The Bonds of Bits and Bytes...

There's been a lot going on in the blogosphere recently, so I thought it best to open up this Friday posting with some recognition of severe awesomeness!

First up, our good buddy Phil over at Musings of the Chatty DM had his one year anniversary AND his 400th post all at once! The well-planning so-and-so intended the two to coincide, further cementing his m4d DM-foo! I didn't want to call you out on your own post, bud, but you're a few weeks *ahead* of us. And a few posts too, but we're not as chatty collectively as you are alone!!

Next, it strikes me that I never properly congratulated Yax over at DungeonMastering on his ENnie nomination! We're all pulling for ya, buddy!

Last, but certainly not least, our good friends over at Gnome Stew reached their 100 post milestone on July 9th, a scant 11 weeks after going live! For those of you bad at math or new to blogging, that's an astonishing amount of content in a short amount of time. With this milestone, the gnomes receive an extra action point apiece, and a giant caraffe of decaffinated coffee.

This year, all of us at StupidRanger count ourselves lucky to get to meet these guys in person (and others!) and get to do some excellent roleplaying! Some of it may or may not involve whiskey and tomfoolery, so its bound to generate some interesting stuff!

So join me this fine Friday in congratulating our buddies! Head over to their sites and see some of the groovy stuff they're laying down, you won't be sorry!!

A Long Awaited Review: 4e Dungeon Master's Guide...

I finally got some time to become acquainted with the 4e core rules! While taking a flight back home from Colorado, I got the opportunity to plow through the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide and what follows are my mostly formed opinions of the latter book. I'll leave my opinions of the PHB for another time.

The DMG

Before getting too far into my high level feelings, I must say that the visual appeal of the new core rulebooks is fantastic. The artwork is stunning and the layout of the information is relatively attainable.

As for the actual content of the DMG, honestly I feel like it could have been cobbled together from the collective roleplaying blogosphere. Do not take this wrong: I am not unimpressed, nor could I have done much better... but as I was reading it, I kept having "I saw that on Martin's site three months ago" or "wow, Yax just mentioned this concept a bit ago" and so on. I guess that reinforces that we're largely on the right path.

The changes to the game mechanics are interesting. We will be playing our first 4e session this weekend, so I will get some firsthand experience in executing the new combat systems which should be interesting in a group that has historically eschewed miniatures.

I am eager to give the skill check system a try. I think it creates a good situation for storytelling, doesn't frustrate the players that don't enjoy puzzles, and gives the DM a discrete "pass/fail" criteria that is easily outlined into an action plan.

One of the more exciting things for me as a DM is the inclusion of the action point system. I think that this is an incredibly good way to handle the "oh crap, I have to rest" process that plagued 3.x editions, and the idea of milestones is an excellent way to reward the group for interim progress toward a goal.

More to come!

I was able to get just into the Treasure section when my plane ride got bumpy enough as to inhibit my ability to remain focused. I'm going to pick up there soon, and I'm sure that will compel a follow-up post along with my first impressions playing with the new rules in practice.

I am happy to say that I'm genuinely excited about the opportunity to get to play the new system. A lot of the aggreviations that we face as Dungeon Masters appear to have been lessened and much good advice is given in the book for how to handle common gaming situations, so the DMG already earns fairly high marks.

Keep an eye out for more soon!

Preparing for Gencon: Packing the Bag of Holding

I know many of you are preparing for Gencon, and I also know that some of you are first-time attendees. For all the newbies out there, I'd like to offer some insight into what you might need for your trip.

1. Badge & Tickets - If you have pre-registered and received your badge and tickets in the mail, DON'T FORGET TO TAKE THEM WITH YOU!!!

2. Backpack - You will definitely want to bring a backpack for your days at the convention center. Besides being able to carry your required gaming paraphernalia (books, dice, pencils), your backpack can be useful for carrying snacks, your Gencon event guide, and all your loot.

3. Game equipment - You aren't likely to forget this one, but make sure you take along your game equipment (books, dice, cards, etc). Even if you aren't registered for a gaming event, you'll find pick-up games around the corner without looking too hard.

4. Camera - There will be things you want to capture to savor your Gencon experience throughout the year, to tide you over until next time. Take your camera and plenty of batteries/memory cards/film.

5. Ziploc bag - This is one of my standards in packing my backpack for Gencon. It never fails to rain at least one day. I carry a gallon-sized Ziploc bag to protect those things that can't get wet. This my just be your cell phone, but may also include irreplaceable items of a paper-like nature (cards, books, tickets, badge).

6. Rain coat/umbrella - Along the lines of the Ziploc bag, you might want to bring a rain coat or compact umbrella. Arriving drenched at the convention hall isn't a whole lot of fun, and I speak from experience here. Of course, you could always just bring your towel, you hoopy frood.

7. Comfortable shoes - You will be walking. Alot. Make sure your shoes are comfortable.

8. Cell phone charger - Especially if you plan to keep in touch with friends during the convention, don't forget your cell phone charger. You don't want a dead battery to prevent you from finding out where the coolest loot is on the sales floor.

9. Personal care items - Seems silly to include this, but you'll wish at some point during the convention that someone had left a similar message for about a third of the people there.

10. Geek clothes - You gotta wear the coolest geek threads you've got. And no, that's not an oxymoron. Gencon is one of the fabulous places in the world in which you can wear your most fantastic geek clothes and be totally, awesomely cool.

Now, I know many of you have been to Gencon before. What other advice on packing can you share?

Proper Villainy Profiles: The Joker

I had the pleasure of seeing The Dark Knight over the weekend. I'd been looking forward to this one because I'd heard that Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker was completely amazing, and he didn't disappoint. TDK's Joker was a standout example of what a real villain ought to be -- and you can take some of his complete batshit insanity (no pun intended) and use it with some of your villains. Let's take a look:

***** POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE DARK KNIGHT, DON'T READ ANY FURTHER!!! *****

Chaotic Evil With A Side Order Of Insanity

If ever you were wondering what the difference between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil is, the Joker's your poster boy for Chaotic Evil. Whatever he does, it's to suit whatever plans he has. Granted, not all Chaotic Evil people have desires as sick and twisted as our purple-suited antagonist, but it does show that Chaotic Evil-aligned people don't so much care about how they accomplish their goals or who has to die.

Just being Chaotic Evil isn't what makes the Joker so frightening. Think about it for a second. Just because you're evil doesn't necessarily make you motivated. I'm sure most of us have known people over the years who really wanted to do some bad things to get their way, but they were too scared to. The Joker's got that motivation somehow. The scary part is what he's motivated to do. And most don't find out what that is until it's way too late.

Why So Serious?

Though the Joker has been portrayed in a variety of ways over the years, the main thing that separated him from most of the other Bat-villains (especially after the 80's, when they really started to turn up the homicidal cuckoo) is that he's not really after anything aside from chaos and mayhem. Yeah, he might rob a bank, but you can bet he's going to use all of that loot to fund some sort of scheme that will sow the seeds of terror in the streets of Gotham somehow. As Alfred says during the movie, "Some men just want to see the world burn."

That's scary stuff. That means that you can't reason with a person like this. You can't make them go away by giving them what they want. If you give them what they want, horrible things happen to you and your loved ones and their loved ones and your dog and their dogs and probably their dogs' friends and everyone's neighbors. People like this love to see others suffer, and probably the single scariest thing about TDK's Joker is that he lives to see people corrupted and to make themselves and their loved ones suffer. It's like he can make a Diplomacy check gone horribly, horribly wrong, and if he succeeds then you've crossed the line where you're not sure if you're a good person anymore.

This maniac was born to tear places and people down, and he's frighteningly good at it. Somehow he's charismatic (or frightening enough) enough to have a bunch of minions following him. He makes unbelievably effective plans to accomplish his insane goals, probably due in part to the fact that he doesn't need to have an exit strategy most of the time. Nobody's quite sure if he even cares if he lives or dies so long as the chaos continues to spread. As he put it himself in TDK, "It's like I'm a dog chasing cars. I don't even know what I'd do if I caught one."

Bringing Mr. J to Your Campaign

I've just detailed a lot of things that make the Joker a frightening and unique villain. You can use a lot of the things he does in TDK and weave them into your adventures in D&D.

Suppose you have a mad wizard laying waste everywhere he goes. Nobody knows why he's doing this. Guess what happens if the PC's try to talk him out of it! (Hint: it ends in "ireball".) Or worse, their conversation points out to the arcane psycho another abomination that needs to be.... corrected. At the root. In the PC's hometown.

Or, how about a fallen villain from earlier in your campaign who wants nothing more than to see the heroic party shamed before all who hold them up as a shining example to their people? This villain could set up a trap with a seeming no-win situation in which the PC's would have to look bad one way or the other. Or he could just plain try to tempt or goad them into doing something morally questionable and let the stone continue to roll down the hill of evil.

I could go on quite a bit more, but you get the idea. The Joker is, in my mind, the epitome of a Proper Villain. Use characters like him as a resource, and your own characters will get a lot more colorful and believable. And if any of your PC's hunt you down because your villain was just too damn evil to stop, then I apologize in advance for giving you just a little push in the right (wrong?) direction.

Sam vs. The Dracolich

Okay, so my son isn't really about to be eaten by a dracolich. He's about to be eaten by Sue, the T-Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago, where Efreak and I took him over the weekend.

We also had the pleasure of going to their Mythic Creatures exhibit. There were lots of creatures represented, from sea monsters to griffins to dragons. It was interesting to roam around the exhibit and see how many things from the Monster Manuals I recognized (I had not previously realized the Bunyip was a mythic creature!).

The real attraction for me, though, was the life-sized representations of a few of the monsters. Their dragon was great and their unicorn was really well done too. But far and away my favorite of their exhibits was the Roc. I loved seeing all these things life-sized because it gave me a frame of reference for how large my imagination will make them during roleplaying. We'd fought a roc in the Evensbrook campaign a long time ago, and just to be able to see those giant talons reaching out for me gave me a little taste of what it would have been like for Lumbar.

You'll see a lot of life-sized monsters at Gen Con too. True Dungeon always has a couple (anybody else almost soil themselves when the beholder showed up last year?). If you get a chance to go to something like this, I highly recommend it. It's a good way to give your imagination some perspective.