Want to play 4e D&D tonight?
Take the character sheets for the delve PCs, and then have them fight some of these monsters from the Dungeons of Dread D&D Minis expansion.(You’re on your own for putting together the rules from all the previews!)
Chillborn
Medium Natural Animate (Undead)
Level 6 Soldier
AC 22, FORT 21, REF 17, WILL 17, HP 48, Bloodied 24, Init +5, Spd 4
Senses: Perception +3. Immune: Poison, Resist: cold 10, nec 10, wpn 10
Weakness: Massive Dmg, Vuln rad 5
Attacks: Melee Slam +14 vs AC; 1d6+6 AND Followup
Followup +9 vs Fort; Immobilized 1 rd
Ice Reaper +5 cold dmg to Immobilized or Stunned
Abilities: Massive Damage: Destroyed by single atk of 24+ dmg
Wintry Cloud: Creatures take 2 cold dmg at start of their turns for each chillborn within 5 (max 8 dmg)
Str +9 (22), Con +5 (15), Dex +5 (14), Int -1 (2), Wis +3 (10), Cha +5 (15)
Chatty's Out of the Box #003: Lean and Green!
Here’s another comic! This time with some Quality Control by my good friend PM.
I decided to leave our Plastic Pirate to his interview and explore new characters. The Green Slaad is too ridiculous a figurine not to make him part of the comic.
This joke came to me this morning and it needed to get out before it made my head explode. I really like this new character and I hope you will too.
If you find it funny, feel free to submit to your favorite social network. The image’s url is here.
I also took pictures for 2 other such scenes so I might spend more time with this.
Have a great weekend!
4e linkies
Everyone talks about 4e since the D&D experience is ongoing.
Have a look over at Critical Hits, they are my official source of 4e stuff. Even I can’t stay calm and unfazed by what Dave and Bart are uncovering.
D&D 4e will be a different game, as much as 2e and 3e were different games.
I really am looking forward to see more about DMing that game.
I’ll leave the analysis to the others… but it seems I’ll probably think about pre ordering the core set soon. Sigh… I’m such a sucker for newness…
Speaking of which, Graham sent me this link… which seems to be a playtester’s accounts of 4e.
(Edit) Part 2 is here.
Enjoy!
The Rule of Fun!
(Image stolen from Critical Hits)
This blog was more or less noticed because of one short text I wrote way back last summer about a Wiki I discovered and a fundamental rule that I believed a successful DM should live by.
There is another one, related to the Rule of Cool, made specifically for games:
Games must be fun to play. Sure, we like pretty graphics and a good plot, but the fun’s the main thing. If they’re fun, a lot of incongruities can be forgiven. Go ahead, try to explain why the yellow circle loves dots and why the ghosts are out to get him, or why the frog needs to get across the road. You can’t. Doesn’t matter.
Just replace ‘pretty graphics’ by ‘cool mechanics’ and the definition applies perfectly to Tabletop RPGs.
Similarly, try to explain why a group of adventurers armed to the teeth would enter a trap-riddled, monster-laden multi-leveled labyrinthine ruin.
You can’t? Who cares! [Read the rest of this article]
D&D XP Dungeon Delve Characters
This afternoon Dave and I got to play in the 4th Edition Dungeon Delve, which is a group of about 10 tables set up with various dungeons pre-set that the RPGA staff (and some occasional Wizards employees) were kind enough to run. It was meant to be just hack & slash, get through the monsters in under 30 minutes. We ended up getting through almost two encounters which were both quite fun, with some surprises thrown in!
Here’s a look at the pre-made character sheets we got to keep after we played.
Dave ended up picking the Male Tiefling Wizard:
(front) 
(back)
While I played the Sexy-Female Dwarven Fighter:
(front) 
(back)
I was very tickled to see that her first Racial ability is “Cast Iron Stomach – grants a +5 to Saves vs. Poison”
Dave also managed to (roll a really good sleight of hand check – still using 3.5e rules) grab the left over char. sheet for the Male Halfling Paladin:
D&D XP Coverage
Here’s where we’ll post links to the different articles for the D&D XP.
- Seminar
- Photo Set on Flickr
- Dungeon Delve Sheets (Fighter, Wizard, Paladin)
- Interview with Sara Girard and Rob Heinsoo
- Interview with Andy Collins and Scott Rouse (Part 1) (Part 2)
- Preview mini from “Against the Giants” set
- Stats for some monsters from Dungeons of Dread
- Gnoll pages from Monster Manual (page 1) (page 2)
- Tiefling pages from Player’s Handbook
- Random Crunchy Bits
- First (Level) Impressions of 4e
Thanks to Yax at Dungeonmastering, Katie at Porter Noveli, and Dave C (the other one) for arranging things for us.
D&D XP Seminar
This is just a dump of my notes from the Seminar, which I’ll be editing when I get a chance!
9:38- Laptop set up in the Potomac room. The room is maybe ¾ capacity, in a fairly inefficient banquet table format.
9:40- Danny returns with “What you need to know about D&D 4th edition at D&D Experience 2008”, a hotsheet containing 13 important changes to the rules for the purposes of playing. The saving throw mechanic that debuted in the DDM rules IS in. Durations are either until save, one round, or entire encounter. Action points give an extra action, and they are accrued by finishing encounters. Short vs. extended rests- short rest is 5 minutes and recharges per encounter powers. Extended rest is 6 hours, fully heals you, regain all healing surges, get daily powers back, and action points are reset to 1. Healing wind- once per encounter, can take a standard action to gain second wind. Gives you hit points equal to Healing Surge value and +2 to all defenses until the start of your next turn. Then lose one healing surge. (Wish we had a scanner here)
9:46- “Fighters attempt ‘sploits” Joke- it actually says “exploits”
9:47- “The ‘Marital’ power source” Joke- instead of the Martial power source.
9:48- Slide changes on the front to Dungeons & Dragons Experience 2008 Preview Seminar
9:56- Groups start using the standing room
10:01- Lights down… all the way down
Chris Perkins:
“Welcome everyone to D&D Experience!”
“Tomorrow I celebrate my 10th birthday… and I can’t think of any better way than to spend it with you guys.” Awwww…
First person to kill a 4e character. Was playing Rob Heinsoo’s character, an Elf. “Woody”, couldn’t remember the real name. Walked into proto-Keep on the Shadowfell. Bugbear Stranger leapt out and garrotted him. Rogue disengaged to try to save his life… but Bugbear Strangler used cool new power to make the Elf a meatshield against the Rogue. Rogue critted, eviscerated the Elf. First kill… and it was from another PC. [Read the rest of this article]
Mini-Fluff: More on-the-fly world building
Mini-posts are approx. 500 words posts on one of my pet subjects. I usually do them when I have a busy evening, like Adventure Preping or doing things like, you know, exercise!
I’m deep in adventure prep, deeper than I have been for a long time.
I don’t know if it’s the same for you (and it is for many as I have read here), but players are often passive about the game world they live in.
Sure, mine like to discover new things/plots/mysteries and will sometimes go out of their way to interact with a NPC that tickle their fancy (like F. Genius Troll in my campaign).
However, when it comes to building an adventure or expand on a piece of your campaign world, the players will often expect you to do it and they’ll be along for the ride (or be gleefully prepared to put your plans off the rails… depending on your dynamics).
A few months ago, I wrote about cooperative world building as one of the greatest ways to get your players involved in your game world. This week I get to live this at a level not seen in a long time!
Which is a good sign that the campaign is in good territory, right?
Well, as mentioned yesterday, my players are real excited about Planescaping and some of the locales they’ve been exploring. So much so that I got a bunch of requests from them on things they want to do and places they want to go…
I was so surprised about that that my 1st reaction was ‘I can’t! I have a plan to follow, a plot that needs forwarding…’
Needless to say that’s not a good start… 
But this reaction is understandable because it basically means ‘but I don’t know how to fit my plan with your requests!’
Then I realized that taking my players requests (visiting a god’s domain, placing the next part in the plane they so happen to want to visit) was not incompatible with the adventure’s plots. I just need to hack stuff a bit further.
One of the weakest points of event/scene based adventures (homebrewed and published) is how players get the necessary info to move on from one part to the next part of the adventure. There are bottlenecks and places where a single failed check means the adventure stalls and the DM needs to fudge things along.
But these weak points are also the easiest to subject to changes.
For example, in my campaign, the info to move to the next part of the adventure is held in the hands of a NPC called Rule of Three that sits in a tavern in Ptolus’ Graveyard.
But he doesn’t have to be now does he? Nothing prevents me to take the next tidbit of info and have another NPC give it, or have players find it at site X…
The trick though is to link it all thematically… if you can find a plausible way to do it, then your golden.
If not, you need to cheat. Using the Rule of Cool is a good idea. By focusing on a character or really cool situation dripping with roleplaying potential.
Have PCs bask in the light for a scene. While they wallop in this awesomeness, have the key to the next scene drop on the PCs laps and you’re good to go.
I’m sure my players will enjoy their game more if I listen to them and work their requests in my game.
Oh and just so we’re clear guys, if you ask me for a +5 Frost Vorpal Greatsword… I will put it in the game…. but quite possibly in the hands of a hostile NPC…
What about you… how much input from your players do you take to shape upcoming adventures?
Game Review: Turok, Tur-ACK!
Quiet…. can you hear that? It’s not far off… maybe thirty yards away. That sound- it can only be one thing.
The Suck.
Now I’m not one to usually voice my overwhelming disappointment in a video game ( I usually save that for real people and situations) but this is one infraction I just can’t let slide.
Propaganda Games bit off more than they could chew when they signed up to do a remake of this N64 game. It being Propaganda’s first major product I was just a little worried walking into it, but I was more then happy to give the game a far shot, as the original still to this day remains one of my favorite FPS’s ever.
With an actual characterized storyline, new graphics, a fresh feel, as well as a new platform to play it on they could have done so many things right, but fell so short as a whole.
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty.
Weapons: There has been this overwhelming trend in FPS’s lately to do away with the old Doom-style of weaponry. Let’s not let players decide between 8 different weapons, no, instead let us lock them into repetitive fights with a choice between two to three weapons. What’s even worse is the fact that when we do dual-wield some weapons, the accuracy drops so much on them it’s not even fun to do so. The vast number of weapons to choose from, and their design in the original was one of the things that made the game so fun. I mean come on, an AK47 against a raptor?! Can’t get much better then that. [Read the rest of this article]
YouTube of the Week: Spokesmonster Edition
These cartoons put out by Wizards have been around for a few months now, but I only just found them on YouTube. They’re better than I would have thought, though not without some cheesiness.
