Sarah Darkmagic's blog

Just by itself, the Sly Flourish blog would be considered a great resource for those 4e DMs out there. Written by Mike Shea, the posts are concise, well-written and accompanied by excellent pictures. The monster optimization series alone is a great resource. Not only does it give DMs monster combos to place into their own campaigns where appropriate, but he explains what it is about the combo that makes it awesome, effectively providing a learn-by-example tutorial on encounter design. It definitely makes you look forward to Mondays.

Recent Posts

• Three D&D Tips I Learned From Dragon Age
• Monster Optimization: Foulspawn Mangler + Foulspawn Seer
• Powerhouse Dragons
• James Bond Encounter Design
• Monster Optimization: Ghouls and Deathlock Wights
• Evernote for Dungeon Masters
• Giving 4e an Old School Feel
• Monster Optimization: Shadow Dragons
• Ten Ways to Challenge Powerful Parties
• Scaling 4th Edition for Six Players
• Magic Gems for Item Reward Flexability

If you need your fix more than once a week, fear not, Mike gives out great ideas throughout the week through Twitter. Followers of the @SlyFlourish twitter account are treated to small nuggets of DMing and story telling wisdom.

Recent Twitter D&D Tips

• Cross-train your RPG reading with King's "On Writing", Tharps "Creative Habit", and Edwards' "Drawing on the Right Side o/t Brain"
• Try out a Stephen King style and foretell coming events: "That was the last time you saw your home town before it burned."
• When using published adventures, don't be afraid to replace NPCs with those already known and loved (or hated) by your PCs.
• Give your players a lot of different quests, each with a well-designed quest card so they can keep track of them.
• Does a PC have a big moment coming? Try using a music playlist based on that PC selected by that player.

In addition to the blog and twitter account, Mike created a really nice 4e blog aggregation site, 4eBlogs.com.

Between season premieres, sporting events, family, and just plain life events, getting the crew together every week can be a bit like herding cats. What is a gaming group, and in particular a DM, to do?

Run an Episodic Campaign

The best defense is a good offense. If you can get your players back to home base at the end of most sessions, it becomes a lot easier to figure out a reason why a missing player's character is not around for a particular adventure. I'm running our current campaign a bit like this. While I've found it a lot easier to plan and change the story line to fit what my players want by running it this way, I definitely feel a bit like I'm writing for a sitcom. I have about 2 hours to present the conflict, have my players come up with their solution for resolving it, and then, actually resolve the conflict, all while tying the story to the parts that came before and setting up the story lines to come. A standard combat encounter takes about a hour of that time, so we generally are limited to 1 - 1.5 encounters during that time period. In addition, since my players often don't know that they can't make it until the last minute, it's hard to spotlight characters since I risk the important character not making it for the session. But these are not insurmountable problems and an episodic campaign handles them much better than campaigns with longer story arcs and lots of overland adventures.

Fill in Character Back Story

Often, character back stories and down time get glossed over in the course of regular game play. The characters might spend a few months in between major adventures but what they did during that time never gets discussed. Or players might have written pages of back story that never gets used in game. When a full group of players is available, it doesn't make as much sense to spotlight players to the degree necessary to bring this out. However, if you are down to two or three players, it makes perfect sense.

• The Keep on the Gaming Lands: The Curse of the Missing Player!
• Mike's D&D Blog: Getting the party inside your character’s head

Run the Character Anyway

It's always possible to just have another player, or the DM run the character. I'm not sure how much I would really recommend this one unless it's absolutely necessary. Many players don't feel comfortable running another person's character, in part because they are afraid of being blamed if the character dies and also because, at least in 4e, characters are so complex, it can be really hard to keep them straight. Chris Heard had the idea of "stunt doubles" or people who can't commit to being a regular party member but who can come to occasional games and run the character of a missing player or the monsters if everyone shows up.

If having a player run two PCs is asking too much and no stunt doubles are around, another option is to have the DM or a player run the character as an NPC or companion character. Again, Chris is the source of both of these ideas. The nice thing about running the character this way is that the reduced power choices makes the character a lot easier to run, but you still have all the benefits of having the character present, particularly for the story line. For instance, you might not want to go to the mage's tower without your wizard or trudge through an ancient ruin without your party's history major.

• Icosahedrophilia: What shall we do with the absent player?
• Icosahedrophilia: Large/irregular groups without large/irregular parties

These are some of the options I've heard of, do you have any suggestions?

One of my players has a great blog about his experiences and thoughts regarding D&D and recently he wrote an entry about something that happened in one of our sessions. Due to how the session evolved, he felt that his character would do something completely different from the rest of the party. Basically, they were accompanying the king and queen back to their capital city and it was clear that the king's chief advisor was not quite right. Mike's character, Skamos, as someone who is generally leery of all authority, understandably wanted to follow around the advisor, but the rest of the party (and to some degree, the story) wanted to be in another location. This left me with a hard dilemma. He could go off and do what he wanted, realistically meaning he could be out of the game for the rest of the session at least. Alternatively, I could find a way to get him to the rest of the action. Since I want everyone at my table to have fun, I did the latter. Someone wearing a cloak just like the character he was following and of the same height and build left the inn where the king and queen were staying and traveled to the tavern where the rest of the group was hanging out, having a few drinks and flirting with the locals. I felt terrible doing it, but at least everyone was together right?

Unfortunately, it turns out it was just the beginning of the story just not flowing in the way I had hoped. The character also didn't feel like sharing in the libations. Completely understandable, since well, they were adulterated with goodnight tincture, but that wasn't something the characters would have known. This meant that when they went outside to get some fresh air, his character was the only one standing while the rest of them passed out. And when the bad guys who were there to kidnap them asked him to give up his weapons, he refused to do so. Which left me with the choices of attempting to (and probably actually) killing his character, leaving him behind or having the NPCs allow him to go with them with his weapons. In the end, I chose the last option, but I just felt like a complete failure at this point. As a person playing the game, I know that none of the other players want to sit out a session. Also, I really try to not railroad my players and had their characters all decided to call it a night and never go out drinking, I would have come up with a completely different story. But I was having a really hard time figuring out what to do when only some wanted to go in a particular direction.

Days, well really a few weeks later, I know that the failure wasn't completely my fault. Sure, there are things I could have done better. Having a better understanding of the motivations of my players' characters would definitely help. Finding other ways to get the unsuspecting PC unconscious would help too. But in the end, the burden isn't the DM's alone. Just like the NPCs can't always act the way they "naturally" would, PCs need to have the same flexibility. Otherwise, it can be a bit not fun and, at that point, why keep playing? And if a player is particularly adamant about not going with the rest of the group, as much as it might hurt to do it, it might be better to let them go. I do like his idea of letting the other players play the other NPCs in the fight, although I would be concerned that they might be a little easy on him since they might need him later.

All that said, I think there are times when the party could be split. Ameron on the Dungeon's Master has a great article about how splitting the party worked really well in a game he was in. And having a Leverage-style game would be really cool now and then. However, unless it's one of those times, please do you DM a small favor and don't split the party.

I've been using the D&D 4e combat tracker for awhile now and I thought it would be handy if I came up with a short video tutorial on how to use some of the features. I'd like to apologize in advance on two fronts. First, I'm a programmer, not a media professional, so I'm not the most polished speaker. In addition, my main Windows machine is a great little netbook, but running the combat tracker, adventure tools and the screencast software all at the same time made some of the graphics run a bit slow. That said, I hope you find the information useful.

Video Tutorial

View larger video

Some Great Features

Adding Player Characters to the Library

The first thing we want to do is add some players and npcs to the combat tracker's library. To do this, open up the library by clicking on Library > Open Statblock Library or hit the F8 key.

Now that we are in the library, let's add some player characters from Character Builder Files. Click on the CB Load button.

That will open a file browser window. Select the Character Builder file(s) you would like to add and click on the Open button.

The Character Builder files are now loaded into the library, along with all of the player stats, powers, feats and equipment.

Next, llet's add the players to the battle list. You do this by selecting the characters from the library you would like to add and clicking on the Add button.

This is what it will look like once the characters have been added to the battle list.

Adding NPCs to the Library

The easiest way to add NPCs to the combat tracker is to paste the rich text from the Adventure Tools program. Right click on the monster in the Monster Selection window and select Copy as Rich Text.

Then go back to the combat tracker program and in the library window, click on the Paste button. You might have to click on a small down arrow next to the CB Load button.

At this point, the NPC will appear in the library. You can add it to the battle list just like you would add a player character.

Adding Library Items to an Encounter

Once you have all the creatures you need in your battle list, close the library window. Your creatures will now appear as part of an encounter.

Starting an Encounter

When the time comes, you can start an encounter by click on Encounter > Roll Initiative or hitting the F6 key.

Many players like to roll their own initiative. No worries, click on the player name > Initiative and adjust the number accordingly.

Running Combat

During combat, you can adjust the hit points of a creature by clicking on the creature name > Damage/Healing.

In addition to keeping track of hit points, you can keep track of effects and conditions. To add an effect, click on the Add button next to the word Effects.

This triggers a popup with the UI for adding an effect. You can select a previously defined effect or call it whatever you wish. In addition, you can set the duration, source and target. When you are done, click on the Save button.

The effects will show up when you click on the character's name until the effect is no longer in play.

Requirements

• Windows XP or later
• .NET Framework 3.5 or later (if you have Character Builder or Monster Builder installed, you have this).

I have to admit, the main reason I decided to start playing D&D is the podcast done by WotC, Penny Arcade, PvP and Wil Wheaton. They didn't take themselves too seriously and had a ton of fun. When I professed this love on twitter, some kind users pointed me to the Icosahedrophilia podcast put out by Chris Heard. Like the other series, this one also features real game play. This might seem boring to some, but I've always been drawn to story telling so I find it incredibly interesting.

What's even better is that Chris takes some time at the end of the episode to explain some of the tools he used preparing and running the game as well as explaining mistakes he's made and the such. Also, usually he'll let us know when the players decide to take the game in a direction he didn't expect and how he then adjusted the story to line up with player expectations. For those looking to create a podcast of their own, Chris sometimes talks about the equipment he uses to produce the podcast.

Story Lines

• The End Is the Beginning
• The Wellspring
• Isla Calipha
• The Book of L'aif
• Feed the Dead
• A Rite Most Foul
• Microcosom
• The Doom of Sarnath

More information about the Stormhaven campaign, including character descriptions and the names of the players, can be found on the campaign summary page.

There are a few other interesting things on the website that you might be interested in. Chris released his own initiative tracker, FightCard. The program is meant to run through a web browser, but since it runs directly from your hard drive, you don't need an internet connection to use it. In addition to the initiative tracker, Chris has a D&D 4E style guide, a dungeon tiles index, and a list of music tracks for game background music.

Chris can be found on Twitter at @d20philia.