Tag: DM Resources

Categories
DM Resources Skill Challenges

Solving the Skill Challenge Problem – Ensuring Everyone Contributes

Has this ever happened to you? The DM sets the scene and you realize that the party is about to face a skill challenge. As the fifth or sixth player to act you only get to make one meaningful skill check before the party achieves overall success. It was a good encounter because during some of the low complexity skill challenge you don’t even get to act before the party achieves their goal.

What makes this situation an even bigger problem is that most players try to use their best skill even though in many cases it makes more sense (from a story perspective) for them not to. They know that they’re only going to get one or two shots at making a meaningful contribution to the skill challenge, and they don’t want to be the guy who flubs the check and wracks up a failure.

The Dungeon’s Master team has come up with a way to ensure that every player gets to contribute during a skill challenge and that every player feel comfortable using the skills that make the most sense to complete the objective and not just the one or two skills that they happen to be strongest in. Here’s what we’ve come up with.

Continue reading “Solving the Skill Challenge Problem – Ensuring Everyone Contributes”
Categories
DM Resources

How To Use Traps To Make Combat More Intense

<click>

Paladin – What was that?

Rogue – Sounds like you stepped on a pressure plate.

Paladin – I thought you were keeping an eye out for traps?

Rogue – So I missed one.

Paladin – Is that supposed to make me feel more comfortable about the situation?

Rogue – Honestly, how did you get this far in life? Hold still, let me look… I said hold still, stop with the squirming.

<clank … clank … clank>

Paladin / Rogue – What was that?

Cleric – I have a bad feeling about this.

Continue reading “How To Use Traps To Make Combat More Intense”
Categories
DM Resources

5 Tips To Increase Role-Playing At Your Game Table

Role-playing has featured prominently in several 4e blogs over the past few weeks. The topics and approaches to the subject have varied widely, from how to speed up combat to allow for more time to role-play to introducing new mechanics to encourage role-playing. Our own post on the 4th action is one of the later articles. The subject of role-playing in 4e has been of great debate since its release with many debating how much role-playing the edition allows.

Some have argued that skill challenges are the mechanic in 4e that facilitates role-playing. While skill challenges can certainly accomplish this task, to state that they are the only way to role-play in 4e is rather naive. I strongly believe that if your gaming group wants to role-play it will. I also believe that some players are more willing to embrace role-playing than others.

Continue reading “5 Tips To Increase Role-Playing At Your Game Table”
Categories
DM Resources

The Groundhog Day Effect in 4e D&D

In the 1993 director Harold Ramis brought us the Bill Murray comedy classic Groundhog Day. For those unfamiliar with this movie, Bill Murray’s character awakens every morning to discover that he’s reliving the same day, February 2, over and over again. After watching the movie again last week I started thinking about how to use the Groundhog Day effect in an upcoming D&D adventure.

I saw this playing out in two possible ways.

  1. The PCs would find themselves in a situation similar to that of Murray’s character in the movie where they actually had to relive the previous day over again.
  2. The PCs had to face the same encounters a second time after defeating them once before.

Both scenarios allow the players to learn from their previous mistakes. How often have you used a daily power in the first encounter and then realized that it would have been more effective against the creatures in the second? How often have you held onto a daily power and then regretted not using it? The same thing goes for actions points.

The Groundhog Day effect, in essence, gives the PCs a do over. Once they realize that they’re facing the same encounter again they can choose to alter their original course of action.

Continue reading “The Groundhog Day Effect in 4e D&D”
Categories
Month in Review

Month in Review: January 2011

We began January with what turned turned out to be one of our most inflammatory articles to date. It created a lot of comments (the most we’ve ever received on any article) and polarized the online gaming community. We also covered a wide variety of other topics in January including the latest DM app for your iPad, action points, henchmen, conflict resolution strategies,adventure hooks, skill challenges, LFR and D&D Encounters (season 3 and season 4).

If you missed any of the excitment throughout January this is you chance to get caught up. Below is a recap of everything we ran during the last month. We encourage you to read any of the articles you might have missed or to revisit some of your favourites.

We want to thank everyone who visited Dungeon’s Master throughout the month of January, with a special shout out to everyone who left us comments. We measure our success largely based on what you, the readers, have to say. We welcome your feedback and encourage continued debate and discussion on every article we write.

Continue reading “Month in Review: January 2011”
Categories
DM Resources Editorial

Putting More “Action” in Action Points

As D&D has evolved over the years many rules and mechanics have been tweaked and changed in order to make the game better. I think one of the greatest improvements was when actions points were introduced with the Eberron Campaign Setting back in 3e D&D. They began as bonus to your d20 roll. Expending an action point meant a good attack became a great attack. With 4e D&D the action point was changed and this good idea became a great idea. Now you actually got another action when you used an action point. Awesome!

Recently I’ve been thinking back to how Wizards of the Coast described the original action point mechanic. One of the reasons it was introduced was to add an extra level of excitement to encounters. This was your chance to have your character do something truly remarkable. You suddenly gave greater consideration to trying new things that were over the top and spectacular.

Continue reading “Putting More “Action” in Action Points”
Categories
DM Resources Player Resources

Running the Combat Part of Combat Blisteringly Fast

Running the mechanical part of combat blisteringly fast allows you to spend more time role-playing your character and describing the action in combat. You’re not trying to get through combat quickly because you dislike it; you’re instead trying to move past the computational elements of the game so that the story-telling can take the forefront.

By focusing on the story-telling your game can become so much more exciting. Instead of waiting for the Warlord to thumb through the PHB to look up his class features (again) you can describe how the Warlord leapt from the second story balcony, dodged a provoked opportunity attack by doing a shoulder roll, toppled the gnarled hag with a low cut to her thigh, then sprung to his feet to stare down into her rapidly dimming eyes.

Below is a list of suggestions that will help you get through the mechanical part of combat blisteringly fast. These instructions are not for the faint of heart, and though some tables may pick and choose from these suggestions to speed up some areas of a dragging combat, only the committed will achieve the supersonic pace described by this article.

Continue reading “Running the Combat Part of Combat Blisteringly Fast”
Categories
Technology

Manage Your Gaming Session with the DMTools iPad App

“Egad! An app review on Dungeon’s Master?!?” Yes, only because the geek in me sometimes needs to link the love for D&D with the love for gadgets and toys. After purchasing my new Apple iPad back in November, one of first apps I downloaded was the DMTools app as I was to DM a small side story arc for our regular game. In the beginning, DMTools was a bit cumbersome to use, but after a session or two it has become an essential tool for my use as a DM.

Continue reading “Manage Your Gaming Session with the DMTools iPad App”
Categories
DM Resources

The Little Details Make a Big Difference

One thing I learned from reading the works of the late, great Gary Gygax is that memorable encounters often include a lot of little details. These details aren’t necessarily important to the greater adventure, but are important to the scene. If you’ve ever read any of Gygax’s now-classic adventures like the Keep on the Borderlands, Tomb of Horrors or the Temple of Elemental Evil you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The danger of including these little details is that the players may place more importance and significance on them then you ever intended. How you choose to deal with that eventuality can make a huge difference to your game. In a game I recently DMed, adding a little detail almost changed the course of the entire adventure.

Continue reading “The Little Details Make a Big Difference”
Categories
Month in Review

Month in Review: December 2010

During the first half of December we brought you new 4e D&D articles every day. During the second half of December the Dungeon’s Master team took some time off for the holidays and during that time we ran our 2010 greatest hits. With a mixture of new and old articles, readers visiting Dungeon’s Master in December were treated to a lot of great 4e D&D.

On or around the first of each month we collect everything we’ve published in the previous month and make it easily available for all of our readers. This lets you revisit your favourite article from the month before or if you’ve just discovered Dungeon’s Master it’s an easy way to get caught up on anything you might have missed.

Thanks to everyone who visited us throughout December. We welcome your feedback and appreciate it when you leave your comments.

Continue reading “Month in Review: December 2010”