The New Old (Experienced) Kids on the Block...

I'd like to take today's post to herald the dawning of a new and truly excellent roleplaying and game mastering blog run by some pretty talented folks: Gnome Stew, the Game Mastering Blog.

All Hail the Honor Guard of Game Mastering!

Those of you that have been paying any attention whatsoever in recent years will recognize many of the names, the Gnome-in-Chief is none other than Martin Ralya. Until very recently, Martin maintained (in my opinion) the gold standard of all GMing blogs, Treasure Tables.

The rest of the gnomes are a formidable bunch as well, several of which have honored us with their opinions during our relatively short tenure in the blogosphere. A quick glance at the front page of Gnome Stew pretty well tells the tale... you get a broad perspective on all things gaming, from conventions to gaming systems to game mastering tips... there's a ton of great information there already and they've not even been open a month yet!

It's going to be great to see what they have in store as months unfold, head on over there and see what good stuff they're laying down! I've added them a big, hairy link in our Featured Links section... because, lets face it... with an honor roll like that there's no question their site is going to rule! Good luck, you guys!

Behind the Screen: Insane things are fun...

In case you can't tell from Stupid Ranger's last post, we had some fun with Deathshriekers (from the Monster Manual III) last session. For those of you that don't know, their primary mode of attack is a scream that persists for three rounds.

Woo, what do they do?

Each round requires a DC 26 Will save, or else you suffer the following effects: round 1 - deafness for 1d4 rounds. Round 2 - stunned for 1d3 rounds. The final round (and the most delightful) is the spell Insanity as if cast by an 18th level sorcerer. This and this alone is what forced most of the party against one another.

That's not all... because of the extreme power of our party, we elected to ignore the bit in the statistic block that indicates that these creatures are solitary and we threw two of them at our group.

Let's just say it was entertaining results. Entertaining for us!

The result

The party lived through it, but they expended a considerable amount of resources. Several characters were killed, later to be revived by the Staff of Life that one of our PC's bought with their in-between-campaign moolah.

As we've previously mentioned, this convenient return to life may be considered as unbalanced, but the more charges they use off of that staff the quicker it is removed from service permanently. Besides, shouldn't the stakes be higher at epic levels? I think that they should.

The fact that our characters are internalizing the encounters in the way that they are indicate that we have a good set of roleplayers. They actually feel conflicted when a spell forces them to do something that they otherwise might not do, and this is a very good problem to have as a DM.

Advice for the Fighters Out There

Dear Fighting Friends -

After recent experience with some Very Nasty Things, I write to encourage you to please do something to ward your mind against attacks. Sure, the shiny armor protects the skins, but what safeguards have you employed to protect your mind? Herein I'll share with you the story of the Very Nasty Things, that through my tale of suffering you might better understand the dangers against which you must guard your mind.

In the deep, dark caverns below Castle Perilous, we disturbed the subterranean pond of two skeleton-like shrieking creatures. As I was distracted by my battle with the animated statue, my mind was suddenly assaulted by a horrible shrieking sound from the skeletons. I could no longer hear the sounds of battle around me as the shriek reverberated in my head.

The statue was quickly defeated, but the skeletons were continuing their attack against my mind. Then, before I knew what was happening to me, I was compelled to attack the nearest person, which was not a troublesome skeleton, but our good cleric. I don't know what came over me, but I could not stop my attack against him, though I knew he was not an enemy.

The battle ended in a blur of activity, most of which I was unaware. I continued my uncontrollable attack against the cleric, then I lost the ability to communication sensibly and babbled incessantly. Before I knew what had happened, I found the cleric dead at my feet, and I couldn't even explain to the rest of the group why I had killed him. The compulsion ended, but the emotional scars will take a great deal of time to heal.

So, my friends, find some means to protect your mind before the Very Nasty Things take it over and force you to commit unspeakable acts. I can't actually tell you what to do, mostly because I haven't recovered the ability to speak, but please read this letter and heed its contents before it's too late!

Sincerely,

Sar'Ruaselari

One Hammer to Rule Them All...

This weekend was rather interesting for several reasons entirely unrelated to roleplaying. I elected to do some yardwork, and in the process elected to employ the water hookup at the front of my house to wash my siding. Shortly after engaging said hookup, I noticed that water was pouring out from underneath my siding and the water pressure was low through the hose, so I decided it prudent to turn the water off and move forward using the water hookup from the back yard.

The Plot... Wettens

I didn't think anything of the leak until I went downstairs to prepare the area for D&D. I got my bar all cleaned up, and then I noticed that the floor was a little cooler than normal by the stairs. Then I heard it... the sound of water dripping onto leather.

Looking up, I found that the water from the hookup had... well... ruined a few areas of the finished ceiling in my basement. I immediately employed the use of large fans and a dehumidifier and called the plumber.

Help arrives in the form of Albus Plumberdore

The short bearded man arrived today, looking very much like a workingman's version of Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore and proceeded to fix the water hookup (apparently called a hydrant). After knocking a hole in my ceiling (*wince*), he had to go to the local hardware store to get some parts, and curiosity getting the best of me I went down to see what he was doing.

Necessity is the mother of invention

Now, I'm not going to get too far into it now, but suffice it to say that I really, *really* like Lord of the Rings and have subsequently decorated my basement with all sorts of accouterments from the films (never fear, I will post more fully on this once I can take some better photos). Luckily, none of my displays were harmed by the water, however I did vacate the wallhanging stuff from the affected area.

Very near to where the hydrant was leaking, I had United Cutlery's Staff of Saruman hanging on its hanger. I relocated the staff to my bar for safety, and hilariously, I found this in its place:



Apparently, in the process of knocking the hole in my ceiling ol' Albus Plumberdore needed a third hand to hold his hammer and he elected to use the staff hanger as his proxy. Not only that, but he fell victim to the strange entropy field that exists in my house and affects only contractors, because this is the second hand tool that has been inadvertently left at my house by someone doing maintenance. I was delighted to find that my $299 service fee has earned me One Hammer to Rule Them All!

It's almost going to be difficult to take it down once my ceiling is repaired...

Behind the Screen: Sweet Return to Service...

At long last, we finally had another session on Saturday night! Interestingly, Kanati and I had devised a partial plan for our intrepid bunch of adventurers before the long, long hiatus so it was just a matter of brushing up the plan and heading right into it. We made a few last-minute additions that really made the session excellent and partially solved our "these epic characters are too strong" problem.

The answer is more obvious than you might think!

This may seem elementary, however in our scramble to keep our plotlines straight I often got into the habit of glossing over the abilities of these high challenge rating creatures that we kept introducing. Unsurprisingly, this led to our player characters being able to trounce them with very little expenditure of resources, causing us a continual problem.

This week, however, we had enough time to actually look at the abilities for the creatures (in this case, Ancient Deathshriekers, woot!) and devise a battle plan that included fully exercising their skills. Now, the resulting chaos might not have been extremely fun (at one point it involved an entire sofa-full of players having to pit their insane player characters against one another) but it certainly used up their skills in the appropriate way.

The battle took most of the evening, when combined with our groups standard propensity to talk and goof off on the first night back from a long hiatus but I think it was a great exercise in us DMs learning what to do in the case of epic characters.

Use all those monster skills and your life will be much better (and your PCs characters will be much, much worse)!