Non Player Characters, The Barkeep

Non player character, to often do we focus on the two first words in that statement. non player. Our NPC's start to lack character.

Who can blame any DM, how many things do we need to keep track of, why add something else who may not be important to the story.

The idea i want to get across here is a para-dime shift of thinking about NPC's. Not just for DM's but for players.

The Barkeep is probably the most powerful NPC i can think of, they are not helpless lawful good individuals.

"I was sitting in my favorite pub down by the docs, a nice quiet place where the fire is always warm and the ale is always cold. I was minding my own business enjoying a smoke and a drink. A group of adventures entered the pub and started flashing some money around and demanded things of old Tuck, the Barkeep. They stayed the hole night and drank and broke the place apart after getting into a fight with a local group of thugs. "

If a barkeep had a class, it would be a bard. Their drinking providing benefits instead of singing or playing music. Barkeeps also know when to shut up, which is why they are protected by most gangs and thugs who know any better.

The pub is where all shady characters go, adventures know this because they go there to find information. it would be safe to assume that the barkeep knows a lot about whats going on and has may favors with people.

"I was walking down the docs to prepare for a boat to baldurs gate, i know i could teleport but something about the sea air i enjoy. Anyway there were those adventures again, piled up dead with the local watch investigating. Well they did not know who was responsible but i sure did"

Barkeeps don't have to be evil, but they are not dumb simple or scare easy. I think its important for Players to be aware of how a Barkeep can be a good friend. They should also not be pestered with, and DM's should not allow players to push the barkeep around.

For DM's barkeeps are great for taking a break from the story, or advancing it along to the next level.

So re think those NPC's and add character to them.

Until next time, keep your dice on the table.

50 things wrong with d&d

First let me state that i am not as big into blogging as i first started out, ces la vie.

Second i hope that i provide useful information to my blog.

Third this is a rant.

this is a rant about how in 2 hours time my rpg blogger feed in Google reader went from 0 new items to 50 new items.

At what point do we decide that quantity over quality is ok, i try my best not to post something unless its an item of quality, (hence not a lot of posts anymore). This in itself seems to be the point of 4e as well. I love 4e i play 4e, i'm tired of 4e.

Let me be more specific, i'm tired of the constant updates to 4e, and constantly looking around the corner to see whats next. Pull back the reigns a little there WoTC, lets go with 1 new book a quarter, i mean 3rd year, = 3rd players handbook. Fuck off.

Seriously, as a player and a DM i'm tired of being bombarded with the new crap, lets let the new stuff work into the system a little before already going on this. It seems to me that WotC saw how much money magic the gathering makes by constantly pushing out new products and felt they could do the same with D&D.

Maybe i'm ranting for no reason, i just feel there has been a flood of information as of late, and how much of that is really quality information.

There are a lot of great blogs out there constantly pushing out new and helpful info that i wish i could keep up with. NewbieDM for one is one of my favorite bloggers, thats because his posts seem to have some user.

So for those expecting good information here, i apologize.

Review: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens

Be warned, I do have some spoilers listed here. If you’re currently playing this then out of respect for your fellow players and DM's please skip this one.

We started playing on October 1st 2009, and by November 20th we were done. Only playing once a week.

At the start the players were level 12 going on level 13 and by the end they were level 14. I did adjust encounter to match, but everyone enjoyed the story.

The adventure is broken down into a few sections. Initial, Search, City Attack, Warrens and Feywild. Well my party ended up skipping the latter half of the warrens; they simply used a ritual found from previous adventures to teleport to the feywild and went exploring.

The city fights were excellent and well loved by the party however I felt it was a bit much, the encounters didn't seem to make much sense. There was some excellent role-playing in the city both before and after the attack.

I felt Scallymag was not powerful enough for a big baddie, including the changed one at the end. The map with the game was great, and is defiantly reusable. In fact next week I will be posting a small adventure that uses those maps.

What I would have liked to see from WotC

Grid Numbering on the Mini Map

For those of us remaking the encounter map, it would be nice to see an ABC along the top and a 123 along the side. I did this by hand, but it would be nice

Encounter Options

I think it would have been great to help the DM customize the encounter by offering a list of optional monsters to swap out. You don't have to put the full stats, just a few extra.

Example (if your party made easy work of the last encounter, try adding in this xxx)

List of Random Names/Races

I hate this question, players always ask for a name and im unprepared.

Notes on rituals to overcome skill challenges. In the very first encounter the warlord intimidated a troglodyte who surrendered and I was out of names.

Question Summary

At the end of every LFR game there are a few questions that need to be reported back to the RPGA. These questions actually server another purpose that I think goes un-noticed. The questions relate to key events in the adventure and how it was handled. This way 6 months down the road the DM can review the questions and get familiar with what happened.

I know a lot of these are up to the DM to do, but it would be nice to see WotC help out every now and then and add some more tools.

Interested in more, get yours today on amazon.ca

Until next time, keep your dice on the table.

Used the forced movement luke

or how i stopped worrying and learned to love the warlock and the wizard.

In our group we have a warlock and a wizard, our group in general works as a team, 90% of their powers are focused on helping one another.

The wizard and the warlock (Richard) have came up with a move called the Dick Maneuver (short for Richard)

In the following examples i show very specific spells, however it is not always like this, both casters tend to have other spells they can use. This battle is against Scallymag, a Large solo troll.

Wizard goes first

Casts Stormage

Initial Damage = 4d6

Wizard spends action point

Casts ray of frost to slow target

Warlock Goes

Casts Hungar of Hardar

No Initial damage on target

Warlock spends Action point

Casts Diabolic Grasp

2d8 damage

Moves Target 7 squares (infernal pact)

Warlock Move 1

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

Warlock move 2

Target Moves into Stormage

Takes 10 damage

Warlock Move 3

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

Warlock move 4

Target Moves into Stormage

Takes 10 damage

Warlock Move 5

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

Warlock move 6

Target Moves into Stormage

Takes 10 damage

Warlock Move 7

Target moves into Hunger Zone

Takes 2d10 for damaging

No matter how far the target moves here (slowed), next turn the warlock casts harrow storm, to do 2d10 and slides the target 11 squares to repeat the process.

Total Round 1 damage

Stormcage = 4d6 + 30

Hunger = 8d10 damage

Ray of frost = 1d6 damage

Diabolic Grasp = 2d8

Round 2 adition

Stormcage = 70 (initial 10 for target starting next to wall)

Hunger = 10d10 damage

Harrowstorm = 2d10 damage

Grand Total 2 rounds damage: 5d6 + 2d8 + 20d10 + 100 damage

Now before i get people saying well yeah but they can only do this once a day. No there are more powers that the players use to dish out this kind of damage.

This is just an example to show the power of forced movement and zones.

I believe this is just another reason to show why solo's are a bad idea, because they are limited to the amount of actions they can take vs a well equipped and team oriented party.

Monster Review: Dust Devil

Ok, i have been a fan of Stargate for a long time. Pretty much when it came out as a movie then when it moved to a tv show filmed in Vancouver. No i'm into Stargate Universe.

If you have not seen it, let me talk about two episodes. In one episode the crew goes to a desert planet in search of lime for the air filter. During the trip one of the crew members stumbles upon this Dust Devil like creature. The dust devil sucked up some water and returned it to the crew just when he needed it allowing him to complete his mission and return back before time ran out.

A few episodes later we find out that lots of water has gone missing, and turns out one of these little dust devils got on board and went into the water supply. We also see that they seem to be generally friendly and curios and not wanting to cause harm. But they can cause harm, they can suck the water right out of you.

So what i submit to you is a version of a dust devil that could easily destroy a party of equal level. The idea behind it is to find alternative means of getting rid of it instead of combat.

See better version here

The only other thing i would like to add is a vulnerablity to fire, only beacuse the dust devil in SGU did not seem to like it very much.

Tactics: Dust Devils have no reason to attack creatures and are curious creatures that idealy like to try and communicate. If provoked they will defends theselves and flee. Otherwise dust devils will try to mimic faces of other creatures as their main method of communicating. Dust Devils are not made of dust or sand but instead of thousands and millions of tiny insect that can consume imense amounts of water and even recall it at later dates.

Well i am very intrigued in feedback and would like to know what you think.

Thanks and until next time keep your dice on the table.

Mapping with the Kids, Watercolor for the win.

Hi Everybody, its been a while since i last posted, almost a month. What can i say life is busy. When your trying to make money anyway you can, spend time with your kids, and everything else that is life its hard to find time put some thoughts on paper.

I started to run P1 - King of the Trollhaunt Warrens with my group of players, its my first 4e pre-made adventure. I really liked the map that came with it but was a little upset there were no maps for the rest of the encounters.

Now the maps i use for the table has varied over the last year and a half. From D&D Map Tiles, to 1" grid paper using markers. I went through the entire book and created every single encounter using makers.

We ran the first night heading into the troll haunt, and the players had trouble seeing where they could go and where they couldn't because everything was still white spaced. I didn't know what i was going to do.

A few days later brought my 3 year old into the d&d room so she could paint some watercolor's, i even gave her one of my large 1" grid sheets. I love spending time with my kids and find being a dad the biggest role playing experience of my life. i noticed the colors she was using and though, jesh that looks just like it does in this book.

So i put away my happy face i was painted and busted out a few of my maps and started painting.

The result was solid. Not only did the maps look great but i also got to spend time with my kid while working on it.

I know recently there has been lots of talk about people building massive encounter using tiles, and even the 3d tile sets. But really who has the money. I spent $12 on paper for 50 sheets (50 encounters) and i spent $1 on the watercolor paint set that is still going strong. All encounters can be pre-built and once dry i just fold it up and write the encounter code on the back.

I've now increase my own personal enjoyment from the map by spending time with my little girl. The players enjoyed the map and feel it adds a lot of flavor to the game that cannot be added with store bought items.

Well for other DM Dad's out there, i say why not give it a shot. Hey go even further and design the encounter with your kids and see what your players think about it.

Well until next time, keep your dice on the table

Ok ok so im not around anymore (108)

i know i have a few fans out there, so i do want to keep up to date.

I'm still really into d&d I'm having lots of fun running games. But however life is to busy to spend much time blogging about it, and in all honesty, Ive been really tired with the other blogs that are out there right now and feel that everything is saturated and i need a break. No offence if you run them, i just think its overloaded right now.

this being my 108th post, i am glad i broke the 100'th post mark, and i did have a special 111 post all planned i may stick to.

Some things i plan on posting about in the next little bit.

• My mead experiment - mead is great for d&d
• My experience making foam weapons
• My experience fighting with foam weapons
• Weekend in the Realms Preview & Review
• Making kick ass maps from scratch
• My review of King of the Troll haunt warrens (ongoing, once I'm done playing I'll post the review)
• My review of Game Science Dice (yup i bought two sets)

Thanks for sticking it out