D&D Encounters buff recap
Posted inDungeons and Dragons (D&D)

D&D Encounters buff recap

For those of you lucky enough to have participated in D&D Encounters, or followed the unfolding news and stories via your preferred source of news consumption you know exactly what these are. For those of you who don’t D&D Encounters was a weekly 1 shot (1-2 hrs tops) encounter played out at your FLGS or other participating venue that’s gone on for the past 12 weeks. Each Wednesday while these were going on @Wizards_DnD sent out random buffs hourly that had an effect on those games. I’m posting an archive of all those buffs here for use in your own game – perhaps make cards, create a table and roll for random effects, or do whatever you will with these little gems. Wizards and D&D players all over are currently gearing up for season 2 which will be set in the Dark Sun campaign setting – which I’m hoping to actually get in on this season.

So without further ado I give you the list, special thanks to @WolfSamurai and his nice little blog over at @matt_james_rpg’s loremaster.org for archiving these too. (I “borrowed” the last 6 weeks or so after advanced google searches got tiring) (Plaintext download HERE if you dislike formatting)

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

The 4th edition hot button
Posted inDungeons and Dragons (D&D) The Hobby

The 4th edition hot button

I was introduced to D&D by a friend early in high school who at the time played 2nd Edition AD&D (this book still adorns my shelves as we speak) and I wasn’t really sure what the hell was going on at first. Sit at a table and pretend to be someone else? Do I dress up and change my voice? I heard about all these crazy adventures that had taken place, powerful magic items and all the cool stuff they did and in my mind all I could think was “Awesome, but I wonder what all this looks like” and in my minds eye it was some sort of elaborate video game/VR simulation. I found myself daydreaming about these scenarios I’d been told about, or overheard them talking about “So I took the oil from my lantern and poured it all over the dungeon floor and lit it ablaze with my torch just as the orcs burst through the door and Andy’s character got clobbered” wow, what the hell were these guys doing after school and why hadn’t I gotten in on it sooner?