Community

Foggy Bog is going to try something new when it comes to role-playing games. We're going to let the players read, take notes, and make personal copies of all the information normally held "DMs Eyes Only" sacrosanctly secret.

Part of the reason is that the player's invest a lot of time and emotion into their characters, while the DM is methodically efficient at being brutally vicious. One 'guideline' the DM likes to ignore is the level appropriateness of monsters for the total party level. In fact, a couple months ago, he wrote a blog citing an encounter (he and only he ran through with his own 1st level characters) where a low level party was without the use of any automatic hit spell capable of getting a slightly better than 50-50 chance of defeating a 19th level minion.

When

Links: The Virtual Table Photo. The Unspoken Tower.

Some thinking on the resource that you might or might not find of use.

I went to "The Unspoken Tower" adventure and began to think about how to organize the adventure on the virtual table taking into account that someday someone else might run the adventure and the adventure's particular quirks. "The Unspoken Tower" is designed to account for anywhere between 1 and 8 player-characters and it begins the Zenobaal Campaign for Foggy Bog.

The following is a rewritten version of the original blog post.

The main objective was to put the entire adventure on one map in such a fashion that a person with no knowledge of the adventure could, with little prepartion, DM the adventure.

The original idea was to have arrows on the map helping

WoTC hires someone(s) to do the following work. Create rough animation for each of the character races, with additional layers for standard equipment for each class. This should not be anything more detailed then a bunch of ovals providing rough dimensions to the characters’ physique. There should be just enough distinction to identify a half-elf from a human or an elf. Tieflings have horns. Bugbears have whatever… Male/female distinctions are probably not a concern at this point.

For equipment, we are not concerned with any distinction beyond the grouping. We can tell a spear from a two-handed sword but not necessarily a trident from a short spear. We can tell leather armor from cloth armor but not one type of leather armor from another type of leather armor.

WoTC will have

The title says it all. Think of the fun. You turn the page and the entire scene over both pages comes to life. Adventurers explore a creepy passage. Pull a tab, a monster appears. Spin a wheel with alternating labels of success and failure. Does the monster hit? Spin the wheel. Oh no, a success! Pull a tab and the adventurer drops. Quick! Someone heal our hero. Push the tab and the adventurer is back up.

The adventurers defeat the spider. Do the adventurers unlock the door? Spin the wheel. Failure! Break the door down. Success! Turn the page and enter the next room. D&D pop-up books would be fantastic for fans and kids, especially fans with kids.

Now to sap your enthusiasm, here is one reality. Print is out. Digital is in. Either production costs for a decent product will probably be

We sat around a large wooden display table in an overly small neighborhood comic-book store usually on a Sunday afternoon when the store was closed, or a weekday evening after hours. Occasionally the owner would pull out a large folding table and would set the white rectangle up in the back of the store.

We made characters and prepared ourselves to tackle some adventure. I remember our storyteller made a paladin (Puny Paladin), our role-player made a elf ranger (Lunch), our watcher a half-orc barbarian who also named every character for his own reference (Me) and there was a community female wizard (Da Bitch), who was named because of the cold and regal look our group artist had given her in the party portrait.

The party was dead with the first encounter, something about a dragon inside