House Rules

As much as we love the core rulebooks, we are all pretty well set in our house rules ways. House rules give you that extra little help when the rules don't quite fit your party's needs. I'm always looking for good house rules to convince my DM we should implement, but here are a few of ours to share.

Re-rolling 1's on healing and health. When rolling for healings (either potions or spells) or rolling your hit die each level, rolling a 1 is an automatic re-roll.

No changes after your turn is over. You can change the amount of damage you did during your turn only until the next person begins his/her turn. So, if you forgot to add the +2 from the bard's inspire courage to the 3 attacks you made, you're just out of luck... try to remember next time!

No food need while traveling. Except in extreme climates (ie. deserts, frozen tundras, etc), it is assumed sufficient time has been allotted during the day to hunt for food so tracking rations is not necessary.

So, what house rules do you have in place?

Behind the Screen: Use creativity to foil writers block...

As you may remember last week I was suffering from writers block relating to our recent campaign. On the drive home, I got to thinking about creative ways that I've gotten past the writers block in the past.

What Dreams May Come

Aside from being a truly excellent movie, dreams can be a very interesting wellspring for new and creative ideas. One of the better original scenarios that I ran in the campaign before last was from a dream.

The trouble with dreams is that they may not logically flow together, or you may not remember the connecting pieces of the scenario. In this case, I took major elements and placed them into my campaign. The players ended up enjoying the trap and the scene, however they had the most unorthodox solution to it... but that is a story for another time.

And Pretty Much Anything Else

Over the years I've found seeds for campaign ideas from some very odd places: the back of a Frosted Mini Wheats cereal box, TV shows (both animated and live-action), even my workplace can occasionally spawn an idea or three.

I've found if you get writers block, its important not to focus too much on the fact that its there. Look in places that you normally wouldn't. Try some writing exercises, like free word association. Try relating a random object in your home to your campaign in some way.

Anyone else?

I'm sure many of you fine readers out there have been in this situation, be it as a Dungeon Master or as a player trying to find new and exciting ways to roleplay their characters. How do you do it? What strange inspirations have you used to break your writers block?

You Make The Call

Gorlag, a 3rd level barbarian, is accustomed to being in the wilderness and chopping up evil things with his battleaxe. Having performed heroic deeds with a party of adventurers, he has been invited by a local Countess to receive an award for bravery at her house in the city.

A half hour before the event, Gorlag got a fierce case of dry mouth, and drained his waterskin. By the time the awards ceremony rolled around, Gorlag's mighty bladder threatened to explode.

Choose Gorlag's Destiny

In order not to piss himself in front of his friends and the local nobility, does Gorlag have to make:

• a Fort Save, relying solely on his bodily strength and constitution to save his social reputation (and trousers), OR


• a Will save, proving once and for all the concept of mind over bladder?

YOU MAKE THE CALL!

Orientation: Overview of Classes

So far in our Orientation series, we've discussed abilities and races. Over the next couple of orientation sessions, we'll be exploring the classes you can select for your character. Your class is your occupation, and as a preview of the coming sessions, here's a quick overview of classes:

Barbarians - fierce fighters from the wilderness

Bards - entertainers who use music to cast spells

Clerics - priests who use their divine connections to cast spells

Druids - protectors of nature who use their connection to nature to cast spells

Fighters - combatants who dedicate their lives to being proficient fighters

Monks - fighters from monasteries who have perfected the art of combat without armor and only basic weapons

Paladins - fighters crusading for the glory of their deity

Rangers - hunters who fight to protect their home from their sworn enemies

Rogues - jacks of all trades who can open locks, disable traps, and pick pockets

Sorcerers - spellcasters with innate magical abilities

Wizards - spellcasters who study the arcane arts

We'll delve into greater details on these soon, so check back soon for the next orientation.

Behind the Screen: Desigining a Great Encounter

Over the weekend, things came back around in a big way for our group and we were able to pull off a largely satisfying session. The interesting thing is that the session was centered around a single battle encounter.

It all starts with a plot point

Our players were suffering from a lack of engagement... they weren't able to see any personal tie-in to the larger world around them. So my co-DM and I set out to create a major plot point that would tie the actions of our characters during the first campaign to our current one.

We created a battle encounter that seemed relatively consistent with a few others that we've had during the session, but we added in the presence of a very, VERY evil aligned NPC. They jumped right into the fray, luckily!

And yes, I got to use some suspense and horror!

The encounter took place near dusk, and the spot check to see the baddies was pretty difficult. Luckily, nobody rolled high enough to see the evil NPC behind the standard baddies until they were entrenched in battle. A few more difficult spot checks to make out some important details made them curious, including the fact that she did not engage them in any way.

The NPC was an evil aligned goddess from the Book of Vile Darkness, and the baddies were her underlines that she put out there because she enjoys torture, pain, and inflicted suffering. The characters realized something was up when the baddies would laugh and writhe ecstatically with every successful strike. As they died, a tether would appear connecting their essence to the evil goddess.

This got them all extremely interested in what was going on.

The all encompassing power of flavor description

After the baddies were reduced to less than zero hit points, they were so overcome by their ecstatic pain that they fell to the ground. At this point, the evil goddess would re-assert her dominance and tethered them with a spiked collar that did nothing but break bones and sinew, causing a disgusting series of images for the players and their characters.

Then, one by one, as the characters attacked the goddess they were stopped dead in their tracks, mid-action. The goddess then had a speech explaining the plot as it concerned the characters, and her actions up until this point and the players were all very interested in what she was saying.

In fact, the two note-taking types in our group were writing so furiously I had to stop for a second to tell them I was going to post this talk on the forum that accompanies our game sessions so they could focus on what was being said. They were pleased.

Get to the point already!

The long and short of this story is this: much can be done to create a good encounter by mixing a whole lot of intrigue with a piece of the plot and sprinkle a battle in there liberally.

The session that I described was the first time in my DMing career that the entire group was engaged at some level and the entire night revolved around a single battle oriented encounter. Several of my players told me that the session was extremely good, and I felt extremely good while running it so I'm willing to chalk this one up as a success story.

Special kudos go to my co-DM Kanati, who found said evil goddess and made her speech positively hair-raising!

Critical Failure #3: Introducing Leopold