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Getting The Party Started

As a GM, there are few things I hate more upon starting a new game than the mess that inevitably arises from getting a load of PCs, who may not have anything at all to do with one another, into a vague semblance of a coherent group. Most of the time, it just feels like [...]

Death Is Only The Beginning

Death is the threat that hangs over every character, PC and NPC alike, at the table. For the longest time, death was the ultimate punishment. The consequence that couldn’t be topped. The fate that every character faced and every player hoped to help them avoid. The fear of death is a natural one because in [...]

“Why” and How It Can Improve Your Game

Willful suspension of disbelief is a concept that comes up a lot when talking about fiction. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s the idea that you sometimes have to stop your mind from saying “That’s ridiculous”, “That could never happen”, or “That is totally not real” in order to enjoy something. It boils [...]

How I Parcel Out Treasure

Since 4e came out, I’ve seen endless discussion on many of its aspects like monster damage and class powers, but it’s been awhile since I’ve heard much about treasure parcels. Here’s the brief summary for those of you who don’t normally GM (like me): The idea of parcels is that along with the standard 10 [...]

Planning Your Exit Strategy

Max level. Be it level 30, level 20, or level 10, depending on what edition or game you’re playing (though for my purposes, I’m going to assume you’re playing D&D4e). It has a ring to it, a sign that you’ve taken a campaign as far as it can go. In a way, you’ve won. To [...]

3 Ways To Make The End Of The Arc Awesome

On Friday night my face-to-face 4e D&D group met for the final session of the current campaign arc. This session is the culmination of 9 months of play for this small group and after this we are adding two new players (one brand new to D&D and one new to 4e). The group is in [...]

Speeding up D&D 4E

Much digital ink has been spilled on the topic of speeding up combat in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. I think at this point we can all at least agree that combat can grow a bit sluggish at times. The interesting thing is, and it’s something that some people have touched upon at various points in the 4E lifecycle already, that there seems to be a paradigm shift away from the simple “4E is slow because of combat”, and I think that’s a very good thing.

The “new” (and it’s not new, just only discussed by a select few in the past) idea is that the problem lies more in adventure design than combat sluggishness. @glimmthegnome on Twitter planted the seed of this idea for me a couple of weeks ago, @gamefiend pushed it along, and @neogrognard put it into words in his Save My Game column on the Wizards website last week.