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[...]Read on >>
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 [...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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 [...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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 [...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
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[...]Read on >>
Ayn Blüd and the Silver Order
March 14, 2010 from Continuing Clockwise
Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, Character, Fluff, Fluff/Inspiration, Inspiration, RPG Hub, advice
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 [...] Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, Character, Fluff, Fluff/Inspiration, Inspiration, RPG Hub, advice
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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[...]Read on >>
The Art of 4th Edition: Eva Widermann
March 13, 2010 from My Girlfriend Is A DM
Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Fluff/Inspiration, Inspiration, RPG Hub
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[...] Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Fluff/Inspiration, Inspiration, RPG Hub
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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[...]Read on >>
E11 – 4e Gritty Heroic Roleplay
Cap the level at 11, only gaining new feats and upgrading powers, to make for a more gritty heroic 4e experience.[...]Read on >>
Mind Bullets, Anyone?
For those of you awaiting the ability to destroy their enemies with merely a single thought, you’re going to enjoy the Players Handbook 3. Introduced in this volume are several new psionic classes: Ardent, Battle[...]Read on >>
Novel Adventures: Games with Predefined Endings
In February’s issue of Dungeon (#173), Craig A. Campbell has created a three-encounter delve called Haruuc’s Tomb: A Novel Adventure based on events from Don Bassingthwaite’s fantastic Eberron novel, Word o[...]Read on >>
Fringes of Khorvaire, Session 3
The third session of Fringes of Khorvaire was a mini-session more than anything else. Just a social encounter with Qolleb, the leader of a band of treasure hunting orcish freelancers. In all honesty, this really served a[...]Read on >>
First Who, Then What
March 12, 2010 from Continuing Clockwise
Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, Game Mastery, RPG Hub, advice
Not long ago I came across the audio version of Jim Collins’ Good to Great. While the focus of the book is to understand the difference between truly great companies with great leadership and enduring growth from the[...] Filed under: 4e, 4e DD, Advice/Tools, Game Mastery, RPG Hub, advice
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Arena 4e
Arena 4E is a fast-paced combat game for two or more players, and it can be played as a bloody free-for-all, a team vs. team cooperative effort, or any other combination.[...]Read on >>
How To Get The Best Of All Editions
This post came out of a journaling session on 750words.com. If you’ve never used it, I recommend it highly. Because of the uncensored nature of the journal, there may be some residual disorganization, but IR[...]Read on >>
Hit Locker
One of the big design changes between 3rd and 4e was the way they handled damage and hit points. First of all, 4e characters start with a lot more hit points: your average characters starts with roughly 24 HP. Compare th[...]Read on >>
Character du Jour: Cudgel the Goblin
(No, this isn’t an instruction) Grey Goblins are known for three things: their granite toughness, their isolation, and their utterly ungoblinlike nature. For the one known as Cudgel, only two out of those three are[...]Read on >>
Player’s Handbook 3 (PHB3) Review (Part 3)
Psionics. I’ll admit that over the years I’ve never been a huge fan of psionics in D&D. I cringed when Wizards announced that PHB3 would introduce psionic powered character classes to 4e D&D. My initial (and [...]Read on >>
It’s Called Tabletop Gaming Not “Rebooting My Laptop” Gaming
Watching my fellow players and their fixation with technology in the past months has got me thinking quite a bit about the place of technology at the gaming table. They use their iPhones to store their character stats, r[...]Read on >>
Saving the game in the middle of combat
Because my group has a limited time to game each week (about 3-3.5) hours, the amount of stuff we can do in an individual session is pretty limited. In particular, there’†s a big burden on the DM to craft encount[...]Read on >>
D&D Dungeon Masters, the video
I realize this is old news but I have a few readers that don’t read a lot of other blogs so this is mainly for them. The last section bashes on 3.5 a bit, though I agree with most of the points they raise. Incid[...]Read on >>
Let’s Roll….(the dice that is!)
That song at the beginning of Borderlands, performed by Cage The Elephant, is definitely a fitting tune for this week. “Aint no rest for the wicked, money don’t grow on trees…I got bills to pay, I got m[...]Read on >>
Is More Really Better: A Look At Character Classes
I’m all about options, I love to have a multitude of choices, doing the research and then selecting the best fit for the vision of my character. These choices don’t just include the feats and powers I select [...]Read on >>
Magical Minds Contest Entries
Thanks to everyone who entered the PH3 competition. Entries are now closed. All entries have been packaged up and are ready to be sent to Greg Bilsland. Now you’ll just have to wait.[...]Read on >>
Classless 4e
Though the game is made up of classes- which are intrinsic to the design of the system- you can try something new with your next campaign by getting rid of them altogether. Some sub-systems in 4th Edition will have to st[...]Read on >>
Player’s Handbook 3 (PHB3) Review (Part 2)
In our Player’s Handbook 3 Review (Part 1) we looked at the new Shardmind race and one of the new classes, the Runepriest. Today in our PHB3 Review (Part 2) we’re looking at skill powers, feats, superior implement[...]Read on >>
Last day to win a Players Handbook 3!
You’ve got until 23.59 GMT today to enter the PH3 competition. http://buccaneersguild.com/players-handbook-3-giveaway-2/ Judged by our guest judge, WotC’s Greg Bilsland.[...]Read on >>
Hezruul’s Winged Goblins
As far as Wizards go, Hezruul the Magnificent was nothing but a fraud. In his lifetime he claimed credit for many fantastic creatures including the Owlbear, Chimera and Manticore, all of which pre-dated him by untold ce[...]Read on >>
i4e review
I’ve been meaning to post this review for awhile. At the end of last year I blogged about playing without my character sheet. In the comments, DM Ron suggested I check out a iPhone/iPod Touch program called i4e. It[...]Read on >>
Player’s Handbook 3 (PHB3) Review (Part 1)
You may think that you know what the Player’s Handbook 3 is all about if you’ve got a DDI subscription, but the preview content was just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re a DDI subscribers who’s consi[...]Read on >>
WotC come out of the bunker
Rodney Thompson from WotC has put a request online at a few sites. I’ll quote it in full: Help me make WotC adventures better. Hello there everybody, In case you don’t know me, I’m Rodney Thompson, a[...]Read on >>
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