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Alright, I know that there's about a million of these out there but no one is making you read these just remember that. Now on to buisness. Unless you work for WotC and they're shifting through everyone's blogs then I fell sorry for you, but look on the bright side! You work for WotC I know people who would kill or gravely maim, in order to work there. So be happy.

Onto my thoughts on Dnd Next, now I've never actually played any of the previous editions except for 4e and a bit of 3.5 so a lot of the concepts were new to me and my role-play group since we've all mostly played 4e and haven't had much interactions with other editions but we use the 3.5 morality system because it allows use to get a better idea of the morals someone has (My Hack'N Slash group is mostly 3.5 players and some who are also new to the game but I made them all play 4e since I refuse to buy more books and learn an entirely new system since I'm doing that with Next already).

Jeez, I need to learn how to get to the point faster, but overall we felt it was good and it wasn't slowing us down from what we wanted to do which was the role-play. The combat was really simple and went quickly so we could have more time to describe exactly hat our characters were doing and not also have to discuss strategy  and powers and effcts and the such. The simplicity of it also made coming up with new ideas (like running up a wall then doing a backflip off it to land on a monster and attack it).

The only thing they really had problems with was the hit dice because it was so new to them not using healing surges and instead using a some sort of a med-kit. I encouraged them to keep an open mind and try to use it though at the end of the day they were still neutral towards it but they grew a little more accepting of it.

This is the attitude that I hope people keep when they playtest the new edition that this edition is meant to join together all Dnd players so the wars on which edition is best will end and the entire community will stand together and be able to reach a general consensus on things like the map vs. no map that is something that people want to choose between and the map should be optional like how they made it in Next so that people can run it their way without forming a large divide between players. From my point of view Dnd is in a bit of a dark age right now. Video games are huge and I'm happy for that but I feel like tabletop gaming in general has become like the underground of gaming today. While looking on this site I can easily see a large and diverse community as soon as go somewhere outside of home or on news sites or school; there are so many people who don't know anything about it. And I'm talking about if I tell someone random that I play dungeons and dragons there's like a 60ish% chance that they don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe its just the area I live in or its my generation thats been surrounded by consoles and computers as long as they remember or even a mixture of both but its not a good sign for people to ask me "What the heck is dungeons and dragons?" instead of giving me the "You have no social life and live in your mothers basement" look that I expected.

Dnd Next is probably our best chance to create a game that everyone can agree is the best edition. But it won't be easy, it's gonna take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears from both WotC and the gamers to get through this and make Dnd better for everyone. So everyone needs to do the playtest and put it through as much work as possible and give good feedback, constructive criticism, and ideas to be added in. Everyone has to make their voice heard while listening to all the others as well. It's the responsibility of everyone to not start flame wars and come up with creative solutions to disagreements in a calm manner that dosn't involve people shouting at their moniters which does NOT help your public reputation or the community as a whole. The optional map creation is an amazing solution to a problem like that and one we should look towards for inspiration instead of starting large internet battles. Save that for Planetside 2.

Let me know what you think about any of the subjects that I touched on above since I did jump around a bit. Feedback and comments always appreciated! Thanks!

Before you think this is a rant on how some gamers are too hardcore; it's not. I actually appreciate hardcore gamers, a lot of them are willing to go through the super heavy number crunching and tactical planning to know how to pull of near impossible encounters and get the party out alive of a tough situation or share the secrets to make the most optimized of a certain character.

  I also believe that now with DnD Next getting into public playtest we'll need people like them to do a lot of number crunching and continuos stress testing of the new system to report mistakes and suggestions for fixes on the game. Thats just something me and my role-play group could never do. As soon as we sat down to try out the playtest we just glosssed over the rules and then did some roleplaying unfortunately they viewed it as more of a chance to do some roleplay with characters they were given instead of ones made themeselves (some very memorable dialogue with the halfling and the dwarf when they talked about how she went from being a farmer to a thief).

Anyway, to the reason I wrote this article, I've had problems with a hardcore gamer recently because his group broke up a while ago because they no longer had time to play together and he heard that I've gotten into DM'ing so he wants to join. But I see no place for him in my role-play group since he just wants to focus on character optimization and beating the hardest of encounters. Although I've contemplated sending him to my Hack'n Slash group since they're more combat oriented but not in the way he is (the group is made up of two dwarven fighters, a half-orc barbarian, a dwarven paladin, and a dragonborn rogue who likes close combat).

The way I see it, is if he joins, either of two things will happen; the room will explode into chaos with everyone shouting at eachother (which probably won't happen since even though they like to eat skulls with heavy necrotic energy coming out of it and get dysentary because of it, they are actually very reasonable). Or eveyone will get along just fine and the group will learn to focus a little more on valid tactics (Though I guess its partly my fault for making the encounter a little to easy; next time I'll make sure to use some tougher enemies) and the hardcore gamer will learn to loosen up a little and care less about tactics and more about the ogre thats in front of him.

Tell me if I've made the right decision or if you'd have done something else feedback and ratings are always appreciated they help me get better at this, and thanks for reading!

I don't see why this poor creature dosn't get more love, it's easily my favorite enemy of all time. I mean, it's everything you love about a lich put into a dragon! Whats not to love? Dragons are just really good boss charcters and liches are amazing recurring villains a mix of the two is a deadly combination.

In my campaign I've changed the Dracolich so it'll be more effective as an undead reuccuring villain. I've done away with the whole "Once a dracolich's physical body is demolished, its phylactery is also shattered and the beast is gone for good." and replaced it with a rule that once the PCs vanquish it it will respawn next to it's phylactery after 1d12 days (With a minimum of 3 days I just reroll if I get lower than 3). Of course it will be harder to get to its phylactery because of the reasonably large cult I gave it full of human and dragon born cultists and the kobolds that praise it.
 
I gave it a longer time to reform than the lich because its a large creature of amazing power so it will take more time for it to regain its lost power but it can contemplate what went wrong in its plan what improvements it'll make to stop the adventurers next time (Think GLaDOS in Portal after Chell "killed" her"). So this also make the respawning timer more interesting because the longer the timer is, the more time the adventurers have to destroy the phylactery but if they fail they'll have to go up against an even smarter advesary.

But the most important thing about about a recurring villain in my opinion is the personality. I wanted to create a villain that was memorable and easy to like and hate at the same time. In my campaign the Dracolich used to be a powerful Dragon growing in strength when he was captured by an evil cult and forced to do their bidding. Eventually he managed to gather enough followers of his own to get them to destroy the cult and set him free.

The Dracolich speaks with a british accent and acts as a very respectable creature. He's more of a lawful neutral alignment and enjoys showing off his power to the adventurers before engaging them in battle. Such as treating the adventurers to an overly extravagent banquet in the great hall of his large castle with cooking servents running about bringing large plates of food to him and the adventurers.

What do you think of the Dracolich? Should it get more attention as a monster? Do you like my version of it? Should the one in my campaign end up assisting the adventurers unexpectedly in their plight against the Demon Prince Orcus? Please leave your thoughts in the comments thanks!

I've always been bothered by this aspect in video games because of their technical constraints. No matter what game I played I never felt like the world was truly open for me to explore. I'd always run into invisible walls or find the immense landscape I was given was not all the fleshed out and a pain to have to travel at times.

This is something I really wanted to change when I ran my first game as a DM. I told my adventurers that whatever adventure they wanted to do, whatever kingdom they wanted to build and rule, whatever foreign lands they wanted to see and discover they could do it as they wished and I would make sure that it was memorable every step of the way.

Of course there's no way in the world that I would take on such a task alone. I gave my adventurers a map of the Nentir Vale and told them that if they wanted to leave that map they'd have to help me make it. Thanks to the fact that we have a topographical master in the party and some very creative members; we often cross in and out of the Nentir Vale at our leisure and the players get to see their impact on the world and the NPCs as they travel.

I feel very accomplished when I hear my players talking over the week about how excited they are for the next meeting because they can't wait for the results of their actions or see how the desert they helped me make turned out. Its great to be able to create worlds like this in Dnd and its one of the reasons why I'll never leave the game or stop being a Dungeon Master.