Gen Con is here and many loyal gamers flock to Indy on this annual pilgrimage I thought what better way to celebrate than a skill challenge about caravans.
Trade is an integral part of any society. The vital caravans that move goods from one area to another require protection. PCs are often called upon to provide this service. It allows the DM an easy way to move the PCs to a new location or introduce an adventure hook.
Let’s face it we’re all busy. Real life has the annoying habit of being, well real. We need to deal with it and as a Dungeon Master sometimes that means our prep time for our weekly D&D sessions has to take a back seat. So what do you do when work, school, family, video games or any number of other things distract you from preparing your gaming session?
There are a number of solutions and while I won’t promise to cover anywhere near all of them, here are some options for smashing a game together on short notice.
You’ve just finished up a night of gaming. Your players are gone and you’re reflecting on the nights encounters. You go over each encounter in your mind, scratching your head trying to figure out just how the party made it through so easily. They didn’t get a thrill out of the encounters and as you reflect you realize that they were bored!
Just how did your players get so bored with the campaign, how did they get so lazy?
Simple. They followed your lead.
Unless you’ve been living inside a portable hole you’ve already heard of Wizard of the Coast’s recent release of Adventure Tools. I am the current DM for Wimwick and Ameron and I have to say that the Monster Builder – even in beta form – is a godsend. Sure the beta has its bugs and missing features but it has already saved me hours of prep time. But that isn’t the point of this article. If you want to hear more about the Monster Builder then search the RPGBlogger community for the many informative Monster Builder reviews out there. What I’d like to do here is take a guess (make a wish?) as to what the other lenses of the Adventure Tool main screen will lead us to.
GenCon 2009 is just a few days away and I can’t wait. Being the D&D snob that I am, my schedule is packed full of nothing but D&D. Since GenCon is all about meeting new people and playing along side them, I invite any of our readers who might happen to have the same games in the same time-slots to join me for some D&D next weekend in Indianapolis. Post a comment below or send me an email so we can arrange to meet ahead of time.
During a recent D&D game at my Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS) I got stuck next to a gaming jerk for four hours. Being the nice guy that I am I didn’t say anything at the time, but the more I thought about it afterwards the more I realized that gaming jerks need to be singled out and reprimanded for the good of the game.
Next week I’ll be participating in the Ultimate Dungeon Delve at GenCon. I’ve done my homework and I think I’ve come up with the best possible character for the delve. I’ve only got a few days remaining in which to make tweaks and changes to this PC, so I’m asking you – the readers – to give me your input.
Eberron is without a doubt my favourite campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. I enjoy its intrigue, moral ambiguity, post war/cold war setting and violence. Since I first read the 3.5 Eberron Campaign Guide I felt it was a setting designed for a more mature player. Not necessarily Wizard of the Coasts core audience, but rather the players who grew up with earlier editions of the game and who now wanted more than just a dungeon crawl. Eberron is a setting that encourages players and DMs to challenge certain assumptions and to role play moral and ethical issues.
Dragon WarAn Eberron Novel
Dragon War, the third and final installment in James Wyatt’s Draconic Prophecies comes out today. When I received my copy on Thursday, I couldn’t put it down. It was great.
Although you don’t have to read Storm Dragon and Dragon Forge to understand and enjoy Dragon War, it certainly helps. I enjoyed the other two books in this series a great deal and strongly recommend them to Eberron fans. Both are now available in soft cover.
July was a great month month for Dungeon’s Master. We saw our traffic and our readership rise steadily. This was helped in no small part by our early reviews of the July releases from Wizards of the Coast. We welcome the new readers who may have only discovered us in July and thank all of the loyal readers who found us earlier and keep coming back. With all of the great article published in July it’s possible that you might have misses a few. Here are the highlights.