newbiedm

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NewbieDM turns a year old today!

September 10, 2009

A quick post to say that my little blog turns a year old today. In all honesty, I never expected it to last more than a few weeks, given my lack of attention span, but here we are. It’s my sincere hope that I’ve at least helped out one or two of you new dm’s […]

Skill Challenges… yet again…

September 5, 2009

This may be like my 5th post about this topic. I’m not sure why the thought of skill challenges reared its ugly head yet again as I was sitting at work, but I thought of something that hadn’t occurred to me. While the DMG urges you to lay out the challenge to your players (as […]

A group for New Dm’s on Wizbook

September 4, 2009

I hate to spam my own site with this sort of stuff, but perhaps some of you new dm’s out there may be interested. I’ve gone ahead and created a group dedicated to us noobs over at the Wizard’s Community site, lovingly nicknamed Wizbook. The group is called ‘The New DM’s Group’ (very vanilla, yet […]

Improved Initiative

September 4, 2009

I finally had the chance to sit down and play some D&D this week, my first post-Gencon session. We had a blast, and as my players are quickly approaching the end of the heroic tier, events in my campaign are coming to a head. A good time was had by all, even if all we […]

Advice for Newbie DM’s: The Competitor DM vs. the Storyteller DM

August 29, 2009

This is a story about two different types of DM’s. One loves to DM his players through really tough and deadly encounters, pumps his fists when a player goes down, and curses when his die rolls badly. The other DM is crafting a story, and together with the players, they are all telling a great […]

PHB3 Speculation – Skill Powers (What the heck?)

August 29, 2009

So the newest editorial calendar for September over at WOTC shows that on monday the 7th of September we’ll be treated to: Debut: Skill Powers PHB3. Okay. What the heck is that?! My feeble mind won’t presume to speculate, so I leave that up to you guys. I can’t wait to see what you come […]

Star Wars scroll for my SW: Dawn of Defiance game.

August 26, 2009

I’ve decided to complement the current love affair I’m having with D&D with a little Star Wars gaming. I’ve been a huge fan of the SW RPG for years, from the days of the old West End Game version of the game, and having played Saga Edition at Gencon reminded me of what a fun […]

Open Game Table available as a PDF

August 25, 2009

Just a quick post to let readers know that the book “Open Game Table: The Anthology of RPG Blogs” is now available as a pdf over at RPGNow. Open Game Table was released in print format last March, and now sees its first pdf release. For those of you who aren’t aware, the book is […]

Imposing a :30 time limit on 4th ed. players

August 24, 2009

This posting stems from my previous one, where I highlighted some items bought at Gencon for my game. One of them was a :30 hourglass, which I plan on implementing at my table as a house rule. Each player, on his turn, will have to decide what his action will be in :30 or less. […]

Gencon knick knacks for 4th Ed. D&D

August 22, 2009

I wanted to share with you some of my purchases from Gencon for my 4th Ed. D&D game, with the hopes that it may help someone out there starting to play the game. 4th Ed., above all others, is in my opinion a game that lends itself very well to this type of thing, and […]