Tag: Dungeon’s Master

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Editorial Skill Challenges

The Challenge Of Writing Skill Challenges

While attending GenCon this year I had a eureka moment. Or to be more precise, the sky parted, a brilliant ray of light shone down, I turned to Ameron and said, “We’re already doing that!” This was in response to almost every hand in the room going up in the air when Bill Slavicsek asked if people wanted more skill challenges during the Dungeons & Dragons preview seminar.

At Dungeon’s Master we love skill challenges. We enjoy writing them, dreaming them up and talking about them. Our archive has over 30 skill challenges and many related articles for the community to use and adapt for their own campaigns.

The challenge that comes with writing a skill challenge for a general audience is how do we make it specific enough to be important, yet general enough that anyone can adapt it and use it? It’s a conundrum.

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Dark Sun Editorial

D&D Encounters Dark Sun (Week 13)

This week I was back behind the DM’s screen. We had a full party of six, three players using the pre-generated characters – Barcan, Phye and Castri – while the other three players brought their own PCs – the familiar archer Ranger (who died last week), the Human Warlord and a new Thri-kreen Fighter.

D&D Encounters is doing exactly what it was intended to do, bring in new players. Every week for the past four weeks we’ve had at least one player join D&D Encounters for the first time. Some of these players are 4e veterans who finally came out to see what all the fuss is about. Others are brand new to the hobby. Either way, it’s great to see some new faces coming out to play on Wednesday nights. Now if only we could keep the rest of the participants coming back. Having the new players is great, but we’re loosing members of our core group just as quickly. Our numbers have been holding between seven and nine since the beginning of chapter 2. I suspect that things will pick up again when the summer ends and we move on to Season 3.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: August 2010

August was a big month for D&D and for D&D fans. Most notably, GenCon gave gamers from around the world an opportunity to get together and play D&D. Wizards of the Coast made numerous announcements about upcoming D&D releases at GenCon during their seminars, many of which we wrote about. In August we returned our attention to skill challenges, a topic we’ve always felt strongly about. And of course, we had another report from D&D camp. This time the kids tackled the Tomb of Horrors. August was a busy month for gaming and if you missed any of our articles this is your chance to get caught up.

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Humour

Achievement Rewards Are Coming To D&D

Breaking news! As you already know Player Rewards are being eliminated from organized D&D game play at the end of 2010. The big question is what’s replacing it? Today we have the answer. A reliable source (who has asked to remain anonymous) provided the Dungeon’s Master team with some specific details. Today we’re sharing everything we have and asking you to weigh in with you thoughts on these upcoming changes.

Achievements are on the horizon for 4e Dungeons & Dragons. The new achievement system is officially launching in January 2011. One of the lead developers of the achievement system had this to say about it.

“The new achievement system is going to shine; we can’t wait to reveal it to our fans. Giving players tangible goals to achieve while playing D&D, aside from killing orcs and ruining the well laid plans of DMs, achievements are going to enhance and change the way the game is played forever! I just wish I could say more, but I’ve already said too much!”

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Book Reviews

Open Game Table 2

Last week I received my copy of Open Game Table 2 in the mail. For those of you not familiar with this publication it’s a collection of great articles from around the blogsphere that highlight the best in gaming. There is a lot of D&D stuff in here but it’s not exclusive to D&D.

From Blog to Book

Creating OGT2 was a collaborative and interactive process. The articles selected for inclusion in OGT2 were done so after after a long and arduous vetting process. Anyone and everyone was invited to submit the URL of their favourite online gaming article for consideration in the OGT2. There were 376 submissions.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

How Difficult Is It To Sneak Past A City Guard?

Assigning difficulty checks (DCs) for skill challenges can be a frustrating experience. Some checks have set DCs that are provided for the DM. Examples of this are traps and locks that have a predetermined level of difficulty. A skill check that doesn’t have such an obvious DC is Stealth for sneaking past a guard. Why is this check less obvious? Because it’s opposed by the guards passive Perception. The tougher the guard, the higher his Perception.

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Dark Sun Editorial

D&D Encounters Dark Sun (Week 12)

Last week ended with the PCs fleeing from the cannibalistic Halfings. Depending on how you fared they were either in hot pursuit or would be as soon as they discovered that the PCs killed all of the guards during the escape. So we literally hit the ground running this week. The DM set the stage and explained that as we fled through the jungle others who had also escaped or avoided capture were hiding in the underbrush. Realizing that there is strength in numbers, we decided to work together for survival.

We made brief introductions before moving on. This let the players introduce their characters. We had seven players this week. Our only new player brought a Human Bard. One player traded in Shakirr for his own Warlord (a Human I think). The Human Ranger (archer) and the Minotaur Seeker (me) returned for another week. The remaining three players used the familiar pre-gens: Castri, Barcan and Yuka.

The DM decided that rather than just jumping into the next combat we should role-play the trek through the jungle while we tried to avoid the pursuing Halflings and at the same time tried to find the best way through the foliage. The ensuing skill challenge was a lot of fun. Everyone tried to make use of different skills even though the DM said he didn’t mind if we repeated actions.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Adventure Hooks: Welcome to the Sun & Moon Tavern (Part 2)

We return to the Sun & Moon Tavern with 16 more adventure hooks. The tavern has been a long-standing staple in D&D. Adventurers head to the local tavern as soon as they return from their time abroad. They regale the locals with tales of their exploits and enjoy a few well deserved pints. Experienced heroes develop a reputation for hanging out at the local tavern, which makes it easy for prospective employers to find and hire them. Aspiring heroes also mull about taverns hoping to find work as a professional adventurer. But the tavern can be so much more than a place to recruit PCs.

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Editorial

A DM’s Debut: The Story of a First Time GenCon Judge

While Ameron and I were at GenCon we met a lot of other players and DMs. Some of these folks were very experienced and others were coming to D&D for the first time. One experienced DM judging at GenCon for the first time was Shawn O’Leary. We played at his table during our first crack at the D&D Convention Delve. After the adventure we shamelessly plugged our website and asked Shawn if he’d be interested in writing an article for Dungeon’s Master about being a first time DM at GenCon. Shawn was kind enough to take us up on our offer and today we’re happy to share Shawn’s experiences with you.

I’ve been a Dungeon Master for a long time. The first RPG I ran as the DM was D&D, of course. I can’t recall if I started with the blue box or the red box but D&D started it all for me. After that there was Gamma World and then various other role playing games published by TSR such as Marvel Super Heroes and Star Frontiers. But my favorite game, first and foremost, was and still is Dungeons & Dragons.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Adventure Hooks: Welcome to the Sun & Moon Tavern (Part 1)

If you’re sitting in a tavern and a mysterious Wizard with grey robes and a pointy hat approaches and starts talking about a job offer don’t accept. You should ignore him and curse your DM. This is one of the most boring and overused ways to begin an adventure. Unless your DM is running his very first game, this should never be an acceptable adventure hook. In D&D, a tavern is a social place full of activity and interesting characters. Relying on this kind of boring stereotype is completely unacceptable.

While rummaging through an old stack of papers I stumbled across notes from an old campaign. As I looked them over a series of adventure hooks caught my attention. The notes were in my printing but I had no memory of writing them (probably because they were at least 15 years old). Although the ideas were from a previous edition of D&D many of the adventuring hooks still held a lot of promise. I realized that with just a little bit of editing these hooks would work in 4e D&D (and make a great blog post). After all, the last Adventuring Hooks article we ran was called The Town Meeting and that was over a year ago.

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