Behind the Screen: Questions about legendary item creation...

I had a good time writing last week's post on tailormade items, thanks for all of the great comments! As I was thinking about this topic further and reading through all of the insights provided on that thread, I started thinking about an underlying question.

Burning questions

At one point in the discussion, I asked whether or not it was important to have a rules set for generating weapons, armor, and items of that magnitude. Is the "outside the box" thinking that is required to create an item so suited to a player part of the creative fun that is being a DM?

So I'll turn this question over to you, gentle reader: if a set of rules existed for creating tailormade, high-power (or growing in power) magical items would you use them? Or would you still eschew these rules in favor of doing it by yourselves?

My thoughts

Honestly, it would have to be a VERY flexible rules set for me to consider using it. Often, I will see elements that I would want to have in my magical item but one little aspect of it isn't quite right... the descriptor isn't quite fitting, the drawbacks too severe (or not severe enough), the legend or lore that comes along with the item just doesn't fit with the setting or the intended character, and so on.

For me, magic item creation over a random treasure roll has to be an act of creative fun for me as a Dungeon Master. How about you?

Behind the Screen: The Legendary Chuck Item...

I had a Dungeon Master in college that would handcraft a special (usually awesomely powerful) magic item for each member of the adventuring party and sprinkle them throughout the campaign. Some we found, some we didn't (and found out about it later), but they all shared some common charactaristics.

These items would be exceedingly powerful. Some had a drawbacks, but in general they would be described as legendary, unique, or spectacular. We even took to calling them "Chuck Items" in the honor of our DM himself.

Usually these items were crafted outside the normal rules system for creating magic items. They would sometimes have complex combinations of effects or very specific rituals that had to be done to activate abilities. They often had significant lore surrounding them that would unveil itself as the campaign unfolded.

An example was a bow that SR's character came across named Harvester. It had numerous colored gems inlaid in it that could be activated to do different types of elemental damage. Each time you used the colored gems, the bow was drained and it had to be recharged by killing undead. If you activated all of the gems at once, it would do an immense amount of damage. Unbeknownst to her, Chuck later told me that each time she did this there was a chance that the bow would be destroyed but it did not happen during the course of our campaign.

(If anyone is interested in the D&D 3.0 stats for this item, I am told that SR retains a copy she might be willing to share!)

Learning from the Master

I have employed this same pattern in my campaigns. The process of creating an "outside the box" awesome item tailored to your players is alluring, but I have often found that if you don't temper it with a drawback or some sort of control mechanism it can heavily unbalance your game.

Since we're quickly approaching the end of the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the beginning of my original campaign content, I am thinking more about how/if I am going to execute this process for my new campaign.

A few words of encouragement: making a tailored magical item that suits a player character is a GREAT way to heavily involve them, especially if you give the item a rich background or legend to go along with it.

The player feels special and gets that moment of sheer excitement every time their awesome toy does what it is supposed to do. To me this is essential to a satisfying D&D experience, especially for new players.

A question to those that have come before

For those of you Dungeon Masters out there: have you tried something like this yourselves? Players, have you ever received a tailor-made item? If so, did it improve your gaming experience?

Finally, if you're reading this: thanks Chuck. They just don't make D&D moments like that anymore!!

Behind the Screen: Nearing the end!

First off, thanks to everyone that answered the Question of the Day that turned into the Question of the Week. I've been dealing with a heavily increased workload in real life since that posting has gone up, so we're going to exercise some of the great recommendations and get a solo campaign started up for her very soon.

The end of the module as we know it!

We're getting dangerously close to the end of Keep on the Shadowfell, and now's the time for me to start infusing some of my own details into the module to prepare my group for life outside the Keep. I've got about 10 sessions worth of material storyboarded, which is a new tool in my DM repertoire.

Essentially I've been writing out the campaign sessions in a bulleted list outlining the setting, the key players, and expected paths that the group could progress along. If the group goes "off script" I will just make some new bullets for the following session and adjust as needed.

I'm taking several notes of inspiration for this idea from the encounter structure from Keep on the Shadowfell. I really enjoy the two-page encounter style, and I'm also taking some inspiration from Phil the Chatty DM's one-page dungeon contest. Succinct representation of roleplaying ideas is a really important skill for busy dungeon masters like me!

Behind the Screen: The Joys of New Experiences!

At long last I emerge from my programming cave to post again! Special thanks go out to Stupid Ranger for pulling some of my weight the past few weeks while I work through a particularly thorny set of work responsibilities!

Learning by Doing

As those of you that follow us regularly may remember, we are experiencing 4th edition via the excellent Keep on the Shadowfell module. This experience has been heightened by the addition of the PHB2, which we reviewed thoroughly last month. During this process, this module has provided a buffet of 4e goodness.

It is interesting to behold the group dynamics that take place when different aspects of the adventure present themselves. Two weeks ago, our group found a secret door that led them into an adjacent room with an illusory wall. The rogue in our group got his moment to shine as he found the secret door, checked it for traps and led the group through into that portion of the module. The player of said rogue had a giant grin on his face the whole time.

In that same section, Stupid Ranger's character used Tenser's Floating Disk to bypass some terror runes that were carelessly strewn throughout that portion of the dungeon. I've not read all the errata surrounding the disk, but I decided to allow them to step over it to avoid the trap since it was an interesting use of that ritual. She was very pleased about this.

The group ran into their first encounter with a time-resetting trap that spewed skeletons, which was mildly annoying but they quickly dispatched their foes and pressed on into the dungeon without their coveted five minute rest to solve that encounter handily.

Finally, I got my moment of learning and enjoyment out of a negotiation style challenge with what could have potentially been a game-ending encounter with a fallen knight. I found this challenge mechanism incredibly fun to play and very engaging for the players as well, so I count this as a success.

Shared enjoyment for all!

So what's the point of listing these various encounters? Mostly, I want to illustrate the variety of good stuff to be had in Keep on the Shadowfell thus far and I also want to point out the "shining moments" of our last few sessions so you might incorporate some of the same aspects into your games.

Because I haven't played in groups with very many rogues, I was slightly surprised by the visceral joy to be had by the player of our rogue when he found that secret door. Stupid Ranger got her classic "I really showed you, DM!" smile going when she dreamt up riding that disk a short distance to avoid the terror runes. Even I got a moment of happiness to try a different style of encounter in that negotiation (and I think our group enjoyed it as well!)

So get out there and try some new things throughout the course of your normal campaign. If you're stuck in the same "find enemies/kill enemies/loot treasure" cycle it pays to break it once in awhile with a new experience.

The Intricities of Group Dynamics, or "Wow, there's more girls in here."

As previously mentioned, we have a new D&D group here in colorful Colorado. We have been into our current adventure for two sessions now, and an exceedingly rare circumstance has occurred within our gaming group: the girls outnumber the guys!

A Fortunate Circumstance, to be sure!

I have been Dungeon Mastering for many years now and never had more than two girls in our group at a given time, so this experience is a little new for me.

I have some hard data at my disposal that proves there are many more female gamers in our midst than we originally thought. Stupid Ranger and e from Geek's Dream Girl are currently writing a book on the topic, so I've gotten the chance to read excerpts from real female gamers telling their tales of geeky adventure. There seems to be a lot of correlation between groups of male players and groups of female players as far as group dynamics go.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

I have noted a few interesting points about our specific group of players. Please keep in mind, this is not sweeping generalities based down gender lines, just what I can see from my seat behind the screen.

The lone male player in our group is the more tactical fighter type (well, rogue to be exact) that revels in the crunch of battle and vanquishing the foes. The ladies in the group (including the lovely Stupid Ranger) seem to focus much more on the flavor aspects of their abilities... what the flourish of blades looks like, how precisely the flaming sphere immolates its targets, and so on.

I have also seen similar divisions when the roleplaying aspects of our campaign take priority. Our guy distills things down into facts and specifics, the ladies seem to enjoy engaging me in in-character dialogue, or enjoy interacting with one another in-character.

This is one of my favorite aspects of our campaign thus far, because we have both sides of the coin represented in our group dynamics. You mix in Stupid Ranger's natural propensity to overdocument the details of the sessions and nobody ever forgets what the current goal for the party is!

There's even plenty of room for a proto-Vanir!

Normally, our irreverent "off-the-wall" quotient was filled skillfully by our good buddy Vanir. This was one of the aspects of our gaming group that I was very afraid would be lacking... however imagine my surprise when one of the ladies in the group wondered aloud about the sexuality of her tiefling warlord, and decided there and then that she would be a lesbian tiefling warlord with very small boobs and very large horns.

To make matters even better, members of our group immediately chimed in with "oh yeah, that's a great idea and that'll work with our backstory" and off they went into figuring out the wheres and what-for's of how their characters knew each other in the past. (Possibly in a biblical sense, but I'm sure that will come out in future sessions!)

For the record: I am unsure if anyone can ever fill the giant roleplaying shoes left by Vanir at our gaming table. I'm just saying options seem to be presenting themselves from unlikely sources!

A quick moral

I'm going to go on record and call for Dungeon Masters everywhere not to discount or devalue the presence of female gamers at your gaming table. I have heard some very poor tales in the past of women being undervalued or downright denied access to roleplaying games.

In fact, our very own college group had a "no girlfriends" policy until Stupid Ranger showed up.

This myopic thinking and exclusion can only damage your game and the larger roleplaying society, not to mention your ability to meet women and procreate. That's all I've got for now!

Behind the Screen: The New Batch

The last time I spoke to you all, it was on the eve of the beginning of our new foray into the new version of D&D. This meant new beginnings of almost everything: we were going to start a new campaign with a new group of people, utilizing a dungeon module for the first time.

What is going well

Honestly, just about everything with 4e. The module we're using, Keep on the Shadowfell, is just about everything I could need for this first foray. The encounters are designed to be very episodic in nature and our characters seem to follow the prescribed "hints" to get them going into the further areas of the module without much coaxing.

This easy acquisition time by the group has allowed me some time to design my own hooks for further in the campaign right into the pre-existing setting. I can tell this is going to make the rest of my campaign organically grow out of the module which should be a very good experience for my players.

In addition, the non-player characters that the module provides offer just enough description and tone in the provided snippets of dialogue that it was very easy to "get into their skin" and make them very real, three-dimensional characters.

I wonder if it'd be bad form to hug Bruce Cordell or Mike Mearls should I run into them at GenCon this year...

What isn't going well

It seems to be a lot of "real-world" interference. Our group originally consisted of myself, Stupid Ranger, a coworker of mine and his wife. We got characters rolled during our first session and got underway, everything was going swimmingly. We realized quickly that the module was a little... difficult on the encounter front with only three player characters, so we were very happy when my coworker's wife had an interested friend willing to join us.

The only downside was that a fair portion of the second session was helping her roll her character and get acclaimated to D&D again, since she hadn't played 4e yet either. Add into the mix a small herd of three young children, and distractions mounted pretty quickly for our second session despite best efforts to placate the children with movies and video games.

What's next!

All of these hurdles are either past us or manageable, so I have to say that things are going well at this point! We're looking forward to our next session in two weeks, and I need to extend a big THANK YOU to those of you that recommended that I read the module through and get comfortable with it. That has really helped my comfort level as we've moved into this new experience. Our readers are the greatest!

Behind the Screen: What comes first?

As I begin the process of designing my next campaign, I found myself inspired in a different way than I am used to. Normally, I tend to generate my campaigns based on two major factors: what classes that my players have selected and cues from the backstory of my campaign setting.

This time it's all about me.

Well, maybe not about me explicitly... but about my NPCs. As I was driving across the frozen plains of Nebraska *shudder*, I came up with some very vivid ideas for some NPCs. In the past, I have stuck to major archetypes for my main characters and improvised many of my lesser NPCs.

A sidenote: often my improvised NPCs are the more memorable ones. Anything born from spur of the moment roleplaying and the influences of sugarfied Vanir is bound to be somewhat memorable.

Anyway, back to the point... the NPCs that I stitched together in my mind varied wildly in character class and background, which left me with another quandary: how do I integrate all of these guys together within one storyline?

Essentially, that's where I am at now... I'm trying to generate an underlying plot that will span disparate cultures in a meaningful way. I suspect I will create several plot episodes that patchwork these characters together, with a common plot backing material and stuffed with the warm cotton batting of interesting roleplaying.

That's it for a strange quilt metaphor now, and I'm off to put a log on the fire because the cold is apparently getting to me! Game Masters, how do you generate your storylines? NPCs first? Characters first? Plot first? Let's hear it!

Behind the Screen: Old vs. New?

Stupid Ranger and I have recently made the long round-trip to Illinois to spend the holidays with our family, and this resulted in a fairly long hiatus from our standard RPG fare. Thankfully, our good buddy Vanir threw in some excellent roleplaying holiday specials for you all to enjoy!

Out with the old... or not?

On the 16 hour car ride from Illinois, Stupid Ranger and I mulled the start of our new D&D campaign, which will begin in coming weeks. I told her that I've got some exciting ideas percolating and we should get serious about pulling our group together, and then she asked a fairly innocuous question: "Are you going to run [D&D] 3.5 or 4.0?"

On one hand, we are both intimately familiar with D&D 3.5 and she knows the rules inside and out. When starting to play in a new environment with a new group of roleplaying friends, the familiarity is very attractive. One wants to bring his A-game to a new group, yes?

On the other hand, if I am never forced to fully acclimate to the new rule set I am unlikely to ever learn it. Our small group of players are returning to D&D after a long lapse, so they will be unfamiliar with either option which should allow some bandwidth for SR and I to learn along with them. Regardless of the final decision, I'm going to get out my D&D 4.0 books and really give them another read.

I will gladly welcome sage advice on this matter as I plunge headlong into campaign planning!

Thanks for putting up with the cold winter hiatus, we've got some exciting things in store for the new year that will be announced soon! Stay tuned!

Behind the Screen: The Winter Drag...

In addition to the gaming hiatus due to our relocation, we are also smack in the middle of the Winter Drag that affects many roleplaying groups. With all of the social obligations, shopping, and general merriment that is involved with the Thanksgiving/Christmas corridor, often there is not time for traditional roleplaying.

But there's always exceptions!

The olden days of college gaming were about the only time during the holidays when we would roleplay, and we had many contributing factors to making this happen: proximity to other gamers, the need for a break from studying, and the lack of family members demanding various holiday gatherings until it was time for the short Thanksgiving or Christmas break that we were given.

Ways to Donder your Blitzen during the holiday season

If you do really want to game during the holidays, one-shot campaigns are your best friend. That, and stringent scheduling. I usually put some cycles toward campaign planning during the winter months, putting together a few episodes worth of common campaign encounters is a pretty quick and easy prospect that doesn't require other people to complete.

I also like to plan some holiday related encounters during my campaigns so the characters in my campaign have the opportunity to relax and celebrate in-game. I've had Santa Claus drop off a few fun presents, and the occasional useful item to my players in the past. The Easter Bunny shows up in every one of my campaigns in some way or another (the vorpal Easter Bunny from another dimension was fun one year) and most of the time the players appreciate the fun diversion.

Occasionally, you will have a player or two that balk at the anachronism or find the presentation of holiday related campaign events childish, but those people can officially Cram It With Walnuts.

Take the time to relax and enjoy the holiday season, however don't forget that you can use these times to create some great moments for use in your campaigns once the presents are unwrapped and the turkey is far into leftovers!

Visiting the Archives: Travelling...

This Behind the Screen piece was posted in a much simpler time before Stupid Ranger and I were cast across the country for my day job. We are in the process of unloading boxes at the moment, so please feel free to sup at the banquet of this post while we figure out which drawer gets our silverware and which one gets our character sheets.

Enjoy!

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originally posted by Dante on 10/13/2007

This weekend the StupidRanger crew is heading out of town and that got me to thinking: how does everyone handle traveling long distances? I would like to recount one failed attempt on my part and open up the floor to obvious criticism and comments.

Rollin', rollin', rollin' (wheels, not dice!)

In one of our recent campaigns, the party was tasked with traveling across country to locate pieces of an important artifact. It was all fun and games for awhile, I had a few episodic encounters put together for them to experience along the way and I augmented that with a few random encounters.

Even though the encounters fit into the landscape (feral wildlife and whatnot), eventually both the players and I tired of the encounters. They still had a long way to travel, and having already established this as a "dangerous" territory it didn't stand to reason that they would be able to travel unmolested for a week or more.

How not to see the coastal plains on just three gold pieces a day.

Eventually, I ended up giving up and in the best interest of the players I handwaved a fair portion of the rest of the travel. I wasn't very satisfied with this as a DM, I felt as if I should have come up with a more interesting way to transport them across hill and dale without just nixing the "dangerous" aspect of the terrain. The group ended up getting from Point A to Point B and things quickly picked back up once they were wired back into the plot, I suppose a good solution would've been not to establish plot points half of the coastal lands away.

Has anyone else run into this difficulty before? If so, how do you quickly move your group without having a random wizard show up and teleport them where they need to be conveniently?

Behind the Screen: Problems with planes and psionics...

I was reflecting on some old college D&D games, and I remembered a certain guy in our group that always wanted to play a psionic. Eventually, we did have a game where our DM allowed psionics and I remember it being a confusing and generally frustrating process largely because this person would, at length, dictate to us his specific rules for using his skills and it was rather painful.

I have found the same issue with planar travel and trying to weave a storyline that involves traversing ephemeral distances in this fashion. Much time is spent explaining the state of the situation you want your players to get into, the usual dangers of travelling across the fabric of space and time, and the preparations that come along with that.

I've had some limited success in enticing the players with plot or treasure to make the plunge into different planes, but by and large this type of game seems to walk on a knife's edge of fun. It's either really enjoyable, or really painful.

How do you handle introducing these elements into your campaigns? Inquiring minds want to know!

Behind the Screen: Loving the one you're with...

While at GenCon this year, I got into several conversations about the breadth and concentration of new gaming options on the sales floor this year. As in past years, offerings ran the gamut from new pencil and paper RPGs, board games, video games, and even a few non-RPG games as well.

I was tasked with selecting a game for one of my coworkers in order to introduce his kids to roleplaying style gaming, so I opted for Atlas Games' "Once Upon a Time" which aims to introduce storytelling gaming via a card game where players attempt to use the cards in their hand to devise a storyline. I figured this would be a conservative, non-threatening way to get the kids into free-form storytelling and it should act as a gateway to more traditional roleplaying style games, but time will tell.

An Abundance of Options

As I was searching for this card game, it struck me that it is easy to experience option overload. So many games, so many modules, so many additions... it is great to have options, but as I have mentioned in the past our group is somewhat change resistant so I tend to stick with a familiar system and setting for our games.

It is for this reason that I usually don't leave the convention each year with a truckload of new games, modules, or other miscellanea. Chances are fairly good that we just plain won't make the leap into a new setting consistently enough to justify the expense, which is also the reason that I don't really frequent our local brick and mortar gaming store as often as I should. I have most of the materials that I need to game with and don't need to purchase much extra to keep the fun times a-rollin'.

One oft-cited example of the change resistance of our group is our limited attempt at a Deadlands campaign. I played this game while in college for the first time and was enamored with the spellcasting mechanics (which used a poker hand to determine success) and the alternative history Western theme was interesting as well. It only lasted a few sessions in our current gaming group, they just didn't feel it as much as I did.

The moral to this story is twofold: be sensitive to the enjoyment level of your gaming group as you introduce new games, and do a cost to benefit analysis before you go buying a ton of new gaming supplements at a convention.

If you have a group that is able to switch focus to different games, how do you pace the introduction of new stuff? Do you do a one-shot session and build on it if the group likes the game? Inquiring minds want to know!

Behind the Screen: How do you break in a new group?

I learned many lessons from GenCon this year, many of them involve eating too many Monster Burgers from The Ram. On the roleplaying front, this was my first opportunity to play with an entirely new group of gamers since college. Even in college, I had pre-established relationships (mostly friendships) with the rest of the gamers in the group. Barring some online chats, this was the first time I got to play with people who I had not physically met before.

Observations and Advice In Action

As previously mentioned, I had the distinct pleasure of an invitation to Drunken D&D which was run masterfully by our good buddy Phil, The Chatty DM. This was a great way to get to know a new group of people and bond over a common pursuit: a mixture of getting sauced and playing a fun adventure.

After the second successful session of this type of game, thoughts started prickling around in my head (or maybe that was just all the Bud Light)... but either way what Phil did made excellent sense. He engineered an ice-breaker right into a D&D game, which allowed us all to get to know one another in a not-too-serious game setting while enjoying some non-nerd style bonding (i.e. booze) as well.

What I Do...

On the rare circumstance that we welcome new players into our group in Stupid Ranger Central, we tend to have a social "getting to know you" session that sometimes consists of character creation, pizza, or a roleplaying heavy first gaming session where characters and players are encouraged to interact over a session which is intended as a prelude to the campaign proper. This allows new players to feel comfortable in the game setting while getting some light roleplaying involved as well.

Phil did a great job of engineering a game that really accellerated the bonding process, we were all laughing and having fun within minutes of getting together for the first time in person. It was brilliant!

What do you do to introduce new players into your mix? Do you adjust anything in your campaign to allow for a "feeling out" process? Let's hear those ideas!

Behind the Screen: What amuses you?

After Friday's post, it has become increasingly clear (thank you, commenters) that I am easily amused. It appears that I tend to fall for most old jokes at least once, and that must be why I currently love our D&D group.

You see, in addition to featuring everyone's favorite non-sequitor generator Vanir we also feature a few members of our group that delight in horrifyingly severe puns. And they're almost always funny once.

So rampant and severe the rate of punning, we had to institute an "out of character" demarcation to determine when a joke was being cracked and when the player was acting in character. (This should clue you in as to the level of seriousness that most of our campaigns attain.) In our group, holding up a piece of paper is the way to tell the GM that whatever it is to come spewing out of your word-hole next is not to be considered in-character. It is usually quite effective, until someone in your group realizes that by holding up a piece of paper they can speak freely and frequently for the whole session We all have our crosses to bear!

So that leads me to the question of the day: Does your group fall back on any humor/movie quote/funny stuff when nothing else presents itself? How do you manage things when the line blurs between character acting and player venting?

I know some groups continually fall back on Princess Bride quotes, Monty Python sketches, or Slayer lyrics. So what does it for your group? Whatever it is, I guarantee you I will fall for it at least once!

Behind the Screen: The Endgame - Epilogue...

I am pleased to report that we successfully chased this campaign into the barn on Saturday. Vanir had accurately predicted based on my Friday post that they had some interesting times ahead, and to my mind the three aforementioned endgame elements played their roles superbly.

Caution: The following contains some description of my campaign and/or characters involved and how our Friday post applied directly. If you hate that kind of thing, head on over to one of our many blog affiliates/buddies on the right hand side today. Also, lighten up a little.

The Big Event

Going up against the goddess of pain and suffering - it doesn't get a lot bigger than that! An interesting sidenote: Kanati and I elected to play our god/goddess rules a little more... uniformly than the actual rules dictate. I prefer goddesses to have a certain uniqueness to their magic, attacks, and damage descriptions than your standard rules imply. Suffice it to say the goddess of pain and suffering tends to be a little... extreme.

Kanati also did an excellent job of reigning our cast into an area where they couldn't explicitly use the environment to their benefit... the group was escaping through underground caverns with a small group of rebels and got trapped by oncoming hordes in an area known as "The Hub"... essentially the middle of a bike-spoke set of caves. The baddies poured in from all sides and cornered them while our goddess made her big entrance.

This ticked off our party and got them to initiate battle... and what a battle it was!

Suspense

Those of you reading along have likely followed our troubles with managing epic characters. I decided to bring about our element of suspense in a different way in this session: hit them hard, fast, and not give them much time to rest. In fact, our end confrontation occurred with most of the party on partial rest, so they were looking a wee bit nervous when she showed up.

The second way we added suspense was with the end of the encounter. The deal was this: whoever took the final blow against our goddess was brought before our pantheon of gods, and told that the only way to stop the goddesses reign of terror was to strike her down and take her power (it really wasn't quite as Highlander-esque as it sounds, but go with me here).

The rest of the party way left scratching their heads as our paladin and the goddess faded from their sight. We led Sir Geekelot, our paladin's player, downstairs and told him this information and he put a lot of thought into his decision but ultimately made the sacrifice to save the world. It was somewhat poetic that he be the one to take the final shot, as the ethical dilemma was heightened because of his strong allegiance to a good aligned god.

The Epilogue

Without going into much further detail, our epilogue was FANTASTIC as a result. Vanir (and Bat Loaf, his character) were so involved in roleplaying the interaction with our paladin/new god that I actually had to ask him to take a few seconds of a break to find out how everyone else in the party was reacting or if they wanted to do anything.

Then it was right back to the roleplaying. I was very proud of our group, how in character they stayed during this portion and how much care was taken to actually react as their character would. We had some of our more "goody goody" characters acted as expected and wanted out of this situation post-haste. Our neutral characters (both of which were very close to our paladin during the course of the campaign) elected to remain around him as he took on his new role as god.

The Conclusion

Happily, my formula appears to work pretty well. I hope all of our players had as much fun during the closing sessions of our campaign as we did creating/running them, and I hope that you have gained a few new ideas for how to execute the final sessions of a campaign!

One final note: never, ever, ever introduce a dead gold dragon on a whim to your epic level players. They will only find ways to befriend/reanimate/abuse this relationship.

That is all!

Three things to ensure a satisfactory endgame...

Tonight should be the night! Barring any further tomfoolery from Vanir and our intrepid bunch of adventurers, we will be looking at the endgame of our campaign! I thought I would share three things that I feel are required to craft a decent final session:

1. The Big Event - Whether it be a major ritual, the ascention of a new pantheon, destruction of the Big Bad, or the out-and-out death of your party you should really save something big to go out with. Even if you want to leave the door open for some follow-up adventures, you should mark the end of each story arc with something significant. (Hint: this usually means significant rewards/treasure too!)
   
   
2. Suspense - Nobody likes seeing the plot coming from down the block, so be sure to keep a few suspense cards in your hand for use during the final session. You want to have that brief moment where things look bleak, the battle becomes more difficult or emotionally significant, or something unexpected occurs to really climax the story.
   
   
3. The Epilogue - I have taken to requiring some sort of epilogue. My job as DM is to tie up the loose ends of the plot, describe the world after The Big Event and frame up any further opportunities for adventures. After that point, I like to turn things over to my players so they can tell me what the immediate future holds for their characters. Will they go home to their families? Continue adventuring in search of the next elusive treasure? Change professions and bake scones for a living, never raising their blade in anger again? This gives both you as DM and the players closure and an opportunity to bid farewell to their characters.

I know there are a possibly unlimited list of additions that should/would/could appear in the final session of a campaign, but I think those three are key components to have some level of success.

Behind the Screen: Getting better all the time...

In case you can't tell from the general overtone of Stupid Ranger's last post, we had a rather crunchy session over the long weekend. Not just any crunchy session, but a particularly epic flavored crunchy session.

Our group of epic adventurers showed the terrible dracolich what death tasted like, however as the rest of the evil armies pressed in on them they called upon an unexpected (to Kanati and I) escape route. They had earned a favor from a particularly old Gold Dragon, and they called on him to provide an expeditious retreat from the invading forces.

After Kanati and I had finished soiling ourselves, we determined that an evil horde of this magnitude would maintain the services of a black dragon. This led us to a utterly fantastic aerial battle that would've never happened if not for working on your spontaneous recovery skills.

There are two takeaways from the above scenario:

1. Take good notes regarding what favors your characters are owed, or what non-standard magical items they have at their disposal. This is more important if you have infrequent gaming sessions like we do. It will prevent the unexpected "oh crap" moment, and that undetermined loss of a few seconds of life as your heart tries to leap out your neck.
   
   
2. When the unexpected happens, try to recover in the most elegant way possible. Commit to your approach and go with it, often if you keep the action up the group will be less likely to question whether or not the evil horde had a black dragon before they realized they could summon their gold one.

Hopefully we will continue getting better as we chase this campaign into the barn, expect more soon!

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.

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)!

Behind the Screen: It may be junk to some...

I was in the basement tonight moving around some of my gaming stuff and I came across a few oddities:

The Random d30

Also known as the "sling bullet", I got one of these from a random cup of dice from the Chessex booth at GenCon in my earlier years. I don't really know what its good for, but it does have the uncanny ability to appear in all its purple glory in random locations throughout our gaming space. Now that we're in epic levels, maybe it is time to start using it as a damage die.

The Lone Skeleton

I don't know if it was a promo or just a random miniature that fell out of the box away from its fellows, but there's a Skeleton miniature that seems to find its way to the bottom of my bookbag, or he'll occasionally show up to jab me in the foot unexpectedly during gaming sessions.

I should make a t-shirt that says "Danger! Severe Skeleton Damage." That'd be great.

Ancient Documentation of Worlds Past

I have a bad habit of taking notes that make plenty of sense at the time, but end up being strangely arcane snips of text like "three yellow amethysts open the device" or "75 +2 daggers". Occasionally, I will find something that grants some vague context to a certain part of a past campaign but this certainly speaks to a need for more organization on my part.

I've given passing thought to learning a form of shorthand so I can actually keep real notes during a session and not be all distracted writing, so maybe these notes won't lack so much context in the future.

My co-DM does not suffer from this problem, when he documents something I usually get a 10 page story complete with good punctuation, maps, and details. He's just better than me in that regard!