Tag: GenCon 2010

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Adventure Builder Workshop: Repercussions

According to Newton’s laws of motion, “For every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.” The same can be said of the actions of your players. Every decision that they make, every action they take, has a repercussion.

The village is burning, while rushing back the PCs encounter bandits with villagers as prisoners. The PCs can rescue the prisoners or attempt to save what’s left of the village. There is only time to take one of these actions, which actions will the PCs take and what will be the repercussions?

The PCs can eliminate a major force of evil in the campaign, but killing this foe will leave a power vacuum that other rival factions will seek to fill. Is the devil you know better than the ensuing chaos that will ensue with the death of this foe? If things go from bad to worse and it is common knowledge the PCs are the ones responsible, how will they be perceived by the common people?

This is the final instalment in the Adventure Builder Workshop, based on the seminar at GenCon this past August. To read the complete series view the articles listed below:

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Adventure Builder Workshop: Rewards

Every player likes treasure. From gold, to gems, to shiny magic swords, we love our treasure. Our eyes glaze over as we dream about the perfect item for our character. Players have been known to lie, cheat and steal to keep a larger share of the treasure for themselves. We just can’t help it, it’s in our nature. As a DM it’s your job to dole out those tantalizing parcels of loot to your players.

This is the seventh instalment in an ongoing series about the Adventure Builder Workshop, based on the seminar hosted by Wizards of the Coast at GenCon this year. The previous entries in the series are:

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Adventure Builder Workshop: Encounters

A great campaign is comprised of many elements and villains, locations, story, and henchmen are all required to bring things together. However, it’s the individual encounters that allow you to weave the story together. Encounters are the meat and potatoes, and are often the most memorable aspect of the entire campaign.

This is the fifth installment of the Adventure Builder Workshop, based on the seminar presented by Wizards of the Coast at GenCon this year.

To read the complete series visit the following articles:

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Adventure Builder Workshop: Henchmen & Antagonists

If you’ve started to notice a trend of overlapping topics in the Adventure Builder Workshop series, today’s post will come as no surprise. Henchmen and Antagonists are closely related to the villain and there is bound to be some overlap. However, henchmen and antagonists are separate enough topic that they deserve their own post and place of discussion.

Your players will face off against the villain’s henchmen far more often than the villain himself, so it’s vital that you be prepared. Henchmen and antagonists is the fourth installment in our series inspired by the Adventure Builder Workshop run by Wizards of the Coast at this year’s GenCon. The previous posts discussed:

Today we’ll look at how henchmen and antagonists interrelate with these other aspects of adventure design.

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Adventure Builder Workshop: The Villain

Every adventure has a purpose and more often than not that purpose is stopping the villain from completing their malevolent agenda. The central villain of an adventure is perhaps one of the most important design decisions a DM makes. If the appropriate time and effort is put into designing the villain, the rest of the adventure will form around him, creating memories you and your players will remember for years. However, if you don’t take the appropriate time to craft your villain you may find your adventure sessions shallow and lacking a clear sense of purpose.

What was the Fellowship without the evil of Sauron and the One Ring? Sherlock Holmes has Professor Moriarty as a nemesis and Batman has the Joker. All of these villains provided the requisite motivation to keep the hero working towards the success of his quest or mission.

This is part one of a series based on the Adventure Builder Workshop held at GenCon this year. Part one will focus on the villain, what you will receive in this series is a breakdown of the seminar that was led by Rodney Thompson from Wizards of the Coast. Earlier in August I posted a high level review of the Adventure Builder Workshop, what this series will do is go into much greater detail about the individual sections.

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Player Resources

Characters for the D&D Open Championship

The pre-generated characters for the D&D Open Championship: A Hole in the World are now available for download from Wizards of the Coast. If you’re going to GenCon and you plan to participate in the D&D Championship, then you’re about to get very excited.

Until yesterday we knew very little about the tournament. Now we know just about everything. The characters begin the adventure at level 25. Anyone fortunate enough to advance to the finals gets to use the level 30 versions of those same characters. Wizards of the Coast not only gave us the pre-gens ahead of time, they provided the character builder files. This is a huge relief. I was really worried that they would provide same crappy little truncated cards like they have for almost every other game using pre-generated characters. (If you’ve been reading our weekly write-up on D&D Encounters Dark Sun you know all about the issues with those pre-gens).

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Editorial

Ameron’s 2010 GenCon Schedule

GenCon 2010, the four best days in gaming, starts exactly one month from today on Thursday, August 5. This year both Wimwick and I are going to Indianapolis. It’s my third GenCon and his first.

Although we’ve both registered for as many events as we could, there were still a lot of question marks in our schedule. Some events, like the Wizards of the Coast seminars, do not have firm times and dates yet. Other events, like Dark Sun Arenas: Glory and Blood and the Convention Delve: Lair of the Dread Witch were not available for preregistration. So with that in mind, here’s what my schedule looks like so far.

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Join the Dungeon’s Master GenCon Championship Team

Although GenCon isn’t until August, registration began this past weekend. Both Ameron and Wimwick are representing Dungeon’s Master at GenCon this summer. We’re going to do everything we can to win the D&D Open Championship this year and we want you to join our team.

The D&D Championship isn’t going to be our only focus while were in Indianapolis. As you can probably guess, we’ll be playing a whole lot of D&D. We’re also looking forward to meeting other gamers and bloggers, as well as authors and game designers from Wizards of the Coast and other small publishing houses. We plan to hit a few seminars and even try out some new games. Yes, we’re actually going to try something other than D&D – something I haven’t done in a very long time. We’ve already registered for a few games but our schedules aren’t complete yet. As we nail down our schedules we’ll share what we’ve got on tap with our readers. But today I want to focus on the Championship.

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