Tag: DM Resources

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DM Resources Editorial

How a Blind Player Improved Our Game

I’ve heard a lot of people say that 4e is really just a video game turned into a table-top role-playing game. The game is too tactical and relies too much on the visual aid of a battle mat and minis. These criticisms always talk about the limitations and restrictions of 4e. I admit that the visual component is certainly important, but the game is certainly not limiting. D&D is so much more than what’s on the table.

When I recently ran an adventure at my FLGS a new player sat down next to me, introduced himself and told me he was blind. I wasn’t sure how to handle this news. I was concerned that I’d have to make significant adjustments to my game in order to meet the needs of the blind player. He was really good about it and just told me to do what I’d normally do but to be sure to describe things (like the map) so that he could accurately picture it in his mind.

This seemed like a reasonable request. After all, everything in the game is described in the adventure, right? Nope.

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DM Resources

Tips For Making Encounters More Interesting

How many times has your party faced an encounter that was basically the heroes on one side, the monsters on the other side, and then the two forces bashing each other’s brains in until one side (usually team heroes) ends up destroying all of the opponents? I’d hazard a guess that most players see this kind of encounter most of the time. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if you play a lot of D&D this kind of setup gets really boring really fast.

Encounter design is one of those things that only gets better with practice. To help you get better at encounter design we’ve listed a few tips that we think all DMs will find useful. There are plenty of ways to make a regular encounter more interesting and more exciting. Little things that the DM can add or actions the DM can have the monsters take beyond just rushing the PC and try to kill them. Most of these tips will likely seem like common sense, but seeing them listed should remind DMs that using any or all of these tips can easily put an end to boring encounters once and for all.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: February 2012

February 1st marked our third anniversary here at Dungeon’s Master. It certainly doesn’t seem like three years have passed to us, but when we look through our archives there’s no denying the abundance of articles (this article is number 866). Wimwick shared some of our stats in the State Of The Dungeon – Year 3 and from everyone here at Dungeon’s Master we again thank you, the readers, for making all of this possible. It’s because of your support and comments that we keep on doing what we’re doing and providing 4e D&D articles every weekday.

After three years we decided it was finally time to reveal The New Dungeon’s Master Banner. Thanks to Winston Lew for designing something so awesome. I think it breathes new life into our site and adds an additional level of professionalism that our previous banner lacked.

February was a big month for public play as we completed another D&D Encounters season. With that came our report card followed by a preview of the new season the begins tonight. We also shared a first look at the new Lair Assault.

In addition to additional public play resources we also provided new adventure hooks, a contribution to the RPG Blog Carnival, a new skill challenge (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) and an interesting look at the Super Bowl with a D&D spin. If you missed any of the great articles from the past month this is your opportunity to get caught up.

Thanks to everyone who continues to visit Dungeon’s Master regularly. If you haven’t commented before please do, we want to hear from you. If you’re not a subscriber, then we have to ask: what are you waiting for? Subscribe today. We make it easy by providing a subscribe link at the bottom of every article (866 and counting).

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Adventure Hooks Humour

Adventure Hooks Inspired by The Simpsons (Part 1)

As a DM I’m always on the lookout for ideas that I can throw into my campaign. It doesn’t matter how seemingly irrelevant the source may be, once I put my gaming mind to work I can often come up with an idea for an encounter or an adventure in just about any source of popular media be it a movie, novel, video game, comic book or television show. The key is to imagine how the situation could be adapted to suit your needs. You’re not often going to find a situation or idea that’s perfectly suited for D&D when you experience it (sorry, the real world just isn’t a fantasy role-playing game) so you need to be creative.

To demonstrate the abundance of ideas in the most obvious places I focused my attention on The Simpsons. I think it’s safe to say that most gamers are fans of the show and that almost every scene and snippet of dialogue from the first few seasons is emblazoned in the minds of gamers in the 35-45 demographic. Yet even with a table of gamers who all possess near perfect recall of the earliest episodes of The Simpsons, you can still base an adventure or encounter around some of the best episodes and the players are unlikely to recognize that it was inspired by The Simpsons. To prove it, here are five examples.

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DM Resources Player Resources

Somewhere Between Living and Dying

Normally there’s no real grey area when it comes to the distinction between living and dying in D&D. If you’ve got 1 or more hit points you’re living. If your hit points are between 0 and your negative bloodied value you’re dying. As long as you’re living then you can act on your turn whether you’ve got 1 hit point or 100 hit points. But when you reach 0 hit points or lower you fall down and start bleeding out.

In some cases taking excessive damage may kill you, dead-dead outright, but most of the time you’ve got a fighting chance of waking up. If you’ve got a leader in the party or an ally with a decent score in Heal, then you’ll likely be back in the action by the time your next turn comes around. Most of the time falling unconscious isn’t even a big concern. After all, the way that 4e is designed makes it practically impossible for PCs to die.

However, there will be those rare occasions when the leader can’t help you and the other PCs are in so much trouble that they can’t take the actions necessary to use their Heal skill on you. These are the rounds when all you can do is roll that death save and hope that you get a 20. Being in this situation sucks! What’s even worse is if you spend multiple rounds in a row making death saves and not getting that elusive 20. I’ve played in a few games where the rest of the PCs can’t or won’t help their wounded comrade and that player does nothing but make death save on their turn. This is not fun.

After this happened in a recent encounter where a player was sidelined for over an hour we decided to introduce a new house rule that would minimize this kind of player exclusion from happening again. The proposal was to create a new state somewhere between living and dying.

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Editorial

RPG Blog Carnival: Things to Love and Things to Hate About Healing Surges

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is being hosted by Nevermeet Press. The topic is Things to Love, Things to Hate.

The Cleric has always been my favourite class in D&D. I’m not a spiritual person in real life but there’s something I’ve always found appealing when it comes to playing divine characters. I think a big part of it is knowing that my character has to very power of life and death in his hands. With just a thought he can call forth his deity’s power and heal wounds. Having this power, a power until 4e that was limited to divine character, is like having insurance that the rest of the characters don’t. No matter how bad things get I know that I can use my class powers to heal wounds and stay on my feet. This is not to say that I’m a selfish Cleric, but if I go down no one else gets healed which certainly makes a compelling argument for serving my own needs first.

In my opinion, the most significant improvements to the Cleric class in 4e was making the ability to heal a minor action, thereby allowing the Cleric to still participate in combat. Until 4e Clerics often did nothing but heal the wounded while all the other classes did amazing things. Not so with 4e. The combination of the healing surge mechanic and Healing Word as a minor action made Clerics a lot more powerful because they could be a lot more involved. This is a big reason why I still find Clerics among the best classes in 4e D&D. It’s also the reason that I choose healing surges as the focus for this article, my contribution to this month’s RPG Blog Carnival.

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DM Resources Humour

Would Giants Beat Patriots in D&D? – Making Sports Teams More Suitable for D&D

This weekend the Giants beat the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI (46). As one of the only people in North America that doesn’t follow pro-football I had no idea who was favoured to win this game, nor did I care. However, in the weeks leading up to the game I kept hearing people talk about the Giants vs. the Patriots. In my mind I kept thinking “If this was D&D, the Giants would crush the Patriots (assuming they were Human Patriots).” And that got me thinking, what would this type of confrontation be like in D&D if the members of each teams were the literal embodiment of their team name?

I’m not suggesting that it would be a team of Storm Giants playing football against a group of radical Patriots; I’m suggesting we actually take the sports out of it and just turn it into a straight up D&D-style fight. In this kind of confrontation you’d see a lot more support for teams with mean, vicious and powerful names. In a fight to the death I’d rather cheer for Titans, Giants or Bears over Ravens, Eagles or Dolphins.

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Adventure Hooks

8 Adventure Hooks: The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

Sometimes the easiest way for the DM to get the PCs to bite on an adventure hook is to just have them be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Events unfold whether the PCs choose to get involved or not, but simply being there puts them in the heart of the situation. Through their own actions (or inactions) they become part of the encounter. Clever PCs may decide that getting involved isn’t their problem, but experience teaches most players that if they don’t step in early, things can quickly get out of hand.

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DM Resources

Running A Game With New Players

Over the past couple seasons of D&D Encounters I’ve had the opportunity to play with a lot of new players. Many of these players (usually the younger ones) were completely new to D&D or any RPG for that matter. While some of the DMs have found it frustrating to run tables with so many inexperienced players, I’ve found it to be quite rewarding.

During this time I’ve come up some guidelines for running games with new players. Although I put these together to help me manage tables of newbies, many of these points are still good to keep in mind when running any table, no matter how much experience your players have.

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Adventure Hooks Player Resources

Switched at Birth – An Origin Story

A good background should help define who the character is, especially early in the adventurer when he’s relatively inexperienced. Your PC’s backgrounds should do more than just provide him with skill bonus or a free minor power. I encourage players to be creative when coming up with a back-story. I’ve learned that the more detailed their origin story, the more I can use those details to help shape the game to come.

Although I derive inspiration for my campaigns and my characters from a variety of sources, I seem to get the most ideas from reading comic books. As a huge comic-book nerd with a massive collection (5,000+ issues and growing) I have no shortage of source material. What I do find surprising is how I can reread an old favourite and have it inspire me in a way it’s never done before. And that’s exactly what happened this weekend.

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