Tag: Dungeon’s Master

Categories
Editorial

Dealing With Conflict At The Gaming Table

Mr. Pink: Hey, why am I Mr. Pink?
Joe: Because…
Mr. Pink: Why can’t we pick our own colors?
Joe: No way, no way. Tried it once, doesn’t work. You got four guys all fighting over who’s gonna be Mr. Black, but they don’t know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way. I pick. You’re Mr. Pink. Be thankful you’re not Mr. Yellow.
Mr. Pink: Mr. Pink sounds kinda wimpy. How ’bout if I’m Mr. Purple? That sounds good to me. I’ll be Mr. Purple.
Joe: You’re not Mr. Purple. Some guy on some other job is Mr. Purple. Your Mr. PINK.
Mr. White: Who cares what your name is?
Mr. Pink: Yeah, that’s easy for your to say, you’re Mr. White. You have a cool-sounding name. Alright look, if it’s no big deal to be Mr. Pink, you wanna trade?
Joe:Hey! NOBODY’S trading with ANYBODY. This ain’t a city council meeting, you know. Now listen up, Mr. Pink. There’s two ways you can go on this job: my way or the highway. Now what’s it gonna be, Mr. Pink?
Mr. Pink: Alright, I’m Mr. Pink. Let’s move on.
Joe:I’ll move on when I feel like it… All you guys got the message?… I’m so mad, hollering at you guys I can hardly talk. Pssh. Let’s go to work.

– Reservoir Dogs

Ever have one of those nights? Two of your players keep butting heads, constantly arguing about what the party should do. Perhaps one of your players is trying to play someone else’s character, constantly telling them what to do. The player thinks they are being helpful, but really the player has become The Gaming Jerk. You can see the writing on the wall and things aren’t going to end well. What do you do?

Maybe you have another problem. A player constantly disagrees with your rulings. Sometimes they are right, sometimes wrong but you’re trying to keep the game moving. You’re following the Eight Rules That Will Make You A Better DM, but you aren’t having any luck with this particular player. It seems they are taking more delight in slowing down and ruining the gaming experience for everyone at the table than just moving on. How do you handle them?

Continue reading “Dealing With Conflict At The Gaming Table”
Categories
Editorial

Retreat Is Always An Option, At Least It Should Be

A common belief among many D&D players is that if the party is balanced and the DM is doing his job properly, every encounter is beatable. This kind of thinking among players instills within them with a sense of invulnerability – an invulnerability that they do not in fact possess. However, with the way that the 4e D&D mechanics work, more often than not players should have a pretty reasonable chance of overcoming a balanced encounter. Thus players continue believing that they’re capable of defeating everything they face. It never even occurs to them that in some instances they’ll face an opponent they can’t beat.

Sometime, however, you’re fortunate enough to play with a group that doesn’t mistakenly believe that they can overcome every encounter put before them. When this kind of party senses that they’re in over their head they will consider retreat as a viable option. It’s not something that will come up very often, but when it does it can have a really dramatic effect on the game.

Twice in the past week I’ve had parties toy with the idea of retreat; once during a level 1 game and the other during a level 16 game. I have to admit that I was very surprised at how differently the two groups rationalized the situation and made their choices.

Continue reading “Retreat Is Always An Option, At Least It Should Be”
Categories
DM Resources Player Resources

How Art Inspires Campaigns

As both a DM and a player I draw my inspiration from four different sources: fantasy literature, movies, my daily walk and art. It is amazing how a single phrase, scene, tree or image can inspire a character’s history or indeed an entire campaign. I walk my dog daily and on the path I take through a forest there was a dead tree that was covered in vines. This image inspired the idea for an entire campaign where the natural world was being threatened by rot and corruption. Not the most original idea, I’ll admit, but as the dead tree was surrounded by life I decided to represent this by an antagonist that the party trusted. Over time his duplicitous nature would be revealed. Not bad for an idea inspired by a tree.

I find that simple images and stills can often provide great ideas for campaigns and character concepts. Fantasy art has inspired me in more ways than I can count. The idea of taking an image and providing a history for that image is an enjoyable and rewarding experience.

Art clearly is a popular subject and I’m obviously not the only one inspired by it. Two of our most popular articles here at Dungeon’s Master are The Art of D&D (Part 1 | Part 2). My purpose here isn’t to go back as Ameron did and talk about artists who have shaped our thoughts of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead I want to look at some select images and create things from them. Today’s post is a workshop and I’m interested in the stories we will create.

Continue reading “How Art Inspires Campaigns”
Categories
DM Resources

Henchmen in 4e D&D

As your character earns enough XP and gains sufficient level doesn’t it make sense that he’d start to attract some followers? Your character is a role-model for aspiring heroes. Tales of his exploits and successes will eventually reach the ears of impressionable youngsters. Inevitably some of them will take steps to seek out your character and bask in his greatness. Whether they seek to learn from him directly or they just want to be close by the next time something awesome happens, your PC has made a name for himself and gaining henchmen is one of the consequences of his fame.

Your character’s ever-developing reputation is a big part of what defines the PC and is just as big a part of how other people will interact with him. But we’ve already written about Reputation (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3) so we won’t bother retreading over that ground again. Instead I want to look at the idea of PCs attracting henchmen of their own.

Continue reading “Henchmen in 4e D&D”
Categories
Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 18.)

The siege on Restwell Keep continued. The PCs managed to stop the lizardman army from breaching the front gates long enough for reinforcements to arrive and shore up the defenses. Now the heroes moved through the inner courtyard towards Fountain Square to meet up with Lord Drysdale. When they arrive at Fountain Square they see a dozen lizardfolk overwhelming Drysdale’s soldiers. “They’re coming from Benwick’s house,” cries one of the solders. “They must have a tunnel.”

This week we were a party of eight: Berrian, Hagen, Quinn, Sola, a Cavalier, a Rogue, a Runepriest and a Sorcerer. Just like last week’s encounter, the players each got to command one of the soldiers in addition to their own PC on their turn. The soldiers were minions who could attack using their swords or crossbows.

Continue reading “D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 18.)”
Categories
DM Resources

The Best LFR Adventure Ever

What happens when you slam LFR and then are challenged to work with a game designer to come up with the best LFR experiences ever? You end up interviewing the author in question and working with him to understand the adventure’s potential. You get an exciting session of LFR available as an actual play podcast. And finally you get honest and critical afterthoughts from the DM who ran the adventure and the players who ultimately judged the success of this project.

In September I wrote the article 7 Reasons I Hate Living Forgotten Realms and it generated a lot of discussion about LFR. The article received many great comments in support of my criticisms and just as many well-reasoned arguments contrary to my own.

Three months later, after the discussion on this topic had cooled considerably, I received an email from Ben McFarland. He’d sent me an LFR adventure. I didn’t know him at the time, but you might recognize the name from his work with the Kobold Quarterly, Rite Publishing or the Ars Magica Fanzine. Most importantly for this discussion, he wrote the LFR adventure DRAG2-1: Discomfort which was published by Wizards of the Coast.

Continue reading “The Best LFR Adventure Ever”
Categories
Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Adventure Hooks: Campaigns in the Cold (Part 1)

This summer we ran a series of adventure hooks that featured numerous bizarre and strange happenings that occurred in the Sun & Moon Tavern (part 1 | part 2). These articles have been incredibly popular and continue to be among our most widely read pages from the past six months. It seems pretty clear to us that our readers want more short, quick adventure hooks.

One of the reasons the Adventure Hooks from the Sun & Moon Tavern were so popular was that they all centered around one common location. It made coming up with the adventure hooks easier for me as the DM, but I think it also made them more appealing for readers.

Before I sat down to brainstorm more adventure hooks I wanted to come up with a theme to tie them all together. The answer was as simple as looking out my front door. I decided to put together adventure hooks that all took place in a snowy environment.

Continue reading “Adventure Hooks: Campaigns in the Cold (Part 1)”
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
Book Reviews

Review: Return of the Archwizards

Return of the Archwizards
The Summoning / The Siege /
The Sorcerer
Troy Denning

A Forgotten Realms Novel

Troy Denning’s Return of the Archwizards trilogy – The Summoning, The Siege and The Sorcerer – was recently re-released by Wizards of the Coast in one collected volume. It follows the story of the Elf Galareon, an Evereskan tomb guard, as he discovers the power and mystery of shadow magic.

Today the Dungeon’s Master team welcomes our newest contributor, Soklemon. He asked us if he could write book reviews for our site and we were happy to say yes. He is a Dungeon Master, Forgotten Realms fan, aspiring writer and high school student (in that order). He’s relatively new to D&D, but is quickly getting plenty of experience as the DM for his gaming group. We welcome him to the team and hope you enjoy his first contribution, the review of the Troy Denning Omnibus: Return of the Archwizards.

Continue reading “Review: Return of the Archwizards”
Categories
Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 17)

This week we began the final chapter of the adventure. Over the next four weeks the PCs will help Lord Drysdale and his men defend Restwell Keep from the besieging lizardfolk army lead by Benwick and the Black Dragon. The heroes will defend the Keep or die trying.

All along I was looking hoping for a thrilling conclusion to this 20-week adventure and it looks like that’s exactly what Wizards has in store for us. The PCs are in a situation where things are happening at a rapid pace. They’ll be lucky to get short rests between the fighting. Everything they’ve done until now has some impact on what’s to come during the final weeks. I only hope that the adventure and the execution at my FLGS lives up to my own expectations.

Continue reading “D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 17)”