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The importance of a ship in your Star Wars game

August 23, 2010 by newbiedm

The ships in a Star Wars RPG serve a real clear purpose beside just getting your party from point A to point B. And yes, that’s a very important purpose, considering that unlike D&D, where the party marches for a few hours, and arrives at their destination, in SW a party has to cross the […]

Dark Sun for the new DM

August 17, 2010 by newbiedm

So you’re a newbie DM, and you’re trying to decide whether or not you are going to run a little bit of Dark Sun for your group. Here are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind if you do, as the standard fantasy fare won’t really apply to the world of Athas. And […]

Using the 3 Act Structure in your D&D game

July 30, 2010 by newbiedm

I figured that before Gencon, I would do some writing about two subjects that I love: movies and D&D. So sit back, relax, and let me tell you about crafting stories for your game following a tried and true formula, the Hollywood Screenplay. Before I go on though, I’d like to say that while I […]

My 4e Sweet Spot

July 27, 2010 by newbiedm

I had been running a campaign since the launch of 4e with 7-8 people. I figured with more people, I would always have a nicely populated table, considering there’s always someone who can’t make it, or his wife needs him for something, or whatever other circumstance will crop up. If a few people missed a […]

Prepping online maps for Gametable use

June 18, 2010 by newbiedm

Here’s a quick guide for using jpegs of freely available maps on Gametable. It is very simple, and not a lot of experience manipulating graphics is required. I’ve written a bit about my experience with Gametable before, so I won’t get into it here. What I will say is that if you are intimidated by […]

A couple of more neat finds…

June 8, 2010 by newbiedm

Every so often I like to post links to neat things I find online that you can use in your campaign. So let’s go… Calendar Generator: I really like this tool, it’s basically on online calendar generator. You tell it the name of your calendar, the name of the days and months, how many days […]

Magic Item Side Quest

June 1, 2010 by newbiedm

The following article comes via Tim, from the Random Thought Parade blog. He had a neat idea about creating side quests for the acquisition of magical items, and he asked me if he could share it with readers of my blog. Enjoy! Magic Item Side Quests Powerful magic items are big rewards for players – loot […]

A simple tool for online gaming

May 12, 2010 by newbiedm

I found this neat website for those of you (like me) who may be interested in throwing down some old school D&D online gaming one day. It’s an online shareable whiteboard for use by up to 6 people. Perfect for a D&D party and a DM. The website is called Scriblink, and it works really […]

Mapping For Me

April 20, 2010 by newbiedm

I’ve decided to not complicate my life with the mapping of my world. You see, ever since I started DM’ing I’ve wanted a kick ass map of my homebrew world, Elderyn. The graphic on my old header was a map I created using Autorealm and a Photoshop plugin that created the elevation and relief on […]

Analog Initiative Tracker for Heroic Tier

April 18, 2010 by newbiedm

If you are a newbie DM, and are having problems tracking and getting the hang of initiative management, this may be of some help. I created this “calendar” type initiative tracker to work with tokens, where you would just place a token representing characters and monsters in their appropriate squares, based on their roll. You […]