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The best 4e experience yet

January 5, 2010

Fights take too long. There’s no roleplaying. It’s a videogame on paper. Blah blahblah blah blah blahblah. I had a wonderful time on Sunday night with 4e, and I feel like blogging about it. Why? Because that session reinforced the true strength and selling point of 4e: simplicity to run. I was asked to run […]

A system for playing D&D with my kid

January 1, 2010

EDIT 9/2010: The new version of rpgKids is available here. ———————————————————————- If you are anything like me, your little kids are curious about D&D. I know that when game time comes at my house, my 4 year old daughter loves hanging around the table seeing what we’re doing. She’s full of questions about the minis, […]

NPC Tracker cards

December 29, 2009

I was talking to one of my players today, and he casually mentioned that sometimes there were too many NPC’s to remember in my game, and note taking is not their thing… so I decided to come up with npc cards. These are simple to use. The Photoshop version has a “hole” where the portrait […]

Warstories: Eat, Drink, and be Merry….

December 29, 2009

First, I’d like to wish all readers of this blog a belated Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. If you celebrate something else, then I hope you had a great time doing it as well. This time of year is always special no matter what you celebrate. It’s time for friends, family and fun, […]

Is the encounter worth it?

December 23, 2009

We recently played our last game of the year, I can’t believe it’s been 1 1/2 years already with 4e. I feel I’m getting into a nice groove with my Dm’ing, both on the table and off. My prep time is going quicker than ever thanks to all the digital tools at my disposal, and […]

Win a copy of The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos

December 21, 2009

EDIT: @aliothefool was selected as the winner, through a random number drawn via random.org. Congratulations! “Hey Boss… Da Plane, Da Plane. No Tattoo, it’s not an airplane, it’s The Plane Below. You see that man over there? His name is NewbieDM, and his fantasy is to give away free books. Today he’s partnering up with […]

NewbieDM Review: Portrait of a Villain – The Desire by Nevermet Press

December 16, 2009

Nevermet Press is a publisher of RPG material, made up of the RPG community at large. In their own words: Nevermet Press is a creative collective made up of scores of writers, artists, and game designers. We are a herd of gaming cats and dogs, running aimlessly from topic to topic. We leave sweet creativity […]

Improved Initiative: Running combats with the Combat Manager v1.6.0

December 15, 2009

This is the second part of the D&D 4e Combat Manager v1.6.0 overview. In my last post I introduced the program and highlighted how simple it was to build your permanent PC/Creatures library to use in your encounters. Now, I’ll quickly go through an actual encounter so you can see how useful this program can […]

Improved Initiative: D&D 4e Combat Manager v.1.6.0

December 8, 2009

This is the third article in Improved Initiative, my series highlighting various combat trackers made for 4e. I first tested out a program called Initracker, and I liked it very much. This program I will write about in this article was brought to my attention via twitter. (As an aside, if you aren’t on twitter […]

Warstories: Having a pool of characters

December 4, 2009

Warstories is the name I gave to a short series of articles meant to spark discussions and advice amongst DM’s and players. With the series, I hope to tackle common problems that crop up during the game, and see how other people deal with them at their table. This is the fifth of such articles. […]