Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

Another GenCon is over, and so it's time for me to do a little recap of how this year was the best year yet (and it was). Day Zero (Wed) First off, I had planned to do daily updates of my experiences at the con, but that didn't happen. I ended up with either too many late night games, or too many early morning events to find the time. Maybe next year I'll at least be better about live tweeting during various events. Anyway... I got into Indy on the Wednesday before the con, around early afternoon. The drive in (shared by me and one of my oldest friends from Philly) was nice, but once again we missed a crucial turn off onto the downtown roads and had to take a slight shortcut. The problem seems to be with my GPS not being up to date with the current traffic pattern of the area. I mention this only because this is the third year in a row that we drove to Indy, and this was the third time in a row that we missed the same exit. Sadly, a large part of the reason for wan...

In addition to me and you, it turns out there are a number of other famous people who admit to playing Dungeons and Dragons. Check out this link for some of those people: 20 Celebrities Who Play Dungeons & Dragons

Hidden away in the bowels of the WotC website are a great collection of tools and generators for DMs. It's a shame that they haven't been supporting these kinds of products for awhile now, long before the announcement of 4th edition. I think they really dropped the ball on the chance to build great loyalty among DMs with these time saving devices. Now one argument is that DMs only represent 1/6th of the game audience (the other 5/6ths being players), but the amount of financial investment a DM has (DM guide, campaign setting books, splat books, etc) is significantly greater than a player (PHB, PHB2, and maybe a few of the splat books) and therefore they represent a much larger financial share of the audience. Also a DM has the power to influence some players away from one game to another simply by running one game over another. OK... the rant is over... Anyway, here's the archive page of the tools WotC has on it's site, including name and background generators as well...

Early reports are that Gary Gygax, who along with Dave Arenson, is one of the creators of the Dungeons and Dragons game has passed away. Here's a thread on the topic. For more on his life, check out his page on Wikipedia . Let's all dedicate our next nat-20 to the man who gave us this wonderful hobby! UPDATE: Here's more details in this Yahoo article .

Here's another great link: http://www.emass-web.com/index.htm Here you can create dynamic character sheets choosing from a bunch of blocks to include in the sheet... and once you make your selection, it builds a PDF file for you to keep and reuse as needed. What I really like is the customizable spell lists. I can select what sources I want to include (just PHB, or do I include BoVD spells as well ?) and what type of caster I am and then... BAM! I got a PDF of spells by level. The spell descriptions are brief, "just the facts", but also include page refs for the full details. It's not meant to replace PHB, or SC, but I think it does make running spell casters a bit easier. See for yourself and let me know if you agree...

First in a series of posts on some of my favorite links for D&D. The Hypertext d20 SRD This is without a doubt one of the most useful links I have. I've just recently gotten back into the DM's chair (and my first time running a lengthly 3.5 game) and I find this site useful for so many reasons. The encounter calculator alone is worth this link being at the top of any DM's list, but the hyperlinked SRD content is also valuable when you need to look up a spell, feat, or almost anything else. Granted, not everything in the D&D Core Books is in the SRD, but there's enough to satisfy most of your needs, and if you keep up on what didn't make it to the SRD, you shoudn't get too frustrated when you can't find it there.