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I chose the first option, although like others I wasn't sure whether to pick it or the 4th since there's no mechanical impact in the game. However, I don't totally ignore alignment - my own as a player, or my players' when I'm the DM. When a player says that their PC will do something that...

I'm also in the "I don't use wandering monsters in 4e" camp. If you're going to do something like this on a long journey, you'll have to think about how you want to handle extended rests. By RAW, the random encounter isn't going to have any meaningful impact on the party unless it happens just...

I said "No, not really" because I doubt if I'll ever get to epic tier as a player. However, when I stop and think about it, I realize that the Friday night game that I DM online using MapTool and Skype probably will hit epic tier. We're running War of the Burning Sky, which goes all the way to...

I'd try it as an experiment if there were an absolutely fantastic GM. I mean really, super-GM. And frankly, I think the most interesting manifestation of this would be if the super-GM were largely making it up as it went along. As the players say, "My character does X..." X becomes part of the...

If you're building a full-on dungeon that the players will explore room by room and map and see all of, then yes, you'll want some nods to "realism". The other approach is to build a dungeon that only exists as a framework for interesting encounters (whether combat or otherwise) where the PCs...

I ditched XP long ago and I level PCs when it's appropriate for the story and for their accomplishments. This works out to about every 3 sessions - call it 12 hours of game play.

The cursed Fighter/Cleric could be hoping to find help at the Lyceum and therefore is recruited by Torrent since she's looking for people to go there. The failed merchant can be looking for a change of scenery, getting out of Gate Pass - again, ripe for recruiting by Torrent or one of the other...

I admit that I'm more of an encounter builder and less of a world builder. My latest adventure takes place in caverns. The party begins with a fight in a multi-level cave, then navigates through some winding tunnels. They find themselves in a trapped room with runes carved onto the floor, then...

Yeah, the fact that I wrote these with inspiration from the current season Living Forgotten Realms format is both good and bad. It's good that it means the adventures can be run at any level in the heroic tier (2, 4, 6, 8 or 10). It's bad that it means this requires a lot more work (more stat...

Good catch. And in looking over that encounter again, I realized that I've never run it at low level... and the Blink Spider didn't seem like it would be a very fun monster for that particular encounter. So, I created a new monster to take its place, one that I think fits very well in that...

Agreed. The Gnome Illusionist from Monster Vault has a power along these lines that lets it split into three copies, only one of which is real. I'd give the Pit Fiend the same ability, with an at-will free action to make any or all of those copies (plus himself) visible or invisible. So, there's...

After more playtesting and some work to improve the formatting and usability, I've released updated versions of my first two adventures on my blog (they're free). The releases also include maps, scaled to a 50-pixel grid (for ease of use in MapTool and similar programs). The first adventure is...

I agree with the other commenters. It's not a very useful tactical map, and that's fine - not every map has to be tactical. But this one seems to be in a weird middle ground; too big and not detailed enough to be tactical, but too small a part of the world to be very useful as a picture to show...

How strict is this group about following the Encounters rules? I ask because the current season of D&D Encounters only allows characters from Heroes of the Fallen Lands, Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms and the Neverwinter Campaign Setting. So, no runepriests, for instance. That would also rule...

This is a very important question, and one that I'm guessing folks at WotC and Paizo and other companies think about frequently. While I'm sure this isn't exactly the case, it does feel to me in many cases that DMs are born, not made. Certain players seem to get excited at the idea of sitting...

DMed: A LOT of D&D 4th Edition. Played: 4e, 1e, Pathfinder, GURPS, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu.

Evilhalfling: I didn't know that any of the players from my game were here on EN World! That's awesome! Which character were you playing? If this was your second-favorite moment of the game, I'm guessing you were playing Gramps. Ah, that delicious-looking magic sword...

I thought I'd share a story from my time running games all weekend at TactiCon here in Colorado (and I'm proud to say that I was able to Iron Man the con, running games in all nine slots). This specific exploit came on Friday during one of my MyRealms games (Descent Into Darkness). The final...

I've found this varies by browser for me. In Chrome, I have to manually select the Quotes tab. In FireFox, it jumps me right to it.

I personally use my own damage expressions, but those only work if you're using something like MapTool (otherwise, I do not recommend trying to roll d7s and d23s). That table does contain the official WotC damage expressions, though. The official updated damage expressions are on page 39 of the...