weekend warrior : the losung keep brute squad

The Losung Keep Brute Squad is a mixed force of goblins and humans keeping order in Losung Keep, the largest town of the Losung Highlands. Each member wears a chainmail coat, metal skullcap and... Click the title if yo[...]
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Is online play relevant to the hobby?

I am in the precarious position that I am criticized for “coming up with imaginary enemies” who only allegedly criticize me, because they don’t really exist. But I am also criticized for other things, b[...]
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Card Protectors for Power Card Types

I love using power cards. I've found that with my group, especially new players, it's so much easier to use rather than flipping through their character sheet. In the past I made up cards at Dragon's Lair using their p[...]
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Gaming with Kids: Moving from 1E to 4E for ToEE

As I mentioned in the final comments of my last Temple of Elemental Evil AP post, I’ve made the decision to switch the game from using the OSRIC version of the AD&D rules to 4th edition. This is not a decision [...]
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The Keep on the Chaos Scar

Mike Mearls obviously has a thing for old-school D&D, which anyone who’s read his blog knows. When I first saw the initial description and adventures in the Chaos Scar and the map that accompanied them, I thoug[...]
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D&D Encounters – Session 1

This is a mostly spoiler-free account of my D&D Encounters experience. Just don’t click to view the picture linked below. Wednesday night, I set aside my general dislike of gaming with complete strangers and h[...]
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The Party That Prepares Survives

It is said that no plan survives contact with the enemy and that might be true. However, without a plan your party won’t likely survive contact with the enemy. The party that plans ahead, very often comes out ahead[...]
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Review of Player’s Handbook 3 by Wizards of the Coast

“If it’s the Psychic Network, why do they need a phone number?” ~ Robin Williams And so this week, Player’s Handbook 3 is finally out, and D&D Players are now free to create psionic Characters of every imagin[...]
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Review: Players Handbook 3; Part 3: The Runepriest, the Seeker and the Hybrid

In the previous installments of our in-depth look at Player’s Handbook 3, we looked at the new races, and the classes for the new psionic power source. The classes introduce new mechanics that may suit them better for [...]
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Hallowed Halls Dungeon Tiles

I have a pretty sparse set of dungeon mastering supplies.  Since I’m only on that side of the table about once a month, I’ve devoted my gaming resources in other other directions.  I do, however, have the b[...]
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Crafting Your Adventure

How about that for a title? It's pretty audacious, acting like I'm about to deliver some sort of authoritative how-to guide. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that a better title would be, "Crafting MY Ad[...]
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D&D Encounters (Week 1)

“D&D Encounters is an exciting, weekly campaign that plays out one epic encounter at a time.” I played the first encounter last night and I had a blast. It took about two hours to complete the first encounte[...]
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Alea iacta est

For such a group of people known for following one system or another and insist on a logical system of rules that make sense, gamers are a superstitious bunch.  For all that we argue with the GM about how something wor[...]
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the losung highlands

The warlord Losung claimed the highlands of his birth with a band of brigands.  He built a fortified keep with five towers on the ruin of his village and with the enforced help of goblins... Click the title if you [...]
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Review: “Player’s Handbook 3″

The Player's Handbook 3 is the newest core release for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons that introduces a lot of new content including the psionic power source. In much the same way the PHB2 introduced primal classes wit[...]
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Sympathy for the Succubus, Part 1

I'll admit it.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Succubi.    Those little trollops from Hell, tempting men with there wild demonic ways.  There are the fangs, the wings and the whole draining y[...]
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Marking your opponents

One of the difficulties in D&D’s combat is system is keeping track of all the different status effects. It’s not so bad when it comes to tracking the effects on your own character; you can use the boxes o[...]
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St. Patrick’s Day Plot Devices

Since it is St. Patrick’s Day, I decided that it would be an appropriate time to come up with some more holiday inspired adventure ideas. And, since leprechauns are underutilited, most of these plots involve the l[...]
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Hammerfast review – now with Pictures!!

[Note: I realized I didn't put pictures into my original review, so I have added theme here (dumb newbie blogger mistake!).  Please note that all images were taken by me, with my own digital camera, and they are of the [...]
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Review of Rituals of the Other Side: Spirit Magic by Zombie Sky Press

“Trust her, child.  In this she does the will of the loa.” ~ Maman Brigitte (Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson, 1989) There is something eerily fascinating about some of the ritualistic magic systems that have exi[...]
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How I’ve improved my DM’ing

I thought I’d join in on the RPG Blog Carnival craze this month, as it deals with a subject near and dear to my game, dm’ing.  Let me tell you about how I’ve improved my game since I started as a DM b[...]
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Improve Your Defenses With Energy Resistance (Heroic)

More often than not, the PC who poses the greatest threat on the battlefield isn’t the heavily armored Fighter swinging a greatsword but the dagger-wielding Rogue in leather armor. Strikers are designed to inflict a lo[...]
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Kobolds at NorWesCon 33

Wolfgang Baur has been invited as a panelist and speaker at NorWesCon 33, this April 1 to 4 in Seattle. The convention panels will include a number of RPG luminaries from the local game industry whose brilliance rivals t[...]
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Hammerfast – A Review of the Outpost

“History walks the streets of Hammerfast in the form of the dead, the dwarves and orcs who died in this place more than a century ago.“ What Is This Product? Hammerfast is the first of the adventure site supp[...]
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Game Mechanics for Personality (for any edition of D&D)

This is a set of mechanics to represent personality and its change over time in terms of some abstract game mechanics.  As it is presented it will function with all editions of D&D, but could easily be modified to f[...]
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Twilight grove

The 27th and penultimate encounter of my 4E conversion of The Sunless Citadel means we’re in the home stretch. Only one more after this.The grove features some of the most dynamic terrain of all the encounters with[...]
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Best of Both Worlds

If one class is fun, just imagine how much better two classes can be!  PHB3 introduces Hybrid classes, giving all of us the chance to combine the best of two different classes to create our very own Hybrid Class. The Ba[...]
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Effective Use Of Weather

I was cleaning out my dice bag the other day when I came across an old gem, the weather die. It’s been years since I’ve seen it, and probably over a decade since I’ve used it in a game. These days the o[...]
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Review: Players Handbook 3; Part 2: New Races

In the first installment of my review of Player’s Handbook 3, I took a deep look at the classes introduced by the Psionic power source. They’ve all turned out to be pretty exciting classes to play, but with some[...]
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More map making fun with Photoshop

I churned this map out for a sandbox campaign I’m planning on running next fall with the kids at the school gaming club.   Of course, not wanting to waste a lot of time dreaming up new names, I did what any good G[...]
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Mass Effect on Paper

Like so many other people I have seen on RPGBN, I have fallen prey to Mass Effect 2. I’m nearly done with my first run through of the game and am honestly loving EVERY minute of this game. It amazes me how deep the [...]
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More on stealth

Stealth seems to be a topic that I’ve been writing about a lot (see On Sneaking) lately. The reason why I’m writing about it again is because at our last game, we had a tough time of it.  Our stealth woes we[...]
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Review: Player’s Handbook 3; Part 1: The Psionic Power Source

Player’s Handbook 3: Psionic, Divine and Primal Heroes will be out in North American stores day after tomorrow, and I have  recorded my impressions of this third set of races, classes and character options for players[...]
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Skill Challenge: Lie To Me

Training in Insight does not make you a human lie detector. Too often in D&D a PC rolls Insight and on a successful check knows immediately if a person is lying. This shouldn’t always be the case. Sometimes you nee[...]
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Review of The Mentalist by Dreamscarred Press

“My mind to your mind.  My thoughts to your thoughts.” ~ Spock (Pick a Star Trek Episode) Psychic powers have a long tradition in heroic fantasy, going back as far as the 1930s with one of R.E. Howard’s Conan nove[...]
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Gears of Ruin: The Phantom Rails, Part 3

There they learned of a pact made between the Gith seeking to eradicate the Elemental Chaos influence on the world of Sikarra and Melora's Eco fanatics who were unable to channel the power of their Nature god to avenge t[...]
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On Environmental Powers

The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 is likely the best D&D 4e book published for Dungeon Masters. One of the great additions to this book, and to the 4e system in general, is the concept of “environmental powers[...]
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A Creature Featured: The Talyn Warrior

A recent discovery has found an unsettling development. The primitive race known as Talyn are becoming more advanced. Investigators at the scene of a recent Talyn attack on a caravan have found, through eye-witness accou[...]
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Ayn Blüd and the Silver Order

The mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition are very tactically oriented, and some argue that this comes at the detriment of the role-playing elements.  However, the game’s crunch can add to a rich role-playing [...]
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News in Review for March 8 to March 14 2010

As this week was leading up to a major release from WotC, I guess I should not be surprised by huge number of D&D 4E news items we had this week. In addition to not just one, but three pre-release reviews for the im[...]
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“Let’s drop down a hole and circumnavigate the forest”

So here it is, as promised, though part of a double dose as my computer went out the other night when posting the pre-game write-up. There are so many things that happened that I am making a list. Quick Run-Through The [...]
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The adventure between times

(This post is late because I realised just now it wasn’t posted, so you get a double-dose for the weekend.) Well, by this time tomorrow afternoon my number of sessions of D&D I would have played will have gone[...]
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The D&D Action Pyramid

So when I jumped into 4E, all my players were new to the game. One had dabbled a bit in a 3.5 game but his experience with D&D was limited. I will be the first to admit that 4E combats can get a little overwhelming. [...]
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Making the Most of Mythic Structure – GamesU 2009

In this session from GamesU 2009, accomplished game designer and screenwriter Matthew Grau discusses the monomyth and how to use it to create epic and enduring stories in your games. Popularized by Joseph Campbell in hi[...]
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inns & taverns – the taproot of all evil

The Taproot Of All Evil sits at the intersection of two narrow alleys. Blood Alley runs down a steep hill from a marketplace and is named as runaway market carts crush anyone in their path, leaving... Click the title if[...]
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The Art of 4th Edition: Eva Widermann

One of our favorite 4th Edition artists at My Girlfriend is a DM is the German-born artist Eva Widermann, who currently resides in that foggy rebel county in Ireland known as Cork. In addition to churning out lots of wor[...]
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Robot Chicken D&D: Foretold by Prophecy

The writers of TV’s Robot Chicken play Dungeons & Dragons. There was no update last week, so this week I’m posting parts 13-16. Earlier I also posted the DM’s commentary episodes from the past two w[...]
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D&D Robot Chicken: DM’s Commentary

The writers of TV’s Robot Chicken play Dungeons & Dragons. There was no update last week, so this week I’m posting parts 7-12 of the DM’s commentary version. Today in another post I’m also inc[...]
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Vehicular slaughter

Last week I wrote about escaping from a dungeon. Reader Paras commented that a good scenario would have the heroes locked up with the ingredients to build a battle vehicle for the escape.  This comment got me thinking t[...]
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Pimp My Mindflayer

Note: This article was originally published by me on the Wizards D&D Community site on 11 March 2010. There is a certain class of creatures we hold to a higher standard than the others. While kobolds, orcs, and zombi[...]
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