Tag: Wizards of the Coast

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 3)

Sometimes it’s nice to play an encounter that’s just hack and slash. Show up, sit down, roll initiative and kill monsters. I’m not saying I’d be happy with this week after week, but it was a welcome change after two weeks with some heavy role-playing.

When last week’s encounter ended the PCs barely had time for a short rest before they noticed Ronnik’s bank was on fire. The action picked up immediately where last week’s left off. Sal cried out, “Ronnik’s trying to destroy evidence of his evil affiliation by burning his own shop.” The PCs rolled initiative and rushed towards the burning building in search of survivors among the flames or evidence of Ronnik’s deeds.

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Book Reviews Eberron

Review: Taint of the Black Brigade

Taint of the Black Brigade
The Chronicles of Abraxis Wren
Paul Crilley

An Eberron Novel

If you like a little bit more than the typical hack and slash in your fantasy fiction then you’re in for a treat. At its heart, Taint of the Black Brigade is a detective story. Even though it takes place in Eberron and the characters use magic it’s not your typical D&D novel. The focus of this story is a mystery and the lengths that a detective will go to solve it.

Taint of the Black Brigade is Crilley’s second novel featuring Abraxis Wren. The first, Night of the Long Shadows, was part of the Inquisitives series and although it took place before Taint of the Black Brigade it’s not necessary for you to read it first. I know that I read it when it was first released but all I remember about it besides that it was set in Eberron and featured an Inquisitive was that I really enjoyed it. So when I began reading Taint of the Black Brigade I was coming to it without any detail from the first book.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

Inside Out Skill Challenge

When you look at the latest issues of Dungeon magazine or read through any LFR adventure, skill challenges are always presented in the same way. After a brief description of the high-level objective you’re presented with a laundry list of skills and then a brief description of what happens when these skills are used successfully. This presentation is ok, especially for a new DM trying to better understand the tasks that can be accomplished by using these skills. But what if we turned the skill challenge inside out? Instead of revolving the skill challenge around the list of skills, have the skill challenge revolve around the goals.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: September 2010

In September two topics dominated Dungeon’s Master: the Adventure Builder Workshop series and our coverage of D&D Encounters. These weren’t the only topics we covered but they certainly filled out the month. We also debated the pros and cons of LFR and began our series on the Tomb of Horrors. There was a lot of great gaming advice and lively debate happening at Dungeon’s Master in September. If you happened to miss any of it, here’s your changes to get caught up.

Our regular readers know that we normally publish our month in review article on the first day of the month. We were ready to publish it on Friday, but after reading about the proposed changes coming to LFR based on D&D Essentials we decided to preempt our normal schedule to cover this more timely topic. So without further delay, here are all of the highlights from September.

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Editorial Player Resources

Will D&D Essentials Ruin LFR?

Love it or hate it, D&D Essentials is here to stay. Some of the changes presented in D&D Essentials are optional, however many are not. The Living Forgotten Realms (LFR) program is in the process of getting a makeover in order to adhere to the new core rules introduced with D&D Essentials. Some players like LFR as it is today and wouldn’t change a thing. Others have been grumbling about power-creep for some time. Perhaps these changes will address some of those concerns. But regardless of which side of the fence you’re on, be forewarned that change are in the works so get ready.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 2)

Week 2 proved to be a great mix of role-playing and action. As promised during the D&D Encounters seminar at Gencon, this adventure has plenty of opportunity for role-playing and skill challenges in addition to the hack and slash. Our group is fortunate to have players that are looking for more than just a chance to roll dice and kill monsters. The DM is fostering a great atmosphere for fleshing out the characters and the story.

Before jumping into the recap I wanted to talk about the pre-generated characters. Although we’ve only had two weeks to use the pre-generated characters, I’ve found them great to play and a lot of fun. More thought and consideration went into building these PCs than we saw in the Dark Sun pre-gens. I wonder how much of this praise should go to the creative team who built the PCs and how much should go to the D&D Essentials rules? In either case, I’m happy to keep playing the pre-gens and really have no interest in rolling up a new PC once character builder is updated.

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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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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 1)

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands kicked off yesterday. Although the number or participants at my FLGS has been steadily dwindling over the past few weeks we had enough people to run the first encounter last night.

D&D Encounters is a great way for new people to try their hand at being the DM. And that’s exactly what happened at our table. Few players at my FLGS have made every game since D&D Encounters began, but one of the most consistent participants decided that he was going to step up and DM this time around. I don’t know if this was his first time ever DMing or just his first time DMing D&D Encounters, but he did a phenomenal job.

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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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