EDIT FRIDAY NIGHT 5/29/09 11:59:59PM -The contest is now over! Random.org tells me the winner is Aaron, who is a big fan of the momentum bonus and the counter making tutorial! Aaron, I’ll be reaching out to you soon. For all of you that entered, thank you for taking the time, and thank you for visiting my blog. I appreciate every single reader that takes the time to read what I have to write. It is truly humbling.
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And I arrive at my 100th posting a lot faster than I expected. Let’s see if I can crank out 100 more. But enough about me, let’s get to the useful stuff. I’m going to link some of my articles that I feel benefit new DM’s everywhere, right here on this posting so they are all in one spot. These will fall in order from most recent to the earliest.
Are you a new DM looking for players?
Bribe your players with bonus +1 or +2 tokens.
New DM Starter Kit (counters, maps, etc. for Kobold Hall DMG adventure)
Are you a new DM and want to play at Paragon or Epic tier right off the bat? Read this first.
Be careful not to make your PC’s survival to important to your plot!
Introducing new PC’s through side plots and adventures.
Masterplan (software for the 4th Ed. DM; not mine btw…)
Song lyrics and your campaign (one of my favorite articles)
Podcasts can be a newbie DM’s best tool.
An idea for tracking conditions.
A tutorial that teaches you how to create your own tokens or pogs.
There you go, a nice sampling of 15 articles. If you are a new DM, this should keep you busy for a while. And now, on to the contest.
All you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling me which of these articles you find the most useful. The contest will run for a week, until next friday night at 11:59pm eastern. The prize will be a randomly selected 2nd Ed. D&D book from my stack of old books. What? That’s all I’ve got…
EDIT: WAIT! IT’S NOT ALL I’VE GOT!!!
Daniel Perez, aka The Gamer Traveler, who also runs Highmoon Games has generously offered to add on to the prize pool. Check this out, courtesy of Highmoon Games:
- A download of all the MonkeyGod Enterprises adventures and sourcebooks for d20 3.X on PDF (22 products, $130 value)
- A copy of the book Ronin: Oriental Adventures in Tokugawa Japan.
WAIT! THERE”S MORE!!! Obsdian Portal has generously offered a 6 month membership!! That’s a $25 value. Obsidian Portal is a great campaign wiki tool and this is a great prize as well!
This has now become a real contest. Make sure you get your comments in.
And I hope you enjoy the collection of links.
www. Newbie DM .com 
Ameron
May 22, 2009
Congratulations on your 100th post. I really liked your recent article: Bribe your players with bonus +1 or +2 tokens. It’s a very simple idea that really appealed to me. I can’t wait to try it out with my group.
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler
May 22, 2009
Congrats on the milestone. Tell you what, why don’t I throw in some stuff to the contest prize pool? I’ll email you.
Aaron
May 22, 2009
I’m a huge fan of the momentum bonus like Ameron, and I also liked the tutorial for making your own pogs. I was looking for a way out of buying miniatures, and your article was great!
Aaron
Wyatt
May 22, 2009
The tutorial for printing battlemaps was amazingly useful. It made everything much more simple than I thought it would be.
Lebrule
May 22, 2009
New DM here, I have been taking a group of five Newbie DM players through a campaign. Your article “Advice for the new DM” has been a great help. Keep up the great work. Congrats
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler
May 22, 2009
🙂
Youseph
May 22, 2009
100 Posts! Nice! Your website has been a big help to me as a new DM myself. Lots of thanks to you!
Chris Cumming
May 22, 2009
Congrats on making it to 100, I look forward to reading what you’ve got planned. Personally I love the printing maps that Wyatt pointed out. I’ve been able to use them on Maptools for online gaming, but was having to hand draw them on my battlemap for my f2f game. Not any more!
dysonlogos
May 22, 2009
Bonus Tokens for the win. I’ve really found that most players like tactile things that make them feel rewarded. I’ve started playing in a CyberPunk game where the GM hands out luck as poker chips at the beginning of the game and then during game play he hands out “awesome” tokens that are treated just like luck (the CyberPunk 2020 rules set has the Luck stat which I think is brilliant). Players basically compete to get these “awesome” tokens during play, which really ramps up the level of play.
Stuart
May 22, 2009
Well done on reaching 100 posts. 🙂
Your article on printing battlemats is going to come in handy in the near future! 🙂
mike
May 22, 2009
Hey NewbieDM, Congratulations on 100th post.
My favorite post so far is “A tutorial that teachers you how to print battle maps from Dungeon or printed adventures at a 1″ scale.”
Please don’t enter me in the contest though, i just wanted to wish you good luck on #200
xerosided
May 22, 2009
‘grats newbie. As you know, I’m a big fan of your tokens tutorial.
Alex
May 23, 2009
The tutorial on making character/monster tokens was by far and away my favorite article. It’s so simple, they look great, they’re cheap, and they’re durable. It was the kick in the rear I needed to get my mind thinking creatively about cheap solutions for really good looking game props, which my players can’t get enough of. It also inspired my creative mind into motion and got a set of DIY dungeon tiles made up looking and feeling just like the WotC tiles.
Questing GM
May 23, 2009
Your tutorial on creating tokens and printing out the maps from Dungeon are the most helpful to me (even though I haven’t been able to try them out yet) but your advice for new DMs to me feels spot on!
Congrats on the 100th post btw. 😉
Zog
May 25, 2009
Congrats on the 100th posts! Hope to be reading your 200th soon!
Ravyn
May 26, 2009
Congrats on hitting 100!
For me, the most useful article would be the adding of new PCs; it’s the kind I’d send my readers to, as it can be applied to any system that holds still long enough rather than just D&D.
Keep up the good work.
pjstoneson
May 26, 2009
Tough one, lots of useful articles. Congrats on that, and on reaching 100 articles.
I’ll have to go with the Starter Kit, though it’s close with the article on printing the maps at 1″ scale.
Scott
May 27, 2009
Congratulations on the 100th post, that’s a big milestone. I don’t doubt that you’ll reach 200 with ease. You’ve had a lot of really good articles over the past few months.
It’s hard to choose your best post from among those. Both tutorials are pretty useful. In the end, though, I’m going to go with the New DM Starter Kit. This is not only an example of those tutorials in practice, but it’s a practical resource that would be immediately useful in a real game. It’s something I would have loved to have as a new GM — and something I’d still find useful today. It makes introducing new players to the game (either new to D&D or new to 4e) a snap.
jason
May 28, 2009
I really enjoyed the +1 +2 tokens. I like giving my players reasons to try something crazy as they turn in a +2 token.
roborus
May 28, 2009
Congrats, and most of the content’s been useful. My goes with token-making tutorial.
In the future I’d like to see a tutorial for DMs on how not to roll teh sux with dice. Just saying.
Icosahedrophilia
May 29, 2009
Well, I have to say that my favorite of those posts is the one about podcasts, because Jeff plugged Icosahedrophilia in the comments thread. 🙂
sarahdarkmagic
May 29, 2009
I really liked the article on making tokens. I don’t have money to buy minis on top of everything else (new to playing and DMing) so they are great for me.
Steve
May 29, 2009
So far, the one I’ve found the most useful is the bribing of players with a +1 or +2 token. I’m soon to be implementing this to promote ROLEplaying.
Zencorners
May 29, 2009
Awesome piece of work. Love the Masterplan link.