So…it’s Friday and you’d rather be reading gaming stuff than working, right?
Put on your pink cowboy hat and enjoy our first Gnome Rodeo (or link roundup, if you prefer the boring term).
GMing Regulars
→ Dungeon Mastering: Wish you were reading more RSS feeds about gaming? Holy crap does Yax read a lot of feeds! I feel inadequate.
→ Musings of the Chatty DM: Chatty delves into ways to handle a big reveal in your campaign without making your players want to tear you into tiny pieces. He’s also done a thorough review of Keep on the Shadowfell, the first D&D 4e adventure (which includes quickstart rules).
→ Roleplaying Tips: Issue #401 is subtitled “Tips to bring the party back together and keep it that way,” and includes a great section on considering your players’ familiarity with your game’s genre. Also, don’t miss the oodles of five-room dungeons.
GMing All Over the Place
→ ars ludi: You should read everything Ben Robbins has ever written about GMing, but start with these two recent posts: Be Interested and Bad Trap Syndrome.
→ Critical Hits: The Pain of Campaigning IV: Put a Little Politics in it gets its peanut butter/politics in my D&D/chocolate.
→ Encoded Designs: Our own DNAphil is too modest to pimp, but The Hard and Soft Skills of GMing is superb.
→ The Game Master Foundation: Tact-Tiles aren’t being produced anymore, and that really sucks. What to do? Make your own Tact-Tiles.
→ Monte Cook’s LiveJournal: In which Monte modestly pretends he won’t be packing Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG with awesome by calling himself a “rules consultant.” (Via Chatty DM.)
→ Robin Laws’s LiveJournal: On changing his mind about a GMing technique after six years: “If I haven’t changed anything about the way I run games in that time I’m a sorry excuse for a GM.” That’s great advice.
→ Treasure Tables Forums: Not new, but underexposed: longcoat000’s excellent series Worldbuilding in 10 easy steps.
Win Stuff
→ The DMs Blog, currently housed at dndreviews.com, is planning a relaunch with a new domain name — and holding a contest to pick the name. The winner gets a D&D 4e core book or a $25 Amazon certificate.
→ Over on Dungeon Mastering, Yax is giving you a chance to win all three D&D 4e core books when they come out — all you have to do is subscribe to his RSS feed and get lucky. (Wait, that didn’t come out quite right…)
Thanks!
A big thank you to everyone who linked to us after launch day (that I could find): Dungeon Mastering, theRPGsite, RPG Blog II, The Code, The Geek Life Project, Geek’s Dream Girl, Jeff’s Gameblog, wallwalker’s LiveJournal, Musings, Triominos.ru and (by way of our announcement) EN World. The gnaughty gnomish gnurses, uh, “dungeonpunk” gnome pics you requested are in the mail.
Got a favorite GMing link to share, recent or otherwise? Tell us in the comments!
It stinks they don’t make any more Tact-Tiles. I have two sets, and they’ll have to last me. I also have my flip map, but I really like the sturdiness and modularity of Tact-Tiles.
Cool link on making your own. Good to know there’s backup out there.
Gawd I love dungeonpunk pictures!
I really, really hope someone out there is feverishly working away on bringing Tact-Tiles — or a product comparable in every way (as IMO, Tact-Tiles are all but perfect) — back. It seems like a no-brainer. Everyone who uses them loves them, and not nearly enough GMs have access to them.
Is anyone else pondering what kind of BBQ one could have after killing a sausage golem? We just need a dire boar and maybe a dire turkey and we’re in business!
*giggles at the thought of a dire turkey*
Martin–I totally agree. I don’t know of many folks who DON’T love them after using them. I like the sturdiness–i know if someone knocks them, everything won’t fall over.
A couple odd contributions:
Over at the WotC website, Wolfgang Baur wrote a pretty neat series of articles on adventure design. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/ab) The one on treasure is excellent; scroll down past the handy, but very D&D 3rd edition-centric discussion on treasure distribution, and there’s a good bit of advice on ways to make your treasure more interesting.
And if you like random generators (who doesn’t?) there’s a whole list of ’em over at Jame’s Random Generators: http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/generators/index.php
What