Nobody Makes It Out Alive Free PDF

So one of the things that I've gotten a lot of request for over the last couple of month is a PDF copy of the short story Nobody Makes It Out Alive which followed an actual game that occurred. Today I'm happy to announce that I have finally gotten it completed with some revisions. Nothing major was done that might change the story. Clarifications to the text were made, a few misspellings were corrected, and the grammar was cleaned up to make sure that the story flowed better overall.

This story is still under my copyright and cannot be included in anyone else's publications without first receiving permission from me. That said you are free to share it with as many people as you like so long as it is linked back here and there are no alterations to the document or the text.

Hope you all enjoy it!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FILE

Or

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ORIGINAL ONLINE VERSION

Free Dungeons & Drunkards PDF!

You know how I mentioned earlier that we had been working on one last part to our Dungeons and Drunkards series? Well here it is! This is a combined PDF of the entire series in a single place that will allow you to take it anywhere! It features all of our articles in an easy to read format without all of the junk that comes along from jumping from one site to the next and having to wait on it all to load!

I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to thank each of my fellow contributors to the series for all their hard work. +Jens D. kept us on track when it seemed like no one else could or would and his mastery of the rules made his article a perfect starting point for the series. +Sean Bircher lent us his brilliant mind to create all of the monsters you find here and was always the first person available when anyone needed to talk about where things were going. +Stelios V. Perdios was a source of inspiration when it seemed like we were hitting a wall and reading his thoughts most assuredly helped inspire my own writing if not all of ours. We hope you enjoy reading the PDF of our series as much as we've all enjoyed doing it! 

DOWNLOAD THE PDF!

Dungeons and Drunkards

Part 1: A pub crawl through assorted editions of D&D (and some homebrew) by +Jens D. 

Part 2: The Dance of the Tarantella by Charles Akins

Part 3: Boozing it Up in 5e by +Sean Bircher
  Part 4: When the DM Gets Drunk by +Stelios V. Perdios
Part 5: Drunken Beasts by +Sean Bircher 
Part 6: B-E-N-D-E-R! by +Sean Bircher
Part 7: Wine Angel by +Sean Bircher
Part 8: The Drunk Girl and the Game Master by +Stelios V. Perdios
The Complete Dungeons & Drunkards PDF

If you liked this project be sure to check out the next one that's just been announced! 
We're still accepting new people for it!

Gary Gygax's GM Prep Checklist

Gary Gygax photo by Thomas Hand Keefe

Over the course of the last few week's I've been reading Gary Gygax's Role-Playing Mastery in my Let's Read series. The book has been a hodgepodge of interesting ideas and advice mixed with some really harsh criticisms. 

One of the more interesting bits of advice for Game Masters came in Chapter 3: the Master GM when Gary outlined the process for preparing a campaign prior to actual play. Now he did this in the form of a narrative exposition of the Game Master's process but I liked it enough that I'm going to outline the process in a checklist format so that I can use it in my own preparations. 

You're all welcome to use it if you'd like to do so too. 

Gary Gygax's Game Master 

Preparation Checklist.

1.) Determine the genre for play

2.) Establish the setting for the game (for example, turn of the century San Antonio).

3.) Create the main goal of the quest

          3a.) Establish a reasonable circumstance for the quest

          3b.) Determine the motivation of the antagonists in the quest

          3c.) Develop the motivations of possible allies in the quest

4.) Draw a ficticous map for the location with special buildings, important places and non-player characters, secret locations, hidden exits, and the like noted on the map.

5.) Create several sub-plots that can be featured in your scenario.

6.) Consider the competing factions that might be involved in the scenario and flesh them out.

7.) Provide a series of false leads to be given to your players.

8.) Create a mastermind behind the antagonistic elements in the scenario.

         8a.) Ensure that he is as intelligent, if not more so, than the players' characters

          8b.) Make this master villain aware of the players' actions and responsive to them.

9.) Have the mastermind actively plot against the players' characters.

10.) Establish all of the mastermind's ancellary factors

          10a.) Where is his headquarters?

          10b.) Does he have additional strongholds? Where are they located?

          10c.) Who are his lieutenants?

          10d.) How many people work for him?

          10e.) What is his ultimate plan?

          10f.) What are his individual goals and objectives involved in that plan?

11.) What other locations are your players' characters likely to visit in the immediate future?

          11a.) How long does it take to travel there?

          11b.) What is the cost of traveling there?

          11c.) Re-answer questions 4, 5, 6, and 7 for each of the new locations.

12.) Now consider all the variables you haven't accounted for yet and attempt to bring them to account.

The list is pretty comprehensive for what you should be able to account for as a Dungeon Master. I've yet to actually accomplish all of those goals prior to my first play session, but I'm thinking that I'm going to attempt to do so with the new campaign I'm going to be launching after the first of the year. 

I have a feeling that I'm always going to just wing number 12 though.

A Quick Reference to Deadly Diseases

Last week I asked if anyone else was sick and tired of the pitiful excuses for disease that we have in our games. The response both here on the blog and on +Google was that we're all absolutely done with that sort of meaningless mess. So after reading everyone's suggestions and comments I started working on my own guidelines. What follows is my results. I hope that it can help some of you guys out there.

As always you can download a free PDF of the file!

Strangely it seems that the colors on the French Disease guy are getting messed up on Google Drive. I have no idea how to fix that as everything is okay on my end but not on theirs. Hopefully it looks right when you download it.

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If you liked this file you can find more free stuff over on the Free Resources Page!

Skill Checks: Aid Another

This is the start of a series of articles focused on the Skill System from Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons presenting alternative uses, methods, and readings of the skills as presented in the d20 System Reference Document – because it’s free, editable, and I can provide my own flavor text.

Today we’re going to be talking about the Aid Another mechanic in the game. This mechanic is one of several that can be used in combat and in skill challenges; it’s also one that in its original form continuously got forgotten by my players during our games. Which is a shame because it was damned useful.

As things stand currently you can Aid Another player in Combat when they attempt to “. . . attack or defend by distracting or interfering with an opponent. If you’re in position to make a melee attack on an opponent that is engaging a friend in melee combat, you can attempt to aid your friend as a standard action. You make an attack roll against AC 10. If you succeed, your friend gains either a +2 bonus on his next attack roll against that opponent or a +2 bonus to AC against that opponent’s next attack (your choice), as long as that attack comes before the beginning of your next turn. Multiple characters can aid the same friend, and similar bonuses stack . . .” (Aid Another, Combat)

While in Skill Checks you can Aid Another player “. . . achieve success on his or her skill check by making the same kind of skill check in a cooperative effort. If you roll a 10 or higher on your check, the character you are helping gets a +2 bonus to his or her check, as per the rule for favorable conditions. (You can’t take 10 on a skill check to aid another.) In many cases, a character’s help won’t be beneficial, or only a limited number of characters can help at once . . . In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a task that your character couldn’t achieve alone . . .” (Aid Another, Skill)

That sort of functionality with Aid Another is fantastic, but I was convinced that it could be improved without breaking the game. I've tested out a couple different methods, but so far the method that has been received the best by my players is the Adding Dice Mechanic.

Adding Dice Mechanic for Skill Checks Outside of Combat

Instead of having each player roll a modified d20 skill check to determine how many bonuses are applied to the primary player have each player who wishes to help give a d20 to the primary player. That player then rolls all the d20s, taking the highest roll and applying his modifier bonuses to it. For example, Tom wants to build a boat and four of his fellow players would like to help him in doing so. Tom then rolls 5d20 (1 for Tom and 1 for each of his four friends) taking the highest result and adding his modifiers to determine success.

I vastly prefer using the Adding Dice Mechanic over the original method because it provides the primary player with multiple opportunities to succeed without the ballooning bonus effect of all those players choosing to help. Now partially that’s a direct result of running for large groups throughout the majority of my time as a Dungeon Master (my largest group had 20 players, playing twice a week, for a year); but mostly it’s because this method is just a lot of fun.

Now the thing that I have done to prevent this from becoming abused is that each player who wishes to take advantage of the mechanic has to come up with a narrative way to help in the task’s resolution. So if you’re building a boat then Tom is going to be lead on the project with Michael and Mary helping him out by double checking the plans, getting the materials, and helping put the damned thing together. It has allowed for some of the more creative solutions to problems that I have ever encountered.

I hope some of you guys and gals reading this can use it to your advantage in your own games. If you do, let me know how it turns out.

An Easy Sculpture Creation Guide

I’ve been contemplating some of the Dungeon features that always seem to populate our worlds and yet rarely have more than a passing thought as to their appearance. Then +JD Clement over on +Google put out a call for some help on a random Statue table. So I decided to make an easy to use Sculpture chart as it gave a bit more variety and was more fun. 

Hope you guys and gals find it useful. 

You can download it as a PDF too!

If you liked this resource you can find more by clicking on the Free ResourceLink.

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An Easy Sculpture Creation Guide by Charles Akins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at charlesakins@hotmail.com.

What is Duke Torlin Silvershield Doing While Everything is Going Down?

Earlier this month I started preparing to run the Murder in Balder’s Gate Launch Encounter for my Dyvers group to see if they would like to play the entire scenario.  So far I've posted
A Quick and Easy Crowd Mechanic and Where is Imbralym Skood to help in the play of this encounter series. 

I designed today's resource because of two of my players: the Master Planner and the Mighty She. They're the sort of players who will notice every little thing that happens in the background of an encounter and will actively investigate the strange little happenings that are meaningless to most, but often prove pivotal in the end.  This is a tool to help Dungeon Masters with some quick responses to players who are trying to figure out where Duke Torlin Silvershield disappears off to during the assassination attempt. 

You can download these in PDF! 

If you liked this resource you can find more under the Campaigns Page.

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Murder in Balder's Gate and all the characters present in this resource are the intellectual properties of Wizards of the Coast. Zu'ur is the intellectual property of M.A.R. Barker. This resource in no way attempts to take credit for, or circumvent, their claim to those intellectual properties.