30 DODND Day 4-Favourite Gameworld

            How can it not be Faerun?  Seriously.  While I’ve played some very good other worlds, (Rich and John, I’m looking at you two) Faerun is vast, diverse, complex and always full of adventure.  I’m not so thrilled about the changes they made in 4^th edition, simply because spellscarring is complicated, but the world remains largely the same.  From the Sword Coast to the wastelands of Thay, it has so much to offer that it is truly staggering that WOTC managed it in the first place.

            Everyone who knows DnD knows the Sword Coast.  Neverwinter, Baldur’s Gate, Waterdeep, all familiar names to many.  My favourite city has to be Calimport on the South Western coastline.  It’s very Arabian, mysterious and crowded; an entire campaign could easily take place within just the city walls.  Faerun has friendly, peaceful lands and dark and treacherous lands alike, with seas, oceans, mountains, mines, and of course, the Underdark.

            As it has been said, “There’s more to see than can ever be seen; more to do than can ever be done.”  Like I said.  How can it not be Faerun? 

30 DODND Day 3 - Favourite Playable Class

He is too a wizard!

            In 3.5 edition?  Wizard.  In 4^th edition?  Still wizard.

            There are a lot of fun classes to play as.  Bard, Monk, Rogue, Paladin, Warlord, Fighter, Cleric, I’ve played as all of them and enjoyed it.  There are only a few classes I’ve never played as in fact.  However, the wizard is always (unless you’re level 1) a blast to play as, sometimes literally.  True, you’re weak and frail and can’t carry anything and don’t get cool weapons, but if you play it right, a wizard can dominate any situation.

            The real difference is in their spell list.  In 3.5 edition, a wizard is the greatest toolkit known to mankind.  With the appropriate spell choices, a wizard can be a DPS, hexer, buffer, controller, thief, summoner or any number of things.  My current favourite is the Transmuter wizard, who spends the first rounds of combat casting Bull’s Strength and Enlarge Person on the fighters to make them unstoppable, and then sitting back to watch.  It’s hilarious!  In 4^th edition, a wizard is far less flexible, but much more powerful.  You can really either control or damage, and control is definitely the better option.  Consider this: by spending an action point at the start of a battle to cast Wall of Fire and Wall of Ice simultaneously, you can box in and seriously damage most of the battlefield.  What more could you want?  Well, the 3.5 edition spell list for a start, but it’s a refreshing change of pace.  Thunderwave is just fun.

            Basically, of all the classes, wizards are the most complicated, the weakest, and the most likely to have to run away.  But you keep rolling them up because there is something to be said for having unparalleled control over the laws of physics.  It’s a beautiful thing.

30 DODND Day 2-Favourite Playable Race

            

           Ok, my immediate choice is Doppleganger, but I’ll be talking about why that is on Day 8, so I’m going to go with my second choice, and one which I have never managed to play as: the Warforged.

            Warforged are mechanical constructs of many different sizes and shapes which have been imbued with magical intelligence, similar to golems.  They don’t heal, instead they repair themselves.  They don’t eat, drink, breathe or sleep, which I feel makes things a lot easier.  They tend to have decent stat boosts and special abilities, and they’re not so monstrous that you are going to be shunned from everywhere like a Bugbear would be.

            But the real reason I like them is the interesting stories you can craft with them.  I really wanted to play a pacifist Warforged – who would hurt but never kill – who was still under the command of a wizard, who was also in the party.  The wizard would want me to protect him, but the pacifist programming would always mean I would stop just short of actually saving him.  He’d have to do the dirty work himself.  Warforged can have fascinating backstories, can have lived for centuries, can be searching for their master having gotten lost, can be trying to break free of some rules embedded into its code... the list is endless.  They are fascinating to play as, and I really want to try.

30 DODND: Day 1 – How You Got Started

            

           To be honest, I’m having trouble remembering exactly when I decided ‘D&D, that’s what I want to play.’  I’d been interested in the style of game for years, though.  I’d even made an INCREDIBLY basic system on a few sheets of paper to play with my friends while we rode to orchestra each week.  It wasn’t too bad, as I recall.  I played a lot of Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and had seen a lot of Tales of the Sword Coast, so I was definitely familiar with the mechanics in general.

            I do remember that my first game of 3.5 edition was played in Brazil, in a sunny living room overlooking Ipanema beach, with a few good friends, and one of their little sisters.  No one else wanted to DM, so it was left to me.  I created a campaign from scratch and we started off.  There was a whole plot about a necromancer lich conquering an island.  Those games taught me a lot of lessons about Dungeons and Dragons, not least of which was the greatest lesson of all: the party will never do what is expected.

            It was tricky DMing when we were all still learning the rules, but we had fun, and it got me hooked.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget my first campaign, especially not the boss I’d spent hours on which they two-shotted.  So.  Incredibly.  Annoying.

30 Days of Dungeons and Dragons: Forewarned is For Running Away

So I had a bright idea for my blog posts for the next few weeks, and lo and behold it DOES exist, just as I suspected.  So, courtesy of insertstupidblogname (http://insertstupidblogname.tumblr.com/post/4379859906/30-days-of-dungeons-and-dragons),  I would like to show you the upcoming schedule for the next 6 weeks here.  I will be doing one post a day again, and naturally doing shorter posts.  Fasten your seatbelts!

Day 1-How you got started

Day 2-Favourite Playable Race

Day 3-Favourite Playable Class

Day 4-Favourite Gameworld

Day 5-Your favourite set of dice/individual die

Day 6-Favourite Diety

Day 7-Favourite Edition

Day 8-Favourite Character You Have Played

Day 9-Favourite Character You Haven’t Played

Day 10-Craziest thing that’s happened that you saw (to party/character/your players etc)

Day 11-Favourite Adventure You Have Ran

Day 12-Favourite Dungeon Type/Location

Day 13-Favourite Trap/Puzzle

Day 14-Favourite NPC

Day 15-Favourite Monster (Undead)

Day 16-Favourite Monster (Abberation)

Day 17-Favourite Monster (Animal/Vermin)

Day 18-Favourite Monster (Immortal/Outsider)

Day 19-Favourite Monster (Elemental/Plant)

Day 20-Favourite Monster (Humanoid/Natural/Fey)

Day 21-Favourite Dragon Colour/Type

Day 22-Favourite Monster Overall

Day 23-Least Favourite Monster Overall

Day 24-Favourite energy type

Day 25-Favourite magic item (your character’s or someone else’s)

Day 26-Favourite nonmagic item (your character’s or someone else’s)

Day 27-A character you want to play in the future

Day 28-A character you will never play ever again

Day 29-What is the number you always seem to roll on a d20?

Day 30-Best DM You’ve Had

Atmosphere in D&D: Are You Sure We’re In a Dungeon?

One of the stereotypical images of a Dungeons and Dragons game is the group sitting around a table in a dark basement.  While often seen negatively, it does highlight one of the important qualities of a good D&D game – atmosphere.  An excellent Dungeon Master can describe a situation is such a way that the players really feel immersed in the experience – the bright living room becomes a gloomy forest with a few well-chosen and well-orated words.  I am aiming to become that good, but I don’t think I am as of yet.  One of the tools which can help this process however, is to have at least a vaguely similar atmosphere in the real world to the one you are trying to create in their minds.  The basement therefore rears its eerie head once again.

Of course, some people just have awesome rooms

Here’s a story for you.  When I first started playing D&D, I was living in Brazil.  I ran a campaign in my friend’s living room – a quest filled with undead-infested cities and chasing elves through dark woods.  The only problem with this was, not only was I a rubbish DM, but it was a little difficult to make the atmosphere convincing when his living room was gloriously sunny with a beautiful view looking out over Ipanema Beach.  The lovely sunshine meant that every so often I would be saying “You enter the cathedral slowly, uncomfortably aware of the unholy aura emanating from the blood-soaked altar at the end of the aisle.  Shadows swirl about the place, obscuring the corners of the hall.”  The players would then look outside and look confused.  Sometimes, suspension of disbelief is a little more difficult.

Always appropriate

So other DMs have solved it with darkened rooms and relevant music.  I find music to be the most useful type of scene setter, because it is a lot easier to come by compared to an appropriately decorated/lighted room.  Muse makes excellent battle music, and Rhapsody of Fire have an entire album describing their own fantasy adventure which is fun to listen to.  I find Youtube to be a saviour of games, though.  A good mixture of music from Zelda, Bleach, and Kingdom Hearts gives a wide variety of moods available, and everyone enjoys listening to Gerudo Valley.  However, if it is possible to get a comfortable room which is appropriately themed to the campaign, then that’s certainly a help.  The artistically inclined could simply decorate the room with certain additions like tree branches.  I’m sure there are other ways of doing things, but I am not so inclined.

So DM’s out there, how do you deal with this?  Music is easy and effective, but does anyone go any further in creating a setting that is actually believable to the players?  A sunny living room is not always the ideal spot, unless you run a desert campaign I suppose.