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Yesterday I posted a new Wizards Watch blog entitled Wizards Watch: Save or Die Spells, Clerics-in-a-Tincan & One-Hour D&D… Really?.  It got some favorable comments,  some critical ones, and  spurred one blogger to write a blog in critique of my own, which I take as somewhat flattering, in a back-handed sort of way.  

To clarify a bit, what bothered me about the idea of acheiving a "One-Hour Game" was that it seems to be only acheived at the expense of the gaming styles of so many of the D&D community.  Sure we all want a fast game, with lots of action, but the only real way to cram multiple combats into an hour is to sacrifice complexity.  FYI, guys, we've already played those D&D games, and they are called Basic D&D, Advanced D&D, and Second Edition...

Just finished a review for EN World on the new magic item game supplement, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium!  I found alot of things to like in this new book, and I have more detailed information about it in the review.

However, I did not like the price, nor being forced to buy my copy from my local gaming store.  At $29.95, it weighs in as the highest priced 160 page supplement published to date from Wizards of the Coast for 4E.  Further, for some of us, our local store is quite far away, and I probably spent 12 bucks in gas getting there and back again with my new book.   I'm sure WotC was concerned about making sure to support brick-and-mortar retailers, but some of us go through online mail order outlets for our gaming supplements for a reason!

But all

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So this past week I ended up posting a couple blogs about Skill Challenges.  I've been noticing that my players never fail them, and started wondering why. 

After digging into the problem statistically, I figured out that under the current skill system with the wide range of skill bonuses available, and using the Skill DCs from the Rules Compendium, I determined that Skill Challenges cannot be failed by most well-rounded parties.  Now obviously, you can always cause a party to fail by forcing them into a challenge that using only their weakest skills, but it'd be a pretty strange skill challenge if no one had the primary skills trained and at a good skill rating.

So arfter taking a look at the problem, I worked on some solutions to try and make skill challenges more difficult,

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I'm finidng alot of DM inspiration this summer in the movies I watch, which I guess is a good sign that Hollywood is finally putting out great fantasy films that actually have application to D&D 4E.  My recent inspiring film was "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" by Guillermo Del Toro, which is a remake of a horror film from the 70s but WAY better - Guillermo is a genius at directing!

But the main antagonists in the film are actually a type of fairy, which was somewhat unexpected in a horror film.  But that got me thinking about all the references in film and TV I've seen where fey folk are actually depicted as pretty evil things, aliens really, as far as humanity is concerned. 

And coupled with my own research into northern European mythology I've been doing for both my campaign

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Posted a new review blog on the Neurgoglyph site this afternoon for a nifty little random generator program called City Builder Generator Pack.  It was written by Chaotic Shiny Productions, and anyone running a D&D game of any edition should check out their site.  The programmer has a very cool site of free online generators called Chaotic Shiny (www.chaoticshiny.com), and it has some really useful generators for a wide range of RPGs.

City Builder Pack has some nice features, and although not D&D specific, works well for almost any fantasy setting.  I used it the other night several times in my Dark Sun game to make up a quick tavern, drop some rumors on the heroes, and give them some NPCs to be suspicious about... all with a couple clicks of the mouse!

So check out the

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Despite a storm knocking out my internet connection earlier this evening - i love my cable modem, but wish it had independent power - I managed to get my weekly review posted on EN World!

I really liked the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, and think that, overall, the authors did a great job.  I had only a couple issues with the book - the lack of an index in a campaign setting is one of them - but I really hate it when companies combine a player book and a DM book in one volume. 

Are players really gonna shell out 40 bucks to buy 85 pages of player content and then ignore the rest of the 225 page book?  Why not edit down some of the DM content to what players in the setting would know, and add it to the player only content, and make a whole other book just for them? 

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I went to go see the new Conan the Barbarian movie last weekend, in 3-D no less.  And although I went as just a fan of the genre, I could not help but analyze the movie in terms of a D&D campaign.

And in doing so, I am forced to conclude that Conan the Barbarian needs a new Dungeon Master, because seriously, the guy who wrote this movie doesn't quite get the genre all the way.  It's like someone trying to run a Forgotten Realms campaign setting without any real knowledge of how characters like Drizzt or Elminster should be portrayed.

But it was well worth reviewing the movie, as well as inspiring a set of DM tips which I had to write down.  You can check out the review and tips at the Neuroglyph Games site:

A Collection of DM Tips Inspired by Conan the Barbarian (and a

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I posted a link on the Neuroglyph Games site to my EN World Review of the recent issue of Kobold Quarterly (Summer Edition).  There are some pretty cool articles for D&D 4E gamers in this issue, and I did an article-by-article run-down of the contents so gamers know if they want to grab this issue or not.

But as I was reviewing the magazine, and noting its contents, I had to stop and wonder a bit about how the gaming community as a whole was dealing with 4E.  Now I'm not trying to start an "edition wars" flamefest, but KQ is one of those magazines which is pretty close to the pulse of the fantasy role-playing community as a whole. 

Back in the day, KQ was a staunch supporter of AD&D, and many solid articles of all kinds got published by the Kobold-In-Chief.  But over

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