Tag: D&D

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10 Ways To Get Your D&D Fix Over The Holidays

The Holidays are here. Time to kick back and relax with family and friends. Perhaps you’re blessed with a few days off work or a slower paced environment for a few short weeks. As a D&D player your mind will invariably drift to your favourite hobby and how you can get a few more hours of game time in.

My normal gaming group is on holiday hiatus and we won’t reconvene until the new year when we begins a new campaign. It’s actually more of a ressurected 3.5e campaign that’s been given a face lift and fresh legs with 4e, but I digress.

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Editorial

Holiday Dungeon Contest Update

Thanks to everyone who has designed and submitted a dungeon or encounter for our contest. We’ve enjoyed reading all the entries so far.

If you haven’t submitted your entry yet and are worried you might not get it in on time you’ll be happy to know that we are extending the deadline to Tuesday, December 22, 2009. Full details about the contest can be found at the official contest post.

The reason for the extension is that Wizards of the Coast is running a holiday themed encounter contest. We recognize that many of you might be interested in submitting an entry, so we wanted to give you a few extra days for our contest.

Of course you could always double dip. After all, we’re likely to get far less entries here, which increases your chance at winning something!

We thank everyone for their submissions and wish you the best of luck with both our competition and the one being held by WotC.

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Player Resources

What Do PCs Do For Fun?

Adventuring is hard work. You’re always putting your life on the line for fame and fortune. But what do you do when you’ve got some down time? How do PCs relax and unwind? We’ve given it some thought and present a few options for your consideration.

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Book Reviews

New Moon Through the Eyes of a Hardcore D&D Fan

new-moon-cover-01Let the mockery begin. I’m a 35-year-old man who read and enjoyed New Moon. I remember when the Harry Potter books first came out I took a lot of heat for reading those too. But look at how big that franchise eventually became. Everyone eventually read the books and saw the movies. Even though the series was first marketed to younger readers, it eventually reached readers of all ages.

I’m not saying the Twilight Saga is anywhere near a good as the Harry Potter stories nor do I believe that they will reach as broad an audience, but I do think a lot of people will eventually end up reading these books. If for no other reason than to see what all of the hype is about. If you’re into D&D then you might actually enjoy these books more than you expect.

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Editorial Skill Challenges

Skill Challenges In A Vacuum

One of the fundamental design concepts behind skill challenges is that they provide a mechanic for large scale, out of combat encounters. Skill challenges were meant to assist in advancing the story. But the story doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The actions of the PCs should bring about reactions from NPCs or the environment they are in.

This is a problem with many of the skill challenges I’ve encountered, they don’t evolve. We’re guilty of it too, many of our skill challenges are static. Certain checks provide certain information, make enough successful checks and you can get on to the next combat encounter. In other words skill challenges feel like they’re tacked onto the game. I know I’ve participated in more than a few where I wondered what I should be doing next. This is because the skill challenge didn’t evolve. Nothing new happened.

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Humour Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge: Holiday Shopping

‘Tis the season for giving and receiving gifts. Regardless of your personal or religious reasons for celebrating during the holiday season, everyone likes getting gifts. This is no secret to retail merchants. They know that you’ll be shopping for everyone on your list at this time of year and they want you to spend, spend, spend.

Shopping for Christmas presents can be a lot of hard, grueling work. It’s the part of the holidays that I like the least. So I decided to look at a challenging, real life situation through my D&D coloured glasses (as I so often do). A few months ago we put together a skill challenge called Battle for the Remote. It’s in that same vein that I present a holiday themed, real life skill challenge called Holiday Shopping.

Don’t forget to enter the Dungeon’s Master Design a Holiday Dungeon Content. This skill challenge is a little bit outside the box, but it would still qualify (if I wasn’t one of the judges). Enter today.

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Editorial

Tiers Of Play: Epic

One of the joys of 4e Dungeons & Dragons is that the various tiers of play open the game up, changing the flavour subtly so that it always stays fresh. Recently my regular gaming group decided to try some epic tier Dungeon Delves. In fact, we decided to go for broke and take on the level 30 delve.

It was a blast and no where near as tough as I thought it would be, which is good because it increased my enjoyment factor.

Each of the tiers in 4e D&D adds an additional layer of complication to the game and as you can imagine the epic tier has highest level of difficulty. This is mainly because you have so many options. Not too many options, just lots of options.

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Editorial

Have You Entered the Holiday Dungeon Contest Yet?

If you haven’t entered the Dungeon’s Master Holiday Dungeon Contest yet I only have one question for you: Why not? This is your chance to create a holiday themed dungeon or encounter and win free stuff. Be creative! Your entry doesn’t have to be about the guy in the red suit or elves (but that is certainly acceptable). Any encounter featuring a holiday theme qualifies.

See Design a Holiday Dungeon Contest for all the contest details. You only have until December 20 to submit your entry, so get started and email us your dungeon right away.

Looking for instant updates? Subscribe to the Dungeon’s Master feed!

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Editorial

Open Game Table Vol. 2: Call for Nominations

Jonathan Jacobs of The Core Mechanic is moving forward with Open Game Table Vol. 2 and is asking the online gaming community to nominate articles they’d like to see included in this anthology. OGT2 is scheduled for a Summer 2010 release and will be available in as an eBook and in hard copy.

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Editorial

Attention Toronto Gamers: Huge Gaming Sale

This weekend is the grand opening of HairyT North & 3rd Quadrant Comics, and to celebrate this exciting event they’re having a huge sale on just about everything, including gaming stuff. This is the third Hairy Tarantula location in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). This time they’ve joined forces with the recently resurrected 3rd Quadrant Comics to open one new super-store dedicated to everything gaming and comic books.

The Harry Tarantula has a reputation for being one of the best gaming store franchises in the GTA. They carry an incredible variety of gaming products. They’ll also order in just about anything you can think of (at least that’s been my experience).

The new store is in what used to be a pool hall and it’s gigantic. If you’re looking for a gaming-related gift for a friend or yourself, you have to check out this sale this weekend. Here’s the email announcement they sent to their mailing list explaining all the details.

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