Dreadful Deeds: Wintery Doom Edition

Dreadful Deeds: Wintery Doom Edition

I may have fallen behind in keeping up with the twitterverse lately, but I’m back in action now – Damn the Holidays and their incessant need for tending to! Be sure to browse this weeks devilish tips for use at striking back against your smart assed players Father Winter while gaming this weekend! Also, if you happen to be in the market for some old school inspiration for your D&D game head over to myrpgame and check out my review of “The Dungeon Alphabet” by Goodman Games.

I probably won’t manage to sneak in another blog post until the new year, but there’s still a possibility of an evil Santa Claws or some candy cane zombies so stay tuned. However in the event procrastination/obligations do take hold, have yourselves a happy holiday and a safe new year!

DM’s – Your PCs are in a snowy and frozen area, whats the worst condition / monster / hazard you can throw their way?

@BlindGeekUK – I used dire winter wolf iceclaws, nasty beasts, and I had a terrain effect that would have dealt

@soklemon – I like the Remhoraz, or an avalanche. Ice Trolls can be fun also.

@Trollitc – A hugely fat human, who can fly, is dressed in red and white, with a sinister laugh who knows the party’s alignment and names.

@infocynic – A horde of evil snow elves/gnomes led by a large troll in a red suit. He commands them (minor) all to throw ice balls.

@deadorcs – A Remorahz that flings out 2d4 minion ice-yetis every other round until slain.

@Level30Yinzer – last time was frost zombies and outracing an avalanche

@lotsofsnow – Some sort of frozen ghouls that burst from the ice and attempt to drag bloodied PCs beneath.

@Gencon4James – Water elementals. Nothing is more dangerous in the cold than being wet, plus they can basically manipulate the terrain.

@DireFlail – Tarrasque. 3 hours post-breakup with his girlfriend. 2 hours post-buying a swimming pool full of Wild Turkey.

@Neldar – save or die to exposure

@VelvetSouljah – I’d do something like an “ice golem” type thing where snow drifts around PCs swirl to life and assemble into a creature.

@TheWanderer14 – Crevasse

@ve4grm – Lava, lots of lava!

@danielbalard – mine have fought giant snow worgs/kreashar and a fire breathing white dragon

@Naloomi – Remorraz – use their heat & tunneling to separate party members.

Turning my wife into a gamer

Turning my wife into a gamer

It’s an every day occurrence for some of us lucky ones, but a pipe dream for others – gaming with our better halves, that is. “Quality Time” with my wife is often spent rolling dice or shuffling cards at the kitchen table, cloistered up in our bedroom in front of our PC’s playing a game or vegging out in the living room around the xbox with the kids. Speaking of kids, mine are much the same (though in moderated and monitored amounts). We are a family of gamers, and I couldn’t be happier about it but for others even so much as convincing their loved one(s) to sit down and game with can be like pulling teeth.

Mind you, getting my wife into gaming may have been a bit easier for me than others, but it was no cakewalk by any means. She grew up playing Sega and Playstation games, board games and the like but always had reservations about the “D&D Nerds” her older sister hung out with in high school. Computer games were not really a thing in her household either, aside from maybe The Sims or flash games online, so when I met her and told her I was a ‘gamer’ she vastly underestimated what I meant by that.

A few years ago, during the first few months of our relationship and several days into the first of many reactivation/cancellation cycles of my World of Warcraft account, she got her first glimpse into what true ‘gamerdom’ could be.  At first WoW wasn’t even something that really appealed to her, and I was definitely going about it all wrong in attempting to show her what the game was all about.

At one point she was finally about fed up with me playing the game, so I decided it was time to re strategize my approach and explained the elements of the game that I thought she would enjoy most, as opposed to my own gaming-malformed brain. So I marketed it as a game where you get to create a little person, buy her fancy clothes, blow things up with fireballs, go shopping and ride pretty animals – and somehow it worked. She had said [paraphrased] “Okay, show me how to play this game if you’re going to be spending so much on it” and then, not before long – Dibbles the gnome mage was born.

Dreadful Deeds: Chapter 3 “Dungeon Edition”

Dreadful Deeds: Chapter 3 “Dungeon Edition”

So it’s been a busy week for the community so far, we have our newfound character builder, a virtual tabletop announced and lots of talk about the Monster Vault. Another cool prop by SlyFlourish and Living Traps over at the Save vs Death blog were some personal highlights for me.

I managed to eek out two more Left 4 Dead zombies for my Pixels & Polyhedrals series (now all complete with video examples), and I’ve got just one left then it’s on to final revisions and release into the community via .monster files! I also got to take part in the DM Roundtable podcast which was awesome and I hope to do again sometime!d

This week’s #D5C is dedicated to dungeons, because I love them and because I know you do too! I love the responses I’m getting from people and I hope the series is helping us feed off of each others ideas as well as maybe earn a few people some new followers for their genius ideas! Enjoy!

DM’s – what game / story (or meta) elements make your players the most nervous at the game table?

@TheWeem – The unknown. Ex: Showing them something seemingly more powerful than them that uses mechanics outside the “rules” box

@BlindGeekUK – the NPC’s knowing all about them.

@TheShaggyDM – Pulling out a big, mean-looking mini, plonking it on the table, and saying “all you have to do…is get through this.”

@ExaltedDarkness – as far as game elements, I think math is the hardest for my PCs, lol. Combat modifiers get pretty tricky…

@Neldar – Dragons, 3D terrain, zombie dragons, sand, overwhelming helplessness

@DigitalDraco – I find sound effects and frenetic (or otherwise appropriate) battle music are particularly useful!

@TheAngryDM – I have a d20 that I have for 15 years that has become famous at my table for crits. My players fear it like nothing else