D&D Week End Review - May 23rd

Well the talk of the online town as it were this week was the price increase for DDI memberships (who really cares) and the d&d game day. We had a chance to play it here in Brantford and had 6 players show up. Three of my normal players and three new players how have not played 4e yet. Everyone had a good time and we finished within the time i set aside (noon to 6pm) I gave one of the table kits away to the three other guys because they wanted to get their normal group into 4e. Everyone walked away satisfied, unlike last game day.

There was some power card calculations that were wrong due to how thing were equipped but besides that everyone had a fun time.

There was also a few items of note on the net this week.

Adventure Ideas

Cave of wonders
this idea i got while watching Aladdin with my daughter. Its a short adventure, the goal is to find a hidden treasure in a hidden cave. the only way to get to the cave is find the two half's of a jeweled scarab and put them together. each half is its own skill challenge. it ends in a fight, success of the skill challenge means the party did not tip off the owner, failure means the owner was ready and waiting for a fight. Once the two pieces are found a 3rd skill challenge occurs to try and keep up with the scarab. failure means they keep up but are down two healing surge values each. Then the cave you keep pretty simple with the treasure at the end. few monsters, just a quick one. and there you go

The Deep Shaft
ME: Nice encounter from wizards

Sacrifice, Interrupted
ME: Great encounter from WotC includes a map and everything

DM Tips

SlyFlourish: #dnd tip: Want to get your warped D&D miniatures straightened? Put them in boiling water, straighten them, and put them in bowl of ice water
ME: I have gotten a few minis that were bent

SlyFlourish #dnd tip: A cut up black t-shirt can make a great fog of war for your dwarven forge layout.
ME: I think i will try this; this weekend, simple but effective

SlyFlourish: #dnd tip: Game going long? Distribute loot and exp in email between games. Add some good background or flavor text too.
ME: I often find myself doing this, great way to make NPC names official as well.

Skill Challenges

new idea from me, skill challenge in a dungeon. the mission is to retrieve an item from a dungeon. which happens to be massive. the dungeon is not overpopulated with mass amounts of monsters. so enter the skill challenge, each success gets the party closer to their goal, each failure loads up a combat encounter. Failing the skill challenge means they were unable to find said item

Skill Challenges of War
ME: How to run a war as a skill challenge

Skill Challenge: Skinning the Beast
Me: No comment, just a good skill challenge

Skillforge
ME: have trouble building skill challenges, go ahead and take one from here.

Other

Robertson Games » Blog Archive » Shields as Weapons in D&D
ME: REVREND!

Easier PDF reading on laptops and netbooks
ME: Its good and all, but tend to read the books or read while planning.

Bribe your players with bonus tokens.
ME: Basically its just either a +1 bonus or a +2 bonus tokens you hand out to your players for use whenever. neat idea in theory, but I've always found players hate having more stuff to keep track of. with 7 people i would just award an action point every encounter.

One time at D&D camp…
ME: Ok so apparently there was once a D&D came, seems cool.

City of the Dead is almost here: and Rosemary Jones is giving away a free book
ME: I've always been a fan of the Waterdeep setting, it had everything for me

Diabolical Devices: the frictionless room
ME: Taken from White Plume Mountain, one of my most favorite adventures to run as a DM ever. I like this trap, thought it always caused arguments.

That's it for me for this week, tomorrow night i should have our Sunday night adventure posted. For some reason the players think they are going up against a dragon. hahaha.

Until next time keep your dice on the table.
a peice of mikes mind

Dungeon Master Tips: Organizing your Adventure

This week i am going to discuss how you can organize your adventure. All adventures in my opinion require a bit of planing. For every hour you intend to play an adventure you should spend the same amount of time planing.

I personally break up all of my adventures into 8 encounters, i mix and match the kind of encounters i want to do but for me a single adventure takes players from one level to another in 8 encounters. At our speed that's 4 weeks of game play.

Tools

There are various tools at your disposal but for me my main ones are the Dungeon Master Guide , MS Word, MS Viso, DDI Compendium, and DDI encounter builder.

MS Visio

The key to a good adventure is not wanting to railroad your players. So i create a start of my adventure, and a end, where i want my players to end up. I'll add a few boxes to the Viso showing possible pieces of information they can find. As i figure out the general storyline i then plot everything out into the Viso. the key is to make it fit on one page

Don't have MS Visio? Try LucidChart

Dungeon Master Guide

Great for references, nuff said.

MS Word

I build my encounters in MS, The first page contains the adventure name and details, the second page is blank. The third and fourth page is a the basic story line and my RP notes, while the 5th page contains the Visio drawing from earlier.

Now i break up the encounters so that the basic encounter information is on the left hand side, and the map (which honestly I've taken from dragon and customized for my own needs) on the right hand side. The next few pages contains monsters information taken from the DDI Compendium so i have everything i need in one place.

I repeat the encounters in the exact same method adding blank pages where i need to.

Don't have MS Word, try OpenOffice

DDI Encounter Builder & DDI Compendium

The DDI Compendium has two tasks for me, one is finding monsters and creatures that fit my story, level, and encounter so nothing seems out of place. The second is to copy & past into word so i have all my information during game play. I recommend for monster pages to be two columns, and formatting the text a bit. i can fit large monsters in 1 full column, and usually two minions per column.

The encounter build i use after i have a list of creatures in mind, and just use it to figure out what creatures are going to be in each encounter.

Don't have a DDI Account, try Monster Lister & Encounter Planner

Binding

Once i have everything checked over and it looks the way i want it to look, i save it off as a PDF (plenty of PDF printers out there) and upload it to staples. I will get it printed on both sides in black & white (so when your doing your map use circles with letters in them to identify monsters (A)). And i pick a cheap binding. the hole process costs me around $4.50 for a 30 page document.

Additions

Another great addition to add after the fact is the 'PrintableDM' sheets i mentioned before hand, I'll send them to staples at the same time for printing and usually get 8 done at a time. if your lucky they will accidentally bend the corners on them and you don't have to pay. good thing i was folding them in half anyway :)

So there you have it, you spent 8 hours designing your adventure, and saving all the information and you have a nice hard copy to show for it. Some of you are thinking, 8 hours that's a full days work for me. Well sometimes being a DM is, but when you have everything organized and know where your game is going, you can spend a hour a night on it after the kids have gone to bed. Before you know it your two adventures ahead of the game

That's all for this week's DM's tips, remember its us vs. them!