The Chaos Scar - Best of D&D 4e

The Best of D&D 4th Edition, Part 2

Wait! Be sure to also read Part 1 of Best of D&D 4th Edition.

The 3rd Season of D&D Encounters (which later became Adventurer’s League) introduced the Chaos Scar in Keep on the Borderlands: A Season of Serpents. This Encounters season was a thematic hommage to the original B2 - Keep on the Borderlands module from 1980. It was not written as a conversion of the original module, as the Caves of Chaos were replaced by the Chaos Scar, a much larger ravine created hundreds of years prior by the crashing of a chaos-infused meteor from the Far Realms into the lands.

The Season of Serpents module was divided into 5 chapters, with 4 distinct 2-hour scenarios per chapter. The plot outlines a power struggle between Zehir and Tiamat cultists which involves machinations to control the Keep itself. Due to the D&D Encounters format (and the limitations thereof), the adventure is a fairly linear checklist of pre-defined combats to be run at game stores in order to introduce new players to the game. But, it is a fun adventure and the Chaos Scar setting itself was also supported through articles in the Dungeon Magazine PDFs, which immensely strengthens the overall utility of this module. The right DM can cobble the D&D Encounters module along with all of the supporting materials into a nice low-level sandbox campaign.

Reavers of Harkenwold - Best of D&D 4e

The Best of D&D 4th Edition, Part 1

If you skipped D&D 4th Edition for whatever reason, you missed out on some amazing adventure content. Wizards of the Coast was testing out a different adventure designs with a publishing layout format requiring individual encounters within an adventure to fit on two pages only (mini-map included).

This format had its pros and cons, but despite its eventual abandonment, the format appears to have wrestled the creative juices out of the designers at the time (or perhaps in spite of it). The longs and short of it is that some of the adventures written for D&D 4th Edition are some of the best I’ve ever run over the course of many editions (for whatever reasons).

In this multi-part article, I will detail some of the best adventure content to come out of the core product and Dungeon Magazine teams that can be adapted to your D&D 5th edition (or any edition, really) game.

Low Cost D&D Terrain

Some simple 3D elements can make your table pop!

People who enjoy watching live-play D&D streams will notice some of the amazing terrain and dungeon set-ups that are often featured on these shows. There are products like Dwarven Forge and Miniature Building Authority that would make anyone oooh and aaah over the amazing creations that DMs can bring to the table… and there's a temptation to think we need to be as visually impressive in order to run a quality game.

But those props come at a relatively steep cost that make most game masters pause.

Do you really need those kinds of fancy props? Absolutely not… but sometimes you still want to put something out on the table that makes your players go “Wow… Cool!” You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to do it. Here are some cheap and easy options to spiff up your game.

GM 101: The D&D Quest Log

Campaigns have lots of moving parts. There are likely dozens of NPCs, a couple main quest hooks, and several side quest hooks. There are also clues, rumors, random bits of lore, and locations of significance that your players will stumble upon over the course of months. It's hard enough to remember what happened in the game 2 sessions ago, much less 3 or 4 months ago.

Notes in a quest log can be short and sweet.

How do they keep track of all of that?

The Quest Log

One of the biggest player challenges (and probably one of the simplest to solve) revolves around player note-taking. Ideally, there's at least one player at the table who is keeping a set of notes written and organized for easy reference... And yet, remembering (or finding) the information the PC's need, even when there are extensive notes, is often still a chore. 

One of my players keeps extraordinarily detailed notes. So detailed that the Google document is now dozens and dozens of pages long. I think he may be planning a novelization... But even with such extensive notes, something as simple as finding all the recent NPC hooks is a daunting task.

To simplify the burden, the GM should keep some simple colored index cards on hand during the sessions. Each time the PCs get an clue, plot, or quest hook, simple jot a couple quick notes down an hand it to the player. It's as easy a 4 lines.

Short hook description, NPC name, NPC location, notes... Perhaps a date stamp for organization. If you use a variety of colors, you can even use the card's color as part of the organization. Yellow for NPC quests, pink for plot clues, blue for interesting locations (with no specific quest attached)... Or anything along those lines. 

EDIT: For those that use a wiki and/or notebook, this method would not necessarily replace those notes, but enhance them with a stack of quest cards right at the table during play for easy reference.

Again, keep it short and simple. The idea is not for you to write all their notes for them, but to give them an easily organized visual reference for specific hooks to which they can add more notes. It should take no more than a minute or two to jot the quest or plot hook down, and your players will have a quick reference for all sorts of happenings in your game world.

GM 101, Ep 2: Problem Players and the Social Contract

If social media is any indication, newer game masters have a lot of issues with disruptive players in their game. These issues are not difficult to resolve if you and your players understand the what the social contract is and how it applies to in-game and out of game behavior at the table. Here's advice on how you should manage disruptive players at your gaming table.



  0:00   Introduction
  0:55   What is the Social Contract?
  1:11   (moment of dementia)
  1:40   Rule 1 - Don't be a jerk.
  1:54   Don't do these things.
  2:22   D&D is a team sport.
  4:44   Don't be "that guy" (or gal).
  5:50   "It's what my character would do."
  6:52   How to manage the problem player as the DM.
  7:00   Don't "punish" the player. Talk to them.
  7:25   Example of how to approach the problem player.
10:20   Consensual in-game conflict
11:30   The DM also facilitates the social interactions
12:05   Personal anecdote of problem players
14:30   Summary points

Is Gloomhaven overrated?

Gloomhaven pops up on my social media radar every couple weeks where inevitably someone asks “Is it really that good or is it all hype?”  

And inevitably there are two camps that answer.

Pro-GH: It’s the awesomest, amazingest best game ever. There’s a reason it’s #1 on BGG!

Anti-GH: Oh God. It’s soooo over-hyped and overrated. It’s just a boring/grindy RPG wanna-be card game riding the Cult-of-New wave.

Ok, perhaps a bit of hyperbole there, but the truth, as always, lies somewhere in between. I don’t usually write about board games, but this game in particular is RPG adjacent and I find these discussions on social media do very little to help the potential buyer know whether they might like it or not, so I’m adding my (hopefully) more measured response to the discussion.

So the question I answer is really “Given my game preferences, will I like Gloomhaven?”

D&D: The eSports Conniption

D&D social media pooped its pants the other day when the Hasbro CEO referred to “eSports” in a conversation about Magic, D&D, and their respective profitability.

So, first thing’s first. Unknot your panties and clean out your shorts.

First of all, if you actually watch the entire interview and look at context (I know, I know, it’s so much more fun to get mad about out-of-context quotes…), the Hasbro CEO was discussing the digital brands of Magic the Gathering and D&D… In other words, video games and such… not tabletop. He also specifically mentioned viewers watching competitive Magic the Gathering.

It’s not unimaginable that we might see PvP-style multiplayer video games with either Magic or D&D branding. Recall that the WotC President, Chris Cocks, comes from a video gaming background. Video games are high on his list of priorities. But hopefully something a bit more exciting than last year's Dungeon Chess (unfortunately, not kidding here).

Second, let’s pretend for a moment that he was talking about tabletop D&D -- to be clear, he wasn’t. Dungeons & Dragons has a long, long history of tournament adventures created for conventions.

To the Aid of Falx
The Egg of the Phoenix
The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
The Ghost Tower of Inverness
White Plume Mountain

The list goes on and on. Given the popularity of D&D streams, it’s not out of realm of possibility that adventures like these could be run as one-shot tournament streams for viewers, alongside longer campaigns like Critical Role.

So, take a pill and relax. You are literally already watching D&D on YouTube and Twitch. Tournament style D&D is just kickin’ it old school.