Homemade Monsters - Scorpions and Bats

I am currently running a campaign in Athas (Dark Sun world) and I sometimes want the adventurers to face some specific monsters that would fit the situation. And, to my surprise, even with three Monster Manuals, two Monster Vaults, and other books with monsters, I don't find everything that I need.

Usually I just make some minor adjustments and re-skinning of some monster and that fits just well into the game. But other times I have to mix and design new abilities and attacks that I imagine the creature having. And that is the case of the monster and NPCs I will post on these articles I shall name "Homemade Monsters".

The first two creatures I will be presenting are the "Giant Desert Scorpion" and the "Blood Bat Swarm". They were both made for an adventure I ran on my Dark Sun campaign.

Chatacter Names - Some Thoughts

A few weeks ago a read an article on Big Ball of No Fun about PC naming. It was about why a player get to choose his character name if they, themselves, could not choose their own names. No one gets to choose his own name, why should the player's choose their character names? Although this does make a lot of sense, the characters are their creation, and as creators, they choose the creature's name.

But let's think about it a little more. Actors play characters in ways that they are creators themselves and they do not get to pick their character's names. They create a unique way the character act, talk and express themselves but are still stuck with the name someone else gave them. Does that make their experience less valuable? I do not think so.

Why am I saying this, you ask. Am I against the the player's choosing their character's names? Well, yes and no. Let me explain what I mean with this.

Custom Made Character Sheets for my Dark Sun Campaign

Ok, this is more of a "show off" post than an actual helpful or insightful post. But you can probably take something good out of this, like how is it nice to invest some time into making good things to give to your players to make them more interested in your game and wanting to come back for more.

And that's not everything. On our first two sessions we were using the usual character builder sheets, and although it's complete and have everything they need to play, it's like five freaking pages long. So the player's (who are not all veteran 4th edition players) had to turn pages all around to search for things they needed to see, and the sheets had a lot of information they did not need or did not need at their level. So I decided to make one that would be smaller (just one sheet printed on both sides) with everything they needed. I made it look good too and have a Athasian feel but still look clean. They LOVED IT.

Campaign Report - The Game We Want to Play

This is going to be a new series of articles on this blog. I will write about the campaign I will be DMing to my friends now that I am back to my home town. It has been 3 years since I last played D&D or any other tabletop RPG so I am kinda rusty.

On the other hand, I never read so much about DMing and creating a nice campaign and interesting adventures, so I do not feel so unprepared. One of the things I read about (in the Dungeon Master Guide 2) was Colaborative Campaign creation. So I decided to give it a first try with my group.

Adventure Building (Part I): Plot

I am about to DM an adventure for some people that never played D&D before. So I wanted to create a small, fast and exciting adventure so they would be hooked into D&D for now on. But how can I do that? By creating an adventure that makes them believe in it, an adventure they could not forget easily, an adventure with compelling elements.

So, what are those elements? Well there are numerous elements in an adventure, but the most important are the plot, the location, and the cast. Those three are the main elements that are the core of the adventure and define everything else like encounters, skill challenges, puzzles, atmosphere and others.

In order to make a memorable adventure, those elements should be worked very well by the Dungeon Master. Because of that I decided to make a helping sheet to make me think about those important elements. This post we will look at the plot element.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate...

I never really had a chance to play with psionic classes over the last editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Mainly because I didn’t have the supplements that presented psionics and because I’ve always heard the rules were complicated and psionic powers were unbalanced.

In fact, I did bought the Expanded Psionics Handbook for 3.5 but by the time I got it fourth edition was released in a couple of months. I read it, I liked it, but I never played with psionic classes until recently.

With the release of the Player’s Handbook 3, Psionic Power was introduced to D&D fourth edition. Not that there weren’t psionic monsters and effects, but this book presented psionic classes, four of them. The Psion, classic psionicist who developed his powers through hard study and discipline; the Battlemind, which powers were honed with a combination of physical and mind training in battle; the Monk, who is the embodiment of the perfect balance between mind and body through hard discipline and martial arts; and, one of the most interesting classes in my opinion, the Ardent.

The Ardent is a psionicist that developed his psionic powers through emotions. He feels the mood around him and can absorb it to empower himself or he can do just the opposite. He can spread the feelings he has to those around him. Some Ardents are disciplined and keep their emotions very tightly controlled not to be overwhelmed by them. Others embrace them freely and let them have control of their actions. This class really reminds me of characters of a movie I really like. If you said Jedis, you’re right.

Colaborative Campaign Building

I read the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 a couple of weeks ago and realized something about my campaigns. I always made them thinking about myself, what I wanted it to be like, who I wanted the players to fight against, where I wanted to adventures to happen and so forth. By doing this I may have created good adventures, but with the help of my players I could have built greater ones that would relate to them more easily and they would remember it for years.

The book suggests that you should get input from your players about what they want in the campaign. What kind of campaign they you like to play? What enemies they want to face? Do they prefer combat encounters or interaction encounters?