Tag: Gary Gygax

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DM Resources Editorial

Cat Lord

a-to-z-letters-cI remember it vividly. I was flipping through the AD&D Monster Manual II (still the only AD&D hardcover rule book I don’t own) and there he was on page 22 – the Cat Lord. Something about this creature grabbed my attention and my imagination in a way that few other monsters ever have. I think it was a combination of the name “Cat Lord” and the accompanying picture (by Harry Quinn) depicting a feline humanoid. This monster was majestic in a way that only a powerful hunting cat could be; yet he also exuded a sense of cool sophistication that has always stuck with me. It’s hard to put my finger on an exact reason, but something jumped off the page and into my imagination that has always led me to believe that the Cat Lord is one of the most interesting creatures in Dungeons & Dragons.

Throughout April Dungeon’s Master is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. The challenge is to write a new article ever day in April, excluding Sundays. That’s 26 articles over the course of the month. To make things even more interesting the title of each article will begin with a different letter of the alphabet. Today’s “C” topic is the Cat Lord, one of my all-time favourite D&D characters/monsters.

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DM Resources

Greatest Hits 2011: The Little Details Make a Big Difference

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

I’m a big fan of adding in little details to my adventures and encounters as often as possible. In my home game my players know that I do this (at least they do now, almost a year after I wrote the original article) and enjoy the decision making and in-game rationalizing that often accompanies their discovery. They have to decide – Is this something important or not? Should we spend time and resources making this detail into something significant?

One other thing my players are learning is that as the little details become more common in my encounters, some of these details are actually quite significant to the adventure. Adding the little details for flavour is fine, but if that’s all you ever do then the players will get bored and start ignoring them. But, if you make a little detail important every once and a while you remind the players not to take any of them for granted.

The idea of using little details to really flesh out a scene is usually a very good idea. However it can backfire, especially if these little details are uncommon in your game. As soon as you do add something a little bit quirky the players will immediately latch on to it as they did in the example I used in the original article. They know how D&D works and if you’re describing it there has to be a reason.

I’ve actually found this is a real problem with D&D Encounters. In order to keep each week’s encounter tight and succinct the authors and editors often trim the fat and provide just what you need to know. This makes any little detail stand out. What I’ve been doing (or trying to do) is to add a little bit of flavour every week. That way when a little detail is highlighted in the adventure, alarm bells won’t immediately go off for all the players at the table. Since they don’t know if the detail is important or not they spend time investigating, and the result is usually some pretty good role-playing. When done right, these little extras will often make an encounter that much more memorable.

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DM Resources

The Little Details Make a Big Difference

One thing I learned from reading the works of the late, great Gary Gygax is that memorable encounters often include a lot of little details. These details aren’t necessarily important to the greater adventure, but are important to the scene. If you’ve ever read any of Gygax’s now-classic adventures like the Keep on the Borderlands, Tomb of Horrors or the Temple of Elemental Evil you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The danger of including these little details is that the players may place more importance and significance on them then you ever intended. How you choose to deal with that eventuality can make a huge difference to your game. In a game I recently DMed, adding a little detail almost changed the course of the entire adventure.

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DM Resources Editorial Player Resources

Unearthing the Tomb of Horrors

Welcome to a new series for Dungeon’s Master where I’ll be talking about encounter design, emergent storytelling, setting the tone of your game, finding ways to challenge your players, and revitalizing the classic dungeon crawl for a new generation of gamers – all through the lens of the classic Tomb of Horrors adventure as I run it as a mini-campaign for group of veteran gamers. The players will provide their perspective as well, as they talk about their preconceptions of the Tomb of Horrors and their character creation process for this iconic adventure. We’ll also have real-play podcasts of our entire Tomb of Horrors experiences hosted at the Shattered Sea in the coming weeks.

Today the Dungeon’s Master team welcomes Steampunked, our newest contributor. He brings a wealth of gaming experience to our blog and a unique perspective on D&D. He’s played and DMed many games with Ameron and Bauxtehude including LFR adventures, D&D Encounters and the Shattered Sea campaign.

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