Just because Wizards of the Coast pays little attention to 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t mean its dead. D&D isn’t Star Wars Galaxies or City of Heroes; WOTC can’t shut the servers down. With currently published material, we can play 4e as long as we desire and the 4e products released since late 2010 are the best in the edition. 4e didn’t die — it finally became stable. It’s not only alive, it may now be the best time to play!
Zen and the Art of Dungeon Mastering #6: Smash that Bottleneck
In which Chatty tackles a subject near and dear to his cold black DM heart: avoiding adventure bottlenecks. This multi-parter series starts with the basics: Skill-related bottlenecks.
Zen and the Art of Dungeon Mastering #5: Make it Mean Something!
In which Chatty DM reveals that he’s an impatient player and really really likes to find that each scene he runs or plays in actually meant something in the grand scheme of Adventuring. And no, XPs don’t quite cut it.
Too Many Pillars: Background and Specialties in D&D Next
I was reminded of this when playing the newest version of the playtest packet for D&D Next at Gen Con, and also clicked even more when thinking about themes and how they work in 4e (of which I just had an article posted with new ones, obvious plug) and also how 13th Age tackles it. Here’s my conclusion: I’m not a fan of the Race/Class/Background/Specialty system as implemented in D&D Next.
Gen Con 2012: D&D Keynote and More
D&D is in a transitional period, and that showed quite a bit at Gen Con. No longer in one big room at the Sagamore, D&D events were spread out across different rooms in the convention center, with the booth in the exhibit hall focusing mainly on showing off the new MMO expansion, the Lolth statue, and selling branded merchandise. Organized Play such as Living Forgotten Realms and Ashes of Athas kept the torching going for D&D 4e, while other rooms were dedicated to demoing Next. Let’s start with the current offerings from D&D and move forward from there.
The Architect DM: Structural Dungeon Design
Back in one of my earliest Architect DM posts I said that structure was one of the most overlooked elements of dungeon design. These days most of the published dungeon maps that I see are not bad with regards to structure, but from what I’ve heard this is still something that a lot of people would like to learn about for their personal, hand drawn dungeon designs.
Zen and the Art of Dungeon Mastering #4: What is Your Intent with my Dungeon?
Chatty’s series of DMing advice continues. This time he discusses how you can help players focus on what they want to do in their turns by asking a simple question.
Zen and the Art of Dungeon Mastering #3: Mind your Players’ Styles, Part 4 of 4
Chatty concludes his four part sub-series (and hits his 900th post) about helping DMs understand what motivate their players and how to tap into this to make a more satisfying game for all. In this article, chatty discusses Lurking and Instigating play styles and also broaches the subject of selfish players.
Zen and the Art of Dungeon Mastering #3: Mind Your Players’ Styles, Part 3 of 4
Chatty’s series on adapting a DM’s natural style to take into account those of his players continue with three more set of player motivations: Specialty Characters, Method Acting and Storyteling. Don’t miss it!
Schrödinger’s Virtual Tabletop
WotC announced yesterday that they’ll be shutting down their lukewarmly-popular Virtual Tabletop application that let people play (*gasp*) over the Internets. Of course, now those same Internets are on fire with all sorts of FUD and vitriol about how WotC is out of touch and predictions on how long before WotC sells the company to Paizo (obviously the clear winner of the online/tabletop RPG arms race). I’m not really upset about this. Why? You have to read the rest of the article for that, silly.
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