Category: RPGs
Obsidian Portal for your campaign
Keeping everything in your campaign organized can be difficult, especially if you are running a homebrew campaign. One of the bigger challenges is readily having information available for your group. If you’ve got notable NPCs, history and events, or a unique group of deities, having that information readily available to your players can be a chore.
Obsidian Portal is a great site to keep all of that organized. It’s a campaign wiki, that allows you to easily edit and maintain your campaign. The functionality is great and I’ve come to make it my primary tool for record keeping in my campaign.
At first, the thought of committing everything in a wiki can be a little daunting. But cut and pasting text, slowly expanding entries, adding tags to pages and NPCS is a breeze. I’ve taken to uploading images of maps instead using of the wiki map section, but the default map section is quite functional. Plus it is accessed through a web browser. No need to be chained down to any specific computer if you need to access (or update) any information.
Another important feature is the campaign log. Once I got into the habit of updating the log, I can now just spend 10-15 minutes after a session to post a quick summary. Since I play every other week (and sometimes just monthly), it has been a boon to my game having the group be able to read up on the last session. If they need more info about an NPC or a location, it is simply a click away to get a little bio or more detail. Now we have a record of what they did 4 months ago, and they can gleam any info off of a particular encounter from the past. For the adventure log alone, I’ve loved what it has done with my campaign.
My initial advice is simply start small with your entries. Use 2-3 sentences for most topics, and slowly expand. In a month or two, you’ll have a fleshed out campaign that is well organized and more importantly, completely referenced. I’m considering allowing my players to keep up on the adventure log. I think it would be interesting to have them record events they think were pertinent. Did I mention that entries can be tagged with DM only sections? That NPCs can have a ‘public’ and a ‘DM only’ entry? Yeah, it is that functional.
Check out Obsidian Portal. It is a fantastic campaign tool. As for my campaign? Feel free to browse the adventures of my group in the world of Terrene. I’m a convert to this great site, be sure to use this tool for your next big campaign.
Thoughts: Eberron Campaign Guide
For the sake of completeness I thought I’d chime in on the Eberron Campaign Guide. I held off picking up the book for a long while as I was currently deep within my current campaign. So I did not want to jump over to Eberron just yet. Additionally I wanted to hold off on shipping overseas, so I waited until I was on holiday to pick it up.
A long while back I posted my thoughts on the player’s guide for the Eberron setting. Overall I liked it and thought it a good buy for people wanting to get into the campaign setting. I’ve currently ported the artificer class over into my home brew campaign as something the players can choose if they so desire. I’ve gotten a lot of milage out of that book. So what about the campaign guide?
If this is your first exposure to the Eberron campaign setting and you wanted to jump into this for your group, buy this book. It has a ton of information and ideas for running this campaign setting. I think the introduction succinctly describes the setting and can allow a DM to easily grasp the overall themes. Additionally, there are a lot of suggestions on the opening campaign theme for your game. Whether you want the intrigue of the dragonmarked houses of delving into the secret war between the nations, to a more epic theme of the dragon prophecy as a high fantasy campaign, to a dungeon crawling jaunt of exploration to fill the player’s coffers with coin and treasure, just about every theme is covered. Enough ideas and information are given to give the DM some means to sketch out a campaign and run the game they want.
Further details are provided on the typical city settings, interaction of the various houses, implementation of magical technology and travel. Sharn is given a bit more detail on typical city life to allow a DM to take pieces and incorporate them into other cities within Eberron. Not to mention finally having some stat blocks on the various wondrous mounts a player can pick up.
This is followed up by more detailed information on different geo-political regions of the world. Each region is given a thumbnail sketch of the people and notable places within. Also a little detail of the other continents beyond Khorvaire is provided.
The book further goes into the various dragonmarked houses, and their role within Khorvaire. It goes over some of the politics and purposes of each house which was nice. The book also covers some more fiendish organizations and global threats. Again, nice to have if the DM does not want to get the players embroiled into the political bickering between dragonmarked houses. The book wraps up with a beginning adventure and some encounter examples.
I’ll pipe in here and say this last section was a disappointment. It always is tricky to put something like this in these books, especially with Eberron as a setting (since your campaign can take on so many different themes). I like the idea of a ‘flashback’ adventure with the initial fall of Cyre and having the players embroiled in it all. Additionally, the follow up encounter is okay, but I love the idea. It follows up on the group, 4 years later in Sharn. All of them are gathered at a ceremony commemorating the day of mourning (each there for some reason or another).
I really wish at this point the adventure stopped, and they just gave lots of suggestions on what the DM could do next. Having a lot of options and player hooks would have served the book well. I much rather they spent the following pages expanding another section covered, example encounters.
This is something I really enjoyed out of the book. A few example scenarios and locales were provided. Each detailing some interesting terrain of the encounter, with different suggestions of creatures to fight. Best of all, different levels of encounter groups were provided. I really wished they ported this idea over to most of the follow up encounters for the initial adventure.
Note to WotC, I think this would be a great stand alone product. Having a book of encounters, with suggested groups of monsters covering different levels would be a solid buy. Don’t worry about stringing it together as a series of dungeon delves, just give us example encounters in interesting locations.
The Good – A lot of solid information here. I think there is a lot of material to get a DM up and running an Eberron campaign. Lots of background on political, economic, and racial factions. There is also a bit more information on the ‘typical life’ of people in different geographical regions. This book goes a long way towards filling in details that the player’s book skimmed over.
The Bad – Plenty of material here, but I still wish there was more. I think committing more on the geographic locations would have been nice. Plus it is very centric to one continent, a bit more on the others within Eberron would have been helpful.
Also it’s an interesting idea of kicking off an Eberron campaign by having a flashback adventure, but I think overall the whole adventure falls flat. I wish they spent more pages with material like the last two encounter locations in the book. For me, I would think that type of material would be more applicable and easier for a DM to use over having a complete initial adventure.
The Verdict – If you are new to D&D and want to run an Eberron campaign, this is a great DM buy. It has plenty of information and a enough details on the movers and the shakers of the world. As a big plus it also covers a lot of ground on giving the DM ideas for running a variety of campaign themes.
If, however, you have run an Eberron campaign in the past and (more importantly) have many of the old campaign books, I think you could pass on this. Much of the material is simply background material on the world and its people and places. Much of that would all ready be at your fingertips with the original 3.5 release. I think with that book you could skip much of the material in this new book, and armed with the 4E player’s book be able to run an effective campaign.
While some of the factions, villains, and groups are interesting, I also expect this is a book strictly for DMs that want to run a game in this setting. Not a whole lot of meat in the way of rules here. If you are running a homebrew setting, likely much of this material is more background information rather than stuff you could port directly into your game.
That is my impression of this book in a nutshell. If you’ve run an Eberron campaign before, just be sure to pick up the 4E player’s book. Nothing in this is an absolutely must have, and you can likely make up what you need to fill in any gaps by yourself. If you are a new DM to 4E Eberron though, I’d say this is a must buy.
Toodles for now!
Cutout conditional tokens
I’m all about using physical markers or tokens to keep track of effects in 4E. There is a lot of small things to keep track in combat, with status effects, bonuses to hit or AC, and stuff being bloodied all being thrown around from turn to turn. I have a love of miniatures (or at least some type of marker) for 4E too. So having stuff to physically hold in your hand helps a lot. It’s so much easier to keep track of stuff having something on the board over keeping a list of status effects on paper.
If you look around, a ton of people have their own little tokens or things they use as condition markers. From using stickers on minis, to special bases, to even using used soda bottle rings, just about everyone uses a variety of items for tokens. I’ve used a lot of small colored markers also, but I started leaning towards using something with a written description.
I opted to create a small sheet of conditional markers. After printing them out, I pasted it on thin cardboard (do make em a little beefy), cut them apart, and secured them a little further with some tape. I also have a few tokens to mark off areas of effect. Some powers have zones that are sustained throughout an encounter, so I wanted a few markers for those situations also. So far they are pretty functional and work okay.
However, I’m still wanting something a little more durable and thicker. I’ve recently picked up a neat product that looks like it will fit my needs nicely. I’m waiting to run a session with my group to get their feedback before posting my thoughts. Until then, here is a link to my cutout conditional tokens as a pdf. Hope folks enjoy them.
Video game sales verses movie box office numbers and implications for geek gaming.
This is an interesting bit of news that has been circulating around the video game sites. According to an article in Business Management video games have been giving more traditional entertainment industries a run for their money with sales. Comparing the box office numbers of Avatar vs Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (see graphic below), each has taken in over 1 billion world wide in sales.
Even modest returns have gotten some notice with the movie industry. Batman: Arkham Asylum took in unit sales nearly 2 million within the first month (average $45 USD/unit = lots of cash). Warner Bros. decided to get in on the action and take a role in pushing out the sequel, dropping Eidos (the company that developed the game) as the middleman developer.
I notice in this splash page that little blurb on World of Warcraft. Nearly 100 million every month in sales. Everyone that has played D&D knows the inspiration for a lot of fantasy MMOs. Levels, classes, forming groups to battle monsters to gain treasure and magic items, at the core of a lot of these games you can see D&D’s fingerprints all over them. I’m certain there is a chunk of MMO players that cut their teeth on pen and paper RPGs, and moved to MMOs. At the same time, I am absolutely certain there are a young generation of folks that have experienced fantasy worlds solely through video games.
I think the big challenge for the RPG industry is to try and tap into this younger generation and, in a way, ‘take back’ the influence and inspiration D&D and many other RPGs have on MMOs. The incorporation of digital tools is a pretty good step. I’m hoping that that expands even further as improvement in technology allows for more interactive computers. However, I still think some efforts have to be made at an even younger age.
One of the strongest elements about D&D is the social aspect, and that everyone is gathered around the table top interacting with each other. Kid RPGs might be a good step. I think children find role playing a natural extension to a lot of normal play. But I think that boardgames are also a good introduction.
Something physical with miniatures to move around and colorful boards can spark imagination. Also, boardgames have a structured style where there is a winner and an end. It’s a concept that is a little easier to pick up over a continual story like most RPGs. Something that kids can sit down, play for an hour, and move on to something else would fit the bill nicely. I think some companies have picked up on this theme, and even WotC has jumped onto the bandwagon, which I think is a solid move.
I see entertainment growing from a passive form to something more interactive. I think the next big generation will be drawn to forms of entertainment where they are more involved in a story rather than just being an audience member. There is big money here too. So you can bet that industry types will be looking at getting into this market. I think the challenge to RPGs as an industry is to try and reclaim a bit of the very thing they helped create. I think without D&D, you would have never had an Everquest or World of Warcraft. The challenge will be to capture a younger generation that never knew about D&D, and reintroduce them to the world of pen and paper (likely a computer too) RPGs.
A video profile of a few real life DMs
WotC has just put up a short film looking at a few DMs. It covers a pretty broad spectrum of DMs and the types of games they run. I have to admit in the third part does tout 4E a lot which might make folks think it’s more an advertisement for the new edition (though I agree with a lot of the positive comments made about 4E). Still it is an interesting snapshot of the D&D community.
I like how it gives a glimpse on the variety of ways people prepare and run their games. From using home brew rules to lots of self-made conditional markers, I liked seeing how folks adapted their game to their own group. A really big portion is dedicated to how people actually got together to meet up and run their games. I’d really wished they managed to get some folks together that ran an online campaign. There are some tools out there to do so, and interviewing a group that had a remote campaign going would have been an interesting profile.
Still, I liked this. I think it realistically captures a lot of folks that play D&D. I like how it gives a quick view with how different a lot of DMs run their games and the little tricks they use. Be sure to check it out.
Expeditions of Amazing Adventure: The titan footsteps of the tundra wastes
The barren tundra of Kormerria is a harsh land with brutal cold winds that chill the bone. Few can traverse these expansive wilds and not succumb to the freezing climate. Somehow, roaming clans of humans and half-orcs can scratch out a meager living but only barely. It is the thorough knowledge of the lands, passed on by generation to generation that has allowed these races to live there. One such guarded secrets are the titan footsteps.
Scattered among the plains and at bases of the infrequent mountain ranges are magical locations, serving as an oasis to the surrounding brutal cold. These locales are remnants of a fairer time. A window into the past world where the lands grew wild with lush vegetation. These locations are a paler image of that time, but their power still pulses through the earth.
These oval areas are, at most, 100 yards across and hold land barren of snow and ice. Some even have small crops of grasses scattered among the rocky soil. Within these small regions, the wind and cold temperatures are lifted, and a gentle warmth can be felt as if from an invisible sun. These scattered pockets of land serve as a reprieve from the harsh tundra. Crossing the wintry terrain is an arduous task, but the journey can be slightly improved if one can rest within these locations.
Local inhabitants revere these areas as holy land. These sparse locations serve not only as a means for clans to roam the tundra plains hunting game, but also as final resting places for tribal elders. Their corpses are bound and buried upright, with small columns of rocks serving as a rudimentary tombstone. Tales from elders claim that long ago titans had walked the world, leaving footsteps in their wake. These footsteps still echo of primal magic, creating small reprieves in these cold lands.
Some alchemists say the stones from these areas are magical, and can be used to make powerful elixirs of protection. Although few prominent alchemists are willing to fund an expedition to retrieve such stones, they will gladly pay a hefty price for a pouch full.
More thieving adventurers might consider robbing the graves of clan elders that lay buried in many of the locations. It is known that fine jewels of obsidian and opals adorn the headdresses of many Kormerrian elders, as are ceremonial daggers and armor of great chieftains. Local tradition of Kormerrians dictate such prizes be buried with their kin. These tombs within a magical oasis might be a tempting find if seeking treasure.
Many local barbarian tribes see the disruption of such lands as blasphemous, and will inflict a quick death to the offender. Those that seek rest in the titan footsteps must be wary of any nomads they encounter. Despite good intentions of only using these lands for a night’s proper rest, prejudice against outsiders likely mean encounters with such barbarians will end in violence.
Congrats to NewbieDM.com
WotC has a new community spotlight interview up. It’s on one of my favorite blogs particularly for its focus on new DMs and 4E, newbiedm.com. He’s done a lot I think for the community. He started up a new DM group on the WotC community boards. I also think he has a great blog.
In particular he tackles a lot of things someone new to DMing would likely encounter. He also has a ton of useful tutorials and guides including for some practical tips on running your game, from creating custom battle maps, to making your own miniature tokens. I also think as his group has matured and leveled up, he’s gone beyond the heroic tier and begun to tackle some issues a DM may face in the paragon/epic tier. Just great stuff on his site.
Yeah, I’ve been gushing a lot lately on other blogs. I should be posting more stuff here. But kudos to newbieDM.com in getting some hobby recognition for your blog. You’ve got a great site that offers a lot to the D&D community. And if you haven’t checked his site out yet, give it a look!
DM Tip: Reduce lighting in encounters
The next time you are trying to add some flavor to an encounter, consider toying with the area lighting. Certain PCs may have difficulty discerning targets off in the distance under dim light conditions (PHB 262), granting those monsters a slight advantage (-2 penalty for attack rolls). Having the complete absence of light can really make an encounter difficult as the penalty for total concealment bumps up to -5 (PHB 281). Keep in mind though that area of effect and close attacks don’t grant a penalty under these conditions.
Counter this with monsters that have darkvision. There are a surprising number of those that do, even at the heroic tier such as undead-types. If you throw in some manner of an environmental hazard that simply reduces (or removes) the player’s light source against some creatures with darkvision, you suddenly have a very challenging encounter.
Having a fight in an open underground chasm, with a constant wind reducing open torches to dim light can make things interesting. Consider having magical effects also. A zone-like effect that nullifies light to utter blackness might make a fight against undead a memorable one.
I’d use something like this sparingly, as it might make certain players upset about being unfairly put at a disadvantage. At the same time however, it might make a few players shine by employing non-combat oriented skills and abilities (say the wizard casting a simple light cantrip).
Some blogs for inspiration
I’ve been cruising some of the D&D message boards and blogs. Quite a few folks have been discussing how to keep coming up with ideas. I agree sometimes it can be a challenge to pull something new out of the DM hat. I always need to get recharged and find something that sparks some creative idea. There are a few blogs I enjoy that usually do the trick.
D&D Doodle has quite a few pics I’ve posted in the past. I find a lot of his stuff just great idea fodder. Looking at his rendering of the lonely tower in Fallcrest, how can you not get an idea for a quick dungeon delve?
Personally I can’t wait for the final rendering of Hammerfast. All ready I’ve got tons of ideas rolling around for some city adventures.
Even the smaller surface communities like his Dwarf Town has my creative juices going.
And this inn? Maybe it could also serve as a barracks for a mercenary company, a local for an urban adventure, or how about a mystery set in a deserted roadside inn?
Speaking of inns, another site I love is Fame and Fortune for his series on inns and taverns. Just about every month this guy puts up an interesting inn or tavern. He laces it with eloquent descriptions of the locale, the fare that would be served, the clientele that frequent it, and some broad strokes describing the proprietors. It is solid stuff and has been my go to site if I need to think of an inn or tavern for an adventure. Some of the stuff has got me brimming with ideas. I’ll likely consider plopping the Barrel in my group’s next jaunt to a dwarven town, and for the Wooden Sword I have one word… pit fighting. Yeah, my players will be doing a fight tournament soon.
Another site is a new comer that I have absolutely fell in love with. Year of the Dungeon has a simple premise, post a new dungeon sketch every 3-4 days. It outlines a basic map with a few simple details. But the blogger here also scatters a few descriptors for items and trappings you can use to dress up your adventure. I love the idea and the stuff here is a great source for sparking an idea of that next grand adventure for your group.
So these have been a few sites I’ve enjoyed, by far this is not an inclusive list. If you’ve been stumped on thinking up a new adventure.
Mapping your game for the tabletop?
I’m curious what people have been using to depict environments during their encounters. I typically have my players mapping things out as a general sketch on notepaper. Once things get into combat, I transplant everything to a white board, map out the room, place minis and run the encounter.
It works pretty well. Players can quickly move through environments, jotting down notes to rooms they think are important. I only have players pull out the minis for rooms that have something going on (like combats or traps).
Sometimes things get a little clunky. I usually get everyone excited about busting into a room full of baddies. Only to slow things down while I frantically map out the room, sketch out hazards and notable terrain, fiddle with placing the creatures about, etc. It sort of kills the flow.
I’m thinking about trying something different. So I’m curious if other folks have run into similar situations, and what folks are using in their games.
Geek Ken 