Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 03 Episode 10

Season 03 Episode 10 Your hosts: Stu, Kimi, Tappy, Casey and Bruce. We read listener email and discuss GMs roles in Player Characters, both generation and in-play.[...]
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The DDI Character Builder — Why It is Not For Me

Many people look at WOTC's DDI Character Builder and think it is a great idea. Even many people who intensely dislike D&D 4e like the idea of the DDI Character Builder and wish there were one for their favorite RPG. [...]
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D&D Essentials: Will It Make Me Take a Second Look at 4e?

Several readers have asked me my opinion of the upcoming D&D Essentials from WOTC and if it would make be consider playing D&D 4e. I wasn't planning on talking about D&D Essentials, but as several people are [...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 03 Episode 09

Season 03 Episode 09 Your hosts: Stu, Gammonstark, CADave, Tyler, Bruce, Sarah We read email, announce the “gaming nightmare” contest and discuss creepiness. Dustin points us to an alternate dice theory, and [...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 03 Episode 08

Season 03 Episode 08. Your hosts: Stu, Bruce, Tappy and Casey. Playing outside of your class. Happy Jack’s Game Day at Gateway 2010. Labor Day Weekend. Sep 3 – Sep 6, 2010 Radisson LAX $35 for a 4-day pass (with o[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 03 Episode 05

Season 03 Episode 05. Listener email catchup. Your hosts: Stu, Casey, Bruce, Claire, Tappy, Bill. Hot Chicks: The Roleplaying Game . Happy Jack’s Game Day at Gateway 2010 Labor Day Weekend Sep 3 – Sep 6, 2010[...]
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THE House Rule for Rules Heavy Games?

If you wonder why I prefer older versions of D&D or others rules lite games to the rules heavy monsters often published today, you only need to read part of Christian's Exploring The Magnum Opus That Is Ptolus post o[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 19

Happy Jack’s Season 02 Episode 19. Your hosts: Stu, Tappy, Kimi, Casey. A plethora of listener feedback and house rules for speeding DnD4e combat. Featured song: Aboard the Good Ship Venus by the Poxy Boggards, fro[...]
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4e “Old School Style” One Shot Report

We had the the "4e "Old School Style" One Shot" Sunday afternoon and evening. Sadly, it wasn't as successful or as much fun as Bill had hoped. I'm held off writing about it for a few days so as not to jump on i[...]
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4e “Old School Style” One Shot

The players in my OD&D game finally got to the City-State of the Invincible Overlord yesterday -- with their newly subdued young dragon. Now all they have to do is find a buyer for the dragon and they'll be rich. Or [...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 14

Recapping Kimi’s first game as a GM — a Sidebar Episode. Your hosts: Stu, Kimi, Eric and Bruce.[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 09

Stu, Stork and Tappy discuss listener email, a few qualities of great players, DnD4e Martial Power 2 and Player’s Handbook 3. Featured song: The Man Who Doesn’t Like Beer, by the Poxy Boggards, featured on Li[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 08

A game day episode, featuring listener feedback and a brief recap of the game just played. Your hosts: Stu, Tappy, Stork, Jenn, Bruce, Kory, Kimi.[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 07

Season 02, Episode 07. Alignments. We discuss DnD alignments through various editions, the meaning of good, evil, lawful and chaos, and our take on it. We also discuss The Burning Wheel, the latest release for Exalted, D[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 06

Welcome to Season 02 Episode 06: Player vs. Player conflict. Your hosts: Stu and Stork. Links mentioned: We Are Douchebags. A series of old Dragon Magazine articles about gamemastering. Thanks to Jason for the link. Feat[...]
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Reasons Magic-Users Did Not Dominate Play in Early Editions of D&D

I often hear complaints about how spell-casters dominated play in D&D 3.x -- especially at higher levels -- and that preventing this domination was one of the reasons that spell casters are limited far more than they[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02 Episode 05

Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 02, Episode 05. The listener feedback extravaganza![...]
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OD&D as a 4e Adventure Design Tool

I just saw a blog post by Mike Mearls, Build Your Adventures in OD&D, where he suggests doing the initial design work for 4e adventures as if the adventure was being written for OD&D. According to Mike, because O[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 20

Pitfalls of character optimization. Cardstock Characters: MILFs (Monster’s I’d Like to F*ck) — ie, Monsters w/ boobies. Savage Worlds More about Munchkins than you ever wanted to know. A big “than[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 19

“Character concept, meet character optimization.” Game day episode! Listener feedback. Concept vs. Effectiveness [...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 18

Keeping the action going. Thanks to Jim Ryan of the Great Debate for our opening bumper. Congratulation to Shadrin for his winning monster haiku: The chairs never fit; No legs, no hands for my ale. The beholder’s p[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 17

Season 1, Episode 17, a Game-Day show. Designing delves do’s and don’t's. Your hosts: Stu, Tappy, Linnea, Jack, Stork, Bruce and Kimi. Podiobook “Grey” Grimtooth’s book of traps.[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 16

Interview with Jennifer Walker, who is working on a cook book for gamers, entitled “What to Feed Your Raiding Party,” a combination cookbook and comic book. She’s funding it through Kickstarter.com, and[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 14

Starting adventures/”You’re all in a tavern.” Bumper from the Slash and Cast Podcast. Announcing the Happy Jack’s Haiku Contest! Send us a haiku as if written by a monster. Email it to us and we&#[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 13

Shattering stereotypes. The drinky episode. Please take our second listener survey. Neverwhere from Drivethrurpg.com. Had a nice messaging exchange with Andrew, from the, Slash and Cast Podcast. His podcast describes his[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 12

“What makes a great player.” This is a game day episode. Your hosts are Stu, Tappy, Claire, Bruce and Casey. We review Kobold Quarterly #11 (you can purchase it from Drive Thru RPG), discuss listener email an[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 11

Season 01, Episode 11 – Character Backgrounds, where in we discuss three different approaches to coming up with player character backgrounds. Links mentioned: EAIeducation.com (this is the site that’s selling[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 01 Episode 10

Welcome to Episode 10 of Happy Jack’s RPG Podcast, where in we discuss listener feedback, our game where the players go off the rails and do unexpected things and touch on PC background and using PC background as a[...]
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DMG 2 Lessons

One of the first things that caught my eye as I was flipping through the book was one of the insets, where James Wyatt describes his experiences with his son, who wants to play a fire archon. He concludes by pointing out[...]
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Monster Tracker

I’ve uploaded a sample of how I format monsters for encounters. The monster stats tables are rich text copied from the Monster Builder in WOTC’s Adventure Tools. The grids below the monsters’ stats are [...]
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Character Initiative Cards

I saw a post on the WOTC forum about using scraps of paper hung on the DM screen to track initiative. I tried it last session and it worked pretty well. I had the players scribble down their names and their character nam[...]
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Where Have All the DMs Gone?

There seems to be a shortage of DMs.When I put out the word that I was planning on DMing a 4th Ed. game, I had almost a dozen players in a matter of weeks. Since starting the campaign, I’ve had to turn down about e[...]
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Bard v Wizard

As Dante posted a few days ago, we have reached the end of Keep on the Shadowfell, and having reached this goal, those of us running multiple characters have to decide which one would continue adventuring while the other[...]
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Behind the Screen: Zen and the Art of Plot Building…

Over the weekend, I undertook an endeavor that I’ve not done in quite some time: I put together my own extension of a campaign setting plot. I was using Keep on the Shadowfell as a trial of the 4e D&D rules, a[...]
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Behind the Screen: Keep on the Shadowfell wrap up…

Tonight we wrapped the big iconic battle in Keep on the Shadowfell. !!! CAUTION: SPOILERS BELOW !!! The Final Battle Went Well The last two battles of the setting are very demanding, and blindness struck three of our par[...]
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DD 4e Without Minis and Grids

A friend of mine whose player group really wants to try 4e asked me if I had seen any rules or even ideas for playing 4e without minis and without grids. He's willing to run some 4e for his players provided that he doesn[...]
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4E Classic Revisited

A few days ago I a href="http://blog.retroroleplaying.com/2009/03/4e-classic.html"posted/a about Necromancer Games plans to do a 4E Classic -- trying to bring some old school goodness to 4E. I was skeptical about their a[...]
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4E “Classic”?

Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games has announced that they are working on a 4E Classic rules set: "a set of alternate content for 4E to replicate the old school way of playing DD. It will work in conjunction with the 4E[...]
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The Intricities of Group Dynamics, or “Wow, there’s more girls in here.”

As previously mentioned, we have a new Damp;D group here in colorful Colorado. We have been into our current adventure for two sessions now, and an exceedingly rare circumstance has occurred within our gaming group: the[...]
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Behind the Screen: The New Batch

The last time I spoke to you all, it was on the eve of the beginning of our new foray into the new version of Damp;D. This meant new beginnings of almost everything: we were going to start a new campaign with a new grou[...]
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Inq. of the Week: 4th Edition Books?

I began to wonder how many people have bought these books. This led me back to a thought I had when 4E first came out, with the shift of magic items to the Player's Handbook it became much less important for players tha[...]
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Four Concepts Adrift in D&D

With the impending release of the PHB2, and the general notion of what will be included, it occurred to me that even with these classes there seem to be some fairly reasonable character concepts that just don’t seem to[...]
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