Gaming Tonic
Explorer
The last week has been packed with all kinds of exciting offerings from Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons & Dragons. Before we get into all those goodies let's get down to the big news of the week and what gamers are saying about it.- DM Rules and Exciting News in the Legends and Lore series by Mike Mearls treats us to a few tips on how to be a fair and balanced DM. It is the second part of the piece that has lit up Twitter, message boards, and forums all over the internet, the return of Monte Cook to D & D. Until last night there was only a brief tweet by Monte Cook about it and then he updated his journal, The Chapel Perilous, with more about it. The new entry is called Back to the Laboratory. Go ahead and read what gamers are saying about it here.
- Shelly Mazzanoble continues in her September article, Everything Else I Learned From D&D right were her new book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned for Dungeons & Dragons left off with a few more lessons that unfortunately couldn't make the book.
- In Dragon Magazine 403, Robert J. Schwalb offers up Academies of Magic. This article presents five organizations aimed at the arcane for your game. Five new backgrounds are presented and I am a fan of the Hidden Academy.
- Do not miss A Hero's First Steps: Rules for Level 0 Characters by Philippe -Antoine Menard 09/23/2011 in Dragon 403 with companion piece Temple of the Weeping Goddess in Dungeon. I always loved starting at the beginning of my career.
- D & D Alumni: Cursed Items by Bart Carroll in Dragon 403 is an expansion piece for Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, taking a historical look at cursed items in the previous editions of D&D and where we are at today. Some great resources for you to take and run with in your game. Just don't run with the cursed scissors.
- The Invisible Railroad in The Dungeon Master Experience by Chris Perkins offers helpful campaign advice for keeping your campaign on track without making your characters feel like their actions can't affect the world around them.
- Madness at Gardmore Abbey in Design & Development by Steve Townshend is a look at what went into some of the designs of the newest super adventure. If a search for the Deck of Many Things can't lure you in then the depth of background and encounter design in the adventure should.
- Shadowbane, the new novel by Erik Scott de Bie will be available Tuesday September 27th. You can download a sample chapter here.
Two new products for 2012 have appeared on Amazon - Haunted Temples Pack (Jan 17th) and the Elemental Heroes Handbook (Feb 21st). I love map packs for creating immersion in my games and elemental characters seem so popular with players that a time has come for a book focusing on them.- Elemental Hero's Handbook: "Masters of fire and earth. Lords of air and water. This tome is the definitive sourcebook for creating and playing characters with ties to the Elemental Chaos and the primordial beings that dwell there. It shows how the elements can influence heroes of the natural world and presents elemental-themed character options for players In addition to discussing elemental power and presenting new character themes with strong story hooks, this book includes three new class builds--the elementalist, the sha'ir, and the shugenja--and new feats and paragon paths designed to tie existing characters more closely to the Elemental Chaos."
- Haunted Temples Map Pack: "This accessory includes three double-sided 21" x 30" tactical battle maps -- a total of six beautifully rendered encounter locations, each one suitable for any D&D game. Each map is laid out on a one-inch-scale square grid, allowing it to be used with D&D miniatures and/or card stock tokens Two of the mapped locations are new, depicting a dark cathedral and a haunted chapel with an adjoining cemetery. The remaining four map locations are picked up from out-of-print D&D products and present adventure locations tied to the "haunted temples" theme."
- For those of you with a DDI account the Monster Builder has had an update which will allow you to build a monster from scratch. This will really help us all to cater our monsters to the tastes of our players and games. This feature seemed to have a lot of requests and the message boards are filling with tips about how to get the most out of the monster builder including printing, exporting, and formatting. You can check out our thread here. We will keep you informed of any updates to the DDI Tools suite so check back.
- The open playtest for the D&D Miniatures Skirmish game continues to move ahead. I had a chance to talk briefly with Rodney Thompson, Developer for the upcoming game. I asked him how he feels the feedback from the open playtest group has been so far and his feelings on using this system for playtesting WOTC products in the future? Here is his response:
The playtest has been going extremely well, and most everyone participating seems excited to be able to make their mark on the game. Since the playtest is open to anyone that wants to join, we've been getting feedback from all kinds of different players from across the world, which just goes to show that a hobby like D&D knows no national boundaries. The open playtest has been a great experience, and very successful based on the amount of feedback we're seeing. We definitely want to do more open playtesting in the future.
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