Before I jump in, some of you might ask "What is happening? Why aren't you writing about Dark Sun?" I fully intend to do that. The ravages of convention season plus some work helping other authors has taken a toll, as have family pressures. Further, my Dark Sun campaign is in a very great phase of players making PCs. That ends this coming Wednesday, and at that time I hope to share a lot more about my campaign. I am also comparing Obsidian Portal and Epic Words and hope to share that when I next post.

Changing Adventure and Encounter Design

If you read just one blog this month, it should be what Robert J. Schwalb (the guy that writes every other Dragon article) wrote in Reexamining the Dungeon. He brillaintly analyzes the way that 4E's formula for encounter design ends up producing fantastic

There is ongoing discussion here regarding the possibility of a change to how PCs can level so as to mitigate cases where some players cannot play.

I am not sure the problem is well understood. To that end I thought I would create some polls and see how people feel.

First, is there a sense of a problem in your area? Do you as a player, DM, or organizer often have to turn away players or have trouble playing?

Second, how often do you have this problem?

Third, what exactly is the nature of the problem?

Thank you for your time!

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,

Get cool mod visuals and terrain for Scout's Honor!

I am the author for SPEC2-1 Scout's Honor, a Living Forgotten Realms adventure for 14th-17th level (P2 tier) PCs.

During authoring I learned that we cannot include artwork or pictures. To do so would create possible copyright/ownership issues. However, I was told I could share such things unofficially as a fan add-on.

Thus, I offer here a link to an unofficial and optional set of images that can be used to show what the PCs will see in some of the encounters. All of these images were taken by me during a recent trip to the amazing Angkor Wat temples/ruins in Cambodia. (This is a trip I recommend any gamer take - Cambodia is fantastic and safe, the ruins are an amazing experience. Tomb raider was filmed here).

Here is the handout file.

In an earlier post in this blog I asked if LFR difficulty overall was adequate. We have been discussing Paragon play in threads such as this one.

What do you think, is the LFR Paragon Play too easy, too difficult, just right, or something else?

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