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 Recent Posts
You gotta blame me, and not the Dungeon staff. Sorry guys, I am a notorious "eyeballer" when it comes to discerning distance as a DM. I'm actually wanted for it in two states. I promise I won't let this happen again though! :) Glad you guys enjoyed the rest of the adventure besides the maps. Again, my bad. :(
Hey all! I play EVERY game! Just kidding, but I play a lot of em. In no particular order: Shadowrun, Star Wars (West End and D20, cause each got their own flavor flave), Rifts, Ninjas and Superspies (one of my favorites), the old TSR Marvel Superheroes (the one with words for stats, like Amazing and Remarkable, this game is the best game in the WORLD!!!), Vampire, Exalted, Palladium Fantasy, Call of Cthulhu (when done right, soooooo scary), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (boomtastic!), and a bevy of D20 products...one of my recent favorites is Swashbuckling Adventures (I always wanted to be a pirate). Oh yeah, and every now and then I play good ole D&D. ;) I also play a bevy of board games and the Game of Thrones collectable card game has claimed hundreds of hours of my life (so have the books, I've rereading them for like the third time now!).
You could have the body fight without it's head. When I playtested it, that was loads of fun. Or you could just call it that the intestines and organs can be used to make both the entrails attack and Marik's unarmed attacks as well. Oh I see James got to this already! OOPS! ;) And I agree, how did anyone get past the hall of 10,000 blades!!! ::Nick makes note to self to make next adventure much much more difficult:: ;)
Manuals are a big part of the Shao-lin tradition, it's true. Check out my adventure in Dungeon #117 ("The Winding Way") for more on monks and manuals. The coolest thing about monks to me is the strange hierarchy of relationships in a temple or a style of martial arts. I'm speaking solely about Chinese styles here, but it is very very very important who your master is, who his master is and who his other students are. As a monk, the temple is your family. Your master's other disciples are sworn brothers, even if their alignments are different from your own, and even if you despise them. Also any one who studied under your master's master is your superior and must always be recognized as such, even if they are not as skilled as you, and even if they are despicably evil people. I would love to write an article on monks. You guys have some awesome ideas here too! You should submit submit submit. Class acts means something about monks must be printed every issue. Let's swamp them my sworn brothers! ::raises fist and palm in salute:: :)
Right on alacar, I hear ya. Pretty short. But I think it can be drawn out with some pretty slow moving an suspense packed storytelling. Especially if you make liberal use of the meenlocks' Rend Mind ability at the beginning, without the meenlocks really jumping out at them and blowing the suspense. Dunno, maybe I am digging the short one shots lately cause I have been so darned busy. ;)
My current record is a character with 2 core classes and 2 prestige classes: a bard 12/divine agent 2/fighter 1/dervish 1. Wonder how many more prestige classes I'll be able to cherry pick before my DM smacks me down? LOL! That is awesome! I usually play characters with just one class, but when I am making adventures I find a lot of my coolest bad guys get three (two core and a prestige). I think this is because I myself have always been a jack of all trades so I can envision characters (especially those with long life spans like elves) as dabblers. To date my favorite character I've played is a jumbled mess, a veritable mutt of the core classes: Mnk2/Ftr4/Rog3/Wiz1. I don't know why it happened that way. I started the campaign as a monk, got booted from my monestary after the second adventure, ended up as a constable in samll village for a few adventures (Ftr levels) and then became a "special" constable who was sent all over the kingdom to investigate particularly difficult to solve crimes, often incognito (Rog levels). Eventually the crimes involved so much magic that he couldn't solve them without a little understanding of the arts arcane so he enrolled at a magic academy in order to bone up on his Knowledge (arcana), and Spellcraft. Besides, being able to detect magic makes him sooooo much more useful as an investigator. To close this overly long post: I think characters can be overly complicated and this gets overdone, but not if it fits with the PC's (or villians) development. After I have created a prestige/template monstrosity of a villian for a game, I love sitting down and thinking up their background and how they became a half-illithid halfling Rog4/Sor6/Arcane Trickster5/Duelist3/Assassin1. Man that little tentacle-faced guy lived quite a life! ;)
Hey all! I thought this adventure ruled. Short, tight, sweet and very very freaky. I especially liked the attention to detail and the horrifying discoveries the PCs make as they explore the way station. The charred finger was sooooo gross and cool. I hope DUNGEON keeps upping the freaky factor and including shorts like this one that are bigger on story than they are on random melees. Great adventure!
Hey Edge, I think these ideas are very cool indeed. One of the weakest elements of D&D is the lack of finality of death. Anything to make it harder to raise someone is great in my book. I especially dig your first proviso: Clerics can only raise fallen characters of the same faith or they are defrocked. Very fun. I might start incorporating this in to one of my cleric heavy campaigns. Also makes other party members much more likely to see things your way and convert to your religion if it is they're only chance at being saved from the great beyond. Cool stuff.
Me and mine run an event at Gencon every year (starting last year and continuing for several years to come we hope) called Iron Dungeonmaster. Think Iron Chef but for DMs. We give em an hour to create a brilliant adventure using three mystery ingrediants. It was a total blast at the last con, so we are expanding it for the next one. Any of you out there think you have what it takes? Show up and do it! :)
I love monks. They can do everything and they need nothing. While most players do the whole wandering "Kane" motif, I personally really enjoy a monk who is a member of a temple. He has a master, his master has other students, discipline demands that a monk respect his master's other student's and his master's master...strange social and political intrigue abounds. I particularly like dishonored monks (whether they dishonored themselves by their actions or their master's actions, or they were just framed for a dishonorable act makes no difference). There is something sad and pathetic about a wannabe monk, with law in his heart, but who couldn't cut the mustard and now has to be a fighter or rogue. That being said, I also dig the bard. I totally agree with James on this one. There are all sorts of performance types other than singing. We don't call Shakepeare "the bard" for historical reports of his lovely singing voice. I once played an elven bard whose family and clan had been eradicated. He was a very morose elf and all of his performances were tragic epic speeches and soliloquies about the decimation of his people. He was a treat to play. As far as sheer power...the cleric. Dear gods above, ye makers of 3.5 blessed the cleric with potentially more raw power than a figher of her level, not to mention the fact that she does not have to prepare cure spells, and oh, gimme a couple of handy dandy domain powers to boot. Yikes. In one of the campaigns I play in, I play a half-orc cleric of Kord. It's just not fair. I wasn't even trying to munchkin and he's mightier than any other player by far. Clerics are fun to play to, because faith and the question of how they interpret their faith instantly creates fun roleplaying opportunities. Cleric's of a death god who aren't evil are a particular fun animal to play. Just me two cents.
I am trying to figure something out for a friend of mine running a campaign with a pesky cleric who uses deathwatch to tell if anything is an illusion. Man, that sucks, especially because the campaign as he concieved it has a very important illusionist arch villian. Do illusions fool spells that detect life? I know that misdirection could, but does screen, or persistant image fool piddly little 1st level deathwatch? Any help is greatly appreciated as I also like to throw illusionists into the mix now and then.
I am wondering what kind of adventures gamers dig the most. I am a big fan of intrigue and political machinations over dungeon delve and I like bad guys you can't just bash but have to outwit first (maybe that's just George R. R. Martin mania gripping my brain). I also dig wilderness jaunts over harsh terrain (especially with a chase element, kudos John Simcoe for RtS). What about everybody else? Tundra? Deserts? Dungeons? Ancient Temples? Airships? I find the setting to be sooooo very important to an adventure. Almost as important as the villian (awesome editorial in #111, James). Just want to know what kinds of things make adventures exciting for players and DMs.
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