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...

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 January 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.

Obviously, this month we got flooded by the announcement of the Next iteration of D&D.  I'm separating out the "Next"

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In a recent interview with Matt Miller of gameinformer, Mike Mearls made the following intriguing (to me) statement about D&D Next:

DMs have ... optional rules to flesh out their campaigns. Those options can range from creating a unique list of races or classes for a setting, to adding in special rules for things like managing a kingdom or waging a war.

I very much like what I am hearing about the Dungeon Mastering side of the game.  It appears that what was, to me, 4e's greatest strength -- the ease with which DMs can customize their campaigns and generate NPCs and adventures -- will be continued into the next "iteration".

Of course, key to the success of the DM side of the Next equation is what modules can be added onto the game.  What areas should DMs be able to opt into (and ...

I know people might want my impressions of D&D Next.  Most of what I have to say is in my prior articles, Long Division, Nonant Cosmology, The World is Not Made of Numbers, To Build a Better Stat Block, Combat Investment, Monstrous Motivation, Unbloodied Heroes, Rituals, and Cantrips for Every Power Source.  I do have some specific comments about Next, which I'll detail next week.  For now, I'd like to complete my Improvised Attack series.

Last week, we discussed at-will improvised attacks and rules of thumb to ensure than an improvised attack is onlly situationally better than a melee basic attack.  But what about non-Martial characters wh want to use their powers to improvise attacks.  What if someone wants to improvise something that makes sense narratively,...

A while ago, I put forward my rules of thumb for letting people improvse attacks.  I didn't think much of it at the time, but enough people have told me that they really got a lot of good use out of it that I thought I should set them forth here.  First, I'll just set out the rules, and then I'll discuss the thinking behind these rules.

Wrecan's Guide to Improvised Attacks

One: The player describes the attack -- the DM converts that into mechanics.
Two: An improvised attack cannot be used as an opportunity action.
Three: An improvised attack is a weapon attack that always targets AC.
Four: An improvised attack inflicts Strength modifier damage (minimum 1) and a condition.
Five: An improvised attack targets only one creature and has no effect on a miss.
Six: The condition lasts no...

My most current blog series is Long Division, a theoretical reorganization of power sources, classes, archetypes, and subclasses.  In my previous articles on the topic, I suggested new division of magic, martial, gish, spellcasting, and weapons.  In this final article in the series, I discuss an organization for implements.

Implements are the "weapons" of spellcasters.  The "gish" use weapons as implements to invoke their magic, so their "implements" won't be discussed here.  Multiclass characters, however, who would use weapons for fighting and implements for magic, will be discussed.

I would like to give thanks to DanTracker, whose article on implements (see the 'How is Magic Performed' section), helped inspire much of my thinking here.

A History of Implements

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