Articles by Danny Rupp
Danny works professionally as an architect and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).
D&DXP News: D&D Encounters
Today at D&D Experience 2010 Wizards of the Coast announced their new program titled D&D Encounters, a natural evolution of the Delve Night concept. D&D Encounters is aimed at encouraging players to mingle and interact more with other gamers in their area and will allow players to participate in contests to win cool prizes and D&D swag.
This new program is set up for your local game store to host a short play session each week, usually 1 or 2 encounters in length, from February through the rest of Spring. They will also be giving out Renown points for accomplishing tasks in these sessions that can be traded in for in-game rewards along with the above mentioned contests for players and stores to win prizes “that will make stores an even more exciting place to play D&D. I have no idea what that could mean, but my money is on fog and light machines!
Here is the official information:
D&D Encounters:
- D&D Encounters sign-ups open February 8
- Each D&D Encounters play kit (arriving in stores March 10) comes with all the materials needed to support 12 players and 2 DMs – adventures, maps, tokens, rewards for players and DMs, and a promo poster which doubles as a play tracker
- Each Wednesday, players participate in a one-encounter D&D play session lasting about 1-2 hours
- The first season of D&D Encounters features the iconic dungeon of Undermountain in the Forgotten Realms and runs March 17 through June 2
The first D&D Encounters mini-campaign takes place in the Forgotten
Realms exploring new areas of Undermountain, with their own
characters, one they create at the store, or a pre-generated character
provided with the kit. It’s a good chance for players to experiment
with a new character…or try DMing for the first time, since there’s a
full kit of materials provided, it’s easier to get into running a
game.In each battle, players will earn Renown Points redeemable for in-game
rewards; as players progress through the campaign, they will earn
Renown Points for completing encounters, finishing quests and engaging
in other adventuring activities. Before and during the game, we’ll be
encouraging discussion via the Web, (Twitter and the Wizards community
site) to share experiences with other players from around the world
and even get clues/bonuses for use in-game.And to support participating stores, Wizards will be hosting contests
and promotions to offer prizes that will make stores an even more
exciting place to play D&D. Information on D&D Encounters and related
promotions (as they come up) will live at www.dungeonsanddragons.com/dndencounters.
Railroading in a Good Way
The term ‘railroading’ usually sends a shiver down the spine of any tabletop RPG player because of the negative implications that come along with it. To be honest, most DMs dislike the term as well and railroading is generally referred to as a problem with an RPG. The implications are that the DM has already planned everything that happens and the players are simply along for the ride. There are certainly players out there who don’t mind being railroaded or even prefer it, simply enjoying the act of playing the game with no real concern for the magnitude of impact their decisions have on the story. On the other hand, many RPG players want to feel as if their characters are a part of a living world and that the decisions they make will have a real effect on that world.
The negative association given to railroading leads to the knee-jerk reaction from most DMs and players of avoiding it completely. I imagine most of you have played in an adventure or two where it was clear things had gone off course or even worse in a direction that led absolutely nowhere. If we try to avoid all aspects of railroading it can work, but it requires a DM who can think on their feet and is comfortable running a game with an uncertain future and resolution. If you have a good DM, good characters, and an intricate world to play in then having no rails at all can certainly be a rewarding and extremely fun prospect. However, I would bet that no matter how good it is every now and then an important plot line dangles unresolved or an adventure simply falls flat due to a lack of direction and overall guidance. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: The Original D&D Dilemma?
With the news that Phil the Chatty DM will be moving his blogging activities over to Critical Hits, we’ve gotten a large influx of other excellent writers to help balance out the “chattiness”. In our previous Inquisition we were looking for which regular features or posts you enjoy seeing on the site, so if you didn’t vote please go back to last week’s poll and have your say. We may be cutting some of the less popular posts or doing them less frequently based on your feedback. Certainly if we stop doing something regularly, and you miss it, just let us know!
At the moment Product Reviews are the most popular, with Editorials in a close second and Game Advice/Tips not too far behind in third. Behind those the weekly twitter compilation Critical Bits and the Inquisitions were voted for but just below 50% of you. If there was a last place in the poll, it would go to YouTube Tuesdays with 21%, so if you’re a fan of them and haven’t voted you can still have a say and possibly keep them around!
Last Thursday one of our new guest authors, the most excellent Matt James, wrote a short piece about the classes in the first versions of D&D and how they developed into the roles we have today in 4th Edition. A lot of discussion happened in the comments of that post, but it led me to create this week’s Inquisition where we can find out precisely which of the oldest classes was most popular.
Loading ...I know that the Thief was not in the first boxed set and came out later, and that there is much debate on exaclty which classes were first, but let this poll be your sounding board and feel free to discuss further in the comments!
Comic Books, Franchises & Reboots Oh My!
Allow me to take you on a small adventure through my life of the last few months. With more spare time than I’ve had in the last six years and a cornucopia of neglected hobbies crying out for attention, trying to choose what to do next can be rather difficult. Between getting back into Warhammer and dedicating more time to my D&D campaign I’ve found that reading my varied library of comic books is one of the most enjoyable ways to spend my time. So far I’ve revisited the incredible Hush storyline in Batman and a long run of Daredevil written by Brian Michael Bendis for the Marvel Knights imprint. As a result of this I have also started keeping up a bit more with current comics online and I have to say I’m immediately disappointed in what’s been done.
I stopped buying comics shortly after Marvel’s Civil War crossover that piggybacked directly from the House of M crossover, and the best that I can tell is Marvel hasn’t stopped with crossovers since. Obviously as a child of the 80’s I have some romanticized concept that a crossover is something done only rarely and to be treated as a special event. I imagine the original charm of the crossover was the interaction of different heroes and intellectual properties, but in this day and age when characters like Daredevil, Spiderman, and (for the love of god) Wolverine are regular members of the Avengers I feel that the crossover has lost nearly all of its unique appeal. Guest starring characters and teamwork are so prevalent that the crossover can easily be seen as simple money making schemes by the comic book companies. [Read the rest of this article]
Game Review: Left 4 Dead 2
Late last year when the game Left 4 Dead was released by Valve for X-Box 360, our friend (and occasional writer here at CH) Joshx0rfz wanted to post a short and sweet review of it saying simply, “It’s as fun as a shotgun blast to the face!” We probably should have posted it at the time, but thankfully we made up for that by featuring the game in our 2008 Holiday Gift Guide. Not too long ago Dave wisely suggested the sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, in our 2009 Holiday Gift Guide but today I’d like to discuss it in detail and address some of the concerns I had about the game, specifically about a full sequel being released barely over a year after the first game.
The first Left 4 Dead game almost instantly became my favorite multiplayer game, probably of all time, finally nudging out GoldenEye (I know, blasphemy, right?) from the position it held for many years. Left 4 Dead 2 is a big improvement over the first game. It has fixed several of the problems the first game had while adding a large amount of new content that makes it worth buying. There is still a large issue that much of that new content seems like it could have been added to the first game in expansions and add-ons without the need to purchase a whole new game. However, when you factor in the length of the five new campaigns added to the game, the new scavenger mode, changes in weapons / adding melee weapons, and the new types of infected that can be played in multiplayer mode you would probably end up with enough downloadable content to equal the $40-$60 price tag of the sequel.
In essence I’m still torn on the issue. I now own both games and am a bit disappointed that many of my friends made the smart decision to trade in the first to make the second game more affordable so I feel that the first game has effectively become useless or not worth playing anymore. Much of my feelings on the matter are probably inspired by that disappointment, but putting them aside the second game takes everything I loved about the first and adds on to it with even more content and options that take the game further than I believe just DLC would have done. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: 4E D&D in 2010?
With the Holidays quickly approaching, two weeks ago Dave asked an actual “real world question” about which season of the year is your favorite. I’m the kind of person that finds little stuff like this interesting, then again Fall is my favorite season and it looks like I’m with the small majority of 33% of you on this one. Spring and Summer nearly tied with 23% and 24% respectively, and Winter came in last but very close with 20%. Also I’d like to extend my congratulations to Dave and Phil the Chatty DM for their excellent entries into the WotC Holiday Encounter Contest.
This week I’m taking a hard look at what has been announced for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition in the coming year (you can see them all at WotC’s catalog in wondrous chronological order) and wondering what’s in store, getting a taste of what I’m going to like and what I won’t in 2010. At the moment they have only really announced products up through the exciting Dark Sun Campaign Setting in August, but there’s still plenty in there already to get excited about or at least to keep us looking forward.
Loading ...I am most excited for Dark Sun, but since that is also the longest to wait for I am very much looking forward to the complete Psionics rules and the unannounced classes in the PHB3, as well as seeing what kinds of new monsters are in store for the third Monster Manual. I believe the product I’m most dubious about right now is Martial Power 2, as there have been no new Martial classes released since the first source book unlike the divine and arcane power sources. However, I am quite excited to see an official ranged Warlord build in the hopes that I can finally make a melee & ranged combat commander without multiclassing. How about you? Which products are you most looking forward to and why?
Review: "The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos"
The Plane Below is the first of several 4th Edition D&D books that delve into a bit more detail on specific planes and the kinds of adventures that can be found within them. As the title indicates, this one focuses on the Elemental Chaos and everything pertaining to it. This book is packed full of content, from cover to cover, and unless your game has absolutely nothing to do with the chaotic plane below you will want to give it a look. If your game strongly favors demons, elementals, the city of brass, or githzerai then this book is a must have.
The Plane Below is about 160 pages deep and contains just under 50 new types of monsters for you to throw at adventurers to murder and startle them. The book is very clearly, and logically, organized starting with the general features of the Elemental Chaos including at-will rules for mentally influencing the plane’s instability to attack creatures with motes of earth or fiery energy. This section reads exactly like the Elemental Chaos chapter from the Manual of the Planes but magnified by four, including various vehicles used to travel the plane from other sources and a few new ones, various weather effects, fantastical terrain features like acidic mires and flowing rivers of earth, and a handful of new hazards that can be found on the plane below. Next the chapter presents a handful of new skill challenges such as how to bargain with an efreet, reasoning with a Slaad (it’s not easy!), and repairing a lightning skiff.
My favorite part of all of the 4E supplemental books has been the Campaign Arcs section where ideas are presented that take you from the heroic tier through paragon and finishing in epic, nearly every single one I read gives me a handful of new ideas to apply to my own game. This book is no exception, presenting a variety of arcs to include elemental creatures and even one that focuses on planar characters that start their adventuring lives in the Elemental Chaos. Next they present a handful of varying level adventure ideas building on the same themes as the campaign arcs. Several potential patron NPCs are detailed as well as some “Orders out of Chaos” like the Cult of the Elemental Eye which are just as interesting to me as the full campaign arcs because they provide lore the players can learn, information just for the DM, organization of the orders, history, goals and methods, and adventure ideas for each of the groups. The chapter ends with three new artifacts for paragon and epic characters that can bring even more elemental themes into your game and directly into a player’s hands. [Read the rest of this article]
Dwarven Dice from Q-Workshop
If you look at many of the hobbies that we have, aside from video games, dice are a common element in a large majority of the games we play. Whether its Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer 40k, or Settlers of Catan they all use dice and as a result many of us end up really liking our little random number generation devices.
Q-Workshop is a company in Poland that I first heard about at GenCon this year and I was immediately impressed by the quality of the dice they had on display. A few days ago I received a review set of their Dwarven Dice including a d4, d6, d8, 2d10, d12, and a d20. The numbers on the dice are sharp angled in classic Dwarven style and most of them include graphics of battle axes along side the numbers, but what impresses me the most is that these aren’t simply painted dice, the sides are slightly sunken and the numbers raised with a textured background. [Read the rest of this article]
Monster Manual 2 – In Depth #5
Now that it is nearing the end of 2009, at long last I bring you my final in depth analysis of the Monster Manual 2 and the creatures contained therein. While the book has been out for half of a year now, I still have not gotten anywhere close to using even half of the monsters that are contained within.
Slaad – These terrifying beasts of the Elemental Chaos, perhaps one of the most feared monsters for a party to encounter due to the chaos phage they inflict that spawns more slaad at the cost of the infected character’s life, are expanded in this book with the versatile Flux Slaad that actually cannot inflict chaos phage at all. This monster is a level 9 Skirmisher that shifts around (a lot) and slashes with its claws, but what makes it truly intriguing is its variable resistance and vulnerability shift. The Flux Slaad begins an encounter with vulnerable 10 to a random damage type (determined by a d6 – cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, psychic, or thunder) and has resist 5 to all of the other damage types listed above. When it takes damage of the type it is vulnerable to, its vulnerability changes randomly to a different type making this monster an interested and unique challenge.
The second type of Slaad added in this book is actually tied to a new template, Slaad Spawner, which allows you to create elite Slaad that spit out level 17 minion skirmisher Slaad Spawn whenever they are hit by an attack. These spawn minions have a bite attack and a chaotic slam which can knock enemies prone, but scarier than that is their penchant for exploding when they miss with the slam attack doing damage in a close burst 1.
Slaughterstone Construct - When I first looked through the MM2 this was the entry that seemed the most out of place to me because they are large combat constructs, but now that I’ve played in an Eberron game I can understand the type of D&D game they would fit into a bit more clearly. The Slaughterstone Eviscerator is a large level 18 brute construct that can take and dish out a large amount of damage. It’s whirling blade aura does 10 damage to any creature that starts its turn within two squares of it, if that’s not enough its whirling bladestorm recharge power will do even more damage in a close burst 2 on its turn. One unique ability of the eviscerator is Tunnel Fighting which allows it to take no penalty to attacks and it does not grant combat advantage while squeezing. The Slaughterstone Slicer is a lower level imitiation of the eviscerator with many of the same abilities but it malfucntions when hit by a critical or when it makes a critical hit, causing it to be dazed for a turn.
The Slaughterstone Hammerer is a large, level 25 soldier construct with a thunder step aura that slows creatures within two squares. It has a slam attack that knocks characters prone, a hammer attack that dazes, and also has the tunnel fighting ability that lets it squeeze and still fight at an advantage. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: Friendly Local Gaming Stores?
Over the weekend I’ve done my fair share of video game playing, the most fun of which was easily several hours of playing four player New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii. With the great selection of new games that have come out this Fall, it seems natural that Dave asked last week about which games all of you are playing. Dragon Age: Origins is clearly the most popular with 80% of you playing it, Assassin’s Creed 2 came in a distant second with 38%, and Borderlands in third with 29%. Left 4 Dead 2, New Super Mario Bros, and Modern Warfare 2 all came in around the 20% range, and several commentors mentioned Batman: Arkham Asylum and Uncharted 2 as games they’re playing.
This week December is officially upon us, and with it comes the full force of the holiday season and all of the shopping that implies. I find it a shame that ordering RPG books online from places like Amazon is so much cheaper then it would be if I were to go to my local game store. That’s not the only problem though, unfortunately all of the stores around my area have one problem or another that makes them less than my ideal for a gaming store, if that weren’t the case I’d most likely patronize them more regularly. That being the case, I go to a game store in my area only several times in a year. I’m interested in seeing how often all of you go to your local game stores.
Loading ...Please share with us your thoughts on your local game store, what they do right or wrong, why you go there as often (or not) as you do, or even just share the name and location of the store with us and we’ll pay it a visit if we’re ever in town!
