I learned a few things participating in Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day this past weekend. These may just seem like simple, common sense reminders, but I think they’re incredibly useful nonetheless. I encourage you to review this list and keep it in mind whether you’re playing at a convention, Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day or just at your dining room table.
Tag: Wizards of the Coast
I once again had the pleasure of participating in Worldwide D&D Game Day at 401Games in downtown Toronto. The adventure was called Journey Through the Silver Caves. It was designed for five, 5th level characters. The event attracted a lot of familiar faces as well as a few new ones. I had a lot of fun and would like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts about how Worldwide D&D Game Day went this time around.
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Worldwide Game Day Characters
The pre-generated characters for the May 23, Dungeons & Dragons Worldwide Game Day are available. Download them now as PDFs or for the DDI Character Builder.
The last time I participated in D&D WWGD I found that a lot of time was unnecessarily wasted while people got to know their characters. I’d like to do my part to speed things up this weekend so I’ve made the pre-generated character available for download. I know it’s kind of last minute, but you still have time to review the five PCs and decide which one you’d most like to play. This gives you a chance to sift through your PHB and PHB2 and review exactly what your powers allow you to do.
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Change Is Coming To The DDI
Wizards of the Coast has announced changes to the Dungeons & Dragons Insider starting with an increase to the price of your subscription. The good news is that this price hike is accompanied by improvements to DDI and a slew of new content. I don’t think any of us expected the prices to remain the same forever, and it was really only a matter of time before we were asked to pay more money. But in light of all the materials Wizards is promising over the next year, the price increase seems justified and fair. And hopefully the revenue generated from increasing the price of DDI will be put towards the release of the online tools that WotC has been promising us since day one.
The new pricing will take effect on July 2, so I encourage you to either extend your existing subscription or sign up soon if you’ve been holding off. Doing so now will ensurer you get all the upcoming goodies at the lower price.
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What Monster Are You?
Monster Manual 2 hits shelves today. Ameron got his copy last week and wrote up a killer early review. So far there seems to be a consensus among the gaming community that the Monster Manual 2 is the latest must-have book. As more blogs post their own reviews we’ll see just how much love for the Monster Manual 2 is out there. We gave it 10 on a d10. So be sure to pick up your own copy of the Monster Manual 2 and give your PCs fair warning. Or just ambush them with new monsters, it’s your call.
Do you define your character by his class or his role? We continue to look at roles in 4e and their defining characteristics. We’ve already explored the idea of how to make the Fighter a striker and we pondered whether the roles could be redefined. But this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to looking at roles. Since this is a new element in 4e perhaps it can be done better. We think there is room to introduce some new house rules around roles, but before we start developing them we thought it prudent to take a deeper look at how the existing presentation of roles affect the game.
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.
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Why We Do What We Do
Wizards of the Coast puts out great materials for 4e D&D, but when looking at the bigger picture they have two significant problems. Addressing these shortcomings and making D&D better was a big reason we created Dungeon’s Master.
We’re coming up on our three month anniversary at Dungeon’s Master and we think we’re on the right track. I know what you’re thinking, Wimwick is about to toot his own horn, and you’re right I am. This is my soap box and I’m going to use it.
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More Than Just Minions
Killing minions feels good. So good in fact players do weird things in order to kill minions. Controllers who normally hide behind the defenders will charge with wild abandon to unleash a close blast spell if they believe they can drop more than one minion on their turn. Likewise, strikers will move into the thick of a group of enemies they don’t consider a threat to get their shots in on some easy minion fodder.
Here are a few fun things you can do to exploit the PC’s perceptions of minions.
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.