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This is for DMs only!

May contain spoilers to ADCP2-1

When Sean Molley was working on the excellent ADCP2-1, The Paladins' Plague, John DuBois contributed by assisting with an idea Sean had regarding a change deck that could cover how the environment interacted with the PCs. In addition, he created a Word document that contained the effects.

Despite D&DXP being just two days away, I couldn't help but realize that John had given me everything I needed to put the effects into MSE format. I spent a couple of hours pulling the text in and adding some quotes and titles. I used Daniel Rivera's excellent Sorcerer template for a great look and format. You can see an example below.

I then turned the cards into PDF format with doPDF, a program that prints to pdf format. The result is a full-color

Table Tents for PCs

A common staple of the Living Greyhawk campaign was the PC table tent, a folded piece of paper or card stock with the name of your PC. Players would sometimes adorn this with images and catch phrases, as well as titles earned through play.

Table tents are a huge benefit to RP. When the DM and other players know your PCs name, and can see it constantly, they are more likely to use it. With the whole table using table tents, everyone can stay in character as they speak to each other. NPCs can similarly, via the DM, refer to PCs by their names. The DM is especially key to this, since they play such a role in influencing whether the table stays IC or OOC. A DM can use table tents to really keep the action focused on the PCs as people rather than as minis moved about by

My DDXP highlights:

Meeting People
It was a blast to meet so many of the people I have traded posts and e-mails with over the past months. It felt like a big family was gathering to play. Getting to know people in real life that I had met online was one of the highlights. The LFR community is a really good one.


Dark Sun
I'm a huge DS geek, having run a very long campaign in college, owning just about every product, and having been the Dark Sun list moderator during college. It would be easy for me to not like any changes, but I played the DS preview and enjoyed it tremendously. They have done a really great job of converting DS over to 4E and capturing all of the flavor. The adventure was really cool and fit the setting in all ways. (I think it can be played at PAX Boston, PAX Prime, Origins,

I argue in this post that minions are best left unadvertised. What do you think?

--- In lfrneusa@yahoogroups.com, Jason Gartland wrote:
>
> As a DM I don't want a player, that may not be as savvy, to use a single target daily on a minion, especially if I then have to remind them that a miss, even on their half dmg daily, never kills a minion. The player just ends up feeling stupid.
>

A DM can always make an exception, especially for a new player. As a general rule, I find it more destructive to group enjoyment to advertise minions than it is to periodically have an inefficient use of a power. I'm totally fine with people seeing it a different way. While the rules lack a mechanism by which a player/PC would learn that something is a minion, a DM could choose to communicate that. DM

This is an old post (July '09) of mine I ran into that I thought was worth capturing here. The conversation had been about controllers, initiative, and melee PCs, centering on whether a controller should feel compelled to drop AoEs on allies that close with their targets.

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I offer a themed guide on how to work with other PCs to handle cases where other
PCs might have a reason to harm other PCs.


1. The Tao of Tactical Positioning
Every PC has a role. Based on the role (and possible choices within that role,
such as a class feature or choice of weapon/powers), that PC has an ideal way to
position themselves and their powers within the battlefield.

In particular, tanks/defenders tend to rush forward to engage the enemy front
line. Often these move slowest, weighed down by armor and heavy

The easiest answer is: I have no idea. The more true answer is: I'm trying to figure it out, and I'm having fun doing so.

In the realm of D&D, women often want an emphasis on different aspects of the D&D game. I've had the opportunity to play with many women over the years, even mostly female groups. Each one is, of course, different. And, you can find many gamer girlz who are truly just "one of the boys". But, if I were starting a campaign that was for women, as Shelly Mazzanoble is discussing here, I would do several things differently than I would normally.

Story and Setting

For women, the story and setting are often more important than they are for men, especially for players new to the game. When it comes to those first few games, raw combat and rewards will win over a lot of guys...