Tag Archive | "Dungeons and Dragons"

Why I’m Glad 4e Exists, Even Though I Don’t Use It

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

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Why I’m Glad 4e Exists, Even Though I Don’t Use It

Since the launch of the new D&D rules, I have seen a lot of talk online (and heard a lot of talk in person) about the Pros and Cons of 4e. Some people are in love with the system and are super-excited for each new book release that WotC has planned. Some would rather eat glass than try and figure out when to use their Daily Powers.

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What to do when your PC’s go somewhere you hadn’t planned

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

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What to do when your PC’s go somewhere you hadn’t planned

I’ve found that it’s really impossible to account for even half of exactly what your party will do.  Oftentimes they don’t mean to go off narrative they just didn’t realize which direction you had intended them to go.  There’s nothing wrong with this, but you do have to be prepared.  Just because the party has [...]

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Making Interesting Side Quests

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

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Making Interesting Side Quests

I've found that PC's don't generally want to constantly be focusing on the main story line of the game. They like a change of pace, a chance to have some quick fun. So what makes a fun side quest?

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Building Cities

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

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Building Cities

In most world building scenarios your players will end up in cities frequently and if you don’t do enough prep work all your cities can end up looking about the same.  There are many different GMing philosophies on this but I’m going to share what’s worked for me. When I first started I tried to map [...]

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Using More Skill Challenges

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

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Using More Skill Challenges

Skill Challenges are something I think many GM's have been using for years but was finally officially introduced to the D&D world in fourth edition (though notably things like this have been in other RPG's long before this). They are a tool to help you award experience fittingly for out of combat action (or sometimes in combat skill checks).

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Dealing With Problem Players

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

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Dealing With Problem Players

There always has to be that one guy. The guy that just isn't quite on the page with everyone else. Maybe he's obsessed with being as evil as possible in an otherwise good group, possibly he's good but just likes to pick fights, or he just disrespects the other player's time by talking out of game too much or being too distracted. These people aren't bad people generally, they just honestly have trouble fitting into the group and cause group disruption either in game or out of game. So how can we help encourage everyone to work together while hurting the fewest possible people?

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Getting your players to care about each other

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

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Getting your players to care about each other

Group unity is one of the most important things in a RP game. Without it the party spends more of their time arguing amongst each other then actually playing. Players quit games because of too much stress in a party so spending a bit of extra time focusing on keeping your party on good terms is time well spent. This is a follow up to what I wrote last week about how to get your characters to work together in the first session of a game. I'd like to expound a bit on that along with talking about how to keep them together.

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Getting Your Players to Work Together

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

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Getting Your Players to Work Together

When I first started GMing I was fairly against obvious hooks in a campaign. I mean, how frequently does your party composition make a group that would all randomly come together at some tavern (and all happen to be at the same tavern) and group up to do whatever the story is. Not frequently enough for a GM's taste.

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Making your PC’s think

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

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Making your PC’s think

Many times players can end up playing on autopilot. Every encounter, in and out of combat, is like every other. It's easy to fall into a formula. As GM's it's our jobs to try to keep things interesting, to keep the players on their toes.

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Showing intricate histories without shoving them down the PC’s throat

Friday, September 25, 2009

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Showing intricate histories without shoving them down the PC’s throat

I've found that many players love rich histories within campaigns. My current campaign is a world building one and over the six or so months since it's started I've been trying to find good ways to solve the age old problem of subtly showing a depth of history in the campaign without bashing people over the head with it. On the other hand many campaigns I've played in, and sometimes even ones I've GMed, have the problem that there is an detailed history but the players never actually get a good feeling for it. For all intents and purposes they are just playing in a generic fantasy world with the occasional explanation from the GM about some historical fact. So what are some easy ways I've found to keep players within the campaign setting without boring them with long history lessons?

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