Posts Tagged ‘games’
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
So this past Saturday was my first week not behind the DM screen. It was definitely an interesting perspective. One I hope I get to keep for more than this encounter (and the next). Unfortunately, my characters weren’t as useful as I would have liked. They are good characters, just this encounter they weren’t as useful as I would have liked.
We came out of the portal into a giant room. On both sides was a wall of Force. On the left side of the left wall were golden colored orbs of energy and on the other were Blue ones. They had tentacles coming out the top of them and they seemed to have some sort of eyes (What are characters were presuming to be eyes). In front of us were three rows of tables, 4 rows per table. Going from one end of the room to the other under the tables were 6 cables, 3 white, 3 black. They ended at boxes at the end of each row of tables. Our group, learning to be very cautious stood there for a second and looked around. Nothing seemed to be an immediate threat. Charlie, our sorcerer (yes the character’s name is Charlie), walked and examined each table. It became quite obvious that this was some sort of alchemical lab. The tables had lab notes, beakers and vials and human body parts. Frey, My Whisper Gnome, couldn’t see past the table in front of her so she climbed up onto the one table. She noticed the bodies, body parts and So held up her arms (her bracers are her holy symbol) and attempted to turn any undead, just in case. The only thing to happen was a wave of positive energy flowed out of the golden orbs of energy towards her, and the white cables began to glow a little. She then noticed some sort of script some sort of script engraved into the tables. Upon further investigation she realized it was infernal, but she couldn’t read it. At about the same time Recyn (My Elven Archer) noticed past the tables were rows of tiles, some black, some white. Beyond that were big glass cylinders with bodies, and body parts suspended in some sort of green liquid. Stinky, the parties Half-Orc Barbarian began moving forward out of boredom. Then we heard a high pitch voice, which seemed to come from nowhere threatening us.
The green liquid started to drain out of the cylinder containers and the glass slid down. Several zombie like creatures stepped out and began walking forward. Freya, who despises undead, more so then any other person any of the party had ever met, charged forward. She tried turning the undead creatures, but only one ran away from her. One of the bit her and she became dazed. Stinky turned invisible and moved forward. Charlie cast Meteor Storm, but only one was taken out of commission, or so we thought, while the others, though obviously damaged were just fine. Recyn hopped up unto a table and began firing her arrows. Then, the undead creature which we thought was done got back up and began putting itself back together. Freya, took damage, but wasn’t sure how. Two of the creatures bit Freya again and she became much weaker (Taking 5 points of strength damage, when you only have a 10 strength sucks, let me tell you). And then Stinky came charging in swinging and dismembering one. But she was then bit. Recyn shot one with an arrow and a loud boom was heard as it hit the undead creature knocking backwards off of a black tile and unto a white one, on its back. Charlie sent a bolt of lightning through another creature, taking it out of commission. Then the ones which were hit, which all except one, were on black tiles got back up again. Freya, who was still dazed was able to figure out that the black tiles radiated negative energy, and the white tiles radiated positive energy. Freya was bit again and collapsed onto the ground (6 points of strength damage this time) unable to move. The only saving grace she had was her arm collapsed on top of her chest. Recyn hopped up unto a table and began firing while yelling, push them to the white tiles. Stinky went into a rage and pushed one onto a white tile, while Charlie cast Prismatic Ray and sent two of them to other dimensions and frying a third one. The damaged undead creatures rose once again and began to attack, but Freya managed cast Greater Restoration on herself and crawl to a white square avoiding the one zombies attempt to squash her. Stinky then pushed another one to a white square while Charlie disintegrated one and Recyn shot one up full of holes (6 holes to be precise). Stinky was then bit again, while Freya made one of the blasphemous creatures from an undead creature, to just a dead creature. Recyn shot one up again with her arrows while Charlie side stepped to get a better angle for his next spell. The one Recyn shot suddenly fell and stopped moving and Stinky was able to smash the other. Stinky and Freya charged after the fleeing zombie like creature, which was no longer afraid of Freya. It moved to a corner of a room in the back and Stinky and Freya smashed at it repeatedly while Charlie and Recyn moved there way forward in the room.
So the encounter is half over. All that is left are the balls of Energy (Energons from Manual of the planes (Called something else which starts with a Z in previous editions)) and the (Gay) lich in the other room. So overall, my Undead hating Cleric (Hierohant, Contemplative) and Recyn haven’t done much, but hopefully once we see the lich Freya will get to do a little better.
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Tags: 3.5e, 3.X Edition, d&d, Dungeons & Dragons, Entertainent, entertainment, games, Player Character, Role Playing Game, rpgs
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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
I get to finally take a brake from DMing for a few weeks because two of players are going to run some encounters in the infinite dungeon I have been running. So to make up for the loss of there characters I have created three. Two for one encounter, and one for the other. I also am using this opportunity to create character pictures because I haven’t used Daz3D in so long and desperately need to practice with it. So this is the first of the three characters, Reycn, the Elven Archer, who was created to replace the paladin we’ll be losing for the first encounter.
If she can see it, she can shoot it. If she can't see it, she can still probably shoot it
Here is the full character sheet. Recyn – The Elven Archer
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Tags: 3.5e, 3.X Edition, character, D and D, d&d, Dungeon Master, Dungeons & Dragons, games, Homebrew, prestige class, role playing, rpgs
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Thursday, August 6th, 2009
The prestige class Master Specialist is from Complete Mage. It is actually 8 different classes, one for each of the arcane schools of magic. As you level up in this class you continue to gain new spell levels. What is even more important you gain special abilities based on your school specialization. For example as an Abjurer you gain a bonus to dispel checks, a Necromancer gives undead allies Fast Healing, Conjurer’s summons gain extra HPs.
Character Personality
Saelion is extremely friendly and kind. He hates to hurt others and uses his abilities to protect everyone he can. Even when battle he tries to encourage his allies to show mercy and not kill.
Character Background
Saelion was born to a wealthy Elven family. In his early childhood he lived a life of luxury. When he started his apprenticeship to his wizardry master war broke out. Saelion’s master was asked to help with an offensive and he took Saelion with him. Saelion saw the destruction that magic could cause. His master was killed during the offensive and Saelion vowed to use his magic to protect others.
Advancement
The two best ways I see to advance Saelion is to increase his wizarding levels giving him access to higher level abjuration spells. The other way is give him cleric levels. The cleric levels will give him the ability to heal which would work great with his personality.
Master Abjurer Saelion
Master Abjurer Saelion Spellbook
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Tags: 3.5e, Complete Mage, D and D, d&d, dragons, Dungeon Master, dungeons, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and Dragons, Entertainent, entertainment, games, hobbies, hobby, NPC, PC, Player Character, pres, prest, prestig, prestige, prestige class, prestige classes, role playing, Role Playing Game, role playing games, rpgs, third edition, Wizards
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
If you ever played D&D 3.x you know that just about every supplemental book has a bunch of prestige classes. I don’t know how often you have ever used any of these prestige classes but I know my play group has never used them. I am currently running what I call Joey’s Infinite Dungeon. It is a high level game where all options from all books are available for the players to use. The sky is the limit. When they made their level 17 characters I worked with them and encouraged them to take a variety of prestige classes. All but one of my players just kept to leveling up the base characters. The player who did use a prestige class took the Dragon Disciple, though a great class, he has used it before.
Now as I said before, I don’t know how often you use prestige classes from the various sources out there, but I bet it isn’t often. So for the next few Character Counts articles I am going to focus on prestige classes from the various non core books. I will give the normal background and personality so even if you don’t play D&D 3.5 you can still use the character in your campaign.
To make the characters I will use PCGen to get the ability scores. It is set to Roll 4d6 drop the lowest. With the exception of that required to use the prestige class all skills, feats, abilities and items are from the core books and RSRD.
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Tags: 3.x, 3.X Edition, D and D, d&d, dragons, Dungeon Master, dungeons, Dungeons & Dragons, Entertainent, entertainment, games, hobbies, hobby, Non Player Character, NPC, Player Character, prestige, prestige class, prestige classes, role playing, Role Playing Game, role playing games, rpgs, third edition, Wizards
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Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Sometimes even the most experienced players and DMs experience a block when coming up with ideas for characters and NPCs. So here I hope to give you every week a new character pretty much completely fleshed out for you to use.
Character Counts – Delamaoh Mountaintracker – Level 10
Character Creation Notes
Was completely made in PCGen
Character Background
Delamaoh family lived and worked in the lowest and most dangerous levels of the Dwarven city. The clan
was attacked by Duergar (Gray Dwarves) when she was young. Both of her parents were killed in the attack. The clan lost the
lower levels in the attack and evacuated to the higher levels. Delamaoh was accidently left behind. She managed to evade
capture and fled even lower underground. She lived alone for many years deep underground constantly fighting with aberrations,
magical beasts and small Duergar patrols. Several years later in her wanderings she ended up back by the lower levels of the
Dwarven city. She wandered into a battle. Her clan, after years of battle was finally pushing the Duergar out of the lower levels of
their city. She jumped right into the battle. During the fight she ended up saving the leader of the clan. The Duergar was defeated
and pushed out of their city. Now Delamaoh lives in the lower levels of her ancestral home and patrols for threats to it almost
always alone except for her constant companion, the Dire Rat she calls Sharp Tooth.
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Tags: 3.5e, character, D and D, d&d, dragons, Dungeon Master, dungeons, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and Dragons, Entertainent, entertainment, fiction, games, hobbies, hobby, Homebrew, NPC, role playing, Role Playing Game, role playing games, rpgs, third edition, Wizards
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Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
If you talk to anyone who has played in a weekly D&D (or any other weekly RPG) game they will all tell you that there were times that their game just seemed to die, even if it was for just a short period of time. Well that is what happened to me and my weekly game. Though it hasn’t died completely, any outside observer (and one of my players) would say otherwise.
So what happened to my game? When did it start to fall apart? Well it started to fall apart in October of 2008. One of my players hurt his knee badly at work. Because of it he couldn’t drive. The game was normally at my house because everyone except for him lived right by me. At the time was the DM. So we cancelled the game two weeks in a row. The third week I threw together a quick dungeon for myself and the other two players. We then found out the one guys knee problems became very serious and needed surgery. So we moved the game to his house which is a bit of a distant from us since it is a suburb of New York. We finished his adventure in the end of November and our youngest player, who unlike the rest of us who are in our late 20s was just a senior in high school, was going to be the DM for the next adventure.
He was going to run a modified version of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It was also going to be the first appearance of our custom race, The Tainted Ones, which is based off of vampires. So we made our characters one week and the next week we started the adventure. (I’ll post a little bit about it later, but it was cool that the arrogant Gray Elf Wizard made friends with the god of The Tainted Ones, where the tainted one in the group, and respectful Paladin pissed him off). And then it all went to hell again.
As I said, he is a senior in high school (for another week or two now) and will be going to college in the fall. So his mother decided he needs to spend almost every waking moment with her. We don’t know why and his father is just as confused by it as the rest of us. He is going to college locally and will be living at home at home with his parents. The rest of the D&D group all have our theories but he swears his mother is the reason.
Now we have a backup plan. It is called Joey’s Infinite Dungeons. What that is a hack and slash inter-dimensional dungeon where no area past a portal is bigger then the battle mat we use. Sometimes it is an actual dungeon setting; sometimes it is an open field, or a dense forest. All characters were created at level 17 so encounters can be made just a little more interesting and difficult. However many games got cancelled anyways. First, we are all scouts and two of us are still very active adult leaders in our respective units and the Order of the Arrow (OA) so many Saturday’s we have to cancel because of obligations related to that. The other guy is a scout and member of the OA but not active. But, this past summer he got married, joined the Masons and is very active in his church so a lot of his time gets taken up by his wife (How dare she want to spend time with her husband lol), his induction, and now officer ship in the Masons and Church activities.
So now we are lucky to play once a month. And just to give and example, the next three weeks we have cancelled the game. This coming Saturday the one guys church is participating in some sort breast cancer fundraiser (Yes, let us help cancer and raise money for it. YAY CANCER! (I know bad joke, sorry)) and the other guy his running a Changeling game (WoD) which I was the only one invited to participate in of the D&D group on Saturday (SO this month the Changeling game being a Saturday worked out ok). The next weekend I will be at a scout camp somewhere in upstate NY for the Section Conclave and the weekend after that one of the guys I hung out with while working on my second college degree is turning 21 and his parents are throwing him a party and required him to get people from school to attend or they were going to cut him off so I am going to that.
So will we ever get past this cancelling of the games? I hope so.
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Tags: 3.5e, D and D, d&d, dragons, Dungeon Master, dungeons, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and Dragons, Entertainent, entertainment, fiction, games, hobbies, hobby, Homebrew, Krydel, role playing, Role Playing Game, role playing games, rpgs, Wizards
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Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Gwen was sitting on a table as she was convincing all the Gnomes and Halflings to keep buying drinks for her. In one corner of the room was the smelliest thing in the world, Stenchfeng who as usual was drinking, eating and making a mess as loudly as possible all by lonesome. Sitting at a shady table along the wall by himself was Razeal; who like the other few tainted she had met was trying to be inconspicuous as possible. At another nearby table was Darren Leclare sitting in clothing which made it very clear which god he venerated above all others. He had pinned down an older of her kind and was questioning him trying to find out all he could in his quest for knowledge.
Suddenly her attention was grabbed by two figures walking into the tavern. Not too many of the bigger races live in the Gnomish city of Grubbelthorpe. Admittedly the few who did came to this tavern since it was the only one tall enough for the bigger races. One was a little taller than the other with blond hair and a longsword hanging off his hip. Not bad looking for a human. The other was a bit more mysterious she thought to herself. He was wearing a black cloak with its hood up and kept tight around his head that she couldn’t see his face and his hands were covered by black gloves. Very unusual clothes for the summer, but mysterious cloaked figures in this tavern were not unusual.
They walked right up to Old Jack, the human owner and barkeep of the tavern. They asked him something and he pointed out Gwen and each of her companions. They followed Jack finger towards each of them, then asked him who the leader was. Gwen spoke up quite loudly to ensure her companions would take notice. “I’m the one you talk to.” Gwen had spent years training her ears to hear that which doesn’t want to be heard. Apparently they didn’t know this, or at least the blond one didn’t. They walked over and Gwen was able to get a closer look at the one with the hood. But she couldn’t see much since he was wearing a veiled mask which effectively kept his face hidden. “We have a job which requires the talents of you and…your party.” Said the blond one.
“Well first I need a drink. Jack, get me a drink…” Stecnhfeng spoke up, “ME TOO!” “And put it on their tab, well his tab.” Said Gwen pointing at the masked figure. “I don’t like people who wear masks and keep their face hidden.” The hooded figure grunted and nodded at Jack. The serving wench brought over a drink and handed it over to Gwen and then brought one over to Stenchfeng as quickly as she could as not to be close to the 7’ tall Half-Orc for more than a few seconds. During this time Razeal was slowly walking around to get a better view of the coming conversation. No one seemed to notice.
“So what is your name?” The blond one spoke up “My name is Thomas.” “And your friend’s name?” “His name is Stephan” Gwen then asked if his friend can speak.
The masked guy finally spoke up in a very deep voice said “yes I can and if this useless banter is done I have a job for you.” Gwen shifted and made a slightly more serious face. “I would like you to retrieve an item for me. “Does it involve stealing …or killing?” Thomas pulled out a small purse and emptied a lot of gems onto the table and Stephan responded “Will that be a problem?” “No, it won…..”And Stenchfeng screamed out “Killing good!”
Darren stood up with his eyes glowing and moved behind Stephan and Thomas and looked them both up and down. Gwen hated when he did that. It didn’t matter which divine power he was tapping into, it was never good for her when he did that. It always meant more work for her and potentially less money in her purse. Stephan pulled out a scroll from his sleeve and unrolled it on the table. It had a color picture of a scepter. It was made of gold with 3 gems on one end and a red gem on the other. The handle had a ring of gems going around it. “So who has this item and where do we find it?” It is currently in the possession of Kerrasslor…” Thomas pulls out a scroll and unrolls it. “he is located in a mountain West of Mount Yetternach.”
“So do we have a deal?” asked Stephan. Darren walked between Stephan and Gwen and tapped the golden end of his quarterstaff up and taps it against Stephan just under the neck. It made a small clank. “What is this?” Darren asked. “It is a family heirloom and is of no importance to you.” He replied. “Does it have anything to do this scepter you want us to look for?”
“It is not a scepter. It is a key and belongs to my family! Now do we have a deal or not?”
“How much does this job pay?” piped up Gwen.
Stephan looked over and nodded towards Thomas and Thomas pulled out a decent sized purse. He opened it up spilled its contents on the table. As its contents fell onto the table Gwen’s eyes opened in amazement which was quickly replaced by her normal greedy eyes when ever so much money was laid out before her. “It pays twenty thousand in gems, ahead of time plus you can keep whatever you find amongst Kerrasslor’s possessions, minus the key.” Said Thomas.
“Yes, we….” Gwen was cut off by Darren. “Before we can agree we would like to see the amulet you are wearing around your neck. You don’t need to even take it off” Stephan and Darren stared each other down, or at least Gwen thought they were. It was hard to tell since Stephan was wearing a mask. Thomas went to shove the gems back into the purse. Gwen quickly rushed out one hand and grabbed his hand while her other hand grabbed the hilt of GWEE. “I wouldn’t. We didn’t say we didn’t have a deal.”
Stephan then said “It’s ok Thomas, I will show them. I will be right back.”Gwen and Thomas both relaxed their arms, Gwen palming one of the gems as she did, and Stephan walked out of the bar. Darren pulled out his journal and began making some sort of notes.
“So where are you and he from?” Gwen asked Thomas.
“We’re from Corinath”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been there. It’s in the north right?”
“That is north of Mount Yetternach isn’t it?”
“Yes it is.”
“Does Stephan ever take that mask off?”
“I’m sure he does, but I have never seen him without it on.”
“Do you know why he wears it?”
“Some sort of deformity that supposedly runs in his family.”
After a minute or two Stephan came back in but now the amulet was hanging outside of shirt and mask. Darren began examining the amulet and Gwen jumped off of the table and onto Darren’s shoulder. She too was staring at the amulet. Darren reached out his hand towards the amulet just a little and looked up at Stephan. “May I?” Stephan grunted and nodded. Slowly Darren reached around the amulet, felt around all the edges and bumps in it. He looked as closely as he could without actually ripping the thing off of the big man’s neck.
Darren and Gwen both slyly glanced over to the shady spot on the far wall where Raziel was sitting and he nodded towards Darren and Gwen. “We have deal” Said Darren as he let go of the amulet and sat down. “May we keep this scroll?” “No, I need it back.” Darren started copying the picture of this scepter like key into his notes. Gwen hopped off of Darren’s shoulder onto the floor. “So how do we get this key to you once we have it?” Gwen asked. “Thomas here will be staying in town. Just bring it to him once you have it.”
Darren finished copying the drawing into his notebook and handed it back to Stephan. Stephan began rolling it up and Darren noticed that there was writing on the back. “Wait a second.” Darren jumped out of his chair and as he did Gwen jumped up onto his shoulders and Stephan stopped rolling up the parchment. “Let me see that parchment again?” Stephan handed it to Darren. He turned it around and started to copy the text. He just two characters down when Stephen took back the parchment and rolled it up and put it up his sleeve. “That has no bearing on your job.”
Stephan took a deep breath and sounding much calmer then he did a second ago. “Thomas our business here is done. Leave them their pay and let us go.”
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Tags: D and D, d&d, dragons, dungeons, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and Dragons, entertainment, fiction, games, hobbies, hobby, Homebrew, Krydel, PC, Player Character, role playing, Role Playing Game, rpgs, story, Wizards, writing
Posted in Krydel, RPGs, Story Hour | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
After DMing for just about 3 years (with a 1 adventure reprieve) I now get to be just a player. It is a nice and needed break. So now Mike is now the DM and running the first adventure in our new homebrew campaign world called Krydel.
So I thought it would be interesting to post in character story of the adventure. However I am a slow writer. Even slower when it comes to writing stories like this. We started the adventure about a month and a half ago; unfortunately he had to cancel several games. We cancelled one week for Billy’s wedding, one week because Mike was sick and one week because Mike’s transportation was hijacked by his family and he didn’t find out until it was too late to do anything about it.
So before we get into the adventure we should probably meet the Characters.
Gwurcyn: Female Gnome Thief played by me
Daren Leclare: Male Human Cleric of Darren played by me
Stenchfeng: Male Half-Orc Fighter
Raziel: Male Tainted (a Homebrew Race) Monk Played by Domenick
Gorath: Male Half-Orc Fighter played by Domenick
As you may have noticed some of us are playing 2 characters. There are reasons for that. Our group became smaller during the summer. We lost Ron for a variety of reasons. We lost Greg, at least temporarily because his job gave him Saturday Evening shifts and Billy got married so we figured he won’t be around as much as he was, despite what he says.
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Tags: D and D, d&d, dragons, dungeons, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and Dragons, entertainment, fiction, games, hobbies, hobby, Homebrew, Krydel, PC, Player Character, role playing, Role Playing Game, RPGs, story, Wizards, writing
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Friday, June 6th, 2008
When you hear Dungeons & Dragons what do you think about? If you are anything like me you probably think about Dragons. And why not? They are not only in the title of the game but they are universal to just about every culture on Earth. Heck there are even dragons running blogs (see my review of Dungeon Mastering).
Unfortunately for them there is always a little debate about how often they should be used in a game. If you want to see some of this debate you can find it on ENWorld. My personal opinion is that they should be used. No, not every adventure should have a dragon but hey, they are included in the game for a reason; to be used.
Dragons can be a great challenge for parties from 1st level all the way through epic levels. You might now be saying, “But wait a second, Dragons for a first level party? Aren’t they great big creatures who breathe fire and send spells flying?” And you would be correct, if you were talking about Great Wyrm Red or Gold Dragons. However there is a whole spectrum of dragons (literally) which come in an assortment of sizes and ages.
I hope to hear from all of you about your opinion on the subject and next time we will have some examples of Dragon encounters.
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Tags: d&d, dragons, dungeons, dungeons and Dragons, enternatinment, games, hobbies, hobby, role playing, RPGs
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Thursday, June 5th, 2008
Yes. You read the title correctly. There is a blog run by a Red Dragon and his name is Expy. However we’re not supposed to know that. The blog is called Dungeon Mastering and can be found at www.dungeonmastering.com. Now he tries to pass it off that a mere mortal human by the name of Yax runs the site. However, my guess is that Yax is just a Kobold who worships Expy and does the typing because well, let’s face it, it’s hard for a dragon to type with his claws.
Now let’s see what we get when a Red Dragon runs a blog. When you first type in the blog’s address (the URL for you techies) you come to a cool looking front page that looks like it is coming out of the screen at you. I think that is awesome. Now this page has of course the name of the site and a small description under it. Below that are links to various other parts of the site. I’ll go into a little bit more detail about them in a second, just let me finish the front page first. Now right below that is an advertisement for 4th Editon. At first I didn’t realize it was ad ad. I just thought it was a cool animated banner. Personally I hope he never changes it.
Now below that ad there are two posts listed on the left. One is the featured article and the other, at least at the moment is site related post. Now below that it gets divided into two columns. The left most column is a list of the recent posts and the right is a list of series that they have done. All the way on the right side of the page is the sidebar which you will see on all the others parts of the page. This sidebar has the usual suspects, an RSS feed, an email subscription, links, recent posts, related posts and a poll.
Overall I love the design of the site. It is simple and elegant and even though it has ads it is not the annoying Google AdSense or get in your face and make the site look cheesy and crappy ads. Great work guys
Now let’s talk about the reason we all go to blogs to begin with, the actual content. Remember before when I said I would more about those other parts of his page, well now you can stop holding your breath because I am now. Of course it has an About Us page. This is where Expy begins his plans lulling you into a calm about a Red Dragon being involved in a web site and claims to just be a mascot for Dungeon Mastering. Now you will notice three really cool sounding links; Free Adventures, Instant Campaign Builder and Instant World Builder. Expy and Yax has under the Free Adventures a list of 83 FREE, adventures and where to get them. Now to my knowledge neither Expy or his (probably Kolbold) worshipper Yax made any of them but none the less it is awesome to have such a list because there are so many free adventures out there it is sometimes hard to many of them.
The Instant Campaign and Instant World Builders are an awesome tool for both new and experienced DMs (or GMs if you prefer the generic not cool sounding title). Now these are on-line tools that will do the work for you. They are both PDFs created by Expy and Yax which give guidelines on how to create your very own campaigns and campaign worlds without doing too much work. They are based off of a series they did back in the day with tips, tricks, suggestion from those who left comments on the series. Please make sure you download (AND READ) them. They are worth every byte of disk space on your hard drive and the 40 to 60 minutes it will take to read both in their entirty.
Expy has Yax normally posting at least one post a day normally. Sometimes there are two or three posts. Very rarely (if ever) are there no new posts. Many of the articles become part of a series of articles. That is how the Instant Campaign and World Builder started. Currently he has a series called “Pimp My Character” This series just started and Expy and Yax don’t do too much of the work, but let the viewers do it. (They seem to be big into having community participation). How this series works is that people had to send in a basic character concept of no more than 30 words. Then the community would help that person flesh out the character a bit by giving a back-story, list of abilities and powers which could be cool or how the character can fit into an adventuring party. It was also revealed after the first pimping that if more than 50 people leave a comment helping to pimp out this character some of Expy’s hoard would be used to get an character sketch done for this character. So go and help Ian pimp out his character and get a character sketch.
There are two days a week in which there are regularly posted items. One is some very interesting quizzes every Sunday. These quizzes vary in challenge week by week but none are so easy where you will sit there and go “Why should I bother?” I do have one gripe with these quizzes. It modifies your score based on some psychological profiling modifier which add or take away from your score. However it seems to be a random number and not a set system of improving this modifier. But the quizzes are for fun and are not, normally, major competitions. The other is Monday Morning Speed Linking where several sites are listed for your perusal. They are normally somehow RPG related. Expy does find some awesome sites.
PROs
- Run by a Red Dragon
- Awesome design
- Posts often
- Posts are interesting and useful
- Excellent use of graphics
- Great links
CONs
- D&D Books Page link is merely an advertisement (however if you are buying D&D books and you like the site use it so they get some cash to keep producing an awesome site)
- Poll is all the way on the bottom of the sidebar
- The DAMN psychological profiling modifier on the quizzes
On the Joey Scale of 10 being the perfect site and 0 being why did I bother to ever look at this site Dungeon Mastering has earned a 9.5 So head on over to Dungeon Mastering and give it a try. You won’t be sorry, I promise you, unless you anger the Red Dragon of course.
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Tags: blogs, Books, dm, dragons, dungeons, dungeons and Dragons, entertainment, games, hobbies, hobby, role playing, role playing games, rpgs
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