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Personally, I think that rolling everything in the open is ideal, but that it often doesn't work well in practice. The problem is the information asymmetry between the DM and the players: as the DM, I know what the monsters' attack and damage bonuses are, whether one monster has a magical +3...

My players and I recently have decided to start a campaign in which orcs will be the primary adversaries for the PCs. Although orcs have been iconic low-level villains since the early days of D&D, I'm having some difficulty coming up with ways to make them viable antagonists over a range of...

I frequently DM for large groups but, for the reasons everyone's pointed out above, it's not easy to do for an entire campaign. If you're going to do it that way, however, I'll offer the following in addition to the excellent suggestions already provided. 1) Make sure that everyone at the...

I voted for "mostly linear" because I think that's the way my players perceive what we do, but like many of the posters above I didn't think the choice was an easy one. Typically when we start a campaign I have a discussion with the players about what sort of characters they want to have and...

Again, thanks for all the excellent ideas. Everything I can't use for now is going into my "stuff to be used later" notebook. Piratecat, the floating platforms in the water definitely are in. Snoweel, the Monster Builder lets me change a monster's level and edit powers without too much...

Thanks for all the excellent suggestions. Thus far, I'm partial to having: - early encounters with bandits and kobolds to foreshadow what the party will encounter later - some sort of conflict between a faction of kobolds loyal to the undead dragon (led by a corrupted kobold priest, perhaps)...

I'm starting a new 4e D&D game this weekend, and I'm trying to finish an adventure for my group. Although they're starting at 1st level, the players are experienced and are very familiar with the "low-level dungeon filled with kobolds with a young dragon boss fight at the end" idea. I'd...

I think I'd make a distinction between npcs that are intended primarily to be antagonists for the players in the context of a specific adventure and npcs that are intended to play a larger role in the campaign world/storyline/whatever. For npcs in the former category, I agree that they should...

As a recent convert from 3.5e to 4e, I can attest that all of the above advice is good. My group actually had no problem at all getting accustomed to the 4e movement rules; in fact, they seemed pleased that they didn't have to worry about when they did or did not have to count two squares for...

I maintain my position despite evilbob's objection, although our disagreement may be nothing more than a difference in preferred playstyle. The default encounter in 4e involves one monster per PC (or more if you use minions). The OP and evilbob assert that this default causes problems with...

My game typically has between six and eight players each session. I've found that the DMG XP budget system has worked very well, with a couple of caveats. First, in designing encounters you need to resist the temptation to fill up your budget with monsters above the party's level, particularly...

I'll jump on the bandwagon. I've played D&D for a long time, and D&D always has been Good.

Jack99, you were not confusing; my response was. My concern, which I did not express very artfully, was that the versatility granted by access to a vastly expanded suite of daily powers through a magic item in itself might be unbalancing. 4e takes great care to ensure that a single character...

Jack99 -- many thanks for your take on the staff. I think it indeed captures the feel of the original, but I'm not convinced that all those extra dailies wouldn't be gamebreaking, particularly at the level where the PCs are. Maybe limiting the staff to a certain number of uses per day...

My inclination is to start them out at the high heroic level as well. The counterargument (which comes from the player of the cleric/thief and other multiclass characters) is that paragon multiclassing (and the levels required to do it) is necessary for an adequate conversion. Is there a...

Greetings from a long-time lurker and first-time poster. I've been the DM for a group of six players since the mid-1980s. We played a long campaign with characters that were created under the 1e rules and later were converted to 2e. We've recently been running some one-shots under the 4e rules...