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race, profession, and organization themes! I’m a big fan of themes if themes give you some interesting but smaller benefits immediately and then let you swap existing class features/powers/maneuvers/etc. for other theme related features /powers/maneuvers/etc . at various levels up to the...

Things to keep: 1) complex, interesting story 2) variety of types of scenarios -- city, wilderness, political, involved in large scale battle, etc. 3) notes for how to adapt the adventures if PCs take a different path (e.g., don’t ally with X, Y kingdom falls) Things to improve: 1) please...

Now that WOTC has released most of the old LFR adventures to the general public Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible Are any of these worth playing as part of a regular campaign? What were your favorites?

FYI - one quirk about the new online character builder (not sure if this has been fixed?) is that you must build a "customized" character and not a "quick essentials" character in order to be able to select non-essentials material for your essentials character. Since you are going to be using...

This always trips me up in these discussions. It seems to me that most people associate sandbox play with pre-determined (or randomly determined) places, NPCs, etc. The "ultimate sandbox DM" would then have the entire world mapped out before hand in every detail, large and small. In...

I think we just found the culprit. Applying divine challenge riders (including hospitaler benefits) to multiple divine sanction creatures would lead to lots of frustrating situations. Correcting this alone should clear a lot up, if the DM just attacks the paladin with monster that is divine...

Another vote for DDI. If you are coming back into things after 10 years, the tools available for 4e will blow you away. DDI gets you: Character builder -- a really well built character generator that includes EVERY race, class, power, feat, magic item, etc. published by WOTC and updated for...

Excellent! I look forward to checking it out. I'm actually a skill challenge fan, so my vote is for including them. I know it's harder to do in published modules, but if you can make the success / failure results of every skill challenge have larger story related consequences that would be a...

I haven't played or run it, but have the 4e releases so far. My take from a read: Plot/ Mix of situations: A. Great job of different locations and mix of objectives. Not a dungeon crawl. The PCs have the opportunity to escape from a besieged city, do wilderness adventure stuff, get involved...

Don't take it the wrong way, but I think you have problems on both sides of the table. Seems like the bard player likes to be creative (a good thing) and take advantage of the benefits of a table top rpg with a live DM. But also seems like the bard player tries to bend the rules to his...

A little late to elaborate here LostSoul, but I think Quest XP only will help with a lot of the issues around player expectations. In several games I have DMed, I decided to do away with combat XP, skill challenge XP, etc. and only award XP for the completion of "quests". The party may have...

Great design points. Combining this approach, and getting rid of combat xp altogether would be a winner I think. Quest XP only is something I do most of the time in my home games, and it really opens up player creativity.

This depends on the story purpose of the dungeon, your play style, etc. But I would recommend starting with no more than 3 combat encounters per location. Why? 1) 4e combats can take a long time (45min-1hr+), especially when learning the rules and powers. Limiting the combat encounters...

"Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head. And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him." This just prompted me to recommend an excellent short story by Asimov, "The Feeling...

Yeah, that's why if people want to roll instead of point buy, we usually have the group roll an array and everyone gets to use the same array. This allows for some variation to the usual point buy stats without screwing certain players.

Over I think they did a good job but not wowed. Pleased: * it's dark sun and they didn't change any of the big tropes * mechanics are very good. love themes, wild talents * don't have it yet, but likely will love the creature catalogue since I think WoTC has been doing some pretty good...

I like skill challenges, and have gotten the execution to work pretty smoothly with a combination of Stalker's Obsidian, "changing the scene"/introducing new complications part way through the challenge, and leading with player narration vs. skills. That said, I think the harder part is...

Reimagining I am a big fan of darksun, but I have all the 2e dark sun books. I'm curious to see if they have done any interesting revisions/reimagining of elements of the setting? Now don't get me wrong, I like the reboot to the 1st box set but there is always room for tweaking things and...

This is exactly what I was talking about. I don't think it is always that easy to do in a smooth way, however. So, how exactly do folks get this type of information conveyed to the characters in game without resorting to hokey things like notes found on dead bodies, etc. ?

This has been alluded to already, but to have meaningful consequences the characters need to know (even if imperfectly) the likely consequences of their choices. In my experience most DMs (including myself) err too much on the side of less information to maintain mystery, etc. Should we...