Tag: D&D

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DM Resources

What is the Town’s Attitude?

Kelmarsh medieval villageA lot of D&D adventures begin with the PCs arriving in town. In most cases it’s someplace the PCs have never been before so everything is new – the people, the locale, and the problems. This is just a natural part of the adventurer’s life; going from place to place, getting in adventures and helping people along the way.

I’ll admit that I’ve run many adventures that start just like this. It’s not a bad thing, but it is a bit boring. The longer you play D&D the more often this will happen and the more trivial each town will seem as you continue on your quest for adventure.

After playing through this scenario for the umpteenth time during last week’s D&D Encounters introduction it occurred to me that a clever DM can turn this traditionally boring introduction into something a lot more interesting by adding one little detail – the town’s attitude towards strangers.

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DM Resources

Friday Favourite: DM Tips for Restarting a Retired Campaign

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From July 30, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: DM Tips for Restarting a Retired Campaign.

After almost a year we are putting our current campaign on hold, and rather than start something brand new we’ve decided to return to a campaign that we put on hold just before the release of 4e. In many ways going back to a retired campaign can be even more difficult than starting from scratch. As I prepare to put on my DM hat and dust off my old notes I’ve been thinking about all the things I need to do to make this transition run smoothly.

I’ve come up with a few tips for DMs planning to go back to a campaign that’s been on hold for any extended period of time. These are guidelines that I’ve used and found useful. If you have additional tips that have worked for you, please leave them in the comments section below.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Against the Cult of Chaos (Week 1)

against-the-cult-of-chaos-coverD&D Encounters Season 12, Against the Cult of Chaos, is finally underway. After a long break, Wednesday night D&D returned to FLGS across the country and around the world. This season returns to the more traditional D&D Encounters mold with one normal encounter each week. For an overview of what’s on tap this season I encourage you to check out our D&D Encounters: Against the Cult of Chaos – Preview.

One significant change this time around is that DMs have a choice of running the adventure using the 4e D&D mechanics provided in the adventure or downloading the play test kit and running it using the D&D Next rules. At both FLGS where I play we polled our regulars to gauge their interest. We had one or two at both locations say they were interested in trying D&D Next but they wouldn’t be terribly disappointed if we stuck with 4e. As none of the DMs have been involved in recent D&D Next play testing we opted to just stick with the 4e rules we already know.

At our FLGS we had 15 people, just enough to split into three tables. Despite losing a few of our regulars after the long break, we did have three brand new players join the fun. I got a good mix of experience and anticipation at my table. The party consisted of a Drow Wizard, Tiefling Ardent/Battle Mind (hybrid), Pixie Wizard (Witch), and Elf Fighter (Slayer). The player running the Ardent is the DM this season at another FLGS and the player running the Slayer was playing D&D for the very first time in any edition.

SPOILER WARNING: This season the party is given a lot of freedom to explore the town of Hommel Lane in whatever order they see fit. There are three threats to the village that can be uncovered and tackled in any order. If you have problems separating player knowledge from character knowledge then you may want to skip these weekly recaps until after you’ve completed week 7.

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Humour

The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge (Encore)

Are you a lonely gamer looking for love? Do you have trouble talking to members of the opposite sex? Do you wish there was some kind of gaming-related guide that you could follow to improve your chances of meeting that special someone? Look no further, Dungeon’s Master has you covered! Last year we crafted a special Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge that can help you in real life. We were going to rerun this tomorrow, but since Thursday is D&D Encounters recap day we decided to put this out a day early. Enjoy and good luck!

Originally published on February 14, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day so we decided to take a light-hearted look at the day most associate with love. All the members of the Dungeons’ Master team are happily married or in a long-term relationship, so we felt that we should do our part to help those looking for love. However, we are by no means experts on the subject so please take the advice provided below with the good humour in which it is indented.

It’s unfortunate that many envision the gamer stereotype as a lonely guy who’s awkward around girls. Although there are certainly a few gamers out there that fall into this category, in my experience many gamers are not really that much different that the rest of the non-gaming masses. Everyone is looking for someone and hopes to avoid painful rejection along the way. With that in mind we’ve put together some tips in the form of a skill challenge. By framing this advice in a familiar wrapper we hope that it will make it easier for all those gamers looking for love on Valentine’s Day.

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Friday Favourites Player Resources

Friday Favourite: Always Train Your Worst Skills

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From December 7, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Always Train Your Worst Skills.

Imagine you have an attack score of +15. Your opponent, a savage brute, has an AC of 20 and his companions all have ACs between 10-15. Does this fight even interest you? You’d hit with almost every attack. It might be ok if this was a rare, one-off situation, but imagine that this was how combat shaped up every single time. Personally, I’d lose interest.

Yet this is exactly what’s happening during skill challenges at gaming tables everywhere. We’re so concerned with being really, really good at a couple of skills that when it comes time to use them we are almost guaranteed automatic success. Using Stealth to move undetected or using Athletics to climb any wall under any circumstance can be very cool and a lot of fun, but training the skills we’re already good at just makes using those skills a bore.

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Editorial

State of the Dungeon – Year 4

Today marks the fourth anniversary since we launch Dungeon’s Master. Four years. That’s a long time. When we began the blog it was just a way for us to share some of our ideas with the gaming community. We had no idea if people would be interested in reading what we had to say and we had no idea if we were going to be able to stick with it. Well here we are four years later and we’re still going strong.

Dungeon’s Master has always been dedicated to 4e Dungeons & Dragons. Although we focus our efforts on addressing 4e issues, we realize that there are a lot of gamers who play other editions of D&D. With the D&D Next play-testing in full swing and the official launch just over a year away we don’t know what direction we’ll take down the road. For now we’ll keep writing articles that appeal to 4e players but as our regular readers realize we’re trying to keep the topics broad enough that they also apply to older or newer editions alike.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Against the Cult of Chaos – Preview

against-the-cult-of-chaos-coverAfter a short break in January the D&D Encounters public-play program returns with season 12, Against the Cult of Chaos on February 6.

This season the format returns to the familiar one encounter each week. All character begin at level 1 and by the time they’ve completed the adventure they will reach level 3. Characters get a short rest at the end of each week and an extended rest at set times throughout the adventure. It’s a regular 4e adventure, there aren’t any strange modifications to the rules. However, Wizards of the Coast is offering the opportunity to convert this 4e adventure into a D&D Next play test.

During the week 0 character creation session, everyone involved with D&D Encounters at your FLGS (players and DMs) should discus whether they want to return to regular 4e rules this season or if they’d prefer to try out the new D&D Next rules. Groups that decide to play test need to sign the NDA. It is possible to run some tables as 4e and some as D&D Next but once you pick one or the other you’re expected to stick with it for the season.

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DM Resources

Passing Notes at the Gaming Table

passing-notesOne thing that has always been challenging for D&D players is to have their character do something that none of the other players know about. This might be something harmless like visiting an NPC from the PC’s past, or it might be something devious like stealing from another character in the party. Passing notes has always been the way that one player let the DM (or other players) know that their character wanted to do something that the rest of the party should not be aware of.

The problem with this approach to secret communication is that as soon as one player does it the rest of the players get suspicious. They have their characters do things that they shouldn’t have any reason to do. Things like checking all their pockets to ensure nothing’s been stolen, or keeping an extra close eye on the note passer’s character during the night watch.

The reason we find it necessary to pass notes is that a lot of players (most players in my experience) can’t separate player knowledge from PC knowledge. If they hear one player say “My Rogue picks the Fighter’s pocket and takes the jewel,” the player running the Fighter will often get upset with the players running the Rogue, even though his PC has no idea anything inappropriate has happened. Because the player knows out of game what’s happened he’ll often change the way his PC acts as if the character knew this detail.

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DM Resources

DMs Are the Worst Players

They say that doctors make the worst patients; well I truly believe that DMs make the worst players. After DMing for long stretches DMs get used to having something to do all the time. They’re used to tracking initiative, running all the monsters, adjudicating rule disputes, playing the NPCs, and basically controlling the world. But when they give up the DM’s seat and go back to being one of the players all they have to worry about is running one character. For some DMs it can be a difficult transition. And for the new DMs it can spell disaster.

This is not to say that all DMs are bad players. Some DMs make the transition gracefully. This is especially true with a close-knit group where everyone takes a turn behind the screen. It’s the DMs who run the show for extended periods of time, especially during public-play or games with newer players that the transition from DM to player causes problems.

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DM Resources

9 Ways to Improve 4e D&D

For the past few months my regular gaming group took a break from D&D. Now we’re gearing up to return to 4e D&D. However, some of my players are again talking about why they wanted to take a beak in the first place. They were getting bored. They felt that 4e D&D was too much of the same week in and week out.

One of the objectives of this blog has always been to talk about ways to improve your gaming experience. We share a lot of ideas and insights about gaming in general with an obvious focus on 4e D&D. Personally I like 4e the way it is, but I do recognize that there are opportunities for improvement. In fact I encourage creativity if the players think a change will make any part of the game more fun, or more exciting.

With this in mind I opened the floor to new ideas. I asked my gaming group what we could do differently to win back the players who were bored. They came up with a lot of great suggestions. Some of these we’d tried before with varying levels of success, others were things they’d read on the Wizards’ forums that we thought sounded fun. In the end we came up with a list of 9 things that we felt would jump-start our 4e D&D games.

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