Tag: DM tools

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Building Better Monsters Part 3: Making the Monster Fit the Bill

One thing that keeps coming up is the idea that monster design should be elegant, graceful, smooth and all these other flowery and juicy sounding words. What I mean to say in more direct terms is that your monster needs to realize its design goal with as little effort from you while DMing as possible. When your monster hits the grid and it’s time to throw initiative, the party is going to immediately do its best to murder your new creation. As a result your monster is going to have very little time to make a good impression.

In music one of the mistakes young musicians make all the time is not playing expressively. They practice a piece for ages before they perform it and come to know its subtleties and complexities very well, but their audience doesn’t. In order for people to understand the piece of music on first hearing the way that the musician has come to understand it over a period of weeks, the musician has to accentuate its good qualities so that they are readily apparent.

As the DM you have the very same problem with your monster. Any trimmings that don’t further your goal for the monster should be removed. Strip the monster down to what abilities it really need because it’s only going to get a few rounds of combat to use them.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

So you’ve got your idea for your monster and you know what you want it to do and how you want it to function in your game. It’s time to put those plans into action. There are a lot of considerations to be made and it can be daunting to figure out where to begin. My outlook is that the best place to start is anywhere. The following considerations are not placed in any special sequence. As you read each heading remember that you can never be too creative.

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DM Resources

Building Better Monsters Part 2: More Than the Sum of Its Parts

In Building Better Monsters Part 1 we talked about the inspiration for monsters and how to identify the ideas that make up a monster design, mainly the monster’s form and its function. This time around we’re digging into the stat block. Every DM has read a stat block before but they’re worth paying close attention to. Stats are the functional manifestation of the monster, and stat blocks are the way that your ideas about monsterhood will be recorded. As such stat blocks are a sort of monster design fundamental, a rudiment for DMs.

You’ve come up with your own idea for a monster so it is time to realize these ideas mechanically. You want to have your design support your plans for your creature as elegantly as possible so that when you get to the table your creature behaves how it ought to with as little effort from you the DM as possible. You have an idea of what you want that monster to do, and good design will let you do that more easily. In order to put all the parts together gracefully a monster designer needs to have a good understanding of what all the parts at their disposal are so that they can put them together creatively.

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DM Resources

Building Better Monsters Part 1: Meet Your Maker, Monster

This article is the first in a series of four on designing monsters from scratch, getting the most out of your homemade monsters and understanding the mechanics of monsters so that you can use and build them creatively in your game.

  • Part 1 deals mostly with the larger ideas behind monster design so that you’ll be able to build the monster that fits the bill.
  • Part 2 is about the stat block, what it means and the relevant in-game and out-of-game factors that can change your understanding of the stat block.
  • Part 3 is about designing statistics for your monster and how various interpretations of the statistics can change the way your monsters will function as part of a narrative.
  • Part 4 is about implementing your designs and the process of review. Now let’s begin.
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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Television Scripts As D&D Adventures

Week in and week out the DMs of the nation are writing phenomenal adventures for the players who gather around the gaming table. The work is endless and occasionally we DMs run out of time and energy. Game day is approaching and we haven’t even started writing out the adventure. We have what is more commonly referred to as writer’s block. We just don’t know what to do with the game this week and a blank page is staring back at us.

Normally, when this happens I put away my D&D supplies and I switch on the television. It doesn’t matter what I watch, I just need to let me mind wander allowing ideas to come to me freely. It’s at the end of several hours of mindless television watching that it hits me, the adventure I’ve been looking for has been literally staring me in the face for the past several hours.

Television and the endless and often mindless content that it produces is the DMs best friend.

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Editorial

RPG Blog Carnival: Negotiating For Souls

Who truly determines whether a soul can return to the realm of the living – the ritualist who just performed the Raise Dead ritual, the gods themselves or the soul of the recently departed?

Yesterday as part of the RPG Blog Carnival hosted by Campaign Mastery we took a look at what it means to Cast the Raise Dead Ritual. Today I wanted to follow up on that post and examine the inner workings and role playing possibilities that are available when this ritual is cast. Some of these idea’s were inspired by the excellent comments in yesterdays article.

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Player Resources

11 Articles Everyone Should Read

After a long and busy week, Friday is finally here. What better way to relax than putting together a D&D list. It started simply enough, just a list of tips for players. That’s when I realized that buried within the 600+ articles we have at Dungeon’s Master are more than enough tips for any D&D player.

Presented below are 11 articles that I enjoyed re-reading and think you will too. When I put together this list together my only criteria was to find interesting article that would appeal to a wide gaming audience. I wasn’t looking for our greatest hits (although a couple included below have already earned that distinction). These articles are a great place to begin a conversation about various aspects of the great game we call Dungeons & Dragons.

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DM Resources

How To Make Your Players Feel Heroic

I’ve realized of late that I enjoy designing tough encounters. Encounters where perhaps the forces border on overwhelming. Where encounter after encounter my players are being pushed to the brink. It’s almost like a test of endurance, can they take just one more encounter? Will they prevail or will I have finally pushed them too far?

Much of my motivation for designing encounters this way comes from taking too many extended rests with daily powers unused and healing surges remaining. These extended rests haven’t been taken because we though we needed them or could get away with them. No, they came about because we had completed the adventure. In short as a player in 4e there have been few encounters that I feel have truly pushed myself and other players to the edge.

Of course what I have also realized is that making every encounter a slug fest, where at the end of the final encounter the party is completely out of resources is also boring. Furthermore, my players are beginning to wonder if I’m out to kill their characters. When the time for an extended rest rolls up they have a look of relief on their faces. Instead of a feeling of satisfaction or euphoria at completing the encounters, they are just glad it’s over.

I realize that while I’m challenging the players, I’m not creating moments for them to feel truly heroic. As a result I’ve developed a series of guidelines to assist me in my adventure design.

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DM Resources

How To Use Prophecy And Divination To Tell The Story

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

With these lines a quest was born unlike any known before or since.

Developing a prophecy or using divination to assist in the story telling of your campaign can be as simple as two lines or as complex as you want it to be. Of course you’ll need an overarching quest to tie everything to, the prophecy simply provides motivation or guidance to your players. The prophecy can be a detailed guide to the adventure or a mysterious code that provides occasional direction.

This week at Dungeon’s Master we’ve been discussing aid from divine and otherworldly sources in detail. Ameron started the discussion off with Divinations – Is Some Magic Just Too Powerful for PCs and then continued with a piece on Divine Intervention.  The discussion was continued by Callin and his post at Big Ball of No Fun – How to Handle Divinations.  In other words there has been no shortage or articles about divination in the 4e blog community this week. I would also encourage people to read Prophecy Points as a Reward for Roleplaying from The Big Red Box Blog.

I felt it was only appropriate that we cap the week off with an article not about reacting to the use of divinations in game by players, but to the active use of divination and prophecy by the DM as a storytelling tool.

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DM Resources

How Much Input Should Players Have On The Campaign?

Different DMs embrace different ideas about how much input their players have on the campaign where some DMs run a sandbox campaign, other than major NPCs everything that happens in the game is left to the whim of the players. Others have a more restrictive idea about how much input players should have. Some do not allow player input at all, preferring to run modules or use adventures published through LFR.

The level of player involvement is usually determined before the campaign begins. The DM gives a rough idea of what the players can expect of the campaign. My normal practice is to provide my players with an overview of the start of the campaign and the central theme. This allows them to create characters that are appropriate. It doesn’t make too much sense for a player to create an urban Ranger for a game that is going to take place 90% of the time in the Underdark.

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DM Resources

Using Player Behaviour To Influence Your Encounter Design

Does your archer always shoot an arrow at the enemy furthest away thinking that monster is the leader? Does your defender always attack the first monster he sees? Do your players constantly scan the battle map for hidden pit traps? Have you noticed that your players always use the same powers in the same order during every combat?

If you’ve answered yes to one of these questions or questions just like them then you have an incredible opportunity before you. Your players have presented you with the opportunity to design encounters based on their expectations and behaviour. As a DM you are about to have a great deal of fun designing and executing these encounters.

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