Even if you live in a cave on a desert island, there’s likely some neck-bearded castaway next to you predicting and complaining about a 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. We’ve heard it for five years and we’ll hear it for five more, regardless of what new games are released. Most recently, 3rd edition veteran […]
Critical Hits Podcast #31: Quinn Murphy and Mike Shea on Skill Challenges
Mike Shea of Sly Flourish talks to Quinn Murphy of At-Will about skill challenges. Learn the top 3 tips for effective skill challenges. Get the hot button questions answered like when to say or hide the fact that players are in a skill challenge, how do you write up skill challenges, how to add interesting choices into skill challenges, how to engage players in a skill challenge, using skill challenges in combat, and much more.
Critical Hits Podcast #30: Chris Sims and Mike Shea on Encounter Design
Mike Shea talks to Chris Sims about designing effective encounters in D&D 4e.
Critical Hits Podcast #29: Randall Walker and Mike Shea on Terrain
Mike Shea of Sly Flourish interviewed Randall Walker of Initiative or What? (Deadorcs on Twitter) about the use of terrain in your 4e D&D game.
Critical Hits Podcast #28: Mike Shea and Matt James on Power Creep
What is power creep? How does it manifest in 4e? What are some of the egregious examples? How can a DM deal with all those many classes, races, powers, and items out there? These questions and more are discussed by Mike Shea of Sly Flourish and Matt James of Loremaster.
Interview with PAX East Champion Dungeon Master, Matt Brenner
In early March of 2011, at the PAX East gaming conference, Wizards of the Coast sponsored the second annual PAX East Dungeon Master’s Challenge. In the end Matt Brenner took away the prize and title as Champion Dungeon Master.
Eulogy for D&D Miniatures
We are gathered here today to say goodbye to some old friends. For the last seven years they have entertained us with their crazy overly-large axes, completely inappropriate phallic clubs, and fiery jazz hands. They have fuelled our imaginations with naked bat-winged lady-folk and helped us avoid trying to describe just what the hell a […]
Thirty Days in Cataclysm
I hadn’t played WoW for about six months before Cataclysm came out but now that it has, about a month ago, I’ve put in a good deal of time into the new expansion and I liked what I got. Today I’m going to talk about I’ve seen over the past month, what I liked, what I didn’t, and where I plan to go. You might call this a review, but reviewing a game expansion with such a large amount of content isn’t really possible. So really it’s just my experiences so far.
What I Learned Running a 1 to 30 D&D Campaign
As I write this I sit less than 12 hours away from the last adventure of a level 1 to 30 D&D 4e campaign and I’m feeling strangely emotional about it. I’m extremely lucky to have players willing and able to play nearly every week for two and a half years. I’ve had to come up with an interesting adventure for over 100 sessions that tied together a story spanning the entire level range of 4e D&D.
Essentials, Choices, and Jams
At a certain level, probably high Heroic and certainly in Paragon and Epic tiers players might have twenty four possible choices on their turn including at-wills, encounter powers, daily powers, utilities, and items. This high number of choices mixed in with the already tactical nature of combat in 4e often leads to analysis paralysis. Players simply can’t figure out what the right move might be.
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