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Personally, I list fiddling with cohorts under the heading of "not worth stressing over." I'm sure that there are balance issues in the minutae, but I don't think it requires getting into too much of a bind. This is how cohorts are dealt with in the game that I play in (the cohort is mine) and...

He killed a significant bad guy, who, unfortunately, was pretty high up in a good country's court. So now the good law is after the good person who killed a bad guy, because as far as they know, the bad guy was good, and it was all terribly against the law anyway.

So here's a question. How do you deal with the tank in your party? Right now I have three players (9th) that are hovering around a 21-22 AC, one (8th) that I think is at a 25, and then the tank, who when he has all his defenses on is at a 32. The way I usually figure it when calculating bad...

I give XP for all kinds of stuff apart from the usual monsters and traps. Completing story bits gets XP, and so does roleplaying stuff. Example, if a session is mostly roleplaying and little or no combat, I'll still give xp for the session. Individuals can get XP bonuses for good...

One guy in my group is famous for silly names. Last summer he was Jaun Danger Messerschmidt ("Danger? Danger is my middle name!"), a Sprite rogue. This summer he's Jack "Blinky" Caggen, a human with three eyes. In the other game, he's Cliff Jumper McCraken, wildmage. His NPCs are noted for...

Never done the video thing, but I did record a few sessions last year. One friend, who wasn't able to play in the game, and had never actually played D&D, was really into hearing about the sessions from her friend and girlfriend, who were. So I used my minirecorder for a few sessions so she...

in approximately ten hours, we'll see if my players get themselves killed by getting themselves in over their heads. They're lucky it's so early in the campaign or I'd be a little less inclined to feel merciful.

I adore Alton Brown. He's my favorite host. I find that his mantra of the most tender meat being the furthest from the horn and the hoof to be easy to remember. I used to like my steak well done, as I didn't fancy the thought of eating undercooked meat. Had a rare steak in France and thought...

I chose first, partially because there's not s much time to get to know and love your character (and you can always use the concept again later if it was realy keen) but mostly because making new characters is such an arduous process, I'd rather it happen as soon as possible so I have less...

I make sound effects. When I was little, I did voices for my dolls, barbies or my little ponies. I made animal sounds whenever animals were making sounds. Today, I still make sound effect for lots of things. Not so much that I think it's a hallmark of my DMing, but just sounds. Monster...

I always wind up including some encounters that are so mind-numbingly easy that the players wonder what the significance is. I also usually include a few mundane items in treasures or as room features that serve no function except to wig players out. Once I let players find a pebble or marble...

Thats my hardcore story. I gamed with a kidney stone. It was the first session of a new game I was running and this horrible pain started up in my back. By the end, I was hunched over the table, all pale and shaky, but still waving off my players suggestions that we cut early, because we were...

Ahhh, LARPing. I love it so. When I wanted to gather my friends and LARP, I couldn't find a system I liked. I wanted to play D&D. So I sat down and wrote a system myself. We've now had three events, the system gets a little tighter every time, and it's all LOTS of fun. Everything is simple...

This is what we do. Each character has a card for the duration of the game, which has their name, the player name, and then simple stat stuff. AC, HP, saves, spot listen search. Then there's a card that says "ME" or "Bad Guys," and one that says "End of Round." When rolling initiative, we...

I don't know if anyone else has thoughts on whether this is a good resource or not, but the little I've poked at it seemed pretty keen. You just plug in all your goodness, and it makes your statblock--including CR http://www.kencyclopedia.com/kender/monstergenerator/

I think that for one, in order to REALLY get used to how the rules work, you almost need to run a game. And for another, it all depends on who you game with. The first game I ever ran came after only playing one campaign. It was disastrous. Girl 1 and Girl 2 had never played. Boy 1 was...

Ditto that

I, too, think that poisons are nifty, but more poisons need to be added for higher levels. For use in encounters, and for things like "Woo, I can wildshape into a big snake and bite things! Wait...the DC for the poison is 14. Well phoo." Because at 10th level, even a critter with a wizard's...

http://pregnancy.parenthood.com/babynames.html This is my favorite babyname reference. It has tons of cultural names that sound very exotic, including names from arthurian ledgend. I use this site and fiddle with the spellings to make fantasy sounding names for all kinds of characters. My...

Oh, and to the question of preparing elf, remember that the older and more worked a meat is, the tougher it gets. So an old elf wizard is likely to be pretty chewy. The solution to this is to either cook it fast and slice it thin (ala flank steak. Elf fajitas!) or long and slow. There's this...