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A Few Oddities There have been a few oddities that have occurred in my game. Back in college, two PCs/Players got into an argument. (It was basically a both in and out of character thing.) The group of PCs had been digging in the loose soil at the bottom of a pit with shields, trying to...

Individual Magic Items Why block out the sun in the entire country? That's going to cause a lot of notice, it's going to require HUGE amounts of magical energy, and it's going to pretty much destroy the local ecology. Instead, go with individual magic items. Each of your vampire lords can have...

You are most definitely not alone in these concerns. I tend to find reading a lot of modules, particularly those which claim to have an "old school" flavor, to be a combination of very humorous and very painful. While this certainly does not apply to all modules, I have seen a lot of ridiculous...

Found A System Thank you for your responses. The Medieval Price List looks like a good source for helping me balance some of the price lists. For trade goods, I've found a system that seems quite elegant. I can't guarantee it's 100% historically accurate, but it's both detailed enough and...

I hope I have put this in the correct forum ... I have just started a campaign that is quickly going to need a more detailed pricing list for various goods and supplies than I generally use. The characters are ship based. They are going to be acquiring cargoes from pirates (and maybe some...

Dragon and Play-Doh I don't remember the issue, but way back when, Dragon published an article on wargaming with Play-Doh. (It was probably an April issue, but we didn't care.) They had rules for grabbing a couple of cans of Play-Doh, putting together a combatant, and then using any handy table...

Textures If you are looking for some textures to create the flooring, here are a few web sites I've used. http://www.ender-design.com/rg/backidx.html The stone and marble categories contain some useful textures. http://www.art.net/~jeremy/photo/public_texture_frameset.html You have to hunt...

I have a basic problem with the concept of this book: Everything you need to know to start making characters is in the PHB. If someone is not willing to read the PHB through well enough to understand, what makes you think they'll actually read a 352 page book that explains all the stuff they...

Bah! I would never kill Toby. Spot was one of the greatest plot elements I ever had in a game. That little guy got them into so many roleplaying situations -- once I could NEVER have gotten the players into if they hadn't decided they were going to protect Spot as much as a PC. :)

I would have to say that the best "pet" that any of the parties I've DMed for ever acquired was a kobold named Spot. They originally rescued him from a group of goblins that were using him as a slave and a cook. The kobold was supposed to be a plot point that gave the characters some additional...

Get the players involved. If they do a chunk of it, give them some bennie, like free access to learn one or more spells. It'll help spread the strain out over multiple hands. :)

You're probably looking for two different things here. I've only see dry-erase board as a separate product from the 4x8 particle boards. At the local Home Depot, they have sheets of dry-erase board that are about 1/8" thick. I believe they come 2x4 only. The table I'm working on is also using...

Session Prep Work vs. Campaign Prep Work I have been DMing since 1985 and I will agree that the amount of session prep work I do has gone down a lot. I rarely run modules. When I do, I run them fast and loose. I make up NPC stats as I go, adjusting them mid-run if needed. Spell lists tend to...

1) Short adventures are best. I prefer adventures that are designed to be run in a session or two. Longer adventures tend to lose the players, unfortunately. If it is a longer adventure, it needs to be one with an overall plot that has the details broken up into reasonable "chapters". I can...

I have to say that if this were one of my players, I would be very angry at him. That would blow my trust in the player. I would have to question any module I bought and ran, for fear that he'd run out, find a copy, and read it. However, if this is a long time friend, such a childish act...

"A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" by Expeditious Retreat Press has a system for determining chances of items being available. I'm not sure that the chapter on this is worth buying the whole book, but I can wholeheartedly recommend the book as a gaming resource.

Golemcraft 101, from Dog Soul Publishing. It allows you to create golems from Tiny on up. I gave the artificers in my campaign the ability to craft these golems. It was either every two or every three levels that the size they could craft went up. The golems presented are not too bad. The...

Only Supporting Roles? In a recent campaign, one of the characters was an artificer. Even with using 3rd party rules for creating much weaker golems to help the character, the artificer was a support character. They have okay combat abilities, but they won't survive long as a front line...

Taxes, taxes, taxes I use taxes in my game. I tend to run a slightly more "realistic" setting than base D&D, trying to use as much historical knowledge as I can, so that makes taxes a part of the setting. Most of my players accept it as normal. They expect to pay a portion of anything they find...

Thanks for the replies. It looks like I was making the physics more complicated than I needed to. I am guessing that the same general physics would apply to the two medium sized flying races. One is humaoid avian and the other humanoid draconic. The campaign is going to spend significant time...