over 20 to succeed at a skill check? If you’re a combat-heavy PC then the answer is probably yes, but what if you’re a well rounded PC with decent attributes? Does your DM ever make a DC so difficult that it’s practically impossible to succeed? With very few exceptions most DMs won’t present DCs that are out of the reach of the average PC. My question is why not? I know I do when I’m the DM.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the actual numbers when it comes to skill checks and DC. We already covered this issue last week in Bauxtehude’s articles Exploring Skill Checks and the New DCs part 1 and part 2. The point I want to discuss today is whether or not DCs should ever be out of reach to all but the very best and most highly trained characters?

Too many players focus too much on combat and forget just how important the skills are to the game and to their character. Players need to realize that feats and powers that provide bonuses to skills are just as vital to victory as the feat that gives bonuses to attacks and damage or powers that deal multiple weapon damage.

By presenting circumstances where incredibly high DCs rear their ugly head, the DM reminds players that they shouldn’t expect an easy victory all the time. These reminders need to be nailed home for out of combat encounters even more than for combat encounters.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 11)

Using the keys found in each of the previous two rooms the heroes opened the doors and entered the vault. They’d found the treasure room. Now all they had to do was find the treasure. The only question now is what kind of guardians will they have to defeat to gain their reward?

Our party had six members this week: Berrian, Eldeth, Hagen, Quinn, Sola and another Wizard. We began the encounter by recapping the events to date for one of the new players. It’s amazing just which details players remember and believe are important when compared to what actually happened and what is actually important.

As the back-up DM for my group I have a copy of the adventure, just in case I need to step up and run an encounter or two. I also use it as a reference after Wednesday night’s game while I’m writing up the weekly article. This gives me a lot more insight into what’s actually going on and is one of the big reasons I try not to be the decision-maker for our party.

When the other players recapped the events from the previous 10 weeks I have to bite my tongue and not chime in with important details that they forgot or overlooked. Fortunately the DM of10 does jump in with subtle reminders when this happens, but not always. This is a problem that happens all the time in D&D, but I think it’s even more prevalent with D&D Encounters. After all we only do one encounter a week. After 10 weeks we’re bound to forget some of the details. Unfortunately for us, forgetting those details, even from just a couple of weeks back, made things a lot more difficult during this week’s encounter.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: November 2010

November was great month here at Dungeon’s Master. The D&D community was abuzz with the release of the new character builder and we couldn’t help but join in on the discussion and debate. Also in November we looked at the art that shaped the D&D worlds of Dark Sun, Planescape and Eberron, we looked at alignment in 4e D&D and we asked you to stop abusing dragons. There were the familiar staples throughout November including D&D Encounters weekly coverage, more Secrets of Eberron, and a detailed look at skill checks and the new skill DCs from D&D Essentials.

With our neighbours to the south celebrating their Thanksgiving last week, we would be remiss if we didn’t take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for visiting Dungeons’ Master, especially those of you who keep coming back again and again.

If you missed any of the great articles we ran in November, this is your chance to get caught up.

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Editorial

How To Return From A Gaming Hiatus In 5 Simple Steps

The life of an adventurer is a tough one. It’s a life full of adversity. Obstacles oppose them at every turn. Monstrous races seek to thwart adventurers at all opportunities. In their quest for riches and eternal glory every task is weighted and considered. Time between adventures is spent honing weapons and mastering skills.

While we as players seek to advance our heroes onwards to even greater feats of strength and bravery, occasionally the monster known and Real Life rear’s its head and stomps its foot down. Be it family obligations, illness or work, occasionally we might miss a prolonged period of gaming.

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DM Resources Editorial

Stop Abusing Dragons!

Dragons should be like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster – often talked about but rarely, if ever, seen. Just because the second “D” in D&D stands for Dragons doesn’t mean that you have to use them all the time. Overusing Dragons amounts to nothing more than abuse. Leave the Dragons alone and leave them out of your campaign.

Call me old school but I believe that Dragons should be feared and revered. When the PCs face a Dragon they should be scared. There should be no smug air of confidence. Any time a Dragon is part of the combat there should be a very real chance that PCs will die. However, very few DMs seem to hold this belief any more. It seems that Dragons have become the standard go-to villain for many adventures, especially low-level adventures. Just look at a random sampling of LFR (Living Forgotten Realms) adventures and D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. From where I’m sitting this amounts to nothing more than Dragon abuse. Stop throwing Dragons at every party!

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Book Reviews

The Dungeon’s Master Book Report

Have you read any of the D&D novels? Hundreds have been written over the past 30 years if you look at all of the different campaign settings and worlds. With new books coming out every month it’s difficult to know which ones are worth reading and which ones you should pass on. Today at Dungeon’s Master we’ve launched a new page called The Book Report. This permanent new page will help you decide what to read next.

When I can’t play D&D I find that reading D&D fiction is a pretty good substitute. I read a lot anyway, so it only makes sense that I’d pick up the novels set in the Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Ravenloft and Eberron (sorry Dragonlance). It’s not exactly the same as playing D&D, but there are many similarities. I find that the novels often serve as a source of inspiration for my campaign (when I’m the DM) and for the type of characters I might want to play (when I’m a player).

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