Harrowing Halls Review

Ok so maybe I'm a bit behind the curb considering this came out last month but hey i just picked it up during the last #dndenc

I have not had a chance to use it yet in combat but i have some time to play with them in general, and test them out.

The tile-set comes with 2 large surface area tiles, which tend to be the most used in my games.

Good
The good is probably that this is the first 3d set out to date where you can use the 2d tiles and make a 3d landscape. This is nothing new some of us have been trying to find ways to add a 3rd dimension to combat for a while now. The most successful i can think of in the media is the guys over at penny arcade and their falling combat.

With finally a door, stairs and fully built rooms on one tile there is lots to look forward to.

Bad
The bad is that there is only a few sets of 3rd items most of them are just cubes and there is nothing fancy about that. It seems like 2 of the 3rd objects are really nothing more then a slightly raised platform. Also one of the tiles is a very specific entrance way on one side and i don't see it being used unless your building out the scenario on the cover.

Ugly
Its the same products as before with the same material so it comes to no suprise that when poke out the cut-aways the images peeled off in some areas.

What i would have done
These products seem rushed, like they were given to a one or two person team to make some images then sent off somewhere in china to be printed. With a little bit of effort they could be made so much better. On the back of the cover WotC shows how you can build a dungeon using the tiles you just received. Why not go one step forward and add a insert that includes maybe a small delve, some npc's just something else beyond the tiles that is low cost and adds to the value.

Overall
Overall I'm a sucker for the tiles. Sure i use grid paper where I've painted & drawn the encounters myself 90% of the time, i enjoy using the tiles where i can. If you can pickup two sets and glue the 3rd parts so they stay together. The stairs are pretty good.

Until next time keep your dice on the table.

Return of the DM

As the undead corps raises to attack a player, i too must get up and start blogging again

December 19th, 117 days ago wow i can't belive that was my last post

Sometimes life gets busy and prevents us from playing the game we enjoy. With Busy work and a new kid life does indeed get busy.

What's been going on!

D&D Encounters

Can you belive we are half done season one already. Next week will be session 6. Over all the Encounters have been great.

There is something about the magic of undermountain that forces my players to roll like crap. Undermountain was for some of us our first true introductions to D&D some 15 years ago. (holy crap im old). Every one of my normal crew who played in those games were looking forward to playing in the #dndenc

The game started off rather good, with the players realy owning the first encounter. But then as things started to pickup and they entered into undermountain the trouble begain. They worked their way through the skill challenge with was possibly the most memorible one ive seen and found the entrance to the lost halls.

Now the players are searching through the halls to discover more information, find treasure, and perhaps discover secrets of undermountain.

Overall the game was well designed and so far loved by players.

Its Hammerfast Time!

If you've had the kind of weather i had these last few days youll know there has been some enjoyable days. A little known fact about us canucks, is that we like to BBQ any chance we can.

Last weekend was no exception, bright sun, cold breeze, we fired up the bbq and had a impromtu #dnd game. Everyone made dwarves and we decided to run in Hammerfast since i picked up the booklet.

What a great little book, if your a dwarf fan it is a must have. Lots of great NPC's, adventure ideas, storylines, and leaves everything open to the DM.

I used some old maps from some previous game day events to run the encounters on, those maps sure do come in handy. And we played well into the night. The game was so enjoyable the players decided to play again the next day. Promptly running into a 14th level mind flayer (Party level 2)

In anycase D&D for me is on the upswing again, and i shall do my best to at least post once a week on news and other geek items.

Tip for Organizers: Need more players comming out to your events? Offer a bonus action point for 1st time people.

50 things wrong with d&d

First let me state that i am not as big into blogging as i first started out, ces la vie.

Second i hope that i provide useful information to my blog.

Third this is a rant.

this is a rant about how in 2 hours time my rpg blogger feed in Google reader went from 0 new items to 50 new items.

At what point do we decide that quantity over quality is ok, i try my best not to post something unless its an item of quality, (hence not a lot of posts anymore). This in itself seems to be the point of 4e as well. I love 4e i play 4e, i'm tired of 4e.

Let me be more specific, i'm tired of the constant updates to 4e, and constantly looking around the corner to see whats next. Pull back the reigns a little there WoTC, lets go with 1 new book a quarter, i mean 3rd year, = 3rd players handbook. Fuck off.

Seriously, as a player and a DM i'm tired of being bombarded with the new crap, lets let the new stuff work into the system a little before already going on this. It seems to me that WotC saw how much money magic the gathering makes by constantly pushing out new products and felt they could do the same with D&D.

Maybe i'm ranting for no reason, i just feel there has been a flood of information as of late, and how much of that is really quality information.

There are a lot of great blogs out there constantly pushing out new and helpful info that i wish i could keep up with. NewbieDM for one is one of my favorite bloggers, thats because his posts seem to have some user.

So for those expecting good information here, i apologize.

Used the forced movement luke

or how i stopped worrying and learned to love the warlock and the wizard.

In our group we have a warlock and a wizard, our group in general works as a team, 90% of their powers are focused on helping one another.

The wizard and the warlock (Richard) have came up with a move called the Dick Maneuver (short for Richard)

In the following examples i show very specific spells, however it is not always like this, both casters tend to have other spells they can use. This battle is against Scallymag, a Large solo troll.

Wizard goes first

Casts Stormage

Initial Damage = 4d6

Wizard spends action point

Casts ray of frost to slow target

Warlock Goes

Casts Hungar of Hardar

No Initial damage on target

Warlock spends Action point

Casts Diabolic Grasp

2d8 damage

Moves Target 7 squares (infernal pact)

Warlock Move 1

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

Warlock move 2

Target Moves into Stormage

Takes 10 damage

Warlock Move 3

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

Warlock move 4

Target Moves into Stormage

Takes 10 damage

Warlock Move 5

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

Warlock move 6

Target Moves into Stormage

Takes 10 damage

Warlock Move 7

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

No matter how far the target moves here (slowed), next turn the warlock casts harrow storm, to do 2d10 and slides the target 11 squares to repeat the process.

Total Round 1 damage

Stormcage = 4d6 + 30

Hunger = 8d10 damage

Ray of frost = 1d6 damage

Diabolic Grasp = 2d8

Round 2 adition

Stormcage = 70 (initial 10 for target starting next to wall)

Hunger = 10d10 damage

Harrowstorm = 2d10 damage

Grand Total 2 rounds damage: 5d6 + 2d8 + 20d10 + 100 damage

Now before i get people saying well yeah but they can only do this once a day. No there are more powers that the players use to dish out this kind of damage.

This is just an example to show the power of forced movement and zones.

I believe this is just another reason to show why solo's are a bad idea, because they are limited to the amount of actions they can take vs a well equipped and team oriented party.

Monster Review: Dust Devil

Ok, i have been a fan of Stargate for a long time. Pretty much when it came out as a movie then when it moved to a tv show filmed in Vancouver. No i'm into Stargate Universe.

If you have not seen it, let me talk about two episodes. In one episode the crew goes to a desert planet in search of lime for the air filter. During the trip one of the crew members stumbles upon this Dust Devil like creature. The dust devil sucked up some water and returned it to the crew just when he needed it allowing him to complete his mission and return back before time ran out.

A few episodes later we find out that lots of water has gone missing, and turns out one of these little dust devils got on board and went into the water supply. We also see that they seem to be generally friendly and curios and not wanting to cause harm. But they can cause harm, they can suck the water right out of you.

So what i submit to you is a version of a dust devil that could easily destroy a party of equal level. The idea behind it is to find alternative means of getting rid of it instead of combat.

See better version here

The only other thing i would like to add is a vulnerablity to fire, only beacuse the dust devil in SGU did not seem to like it very much.

Tactics: Dust Devils have no reason to attack creatures and are curious creatures that idealy like to try and communicate. If provoked they will defends theselves and flee. Otherwise dust devils will try to mimic faces of other creatures as their main method of communicating. Dust Devils are not made of dust or sand but instead of thousands and millions of tiny insect that can consume imense amounts of water and even recall it at later dates.

Well i am very intrigued in feedback and would like to know what you think.

Thanks and until next time keep your dice on the table.

Mapping with the Kids, Watercolor for the win.

Hi Everybody, its been a while since i last posted, almost a month. What can i say life is busy. When your trying to make money anyway you can, spend time with your kids, and everything else that is life its hard to find time put some thoughts on paper.

I started to run P1 - King of the Trollhaunt Warrens with my group of players, its my first 4e pre-made adventure. I really liked the map that came with it but was a little upset there were no maps for the rest of the encounters.

Now the maps i use for the table has varied over the last year and a half. From D&D Map Tiles, to 1" grid paper using markers. I went through the entire book and created every single encounter using makers.

We ran the first night heading into the troll haunt, and the players had trouble seeing where they could go and where they couldn't because everything was still white spaced. I didn't know what i was going to do.

A few days later brought my 3 year old into the d&d room so she could paint some watercolor's, i even gave her one of my large 1" grid sheets. I love spending time with my kids and find being a dad the biggest role playing experience of my life. i noticed the colors she was using and though, jesh that looks just like it does in this book.

So i put away my happy face i was painted and busted out a few of my maps and started painting.

The result was solid. Not only did the maps look great but i also got to spend time with my kid while working on it.

I know recently there has been lots of talk about people building massive encounter using tiles, and even the 3d tile sets. But really who has the money. I spent $12 on paper for 50 sheets (50 encounters) and i spent $1 on the watercolor paint set that is still going strong. All encounters can be pre-built and once dry i just fold it up and write the encounter code on the back.

I've now increase my own personal enjoyment from the map by spending time with my little girl. The players enjoyed the map and feel it adds a lot of flavor to the game that cannot be added with store bought items.

Well for other DM Dad's out there, i say why not give it a shot. Hey go even further and design the encounter with your kids and see what your players think about it.

Well until next time, keep your dice on the table

Trick or Treat

Well i finally have the time to sit down and work on a blog. And since its October why not talk a bit about Halloween. Halloween is always a fun time. Some groups like to run a special Halloween inspired game session.

Our group will either run some call of cthulu, vampire, or sometimes chill. However i think I've got a special delve in store for them that I'll share next week.

The key to a good one night theme game such as Halloween is the rewards. Players are playing for the fun, but why not have rewards that carry over to other games your running.

For any DM this is a tough one, the last thing you want to do is reward the players in your hard working campaign from events of a one shot night game. But I think this is where the trick or treat tokens come into play quite nicely.

First to make your trick or treat tokens you can simply print them off on paper and fold them in a bag. The key is each time a player gets to pick one its at random and they don't know. Another great use for dollar store foam sheets is to make these tokens as well.

I recommend listing weather or not its a trick or treat, followed by the effect.

When your determining what kind of in game effects your going to have you also want to keep in mind how many will you give to the players over the period of the adventure. If you give them one after every kill, then you get into the argument of who got the kill, strikes of course will get more than other characters. Might as well go with an easy system such as letting each player chose form the trick or treat bag one at a time after each encounter.

If your worried about players making their own or copies at home, simply sign the back of each token. Each token isn't going to be larger than 4inches wide, and 2 inches tall at most.

Tricks

Trick tokens affect the game as it is, its rolls or everything going on. In a way it lets the player play a trick on the DM. Here are a sample of 5 tricks you can use.

• Trick: Teleport your movement
• Trick: Remove a standard monster from combat
• Trick: Immediately gain an action point
• Trick: Re-roll the roll you just made, add +2
• Trick: Swap places with a monster of your choosing (no save)
• Trick: Target monster now grants combat advantage

Remember that this tricks are limited to how long your one night game is, the players will use them to increase their own fun in the campaign. Make sure your only creating Tricks you are prepared to live with.

Treat

Treat tokens are in essence treasure, they increase the wealth of the player in some fashion. It gives the player something they did not have before. As with tricks be sure to only use ones your comfortable with. Here are a few examples

• Treat: Cast a ritual without spending the material component cost
• Treat: Exchange a recently found magic item, with one that is +1 level higher (ie find a level 4 item, change it with a level 5 item)
• Treat: Regain a healing surge
• Treat: Gain a free 'retrain'
• Treat: Regain the use of a encounter power or daily power (you decide when creating it)

Keep in mind these tokens are limited, your only going to do this once at Halloween, and players might use them all up at once, or spread them out. Be prepared for both, both will be enjoyable. The idea behind the trick or treat tokens is to exchange xp or gold in a one shot game night.

I have a few more posts coming up this month about Halloween, including special magic items, to my ultra deadly delve challenge for 5th level players.

Until next time keep those dice on the table.

DMs Top 5 things to get at the dollar store

Without mentioning classic, paper, pencils, erasers and sticky notes, there are a few items you as a DM should pickup from the local dollar store every once and a while that can help you with your game.

What i mean by helping you with your game, is that each of these items alone cost little (around a dollar!) and help overall by speeding up your game.

#5 - Poker Chips

If you use the +1 or +2 token rule this is a great way to keep track of them, usually you can get some white, red and blue tokens for a dollar. Use the white for +1, the red for +2 and the blue for action points.

It may not be the best idea in town, but it is something I'm almost sure people do.

#4 - Color Foam Sheets

These colored sheets of foam about the size of a piece of paper can be cut up to make your own burst & blast templates. You can use left over pieces to make bloodied/status tokens.

Four sheets for about a dollar, you simply cut a five by five inch section off, then a four by four, then a three by three and use the rest to make multiple one by ones.

#3 - Modeling Clay

Somethings you just don't have anything your need for your game, Modeling clay lets you spend a few minutes to accurately get what you need. Perhaps your building a wall, or simply some boxes. Using this an let the players know that indeed something is on the gird.

The best thing is its all reusable, just roll it back up and throw it in a bag. Just don't let your players make a dr. manhattan slong for your Degenerate Cultist of Orcus, i mean sure hes Degenerate but common.

#2 - Round Labels or Reinforcements

Reinforcements are the little round circles, the donut with the center. Often used to holes in paper that were riped. You can use a pen and write a number in the center circle, then use this circle on the base of miniatures to identify them on your initiative tracking. Sure you have 40 orc's, but now you can have them properly labeled. This works great for the round labels as well

The Outer donut an be colored with a marker and used as a status identification or bloodied mark.

#1 - Star Stickers

Yes, even when i first thought of this, i was like WTF. But then in dawned on me, i can get a pack of 400 star stickers, each sheet has 5 colors, yellow, red, blue, green and silver. Then i realized i can use this to significantly marked tokens, bloodied tokens and other effects.

Its simple and it works, Red of course is bloodied, silver can be a marked effect, yellow, blue and green can be any status effects you find come up a lot in your game. Prone is a big one.

Just peal the sticker off of the sheet, and use one of the star ends to stick it on the top of the miniature. Or but it on the base so it can be seen.

Now that you have some ideas of things you can get to help your game along, here are a few things to stay away from.

Dinosaurs: No they do not make good miniatures

Flutes: No, do not give this to your bard, the party will hurt him. And possibly you.

Fake Swords: This can only end badly.

Honorable Mentions

Small Sticky Notes

Sure i mentioned them at the top, but the smaller ones are great for making areas in books you need later on. Perhaps what page that orc is on, or what page of the players handbook the players treasure is on.

Freezer/Sandwich Bags

Yes, this are great. The freezer bags lets you store dungeon tiles in sets or in groups. If you want you can even pre-build your encounters and store the needed tiles in a large freezer bag, then user makers to write down which encounter it is

With the sandwich bags you can store multiple miniatures again by each encounter or type. Pickup a few blank labels and you've not organized everything in some easy to grab minis-dime bag.

Well there you have it, i hope i brought you some good ideas, or at least some bad ones.

Until next time keep your dice on the table.

DNDGD Preview: Xandross Male Human Fighter

Yesterday i gave DMs some tips on how to run the game day adventure, and previewed Tower the Warforged Artificer. Today i'll be covering the final player character and talk a bit about designing the adventure.

If you remember from Monday groups will be able to sit down and build the adventure in advance. This section will roughly take 1 hour. And here are a few things to keep in mind

Limit

Limit yourselves to what your using in each encounter. It might be hard to count up the XP and figure out a good number, so instead a good rule of thumb is having the same total level. Party of five, sixth level characters give you 30 levels of monsters to play with. Keep this in mind when building each encounter

Re-Use

Just because you used monsters in the first encounter doesn't mean you can't use them again. Your limited with the miniatures and monsters you an use so don't be afraid if your not using all of them. Go with what makes sense for your adventure.

Terrain

Review your double sided map, see what monsters make sense, and where they should be placed. What are the monsters doing. Are they expecting an attack or is this just their base. If so how are they acting. Use terrain to the adventures advantage. Don't forget that ranged creatures will benefit from higher ground.

Story

Go with what fits in your story, focus on the story when your building the adventure. A good story will be remembered by the players who play it. If the scarecrow doesn't make sense, then don't use him.

Finally ask your self how you would feel if you were playing the adventure you designed. Would you feel cheated that it was too tough, would you feel that everything was stacked against you? Or would you enjoy the challenge.

Make sure you have fun tomorrow, and Here is Xandross

Find a Game Near You

My Game Day is being held at Alternate Icons

257 Marlborough Street, Brantford On

Noon until 6pm

Sleep time, happy game day tomorrow.

Magic Item Review: Cloak of the Walking Wounded

Ouu, 2nd post of the day. That means i get an action point after this one. There are a few magic items in 4e that realy stand out, and need some focuse.

Cloak of Walking Wounded

I can't get into the details of this beacuse your not allowed to post magic items from the wotch site, but basicaly when you spend a healing surge, you can instead spend two. This isn't a dialy power but a property. This is freaking amazing.

Imagine if you will that when you use a second wind, you now heal for your bloodied value. This lets you spend less time healing and more time killing stuff.

Cloak of the walking wounded is a 4th level magic item, and in my opinion a must have. I've rescently discussed it with my players of a LFR game, and we've concluded that sure like all neck items it gives you a +1 to fort/ref/will but they see no reason ever to upgrade it to the +2 version.

The cost diffrence dosen't justify it, your not getting anything more out of the property and when your playing in a limited gold campaign why spend the money there.

Every dwarf in the world should have this as well, the sheer ability to second wind as a minor action, get +2 to all defences, then still have a standard to take more beatings or dish it out is also amazing.

You can find the cloak of the walking wounded on the DDI Compendium, or in the Adventures Vault.

Originality: 4/5

Very original, there is little else in the game that has the same options this does.

Lifespan: 4/5

You can go all the way to 30 using the +1 version of this, you may want to upgrade later on just for the extra bonuses to defences, but the core of the item will never change for you.

Cost: 4/5

Sure all magic items cost the same, but when you look at the cost vs effect, its solid. a LFR character starting off can easily purchase it as soon as they hit 4th level if they save their gold.

Usablity: 4/5

No matter your race or class, everyone uses healing surges, casters with low hit points can spend two surges at once to heal up quickly and get back in the fight, while fighters who take constant damage will enjoy the benefit of staying at full. Sure it does use two healings urges per use, but thats the point.

Well i hope i've convinced players to look into buying this wonderfull item, and DM's this makes a great magic item as treasure. Even at high leavels, drop a 1k gem for one of these cloaks. Even wizards know show good the item is, a lot of their game day charaters own it.

Until next time keep your dice on the table.

DNDGD Preview: Tower Warforged Artificer

Yesterday i previewed Naivara Female Eladrin Swordmageand talked about what everyone should bring to the game day event.

Today I'm going to talk about some DM tips for those DMing the games.

DMing for the game day is a bit different than normal events, and i highly recommend following these simple kiss rules.

Stay true to the adventure

Though your the DM your group worked together as a team and designed the adventure, try and stay true to what the adventure entailed.

Make a Call

If you run into something that others question, just make a call. Ask the player to look it up while they wait for their turn to come around, and if your in the wrong award them a temporary action point that they can use until the end of the encounter. its not perfect but it keeps everyone happy and it keeps the ball rolling

Assign a Buddy System

Find out if there are some people who are new to system, ask for volunteers who will sit with them and help them through the game as they go. Focus on the basic Move, Attack, Minor and the rest should follow suit.

Say Yes to the Players

Sure your group wants you to make it hard for the players, but if they come up with a good idea or something you haven't seen before, just say yes. Or say, 'that's a good idea, but that might require an action point' if the player is willing to spend the action point let them do what they want to do. Play this by ear, let the players drive the game.

Initiative

Stay on top of initiative, if you've DMed 4e before you know how hard it can be to track 40 different things. See my posts yesterday about bringing proper condition markers and initiative trackers.

Monsters

Spend a bit of time during the prep to read over the monsters, bring a highlighter so you can remind yourself of any regeneration, damage reduction etc.

Have Fun

Everyone is here to have fun, you, the players and the organizers. Just keep this in mind, don't be afraid to break some rules in the name of fun. Players will walk away with a memorable game and a overall enjoyment.

Character Death

I seriously doubt characters are going to die, but if thing get heavy jump in and help them out where you can. Have a NPC suddenly show up and drag the person to safety. Sure people will question it, but again its about having fun, not trying to get a TPK under your belt.

Tower, Warforged Artificer

Well that's it for today, tomorrow i will preview the final character and talk about some tips on building the adventure. They will be very general.

Find a Game Near You

My Game Day is being held at Alternate Icons

257 Marlborough Street, Brantford On

Noon until 6pm

Until game day keep your dice on the table.

DNDGD Preview: Naivara Female Eladrin Swordmage

Yesterday i previewed Glorinus Male Human Invoker, today I'll focus on a new character and talk a bit about what you should bring to your local game day.

If you were at the players handbook game day, then you'll know there were dice, each table had a set of dice. These dice were absent at monster manual 2 game day, and again are not going to be showing up in this game day. Fact is I'm sure dice are something that needed to have been cut to keep the cost down while they focused elsewhere.

This is where you game stores out there hosting the event can shine a little. Offer a set of dice up at each table, then at the end of the night give someone a chance to win them. This gets you more involved with the players.

All

Be sure to support your friendly local gaming store and bring some money to purchase snacks, drinks and books. I'm a firm believer that if players support their gaming store, the gaming store does the same to them and hosts more and more free events. So pickup your book on game day from your store.

Players

All players should bring some pencils, paper, and dice. This is core to any game, you can play any role playing with these 3 items alone. It also can't hurt to bring a spare blank character sheet, and a players handbook.

Dungeon Masters

If your planing on being a dungeon master at the event be sure to bring all the core stuff that players are bringing and whatever you feel comfortable with bringing from the organizer section below. Its also a good idea to bring a dungeon master screen, since it will have the core information you need.

Organizers

As an organizer you have a lot of work to do, you're aware of this and that's what you've signed up for, i find the more you put into something like this the more you get out, so here are some things that i plan on doing that you might want to think about as well.

Spare dice - keep some extra ones kicking around

Spare miniatures - again bring in some form home and label them in advance

Extra Rules - Don't forget to photocopy the rules page in advance, wotc only gave out 2 sets

Paper - bring some paper and ask players to write down contact information for you

Name Tags - Name tags are great, have players either use their own name, or their players name

DCI cards - be sure to bring enough for everyone, and write down information for yourself in case players lose it in the future.

Markers - I have a set of bloodied/status markers that i plan on bringing

Burst Templates - again i will be bringing my burst templates, never know

Initiative - ah, initiative, when not using IniTracker, i use this Printable DM. Feel free to print off a bunch for the event. I've since lost the original URL. http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/408350/printableDM.PDF

Quick Start Rules - Its great to have a copy on hand for new players to review, and great way to get them into the edition by giving this away for free.

Overall I'm excited it seems like fun and i can't wait.

Lets take a look at Naivara now

Well there you have it

Find a Game Near You

My Game Day is being held at Alternate Icons

257 Marlborough Street, Brantford On

Noon until 6pm

Tomorrow I'll talk about DMing tips to keep in mind for the game day.

DNDGD Preview: Glorinus Male Human Invoker

Yesterday i previewed Holkarn Male Halfling Barbarian, today i'll focuse on a new character and talk abit about the uniqueness of thsi game day.

In previous game days you would form your party, learn a bit about your characters and then run up to four encounters. I was a player for the PHB2 game day, and felt the DM was out to get me, this is when i decided to get my WPN and run the game day for MM2, it turned out to be a huge success ( ok for a city that can only support 1 gaming store) I got some people from a local gaming community and a guy who played d&d back in the day and was looking for some fun.

The diffrents is for the first our of game day, your group will be building the adventure. Thats right, you get to sit down as a group and use the maps & minitures to build two encounters for another group. I can see it already groups will try and trick eachother and make something that is killer.

Its not all just combat, in fact WotC recomends spending the first 10 minutes deciding the backstory and theme to the adventure, why are the players there to begin with. Everything is broken down to steps roughly 4 steps in total, from building the encounters to writting down encounter descriptions and what the DM will say when the players enter the area.

Overall im excited it seems like fun and i can't wait.

Lets take a look at Glorinus now (what a name)

Well there you have it

Tomorow i'll review with you a list of things you should bring to your game day event.

Find a Game Near You

My Game Day is being held at Alternate Icons

257 Marlborough Street, Brantford On

Noon until 6pm

Until game day keep your dice on the table.

DNDGD Preview: Holkarn Male Halfling Barbarian

Well its no secret I love game days, maybe its because i don't get a chance to go to cons, but for a 30 year old with two kids and a day job, being able to spend the day playing d&d is just great.

Each week before the game day i like to talk a bit about the game, a bit about the characters, and a bit about the location. So lets being shall we.

Location: 257 Marlborough Street * Brantford * Ontario * N3S 4T4 * 519-720-0771 *

Time: Noon until around 6 PM

Notes: Bring some cache for drinks, food & any purchases you wish to make.

Character Sheets

The character sheets in my opinion are absolutely amazing, yet simple. You'll notice some options are not present on the character sheet for brevity, and that's fine with me because at the end of the day lets just play. If the rule/feat is important enough I'll remember it and look it up when i need to.

If you can see here its pretty solid, you just put a check mark in your surges used as you heal. So Holkarn has 8 healing surges. Which should be fine for a 2 encounter adventure. The back side of the sheet has all the attack/utility powers.

Miniatures

With the last D&D game day, were lucky to get the new miniatures that are coming out as the player options. For us Canadians this is great, because I've never seen the pack of 3 at a price I'm willing to pay. I feel bad for store owners, but there isn't much they can do when they have to add shipping costs onto everything.

If you are going to be in the Brantford area come on and join us, rumor is there will be pizza. You can sign up on facebook via this link. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=230449410132&index=1

If your not around here, but still want to play, then check out this link here from the www.dndgameday.com website, it will help you find a place near you: http://ww2.wizards.com/StoreAndEventLocator

Until game day, keep your dice on the table.

One Shot Game Night: Eberron Western

Sorry for the lack of posts as of late everyone, life as would have it is very busy. No on with the show.

I suggested this idea to a few people on twitter a while back and wanted to present some more ideas online today. My knowledge on Eberron is limited so if anyone sees me breaking the rules, i appologize but thats the DMs poragtive.

The lightning rail is one of my favorite ideas from Eberron, basicaly its just a train. The idea i have here is for a train heist.

Now your players don't nescerialy have to be bad guys to pull this off, and my suggestions are going to follow the path of good. Feel free to change this around if you want to have a bad guy night.

Backstory

The heroes have been hired by a small mining town, who has lost much of their wealth to a gang of bugbears. The bug bears have stolen the deed to the mine, as well as various jewlery when they robed a casino just before leaving. By the time the players are made aware of everything its already too late, the bugbears just left on the lighning rail and must be stoped.

The Chase

the first thing the players need to do is catch up to the train, this will be the first part of a multi teir sill challenge. Success they get on top of the train. Failure means they lose a healing surge, bugbear guards are on top of the train firing at them.

Once on the train they will need to climb to the top, as where some of the bugbears are keeping watch. Again success means they get to climb to the top of the train, this should be a easy enough skill challenge. However if they fail, another healing surge goes down the drain as they take more damage from the bugbears

Top of the train

This is a great fight seen, and one players will find as a favorite, i would build it 3 squares wide, with each square on the side requiring a athletics check or fall prone. The train is very limiting in combat. After the first round of combat anyone with a high enough perception will see the train is entering a cave and there is not enough room for them. They have 4 rounds remaining. Each round the perception required drops.

The right cart

most of the carts are just storage or have been locked up, the players need to find a way in, or find a good spot to get to ride out the cave. Anyone who drops prone should take ocasional damage as the train passes through the cave for 3 rounds. Anyone droping between carts has a 50% chance to be able to enter a cart, otherwise they have to wait out the cave.

Cart Fight

Once inside the players will find them selves in a cart (again roughly 3 squares by 5 squares) and it might be extremly difficult to fight in, but thats part of the fun. The players need to fight their way through one passenger cart before they can get to a storage cart (seperate fight) that contains all the treasure.

Boss

The last fight occures in the engine room, shortly after the players find all the missing items the train jolts forward and is being pushed to the max. In the engine room is the final boss (elite) who has flung the train at high speed in hopes to knock it off the rails at a sharp turn comming up. Any player can make a history check to know that comming up is a very dangerous part of the track, its a sharp turn just before it goes over a cliff. The players have 3 rounds to stop the train at the controls, after that therey is no stoping the train in time. after 2 additional rounds move to the sudden death skill challenge

Sudden death skill challenge

This is a slightly diffrent challenge then you may be used to, give each player 2 actions, its up to them what they want to do. here are some things they could do.

• Grab some treasure
• lasso a large rock
• jump out of the train (either by using a rope someone used, or tumble)
• tumble once you hit the ground (make a athletics skill check, pass is 1 healing surge, failure is 2 healing surges)

The train goes over the bridge and into a deep ravine. The Bugbears are dead, any player left on the train should immediately be considered at 0 hp, unconscious. other players should get to them as soon as possible.

Over all its all about having fun, so enjoy the train encounter and make it your own. There are lots of variations you can do on this, i just wanted to provide something to you that can be built in a night.

Until next time keep your dice on the table.

Digital Dungeon Master: RPTools part 2 - Using & Moving Tokens

Ok so my last post was about how to install MapTools, and connect to and start a server. Now lets spend a little bit of time on tokens. I seem to be able to get two posts off during nap time, so like he-man changing twice in one episode this should be good.

In this post I'm going to focus on the basics of tokens, once you get the basics down the rest will follow just by playing with the program.

To add a token to the field

Once MapTools is up and running, go to the Resource Library window and drill down to Tokens.

Make sure you select the Tokens Folder, below it you will see a bunch of new icons.

Click and hold onto a token and drag it over to the grass.

A window will pop up asking for some basic details.

There you go your done.

Right click on your token and view some of the proprieties, lets lets you control in game effects on the token. Lets go to edit the token and add 20 hit points.

Now when we select the token we can see the a larger copy with the hit points and any other details we want. On your turn to move the token, simply grab the token and drag it where you want to move, a path and counter will show up to help you make sure you only move where you can.

When roleplaying, click on the Impersonated window, and select token that says Impersonated Selected. Make sure you clicked on your token.

Now when you type something in chat, your typing as if it was your token.

Adding your own token

Using RPTools you can add your own tokens from pictures online. Simply go to the RPTools website, downloads section and download the TokenTool application.

Follow the same instructions as before to get the program installed. Then double click on tokentool-1.0.b28.jar to run the token tool.

Using any old image you find on the net, simply drag the image from your browser over to the token tool

Now use the zoom feature to make the image fit, and use the dropdown to select the type of token your going to use. Here i have selected a green circle.

Once done go up to File then save token, save it in a new folder C:\MapTools\Tokens

Now you've created your first token, how can you access it? Well back in the MapTools program, Go to File and click on Add to Resource Library, and select your new token folder.

Use the same instructions as before to add the token to the map.

Now that you can create a server, connect to a server, use tokens and make your own tokens your pretty much ready to start a game. I'm glad i was able to get two posts in today. I'm off to a local fair tonight so there will be no MapTool challenge this week.

Keep an eye out for another post hopefully this weekend,

until next time keep your dice on the table.

Digital Dungeon Master: RPTools part 1

Well its been a long week, and i've ment to release this post in a series all week long but life has a way of throwing plans out the window.RPTools is a great website full of diffrent tools to play d&d online, i remember using it back in teh 3.5 days, i had a friend move and we wanted to still play with him. We tried many tools at the time and ended up going with fantasy grounds at the time. However RPTools developemnt has certinaly come around since the release of 4e and is a solid tool.

Installing

Installing RPTools is straight forward. Go to to http://www.rptools.net/ click on the downloads section.

Click on the link for MapTool, a huge list of files will show up. Don't worry you don't need to download each of them, just grab the one on the top.

This is the most recent version. I recomend saving the file to C:\MapTools, though its your system put it where you feel its the most comfortable.

Make sure you tell your players to download the lattest version as well.

Then using your friendly neighbourhood unzipping software (7zip), unzip the file to the same location.

Now your ready to begin, it is realy that simple.

Starting the software

To start the software go into the newly created folder, it should be something like C:\MapTool\maptool-1.3.b56, in there look for the launcher icon, and double click on that. MapToolLauncher.exe

This will bring up a configuration screen, for now lets keep it as the defaults, i will do some playing around with the settings and give some recomendation based on player size & computer size.

Now your in, you'll see a lot of grass and windows everywhere, im not going to focuse on each of them just today. Right now i want to show you how you can start a server, and connect to a server. The rest can be figured out just by playing with it.

Starting a server

You will need to start the server, usualy i recomend this for the DM. Click File, then chose Start Server.

You need to put in a username, it needs to be unique and diffrent than the rest of your friends but it realy can be anything. You don't need to signup anywhere to get one. Make sure you select GM in the drop down box

Everything else you can leave as the default, feel free to add a alias so people know its your game. The options i recomend is strict token ownership, restricted player impersonation, and use tooltips for [] rolls.

Once your ready to begin click on ok.

now its time for your players to connect, check out http://www.whatismyip.com/ to get your ip address, you will need to give this number to your players for them to connect. If your running windows firewall make sure to allow the MapTools through, and if your using a router make sure you open up port 51234. You'll have to find a guide on each router.

Now your ready for players.

Connecting to a server

Connecting to a server is just as simple, once you've been given the ip address from your dungeon master, your ready to roll. Simple go to File, Connect to server.

Click the tab that says Direct, and put in the address you were given. Your username can be anything but has to be diffrent than your DM and diffrent thatn the other players. Only put in a password if your DM has setup a password on the game.

make sure your joining as a player, you might not be able to connect if you select GM.

And there you have it, a simple server connected up and running. Make sure you check the chat window to see whos connected and test everything out.

Watch out for my next posts

• Using & Moving Tokens
• Roll the dice to determin your fate
• Building the Maps

Until next time, keep your dice on the table.