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IMC theft has always been considered "worse" by the players primarily because the victim was able to do something to rectify the situation.

While DM'ing I once had a player ask the same question while plane hopping, a rare event IMC. I was stumped, but while I sat there like a deer in the headlights, the player playing the dwarven cleric cuffed the questioning player along the back of the head and bellowed "Home! Its called home you...

The type of army is dictated more by politics and economics than time period/technology. Just look at modern Somalia's feudalism and contrast it to the armies of Rome or Sparta. The more powerful a leader is the more the army will represent a modern army in terms of consistent chains of...

Steel fender washers from a hardware store are usually in the eight to ten cents apiece range and work well, but may cause some damage to figures if they are thrown loose into a box and jostled around. For cheap plastic bases poker chips can be used, or try a dollar store. There's usually some...

I wrote a CoC adventure that I ran at several cons. It dealt with the PC's being black in the early 20th century and having to travel into a remote southern locale to deal with a dread thing from beyond. What scared them wasn't the evil beasties, it was the oppressiveness of Jim Crow laws, the...

I have two main map sets. For the first I made a bit map of the eastern hemipshere of my campaign world at 1 bit equals 1 mile. The map is divided into water and land only. Using this I can make smaller area maps, continental maps, what ever. Its primary purpose is to serve as a standard for my...

The issue of DM trust is almost impossible to overcome, especially if the end result is bad. As a DM I've had to deal with prisoners several times and have developed a few rules of thumb. First, if the prisoners are going to be helpless for more than an hour of playing time I try to have an NPC...

our group often has this problem, and I as the DM am a big part. I found two things helped - 1) Be prepared. Much of the drifting occured when we were looking something up or I the DM was distracted doing a few minutes of bookkeeping. The side conversations always seemed to expand to fifteen or...

What I'd like to see is T:2000/Dark Conspiracy's career system updated for d20, replacing classes and levels. Its almost there as is, I've tried it for one off games and simply used coolness increases as HD.

Keep in mind no self respecting Monarch is going to give up a profitable piece of real estate without a catch. A war averted all too often simply means a war delayed. After a few profitable months, give her the honor of housing a few of the king's own guards to help bolster the regions defenses...

One of our players/Dm's simply took appropriate pictures from the web, used Photo Shop to overlay some numbers, sized them to 1" squares, and then printed them out. He then glued them to foam core bases that had been spray painted black. This made them easy to pick up and move around. One...

For dungeons in urban settings some of my favorites That I've used have been; Former tower/castle/fortress now being used as a prison for political prisoners (ala Tower of London or Bastille). Making it possible to bribe the guards helps. Royal Gardens The main chamber of the old temple has...

For my new OA/Al Qadim campaign I'm using a social standing system that works like a normal ability with the normal modifiers and is used in addition to the charisma modifier whenever both PC and NPC are from the same culture. It has worked well. It isn't original, and I no longer remember if...

Last Sunday we started a new campaign, and thus made up 5 new PC's. Books used were; PH 3.5 MM 3.5 DMG 3.5 Savage Species Oriental Adventures (3.0) Complete Warrior Unearthed Arcana (bloodlines, geric classes, specialist wizard variants) Rokugan Al Qadim for 2nd ed. Tome and Blood DMG 2nd ed...

Abjuration, because Dispell Illusion is so improtant to the Curmudgeon PrC I'm striving for.

On a college field trip we were measuring the height of a vertical cave entrance. A fellow gamer was standing at the top and just as he read "thirty feet" off of the tape he slipped and fell. As we rushed to him and his freshly broken leg he shouted "three dice damage my a$$!"

Some of the methods I've expermented with; 1) Casting Roll Inspired by Ars Magica, a Spellcraft or Concentration check - this fell flat with the players and had little actual effect on play. 2) Casting Cost Look at D20 Call of Cthulu. Each spell costs San and/or ability damage. While...

The most dangerous aspect of any hardrock mine is actually hypothermia. As a general rule of thumb mines will be around 45 degrees F, but exposure to outside air flows can leave them colder, even below freezing in northern climes. If they are deep enough they begin to warm up, but at the normal...

It helps if you seal any exposed foam with white/Elmers/PVA glue before spray painting. Also check out http://zeitcom.com/majgen/index.html for some good instructions on building ships that do not expose the foam core's foam. Using these instructions I built three boats in just over an hour...

For my new prates meet Sinbad and the ninja's game I've just finished a sloop last night and have an oared felluca, a galley, and two xebec's on the table. These are my first tries, and I've been trying to balance appearance with compatability with 3.5's square based movement. I was inpsired...