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300. And no, not muscled men with hard abs.

October 14, 2010 by newbiedm

And here’s my 300th post on NewbieDM.com. Whew, what a ride. I recently said all the sappy things you say in times like this, when the blog turned 2, so I’ll tone it down here. What I’d rather do is give a top 10 list of my favorite posts out of the 299 that qualify. […]

Warstories: Play Your Guy Right!

October 13, 2010 by newbiedm

It seems I started a little bit of a mess on twitter recently by tweeting this: “What I want to see more of now in #dnd are builds for character classes that break the roles, like the slayer did & the ranger will as well. I want role to be a choice, not a label […]

Return of the Minicast

October 5, 2010 by newbiedm

Well… return is a harsh word, as the Minicast never went away, it was just on a summer break. But it’s back, so all is right in the world now, call off the search and rescue. Really though, I took a break from the Minicast over the summer. I had a lot of stuff going […]

Dungeons & Newbie DM’s

September 29, 2010 by newbiedm

There’s been a lot of chatter in the online D&D community about dungeons. Some present the argument that dungeons are a very important part of the game, while others make the argument that Dungeons are so far removed from a players real world experience that they cripple role-playing. As always, I look at this from […]

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 […]

Eureka! by the writers from Gnome Stew

June 28, 2010 by newbiedm

Back in April, I wrote about Georges Polti’s wonderfully inspiring “The 36 Dramatic Situations”, a writers tool offering 36 types of plots for a story, or in the case of our hobby, adventures. From the moment I read it, I thought “how cool would it be if somebody adapted all these to an RPG?”. I […]

Minicast Episode 11 released

June 25, 2010 by newbiedm

I’ve released a new Minicast, where I’m joined by Jeff Greiner, host of “The Tome Show” and creator of the Temporary Hitpoints D&D blog. Here are the show notes: In this episode of the Minicast, I am joined by Jeff Greiner, host of The Tome Show, a long running D&D podcast. Jeff is also founder […]

As the world scales…..

June 23, 2010 by newbiedm

A conversation came up the other day on Twitter about how DM’s treat the world around their PC’s, in as far as the level of threats that surround them. Is every enemy that appears, and every area the PC’s discover at the player’s level? I was fairly surprised at the different responses that came about, […]