This is an ongoing series in which I highlight what I think were the best D&D-related blogs each month. This is the article for May 2012. The criteria for this honor is:

1. The blog must be on the WotC Blog site.
2. It cannot be made by a featured or staff blogger (the point is to highlight blogs that might otherwise go unnoticed).
3. It cannot be made in the blogs for a specific group.
4. It must pertain to D&D (of any edition).
5. It must be in English.
6. It must not be reposted from or pushing content on another site.
7. It must tickle my fancy.

Note, you really should check out the featured blogs. You can see the current Featured Blogs here and the Staff Blogs here.

WIth the release of the first playtest, I'm segregating playtest reports into a separate list, and I'm ignoring most of the Next-related

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Recently, I created a poll to ask people what player-based skills the game should reward.  This got me thinking about DM skills.  Now, I don't think we can ask what DM skills the game should reward, because truly, most people want their DMs to be a master of everything.  Rather, I think the more appropriate question is as follows:

What is the minimum competency a DM should possess to be considered a good DM?

I've broken the DM skills into seven "professions" and created a poll for each that asks you to vote for the minimum level of competency you believe a DM should have in that profession.

The polls will last for one month.  Please feel free to leave a comment below, join in on the associated discussion thread, or review my analysis of the poll results here.

ACTOR

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A month ago, I posed a poll to the forums concerning what out-of-game player abilities a game should reward.  You can see the results of the poll here and you can join the forum discussion about the poll and the results here.  This article will discuss my analysis of the results of the poll.

Essentially, I broke player skills into seven categories: character optimization, preparation, knowing the DM, knowing the players, puzzle-solving, strategic gaming, lorekeeping, and aggressive roleplay.  I then asked people to rank each category's desirability from "Should be punished" to "Should be mandatory".  In between those extremes were "discouraged", "no effect", "minimal effect", "some effect", "pronounced effect", and "reward mastery".

Not surprisingly, the median of almost...

This is an ongoing series in which I highlight what I think were the best D&D-related blogs each month. This is the article for April 2012. The criteria for this honor is:

1. The blog must be on the WotC Blog site.
2. It cannot be made by a featured or staff blogger (the point is to highlight blogs that might otherwise go unnoticed).
3. It cannot be made in the blogs for a specific group.
4. It must pertain to D&D (of any edition).
5. It must be in English.
6. It must not be reposted from or pushing content on another site.
7. It must tickle my fancy.

Note, you really should check out the featured blogs. You can see the current Featured Blogs here and the Staff Blogs here.

While the D&D Next blogging has tapered off, it's still significant enough that I'm keeping the separation of the "Next" blogs

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In a few threads, it has been asked what player abilities should be encouraged, discouraged, or rewarded by the next iteration of D&D.  This is a crucial question for the designers, as it sets up what players and DMs they hope to attract to the game.  I have identified eight different categories of player abilities, and have created the following poll to identify what people would like to see in their games.  Note I am not asking what you want to see in the next iteration of D&D.  Let's assume that the designers are going to make the game as modular as possible and open it up to as many game styles as they can.  What I want to know is what you prefer when you sit down to play D&D.

Feel free to leave a comment below, or participate in the related discussion thread...

On February 2, Evil_Reverend, the screen name for Robert Schwalb, one of the developers for the next iteration of D&D, wrote a blog on the D&D Next Group called "Weapon Damage Types", where it was suggested that the game would bring back the three weapon damage types: bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, such that some creature might be resistant or vulnerable to one or more types of weapons.  At the time of this article, more than half of the people who responded to the poll at the end of that article thought this was a good idea.  So I have a feeling that weapon type damage will see a return.

Last September, I wrote an article called "A New Division of Weapons", in which I describe some of the issues I've had with similar weapon categorizations.  Specifically, I gave the...

This is the third in my "Three Pilasters" series of articles.  In this article, I plan on talk about the second Pilaster of D&D: 'Sage. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Three Pilasters of D&D
'Ludes, the First Pilaster
'Sage, the Second Pilaster
'Port, the Third Pilaster

While 'ludes describe the things that happen when an adventuring companion is unaccompanied -- the space between the pillars -- 'sage is the stuff that makes the pillars possible: information.

D&D, like all role-playing games, is a game of the imagination.  And since imagination has no form, not physicality, it is essentially a game of information.  So how the game doles out information is crucial to its success.

This is has been an area that has been handled haphazardly, at best.  I've divided information into...

This is an ongoing series in which I highlight what I think were the best D&D-related blogs each month. This is the article for February 2012. The criteria for this honor is:

1. The blog must be on the WotC Blog site.
2. It cannot be made by a featured or staff blogger (the point is to highlight blogs that might otherwise go unnoticed).
3. It cannot be made in the blogs for a specific group.
4. It must pertain to D&D (of any edition).
5. It must be in English.
6. It must not be reposted from or pushing content on another site.
7. It must tickle my fancy.

Note, you really should check out the featured blogs. You can see the current Featured Blogs here and the Staff Blogs here.

While the D&D Next blogging has tapered off, it's still significant enough that I'm keeping the separation of the "Next"

...

Last July, I promised to produce a picture of the whole brood of wrecan, but it wasn't until last week when I could produce a picture of the whole clan in our natural habitat.

^{Good thing the baby knows Dungeoneering!}

During a family vacation, we visited the famous Luray Caverns.  Anybody who has ever played D&D should make the trek to Western Virginia to see these fascinating caverns.  I have been to other cavern systems, like Howe Caverns.  These caverns are amazing and blew any image I ever had of what the Underdark would be like out of the water.

When I have more time, I will blog about how visiting these natural wonders added to my DMing repertoire.  But I don't have time presently.  So for now, I'll just leave you with two more photos taken in the caverns......