Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

While I was working the company booth at an industry convention, I noticed folks walking this way and that (rarely stopping at our booth), all with the various goodie bags they picked up from the other vendors at the show. Between failed attempts at using the force to compel folks to visit our station ("This is the booth you're looking for"), I started thinking about GenCon (and how it couldn't get here soon enough!). Thinking about the con made me realize two important thinks: Pre-reg starts this weekend! That's right. If you're planning to go, you can pre-reg starting this Sun at noon. Pre-reg saves you a couple of bucks and is of course the first step to booking a room as well as events. I need to start training! That's also right. If you've been to GC before you know the layout is massive, and the reports are that it will be even more spread out this year, with more nearby hotels serving as the site for various games and seminars. In orde...

As a follow up to my previous post, "Let Your Campaign Talk to You" , I've been thinking about new ways to approach developing character backgrounds, and looking at various techniques from literature and television. Rather than what I suspect is the standard approach, that of drafting the background and incidental details all at once, and typically before even the first game session has taken place, what I'm now envisioning is a process where the character background grows organically over time. In this new approach, players should at the time of the first game session, know the basics, what's readily apparent from their character sheets, but details beyond that can be left somewhat vague and filled in over time. This could be something as minor as character details, or something as major as character motivations and goals. In the past I might have a character background that states that "Johnny" is the oldest of 5 siblings. But in this new appro...

In case you missed it, WoTC confirmed Monday one of it's worst kept secrets, that they are hard at work on a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Read about it here from CNN, or here from Forbes. The announcement was also carried by the New York Times and EN World. This new edition, cleverly referred to at the moment as just "D&D Next", seems to have a very daunting mandate, to re-unite the various splinters of the D&D community that have grown out of a dissatisfaction with the 4e rule set. We now have not only groups that still cling to old rule sets (like Basic, 1e, 2e, etc), but also active supporters on emerging edition variants, including Pathfinder and the OSRIC branch of D&D. I've tried to take some time to distill my thoughts on what I think would be needed for a successful next edition of D&D, beyond things like Vancian magic and Digital Support - WoTC needs a digital publishing plan, and they've needed it for the last few years. P...

My typical progression for a campaign may be little unusual. In the beginning, when the PCs are newly minted 1st level characters that have just been created by their players, I run adventures that don't tie too closely into any character's background. The reason for this is two fold. At lower levels, simply put, characters may not survive. I never go out of my way to kill a character, but to quote the villainous Leland from Needful Things "these things happen". Secondly, I want to leave things open in case the player decides "this character blows" and wants to play something else. Replacing characters is much easier to do when said character has no integral connection to the overall campaign. When it's established in the first session that these six noobs are destined to save the world, it's a little hard later on shoehorning in a new character--like the convoluted solution on Charmed when the "Power of Three" needed a new Third af...