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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters (Week 12)

After 12 weeks the adventure came to a thrilling conclusion. The PCs finally came face-to-face with Xeres. But he wasn’t alone. The ensuing battle was a worthy conclusion to season one of D&D Encounters, Halaster’s Lost Apprentice.

D&D Encounters is a 12-part adventure from Wizards of the Coast and it’s played out one encounter each week over 12 weeks.

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Dark Sun Player Resources

Dark Sun: A Quick Player’s Primer

A couple of weeks ago we ran the Player’s Primer for the upcoming D&D Encouners: Dark Sun. As a part of our Dark Sun week here at Dungeon’s Master we felt we should post this again for anyone who might have missed the original article.

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D&D Encounters Dark Sun Player Resources

D&D Encounters: A Dark Sun Preview

Tonight we play the final session of D&D Encounters season one. We’ll finally get the payoff of our 12-week commitment. But rather than look back on the previous 11 weeks, we’re looking forward to the next 15. Without any delay or interruption, beginning next Wednesday, June 9, we jump right into the second season of D&D Encounters. You can wait until next week to find out all about it you can read on as we share a high level overview of the next season of D&D Encounters.

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Dark Sun DM Resources Player Resources

Dark Sun: New Rules

The Dark Sun Campaign Guide won’t be out for another two months. But you can get your Dark Sun fix starting on June 9 when the the second season of D&D Encounters begins. The adventure – Dark Sun: Fury of the Wastewalker – gives players and DMs their first taste of Athas, the world of Dark Sun. Yesterday we posted the pre-generated characters Wizards of the Coast provided with the D&D Encounters kit. Each character has some flavour unique to the Dark Sun setting, including character themes. What are character themes you ask? Good question. Here is the sidebar from the page 8 of the adventure.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: May 2010

May was a great month for Dungeon’s Master. As we learned anything about the upcoming Dark Sun setting we shared it with eager readers. Our weekly recap of the D&D Encounters program continues to be popular and gets a lot of great comments. We also provided our usual opinion of how to make your D&D better for players and DMs.

Every month we publish a recap of all the material we published in the previous month. This is a great way for readers to get caught up on anything they might have missed. You’ll find all of May’s highlights below. Thanks to everyone who visited in May. We’ll keep striving to put out top quality work and welcome your comments, feedback and discussion.

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D&D Encounters Dark Sun Player Resources

Dark Sun Characters for D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Dark Sun begins on June 9. Wizards of the Coast has provided six pre-generated characters – all of them highlighting unique aspects to the upcoming Dark Sun setting for 4e D&D. Today we’ve provided copies of all six characters for your review. They’ll be available from Wizards next week, but we’re giving you a first look.

Now available: The pre-generated characters for D&D Encounters Season 3: Keep on the Borderlands.

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Player Resources

Your Best Resource: Healing Surges

One of your most important, yet overlooked resources as a PC, are your healing surges. Healing surges in 4e D&D are the difference between life and death. Effective use of those healing surges can mean the life or death of you and your companions.

Healing surges are a new mechanic to D&D that were introduced with 4e. No longer do you heal a certain amount of hit points by resting or from relying on the Cleric to have enough healing spells or the right combination of healing potions. Now every PC is equipped with the ability to heal themselves during and after battle.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters (Week 11)

As I sat down to play the penultimate session of D&D Encounters season one, I wasn’t sure what to expect. After 10 weeks, what could this adventure possibly have in store for us that we hadn’t already seen before? The answer – nothing.

Although I had a lot of fun playing this week’s game, it didn’t “wow” me. I don’t know if this was because I’m getting bored with the adventure, tired of my character or just burned out in general. But despite a relatively straight forward encounter I realized that the amount of effort you put in to D&D is directly related to the amount of enjoyment you get out if it. And in week 11 we certainly made the effort.

D&D Encounters is a 12-part adventure from Wizards of the Coast and it’s played out one encounter each week over 12 weeks.

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DM Resources Humour Player Resources

The D&D Teen Comedy

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of 80s teen comedies. Revenge of the Nerds, Real Genius, Summer School and of course the greats by John Hughes – Weird Science, the Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (to name just a few of my personal favourites). While watching these again recently, I started thinking about how the formula for a teen comedy could be used to create an interesting D&D campaign. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have kids in their mid to late teens get into all kinds of fun and frivolity when they are left unsupervised.

In the world of D&D most adventures begin their career in their late teens or early twenties. Other fantasy races are older, but their social, physical and mental maturity is roughly in the same place as a human reaching the age of majority. But what if we looked at heroes who were even younger? A bit less refined and a lot more naive. Level 1 adventurers already look at the world through rose-coloured glasses, but if they were a few years younger how much more would this outlook change?

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DM Resources Player Resources

The Pitfalls of a Specialized Paragon Path

Choosing a paragon path is one of the most decisive ways that two characters of the same class and race can differentiate themselves from each other. It also lets you better define your character as an individual. Your paragon path lets you better specialize within your class. But some paragon paths offer a much narrower focus of specialization than others. And in recently choosing one of these paragon paths, I realized that they can lead to more problems than players and DMs may realize.