Humor amidst the tension
Posted inDungeons and Dragons (D&D) Humor

Humor amidst the tension

Personally I didn’t know what to think of these new D&D rule announcements earlier today, and in regards to the essentials products I’ll just have to wait and see if they’re for me I suppose. I’m always for improving, balancing and making games more fun for everyone and after spending almost the entire day looking into these things, and reading angry posts on ENworld to enlightened twitter posts I think I fall into the “I’m totally stoked about this” crowd. I also happen to belong to the “Magic Missle changes are rad” (also – Dispel Magic) crowd – just to put that out there.

I still think it would be nice to see a digital version of some of the sourcebooks be made available to DDI subscribers but that’s a whole other post. (Yes I know the compendium prettymuch does it, but as always- I want more)

Anyway in an efforts to move away from the heavy hearted version debate going on I’d like to share something I made for fun over the weekend.

Dark Sun Goodies!
Posted inDungeons and Dragons (D&D)

Dark Sun Goodies!

I've bundled the Bloodsand Arena module Wizards was giving out this year for Free RPG Day, along with some other goodies for all of you. If you're like me and are foaming at the mouth for more 4e Dark Sun material - August can't come any faster for a lot of us. The Bloodsand Arena was created by @blindgeekuk as a great looking PDF complete with highlight-able text (not just raw images) so a huge hats off to him for creating this for all of us.
Dire elephant at the game table
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

Dire elephant at the game table

Once a week we invite everyone over into our home to play D&D. Everyone just walks right on in, takes their shoes off and we sit down together for a good friendly game – hell my players don’t even knock. My gaming group has remained the same for some time now; my wife, my best friend, his fiance, his dad and his fiance’s dad whom both have been playing since their teenage years. More often than not on game night we provide food and beverages for everyone, and most of the time someone brings beer or something else to drink or eat, it’s communal and no one keeps tabs or anything and there’s never been a problem.

Everyone really gets along swimmingly and the party plays well together – they always manage to find a less than obvious way around things and I’m never prepared however good times always ensue. I prepare our campaign with heart and soul each week, I have no co-dm and I painstakingly set up our game to be as fun as efficient as possible, and I’m always looking for ways to bring the experience to a new level. I attempt to cater to my players needs and wants to achieve maximum fun for all.

I wish all of the above said was true, which actually it is mostly with the exception of one of those players. They are downright rude there’s no other way to put it, at first their demeanor was a minor snag in the flow of our game sessions. I can put up with a few comments here and there or shrug off the inappropriate mentions of my wifes breasts.

Dropbox: A DM’s best friend
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings Tools

Dropbox: A DM’s best friend

Some time ago, a co-worker turned me onto a free storage service called Dropbox, it’s basically a cloud storage system for Windows, Mac, Linux, & iPhone and I’ve found it to be an indispensable tool for our gaming group. No matter where you go, when you put a file in your Dropbox it will sync across the board and be retrievable on any device you also have Dropbox installed on and even if you don’t install the app your stuff is always reachable from the internet via the Dropbox website. You can share folders with friends and it even archives stuff so if you delete it and later decide you need it back, you can restore it with 1 click. For each friend you recruit into using drop box they give you an extra 250mb of space tacked onto the 2Gb you start with as a free account.

What we use it for is – everything. Adventure logs, character sheets, pdf reference books, music & playlists for our game, DDI magazine articles you name it we throw it in there so everyone in our gaming troupe can have access to it anytime. When we find good reads, or resources we toss them in. As a DM it’s especially handy

Teaching my 3 year old D&D
Posted inKids

Teaching my 3 year old D&D

Ive "played D&D" with my son on many occasions - we sit down with minis, dice and some dungeon tiles. He rolls his very own set of dice with no purpose other than the noise they make and then I tell him awesome things happen. He uses his imagination, and the bad guys lose so everyone wins. However this weeks many twitter posts regarding the Heroes of Hesiod kids module got me motivated.
Carebears Anonymous, an update
Posted inDungeon Master's Musings

Carebears Anonymous, an update

Hello, my name is Jerry and I’m a carebear Dungeonmaster. I’m here to inform you all briefly of an encounter I ran this weekend that actually managed to incap two of my players (nearly killing one). Some of you may have read my previous article about being a little too easygoing on my players, and what I should do to combat it. Well I designed a rough encounter and ran it this weekend and let me just tell you that the pit of my stomach fell a bit as I heard “wow I’m dying, my character is gonna die”. I knew I’d finally managed to make them sweat in an encounter to the point of incapacitation and possible death, but I felt horrible about it!

Now I must admit, for a party of 5 level 4 characters (and a level 3 NPC who’s an amateur at best) an XP budget of 1300 is kinda high, but hey that was the point