Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

... Are Created Equal   I was recently reading I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin (inspirational reading while I run Curse of Strahd) and something mentioned in the book sparked an idea. In the book, Strahd creates a potion he plans to give to one of his human servants. After the human ingests the potion, the servant collapses, and Strahd fears he may have made the potion too strong. Later, he attempts to give a similar potion to a captured vampire enemy. This potion was crafted to be 10 times as strong as the previous one, knowing that it needed to be so potent to affect the vampire. This got me thinking about when PCs find vials of poisons in treasure hordes, which always seemed a little meta-gamey to me. Why would they be there, if not for PCs to find later? Why do I have a poison in my treasure looking like any other tasty little potion, if not for the "gotcha" to the player when their character drinks it. One way to rationalize this is to have the poison vial...

Speaking about Character... If you're a player or DM who likes being in-character, one of the best ways to help establish a character is through the use of a unique voice, one that is somehow different from your own nature voice. This can include something like a catch phrase. If you think of Wolverine and his use of the word "Bub" in relation to those around him, or The Thing and "It's Clobberin' Time" these are great ways to help you identify a bit about the character. Wolverine tends to be a man of few words, and more action, so "Bub" is a great line, and for the The Thing, "Clobberin' Time" makes him sound a bit uneducated, but also hints that he's not a bloodthirsty killer. Another way to help get that unique character voice is through the use of an accent. Here I must admit that accents are not my specialty, though I have be trying hard to keep the right accent for Count Strahd in my current CoS game. If you are ...