Community

Following up on the idea that dungeons ought to be more demanding than a typical series of combat encounters, it seems appropriate that Players will want more rewards for the ordeal, and possibly choose to undertake the delve without the ordeal.

The starting point is the idea elaborated in an earlier blog about dungeon designs. In the earlier blog, the main element was to prevent the players from taking an extended rest. There are two main objections to this tactic: the DM limits the ability of the Players to determine their own fate, and the Players gain nothing for it.

One obvious solution is to incorporate the Quest Rewards into the structure. If the players manage to get through the entire delve without taking an extended rest, then they receive a Major Quest reward. If the players

Hello there, I'm Chris, I've been playing 4th edition on and off in the Toledo, Ohio, Lucas County area since 4th Edition started, until I eventually had problems finding a place t play (let's just say both my dislike for some of the players in my LGS's RPGA meta, I can't stand extreme powergaming and rule-lawyering to the point of bossing over and making fun of other players, and my overall dislike of Forgotten Realms (I just think Faerun is a little TOO GOOD at aping Middle-Earth if you know what I mean. Not a fan of "cookie-cutter" Fantasy settings, unless it's a good homebrew. I much prefer the....very underloved Eberron, and I'm pretty excited about Darksun from what I've read of it.) I used to play 3.5, but 3.5 is what really drove me away from D&D back when I first wanted to get

The recent GenCon announcement that Ravenloft, my all-time favourite campaign setting – official or otherwise – is the 2011 campaign setting has sent my imagination into a tizzy resembling a hummingbird on a Red Bull and crystal meth high. One of my favourite parts of the campaign world was that monsters were not standardized  and were often break-the-rules powerful.
Now, in 4e, non-standardized monsters are the norm. Every monster is a special exception. Part of what made the original Castle Ravenloft adventure so interesting was that it broke the rules of 1e D&D and defied the expected behaviour of boss monsters: all vampires were identical and boss monsters happily waited in their lair at the end of the dungeon for you to come and thwack them. But Strahd did neither. He wasn't

I have never played Dungeon and Dragons in my life, that's a fact. When a colleague from my university told me he would sell me all his 4th edition book for a pretty good price, I said why not. So I read all the books, thought it sounded like fun and found 5 of my friends(none have played DnD ever) to play with me.

We are playing on the cheap so I made a bunch of tokens by hands, got a DDI subscription because the character builder sounded awesome (and oh boy it is) and bought Keep on the Shadowfell to get us started.

Next wednesday I will play DnD for the first time, and I cannot wait.

Earlier this week I wrote about some of the hows of limiting options for Players, which could be summarized as: be fair, let them know in advance, and try not to hamper their creativity.

Today's blog is about why you can and possibly should limit player options.

Campaign Worlds

There are two ways to define something: explain what it is and explain what it is not. You classify what shape something is by where it ends, and the absence of something is an important clarifying feature. Doughnuts are defined because they have a whole in the middle. I spell it "doughnut" instead of "donut" because I'm Canadian, and our self-proclaimed defining feature is that we're not Americans.

One way to define a campaign setting is by what races are and are not present. Removing a common race from the equation

Names

What is a world but a group of names? Hills, houses, hollows, havens, and every other object, geographical form, and non-tangible entity needs a name. We worry about keeping mechanical balance in the game world, and about keeping an interesting style or hook, but do we worry about consistent and deliberate naming? This post will go through the important points of naming and language in a homebrew setting.

Now, maybe you're designing a small one-off adventure, or maybe you're just not interested in keeping track of what root words mean what in the languages spoken by the inhabitants of your world. If it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. But consider for a moment what benefits lie in maintaining linguistic consistency. Much of the enjoyment of RPGs is getting lost in the story and

My homegame this past weekend hit a milestone. Partially because the Big Bad of the campaign was finally revealed (Mind Flayers, but the players had guessed this ages ago so it was a bit of an anti-climax), and partially because it featured the first player character death of the campaign.

It was a cruel death, the capstone of a long, far too difficult fight (level+1 before I added the elite mind flayer that was level+4). Despite this, the players almost won, having reduced the illithid's hit points by 4/5ths before it retreated (a large part of that damage was liberal use of the new magic missile) and they would have succeeded had they been able to reliably roll above a "7" and if I hadn't rolled no less than 5 critical hits compared to their 0.

The encounter was designed to show that

Aka My New Gaming Room.

Background

I just moved. Last week to be exact, although I've been packing and preparing for the better part of a month. I had an excellent gaming set-up at my old townhouse, as seen in this old blog with a china hutch (The Hutch) being used to hold a good portion of my books and minis, small shelf, and more. It was a little gaming Mecca with ample light and a large table dedicated to the game so I could leave minis and maps set-up between games.

I really like having a room devoted to D&D. It has become my dominant hobby, having a great value in terms of dollars-per-hour.  And because the game requires so many accessories now, storing everything can become an issue. And it's nice not relying on the dining room table and having to delve between food spillage and

Continuing my little brainstorm-blog about what it might be like if a Campaign setting was dominated by a single power source. My first entry can be found here and has some great feedback at the bottom suggesting where some worlds could deviate. It might be interesting to do a third after I finish and discuss variants or alternatives, but, really, discussing one option also partially defines its opposite. That, and worlds with smart and wise rulers don't tend to need adventurers to come and save the day…

Simply Psionic

When one thinks of a "psionic dominated world" Dark Sun tends to be the first example. But, as I mentioned last time, Dark Sun is a world ruled by an arcane man-dragon and defiling sorcerer-kings where psionics are the tool of the oppressed masses. It's not so much a psionic