Tag: Dungeon’s Master

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Editorial Top 10

Ameron Answers 20 Quick Rules Questions

Every DM runs their home game a little bit differently, so as new players join the ranks it’s important that any house rules or tweaks to the RAW (Rules As Written) are clearly spelled out. This becomes even more important when you jump between editions or are playing in a home-brew campaign. Brendan at Untimately put together a list of 20 rules questions feeling “that it would be useful to have a list rules that often change from campaign to campaign.” By answering these questions DMs ensure consistence and rule clarity at their tables.

Many of the other bloggers who have posted their responses play older editions of D&D or use a mish-mash of various editions. The Dungeon’s Master crew plays 4e, bet even so the answers to some of these questions are not as straight-forward or clear-cut as you might think. Everyone has at least a few house rules and we’re no exception. So today I’m answering Brendan’s 20 quick rules questions.

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Player Resources Top 10

8 Ways to Get Out of a Gaming Slump and Make Your Game More Exciting

It’s common for people in long-term relationships to talk about how the romance is gone. They remember how it used to be: the anticipation, the excitement, the thrill. But now things are just so-so. They go through the motions and wonder where it all went. They still love their partner and want stay with them, but they know the need a change. They look for ways to spice things up in an attempt to rekindle the lost romance.

A similar phenomenon can happen to gamers who play a lot of D&D (believe me, I know). You enjoy D&D and you’re not looking to play a different game, you just want to make each session a little bit more exciting. Sure you face new challenges and new monsters each time you play but so much of the gaming experience has become repetitive and routine. How do you bring back the romance and ignite the spark of excitement you once had when you first started playing D&D? We have 8 ways to get out of a gaming slump and make your game more exciting.

These suggestions are ways for individual players in a larger gaming group to make changes that will really only affect them. After all, it’s possible that the rest of the group is having a great time and wouldn’t change a thing if they could. These ideas can spice up your D&D experience without intruding or ruining anyone else’s good time.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: The Elder Elemental Eye (Week 1)

Welcome to the beginning of another season of D&D Encounters. This season (season 8 for those keeping score) is set once again in the Forgotten Realms. The adventure is called The Elder Elemental Eye and sees the return of the Abyssal Plague to D&D Encounters. If you haven’t already read our Elder Elemental Eye Preview I suggest you check it out.

This season I will again be running two sessions a week. However, I’ve decided to cover only one session in my weekly write-ups. As much as I enjoyed providing the often contrasting tactics I found that many of the articles ended up being really, really long. It also required a lot more work on my part. I’m still recording both sessions and will provide links to them each week.

The Party

Knowing we would have a lot of returning players again this season, I suggested that they get together and come up with some kind of shared theme or back-story to help unify the party and give them more details to latch on to when role-playing. They all ended up making Genasi characters. We’ll see how this choice affects the role-playing and the overall enjoyment of the adventure. I’m expecting great things.

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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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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters – 4 Tips for Players

As the new season of D&D Encounters is about to begin we wanted to share a few tips about character creation and party composition that we think will help you get more out of this season. Although these suggestions are intended more for players who are D&D Encounters veterans, newer players may still find them useful.

Remember that this season of D&D Encounters only lasts for 11 weeks so why not try something a little bit different; take a risk and shake things up a bit?

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave – Report Card

Our journey to the Feywild is over. Some loved the experience and some hated it. But in the end we all survived another season of D&D Encounters (although some of our characters may not have been so fortunate). Today we provide our report card on the season as a whole as we look at the good and the bad. Read what we have to say about season 7 and then share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Player Resources

Give Your Character Personality

When you ask a gamer to tell you about their character they will usually begin with class and race followed by the kind of weapon the PC uses, a list of their best magical items and then finally some really cool attack power or spell in their arsenal. And for most people that’s the answer they expect. But when was the last time you described a character as being a know-it-all, or a suck up, or a dreamer, or manipulative, or unusually arrogant?

Personality isn’t one of the boxes you need to fill in on a character sheet so many gamers, me included, often overlook this important detail when we create characters. More importantly we forget that every character has a unique personality. Looking back at my last few long-term characters I realize that they all had pretty much the same personality – mine.

In my experience, very few of us define our character by who they really are at heart, resorting instead to what they possess and what they can do. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this approach, but if you play a lot of RPGs you realize that a character with a well-defined personality can be a lot more interesting and a lot more fun to play. After all, personality goes a long way.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

It’s Here! – Lair Assault: Attack of the Tyrantclaw

If you think battling an Orc riding Triceratops or firing a ballista at a Pterodactyl sound like the making of an excellent D&D adventure then you’re going to love the new Lair Assault: Attack of the Tyrantclaw. It’s a good old-fashioned hack and slash encounter designed to challenge the most tactical power-gaming D&D players out there.

For the uninitiated, Lair Assault is a special public-play series that Wizards of the Coast released to challenge the most hard-core D&D players. This is one of the few times when it’s truly the DM vs. the players. Lair Assault adventures are intentionally harder than anything you’ve played before and Wizards expects over 80% of parties to get slaughtered and fail their first time though. With the gauntlet thrown down it’s time for you to decide if you’re willing to pick it up accept the challenge.

The new season of Lair Assault runs from March 1 – May 31. Below I share some of the high-level details, but don’t worry I won’t spoil anything. After all I’m one of those DMs trying to kill the PCs so I don’t want to give any players an unfair advantage.

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