Tag: Skill Challenge

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Friday Favourites Humour

Friday Favourite: Holiday Shopping Skill Challenge

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From December 11, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Holiday Shopping Skill Challenge.

‘Tis the season for giving and receiving gifts. Regardless of your personal or religious reasons for celebrating during the holiday season, everyone likes getting gifts. This is no secret to retail merchants. They know that you’ll be shopping for everyone on your list at this time of year and they want you to spend, spend, spend.

Shopping for Christmas presents can be a lot of hard, grueling work. It’s the part of the holidays that I like the least. So I decided to look at a challenging, real life situation through my D&D coloured glasses (as I so often do). A few months ago we put together a skill challenge called Battle for the Remote. It’s in that same vein that I present a holiday themed, real life skill challenge called Holiday Shopping.

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Friday Favourites Humour

Friday Favourite: The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From February 14, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge.

Today is Valentine’s Day so we decided to take a light-hearted look at the day most associate with love. All the members of the Dungeons’ Master team are happily married or in a long-term relationship, so we felt that we should do our part to help those looking for love. However, we are by no means experts on the subject so please take the advice provided below with the good humour in which it is indented.

It’s unfortunate that many envision the gamer stereotype as a lonely guy who’s awkward around girls. Although there are certainly a few gamers out there that fall into this category, in my experience many gamers are not really that much different that the rest of the non-gaming masses. Everyone is looking for someone and hopes to avoid painful rejection along the way. With that in mind we’ve put together some tips in the form of a skill challenge. By framing this advice in a familiar wrapper we hope that it will make it easier for all those gamers looking for love on Valentine’s Day.

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DM Resources Friday Favourites

Friday Favourite: 5 Tips To Increase Role-Playing At Your Game Table

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From February 8, 2011, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: 5 Tips To Increase Role-Playing At Your Game Table.

Role-playing has featured prominently in several 4e blogs over the past few weeks. The topics and approaches to the subject have varied widely, from how to speed up combat to allow for more time to role-play to introducing new mechanics to encourage role-playing. Our own post on the 4th action is one of the later articles. The subject of role-playing in 4e has been of great debate since its release with many debating how much role-playing the edition allows.

Some have argued that skill challenges are the mechanic in 4e that facilitates role-playing. While skill challenges can certainly accomplish this task, to state that they are the only way to role-play in 4e is rather naive. I strongly believe that if your gaming group wants to role-play it will. I also believe that some players are more willing to embrace role-playing than others.

Role-playing can be an uncomfortable experience for some players. It requires taking on an alternate personality and sharing that with the rest of the game table. Included below are five tips that a DM can use to foster role-playing at the table.

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Humour

The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge (Encore)

Are you a lonely gamer looking for love? Do you have trouble talking to members of the opposite sex? Do you wish there was some kind of gaming-related guide that you could follow to improve your chances of meeting that special someone? Look no further, Dungeon’s Master has you covered! Last year we crafted a special Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge that can help you in real life. We were going to rerun this tomorrow, but since Thursday is D&D Encounters recap day we decided to put this out a day early. Enjoy and good luck!

Originally published on February 14, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day so we decided to take a light-hearted look at the day most associate with love. All the members of the Dungeons’ Master team are happily married or in a long-term relationship, so we felt that we should do our part to help those looking for love. However, we are by no means experts on the subject so please take the advice provided below with the good humour in which it is indented.

It’s unfortunate that many envision the gamer stereotype as a lonely guy who’s awkward around girls. Although there are certainly a few gamers out there that fall into this category, in my experience many gamers are not really that much different that the rest of the non-gaming masses. Everyone is looking for someone and hopes to avoid painful rejection along the way. With that in mind we’ve put together some tips in the form of a skill challenge. By framing this advice in a familiar wrapper we hope that it will make it easier for all those gamers looking for love on Valentine’s Day.

Continue reading “The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge (Encore)”
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Friday Favourites Player Resources

Friday Favourite: Always Train Your Worst Skills

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From December 7, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Always Train Your Worst Skills.

Imagine you have an attack score of +15. Your opponent, a savage brute, has an AC of 20 and his companions all have ACs between 10-15. Does this fight even interest you? You’d hit with almost every attack. It might be ok if this was a rare, one-off situation, but imagine that this was how combat shaped up every single time. Personally, I’d lose interest.

Yet this is exactly what’s happening during skill challenges at gaming tables everywhere. We’re so concerned with being really, really good at a couple of skills that when it comes time to use them we are almost guaranteed automatic success. Using Stealth to move undetected or using Athletics to climb any wall under any circumstance can be very cool and a lot of fun, but training the skills we’re already good at just makes using those skills a bore.

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Humour Skill Challenges

In Anticipation of GenCon: Road Trip to GenCon Skill Challenge

Those of us lucky enough to be going to GenCon this year are likely making the trek to Indianapolis tomorrow. For me it’s a 9-hour car ride that starts at 6:00 a.m. in Toronto.

Road trips can be a lot of fun as long as you have good company, suitable refreshments and plenty of stuff to do. With that in mind we once again present the Road Trip to GenCon Skill Challenge. It’s fun and lighthearted, while being geeky enough to keep even casual gamers interested. I encourage you to print a copy of this sill challenge and bring it with you to help make things more exciting on the way to GenCon. Enjoy.

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DM Resources Editorial

Splitting the Party Successfully

Experience teaches player to never split the party. However, there are times when it doesn’t make sense for the party to remain together. This might be because there are many tasks to complete in a limited amount of time or it might be because some party members have skills or powers that make them uniquely qualified to handle a task alone. Yet when presented with any opportunity to split the party, no matter how logical it might seem to do so, a lot of players insist on staying together. It’s a knee-jerk reaction that is not founded in any rational assessment of the situation. It’s an instinctual response based on a previous disaster and a slogan ingrained into them by the Wizards marketing department. Players need to take a deep breath and repeat after me: Sometimes it’s a good idea to split the party.

My gaming group has actually had a lot of success when splitting the party. It’s not something we do very often, but we are certainly open to the possibility when it makes sense. Most often when we split up each group or individual ends up with their own mini skill challenge, but every so often the DM has something else in mind and combat occurs while the party is separated from each other. We’ve found that there are ways to make combat with a split party work. It’s definitely challenging, but our approach to these situations are always fun and rarely result in anyone being left out while their character is off screen.

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DM Resources

Tips For Making Encounters More Interesting

How many times has your party faced an encounter that was basically the heroes on one side, the monsters on the other side, and then the two forces bashing each other’s brains in until one side (usually team heroes) ends up destroying all of the opponents? I’d hazard a guess that most players see this kind of encounter most of the time. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if you play a lot of D&D this kind of setup gets really boring really fast.

Encounter design is one of those things that only gets better with practice. To help you get better at encounter design we’ve listed a few tips that we think all DMs will find useful. There are plenty of ways to make a regular encounter more interesting and more exciting. Little things that the DM can add or actions the DM can have the monsters take beyond just rushing the PC and try to kill them. Most of these tips will likely seem like common sense, but seeing them listed should remind DMs that using any or all of these tips can easily put an end to boring encounters once and for all.

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Humour Skill Challenges

The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge

Today is Valentine’s Day so we decided to take a light-hearted look at the day most associate with love. All the members of the Dungeons’ Master team are happily married or in a long-term relationship, so we felt that we should do our part to help those looking for love. However, we are by no means experts on the subject so please take the advice provided below with the good humour in which it is indented.

It’s unfortunate that many envision the gamer stereotype as a lonely guy who’s awkward around girls. Although there are certainly a few gamers out there that fall into this category, in my experience many gamers are not really that much different that the rest of the non-gaming masses. Everyone is looking for someone and hopes to avoid painful rejection along the way. With that in mind we’ve put together some tips in the form of a skill challenge. By framing this advice in a familiar wrapper we hope that it will make it easier for all those gamers looking for love on Valentine’s Day.

Continue reading “The Valentine’s Day Skill Challenge”
Categories
Humour Skill Challenges

The Holiday Shopping Skill Challenge (Encore)

Today is Black Friday in the U.S. and while those of us in Canada and the other countries around the world suffer through another day of work, our American brethren get to experience this shopping extravaganza. To mark the occasion we decide to do something a little bit different. While looking through our extensive archive I came across this gem and thought it was a good time to run it again. Enjoy.

Originally published on December 11, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: The Holiday Shopping Skill Challenge.

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