LCTN: Exploring the Sanctuary

THIS IS SCENE #3 IN A PLAY-BY-POST D&D GAME

Many elements of it are unique and innovative, with several key twists that will catch the players by surprise. The adventure is deadly and devious, with victory going only to those clever enough to take it. Though it may not be a traditional Fourthcore deathtrap dungeon, I assure you, dear reader, that it holds many of the ideals of Fourthcore close to its heart.

I will keep these posts easily collapsible, so that readers may easily skip past them if they wish. Although, really, you'd be missing out.

LCTN: Sanctuary

THIS IS SCENE #2 IN A PLAY-BY-POST D&D GAME

Many elements of it are unique and innovative, with several key twists that will catch the players by surprise. The adventure is deadly and devious, with victory going only to those clever enough to take it. Though it may not be a traditional Fourthcore deathtrap dungeon, I assure you, dear reader, that it holds many of the ideals of Fourthcore close to its heart.

I will keep these posts easily collapsible, so that readers may easily skip past them if they wish. Although, really, you'd be missing out.

LCTN: The Cold, Hard Road

THIS IS THE FIRST SCENE IN A PLAY-BY-POST D&D GAME

Many elements of it are unique and innovative, with several key twists that will catch the players by surprise. The adventure is deadly and devious, with victory going only to those clever enough to take it. Though it may not be a traditional Fourthcore deathtrap dungeon, I assure you, dear reader, that it holds many of the ideals of Fourthcore close to its heart.

I will keep these posts easily collapsible, so that readers may easily skip past them if they wish. Although, really, you'd be missing out.

The Seven Sons of Moradin - actual play log

By reader request, I've linked and opened up the Google Docs continuing log of The Seven Sons of Moradin D&D campaign that I play in on Thurday nights. It's pretty neat to read, as many of the recent innovative posts here at DMG42 were created through its play, such as the popular Death and Reincarnation mechanics.

The notes are written very hastily, during the middle of the game, while we're drinking beers. So, it's a little sloppy at times, but very natural and organic, taking place entirely from the players' perspectives and relaying information that we find important without the shadow of the DM's plot schemes hanging over the descriptions.

The Lich-Queen's Beloved: Spellbook

image from lostinschlock.blogspot.com

For the last few weeks, my home group has been exploring a 4E conversion of the much lauded 3rd Edition D&D adventure The Lich-Queen's Beloved. You can read up on some of their prior exploits here. For brevity, I've skipped a few session here and there. The adventure isn't so much timed as it is restrictive on extended rests; many bad, permanent conditions apply to the dungeoneers when they take a rest. As such, some weeks the group is very careful and reserved in their delving, which makes kind of a boring post.

At this point, the dungeoneers have really got this adventure nailed. They've gotten into a good puzzle-solving groove, finding helpful treasures all around and are able to keep up with the main antagonist, The Iron Lich-Queen Abilene, through some quick ritual casting. All the pieces are in place for the finale that will not only end this adventure, but also my entire 4th Edition campaign.

Even with all the treasures and boons the dungeoneers have earned, they are still deathly frightened of the villain. During the course of their delving, they've had a handful of narrow escape from her clutches. She packs quite a wallop in combat, and has indiscriminately killed dungeoneers with a flick of a spell. To further heighten the players' sense of fear, and to give them some interesting strategic insight into their enemy, I created Abilene's Spellbook, placed in Room 37: Library of Bone and guarded by an Illithid Lich.

Scenes from PAX East

Worth a thousand words, right? Here are some snapshots of some of my my D&D activities last weekend.

WotC's booth in the exhibitor hall with a huge ass Lolth statue

PAX East 2012 DM Challange

Pregame setup

PAX East 2012 has come and gone in a whirlwind of activity. Among my favorite events this year, as was last year, was WotC's DM Challenge. Although I found many of the same troubles and frustrations as before, this time around proved to be at least a little more fruitful, in no small part to hard work done at Dungeon Oracle.

Halt, human female!

Normally, I never bother to fully read the adventures that come out of Dungeon Magazine (call it DDi if you really must). As a whole, they're insipid, uninspired and worthless. My usual modus operandi with these sorts of things is to simply skim the article in question for anything useful for me to use in my home game, generally technical or crunch material, and then just ignore all the drivel and fluff surrounding it. I don't mind flavor text, fluff pieces, and the like. But for the overwhelming majority of DDi content, that aspect of the articles is simply not very good so I ignore it.

Today was a little different. Today I took the time, slowed myself down a bit, and decided I would really sink my teeth into an article. In my list of PDFs to get around to reading I still had an epic tier adventure, Flame's Last Flicker, by Shawn Merwin. This adventure was hyped up quite a bit, with a Design & Development article preceding it, and the adventure itself being a sequel of sorts to a verified classic Dungeon adventure about as historic as they come.

By Page 3, however, I was already sorely disappointed. Again. The writing in this is simply terrible. I haven't even had time to absorb the linear plot or stale, safe, by-the-numbers combat encounters. No, this was some froo-froo roleplaying bullshit that tanked it for me. The following line is what really grinds my gears, something that many D&D authors throw into their writing that is one of my pet peeves (emphasis mine):

"Amid the destruction lies the crumpled form of a human female in plate armor."

Human female? Is that how the author describes a woman? Who the fuck talks like that? "Hey guys, let's go down to the bars and see if we can pickup some females!" It's as though the author was an alien zoologist studying human beings from afar, never having actually interacted with them, and now must describe them in detail.

Some may say I'm being too harsh and judgmental, that I'm kind of an asshole who tramples on a lot of people's D&D picnics. This is just throw away fluff text, right?

Well, fuck you, I demand better. The authors of these articles get paid, not a lot by any stretch of the imagination, but pretty good compared to the writing industry at large. I would think that a paid author would know better than to write something so boring, dry, and technical. This also isn't just throw away text that doesn't matter. This is, by the adventure's own description, part of the first paragraph of text the players will ever hear at the table. This is the adventure's first and thus most important impression, and the author sets the tone to that of a car alarm installation guide.