Thank you all for following this blog! Its surprising we have 50 followers, especially since this isn’t the blog of a hot nerd girl (I’d say it was but my bluff skill is far too low). Your feedback is always appreciated and your questions and submissions are highly anticipated. Now to go level up and distribute my skill point (Hint:Tomorrow this blog might start being ran by a hot nerd girl).

Thanks again, everybody!

Alignments can become a sticky subject and can end up railroading players into making actions they don’t really want to, or causing group cohesion to fall apart. Rather than use them as a strict rule for a character think of it more as a general philosophy and take on the world. In addition it’s often hard to find good examples of each. We will be covering the 3.5e alignments today but within them contain the 4e alignments so it applies to both.

Lawful Good – This character is the by the books cop. She fights for what is good while upholding the law. Examples: Superman and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Lawful Neutral – Your average citizen. For the most part they follow the law and do what’s in their best interest, or perhaps they follow the law because it is in their best interest. Examples: Bounty hunters and Judge Dredd.

Lawful Evil – He wants to commit acts of villainy, but breaking the law or personal code is unacceptable. Again, self preservation might be the motivation or he might have an extremely strict set of rules guiding him or could have superior officers keeping him in line. Examples: Darth Vader and Dexter (his “code” being considered law).

True Neutral – This character does as they wish, if it is convenient they might steal but they don’t go out of their way to make a point of it. They are the Switzerland of alignments. Examples: Doctor Manhattan, mindless animals, and referees.

Chaotic Good – She fights for what is right but doesn’t mind doing some wrong for the greater good. Often take up an extremist cause. Examples: Robin Hood, Dr. Horrible, and Batman.

Chaotic Neutral – She is out for herself. It’s a very gray area which allows players to be selfish without having to take a fully neutral stance. Examples: Han Solo in the beginning (he later can be considered Lawful Good when he comes back to help on the Death Star assault), Wario, and the Joker (arguably).

Chaotic Evil – She wants to wants to maim and slaughter and do all sorts of evil deeds, and she will not be stopped by any laws. These characters are villains at their most pure. Examples: Serial Killers, Simon Pheonix of Demolition Man, and Darth Sidious/Emporer Palpatine.

After investigating the guards were suspicious of what was going on the Paladin decided to leave saying he thought they were not handling the situation correctly. On his way out he decided to bump shoulders with one of the guards which got him an arrow in the leg. They then took him to jail (he cooperated) where they confiscated his belongings, and after the group convinced him to apologize they returned everything with the exception of his half-plate armor. As you can imagine he was quite unhappy.

The group at this point had about 3 hours until they were to arrive at the arena. The Paladin decided to go the main office and make a complaint. After an hour and a half of go-betweens and debates he was given a bag which in fact only had leather armor, and told he would have to wait until tomorrow for everything else to be settled as the people in the facility were leaving for the arena.

At this point the Paladin was quite unhappy but then fist bumped me saying, “Pro DMing.” We ended it there since the Druid had left prior and there were other missing people from that night. The group had entered 2 arena fights. The first night was fighting monsters, the second night was fighting other humanoids, and the third night is 1v1 combat. To enter the 1v1 combat competition the character has to have played in one of the other competitions prior and won. The group showed an extreme interest in this and I hope to have them return to play 1v1 once their levels are a bit higher and they understand their powers.

Thanks to StolenDataTapes for the inspiration for this question.

Critical hits as per the book state that to make a critical hit you must roll within the crit range of your weapon. To confirm a crit you must roll within your weapon’s weapon range then then pass another attack roll. This is the official take about criticals in 3.5e. That said I have never played with a group where you had to roll to confirm a crit. In the same respect I’ve never played with a group where a natural 1 was not considered an epic failure or fumble.

These two house rules in combination add some unpredictability to the game. In any given battle there will likely be at least one critical hit or failure. A critical hit does as the book states; you apply your weapon’s critical modifier to your damage. As for a critical failure, that gets a bit more variety.

Generally speaking when you critically fail your weapon either breaks or leaves your hands and you get an attack of opportunity from any adjacent enemies. One DM recently bought a directional die, and uses that plus a d4 and your strength modifier to establish where the weapon lands. This really only works well for melee weapons. For ranged weapons a break of some sort is often the answer whether it is the entire gun or just a string. Another option is a misfire which hits a friends target if they happen to be near the intended target.

In my early days as a player, I joined a group and rolled a critical failure which hit a tentatively allied NPC who then turned on us. It essentially shifted the entire route of the campaign. While these can often shift the momentum of a battle they spice up the combat considerably, and there is no greater proof than the giddiness a player gets after hearing that he has just ruthlessly decapitated an ogre.

(sorry for the delay)

That night they decided to investigate the graveyard, as they entered they hear eerie moans and soon discovered they were ghouls. One by one the ghouls emerged from the tree line until 6 of them were present, followed by a larger ghoul. The fight was close, and I admit was the first fully honest fight I’ve given them.  Metagaming become an issue, especially with one player. I ended up having to speak over him on several occasions and it became quite frustrating at times.

In the end the paladin was knocked unconscious but stabilized quickly. The druid fell right as well; right before they downed the large ghoul (loud cheering occurred). Since nobody else in the party had a healing spell to stabilize them the party searched for her potions while she attempted to stabilize. They ended up breaking one healing potion and then feeding her a potion that made her vomit. In the end she stabilized at -5.

The group went back to town dragging the paladin and druid, went to the house they were staying in while their main NPC berated them for doing something like that. In the morning they woke up and essentially demanded a reward from the mayor who was cooking them breakfast despite none being offered previously. She said she would ask around town to see what they could offer and that’s where the party left off.

I felt that for the first time the group felt as though their characters were in mortal peril. This is exactly what I planned for and hope that I can recreate that sort of feeling with the full group. Previous fights had all been made rather easy to allow them to get used to combat, and while they were unconfident in their ability to survive they seemed at home with their spells and attacks.

Session 3 saw a large decline in players due to 3 of them not being able to make it. We ended up with a druid, a paladin, a rogue, a scout, and a sorceress. It was a nice balance despite being without a healer. The makeup of 4 girls and one guy didn’t seem to factor into play much, the group worked fairly well together.

It started with the sorceress waking up from an extended nap (she missed the session prior) and meeting back with the group. They had all just finished a delivery to a small town located in the woods of an island state.  The town had approximately 80 people and was self sustaining, unfortunately for them there had been strange sounds coming from the graveyard and the townspeople had no real fighting force.

In the first session the sorceress used a Detect magic spell and saw that there was a faint glow in their cargo. After being paid the rogue and druid searched for this item but had no luck finding it. Everybody else did things like buy minor items and in one case a spear from the town store.

The mayor had invited them to a minor feast and bonfire that night and they kindly accepted. During the night nothing eventful happened, everybody investigate their own things (the paladin spoke with evil people, the rogue questioned about the item and boys, and the druid learned how to make potions from a mountain man).

The next day everybody but the druid decided to help out around town with things like chores and a bit of field work. The druid decided to create potions from plants she had found. She was able to make 2, +1hp pots as well as 1 pot that would make the person who drank it become ill. After this she joined the group until night came, when they had planned to head to the graveyard.

Music is a rather controversial issue surprisingly. Many groups play with no background music so as to have complete focus; however the majority of groups I have played with have some sort of music on. Generally it’s at a low level in the back and more often than not is light on lyrics. In one group I play with Dub-Step is generally the genre of choice and while I myself am not a fan of the genre it works well for this purpose.

This seems to be a general consensus for gaming. If there are no lyrics then you are far less likely to have people continuously asking what the song is or people complaining over the music. All in all it all falls back to the DM’s choice.

For the Alpha group session 1 was played without any music. This went unnoticed seeing as how most people were talking so loudly that the music would have been drowned out anyways. For the second session however I decided to tap into the depths of xbox live and use the Last.fm features. I’ve used them all of once before but after a bit of cruising I decided to try the 8bit channel. After about 15 minutes I decided it wasn’t right and went with a channel called Minibosses which I later realized was the band. This remained on the rest of the night.

The group didn’t seem to mind the music at all which I consider an accomplishment seeing as the musical preferences in the group range from Harry and the Potters to Skrillex. I expect to try another station for Session 3 though, its always good to experiment.

Session 1: the single day where my players and I get to indulge in our highly anticipated nerdery. As stated before all players had little or no experience with D&D so rolling out characters took a big chunk of time. Over 2 hours to be exact. This did include people arriving, introductions, a bit of mindless chat, then helping them on an individual basis with most of the character building. With the exception of being short on Players Handbooks (PH) and a few people being a tad too chatty things went smoothly. I suggested to the players to pick from the PH for races and classes. I then described a few classes outside of the PH that would be simple enough for them to use. In the end they built their characters 90% with only minor suggestions from me.

Then I began the game. I had the characters start as new hires for a delivery and escort service. They were all coming into the city to meet with a man who then directed them to a bar (where all great adventures begin). The group was all over the place. Two people played pretty close to home, two chose to be prostitutes including one character that was underage, and one decided to be the short spoken brash type. It was typical, the characters got drunk, one player had her character hit on her boyfriend’s character and when he refused she seemed legitimately unhappy. With a bit of coaxing though the group was introduced to each other and no fights occurred.

Next came the combat. I had them guarding 2 small wagons. I had them rolling a percentage die once per day of travel to see if they had an encounter. On the second to last day of 10 they rolled it. I had them attacked with 8, level 1 gnolls and a level 3 gnoll. The combat went surprisingly smooth with only brief questions about spell casting, I was impressed. They defeated the gnolls with only one player being knocked unconscious despite the challenge rating being well above a 1. Next session thing will have to be ramped up a bit.

So here we go. This is a long time concept taking one more step to becoming a reality. This is a blog that will be about everything pen and paper, and specifically the aspects of being a Dungeon Master. This will also contain tips for players. We will be showcasing ideas that we feel add to a game as well as clever ideas we have found on the web. The components of this blog include players, DMs, and storytellers of every experience level there is. So if you are curious about playing or DMing then follow us, ask questions, and please give us any comments you feel like.

Thank you and remember, all you need are a few books and a story to tell.