The Eberron campaign setting comes with all the intrigue of a post war setting and all the mistrust of a setting still stuck in a cold war. During such difficult times the PCs may find themselves involved in tense negotiations where a poor resolution could result in renewed hostilities.
Tag: Dungeon’s Master Resources
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Skill Matrix Update
We’ve updated the skill matrixes by class and race. The existing skill aides for players and DMs now include materials presented in the Eberron Player’s Guide.
- The player’s aide has three new races: Changeling, Kalashtar and Warforged.
- The DM’s aide has the skills breakdown for the Artificer.
We’ve also added a new monster matrix for players and DMs. This is similar to the player’s aide except that it collects the monstrous PC race options presented in the Monster Manual and the Monster Manual 2. Those monsters later printed in other sourcebooks have been included in the player’s aide only.
Moving from room to room in a dungeon has historically been handled by drawing the map and the DM asking the party how they advance. Do they turn right or left at the t-junction. In 4e, the amount of crawling through a dungeon has been reduced with more focus given to large rooms and the encounters they contain within. Indeed, even traps are now incorporated into combat encounters. An adventuring group in 4e is more likely to find a pit trap in a combat encounter than randomly placed within a dungeon corridor.
Today is all about Eberron. The Eberron Player’s Guide is finally in wide release and earlier today we posted the skill challenge Maintaining the Karrnathi Army. As an added bonus, here is another Eberron-specific skill challenge.
The lightning rail is a key component of transportation and daily life in Eberron, so when service is disrupted the commerce of the Five Nations is effected. This skill challenge provides the DM with a quick encounter for the PCs that could lead to further adventure and intrigue.
Eberron is here and with our continued focus on skill challenges I thought I’d combine the two. My favourite nation in Eberron has always been Karrnath. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s ruled by a Vampire, the militant nature of the nation or that Atur reminds me of Las Vegas. Either way, I thought a skill challenge about the Karrnathi Army’s undead shock troops would be fun. Enjoy.
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One Page Dungeon Submission
Last week I whipped together a submission for the (awesome) One Page Dungeon Contest put on by Chatty DM and Chgowiz. You can read the back-story idea for the dungeon within the submission itself. In short, orcs are using some old dwarven ruins and caves beside a waterfall as a base of operations for raiding the countryside. Add the dwarves’ bane – a living spell, some water elementals living in the pool under the waterfall and some Myconids to the mix and an adventuring party will have their hands full.
As we continue to explore how to run and design skill challenges we’ll look at the importance of creativity, the consequences of failing and new, advanced ideas for skill challenges. This builds on the basics of skill challenge design we covered yesterday in Running Memorable Skill Challenges (Part 1) including what is a skill challenge, how to introduce them and the basics of designing skill challenges.
Reward Creativity
Skill challenges are about creativity. They challenge the DM to think creatively when designing the challenge in order to give the PCs something new to experience. They also force PCs to look at their skill selection in new ways. The Fighter who is all thumbs in social encounters might consider training in Intimidate or even Diplomacy to increase his level of participation.
What is a skill challenge? These two words redefined encounters in Dungeons & Dragons. Since the release of 4e almost a year ago, skill challenges have been a thorn in the DM’s side, and a challenge for players to participate in. Much has been written about them in the blogosphere and this article certainly won’t be the last. The fundamental question I want to answer is “How to run and design skill challenges?”. The paradox here is that as I write this article I know I don’t have one solid answer. Rather, there are a myriad of ways to run skill challenges. All of them have merit, all of them have negatives and no one answer is right for all gaming groups. Further, what worked in the design of one challenge may fail in another.
The world is starting to take shape, the geography has been defined and named and you have appropriate resources on hand to assist you. Now comes the time to start breathing life into your campaign setting. This entry in the Campaign Design series takes a look at Politics and Groups of Influence. This is a high-level view at the different powers and factions that exist within the world. We will examine particular individuals and NPCs in our next entry, but today it’s all about the organizations.
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Reputation (Part 3)
Your deeds define your reputation. Basking in your success is the easy part, but what happens when things don’t go quite as expected? Your reputation is easily tarnished by a few bad outings, and now you’ve got to live with the consequences.
This is the third of three articles examining reputation. Reputation (part 1) appeared on The Core Mechanic a few days ago. It was aimed at the DM and provided him with direction for using reputation as a campaign tool. Reputation (part 2) and Reputation (part 3) are aimed at the players and provides insight on how PCs can shape their own reputation and gain the most benefit from doing so.