DDE Season 4 Session 7 (03/23/2011)

There were only six of us tonight at The Gaming Goat so we did not have to break the group up into two different tables. There was not a real game map provided for this encounter, so we sourced the provided picture of the town into a spreadsheet, stretched and pulled the map into an appropriate size, and then printed and taped up a game map from there. We will apparently need that map next week as well. 

New DDI Monster Builder Tool Released

As promised Wizards officially released the new web-based Adventure Tools yesterday, which specifically meant the new Monster Builder tool (the announcement can be read here). The announcement seemed to include as much text about what the new tool wasn't as opposed to what it was. Regardless, you can find the link to the new tool - and to the still available to be downloaded but never to be updated Adventure Tools - here.

DDE Season 4 Session 6 (03/16/2011)

Another excellent night of fun at The Gaming Goat. We were missing Jorie and Dave (uh-oh, our mage!) tonight but two new players, Daniel and Devon, joined us for session six of the fourth season of DnD Encounters. The other issue of note was that this was our first session after having changed the clock for daylights savings time - it was kind of odd to start playing when it was still light outside.

Character Builder Updated (03/15)

Wizards announced today that the updated character builder tool was released. I had posted previously (here) that the update was to have been released a week ago, but apparently Wizards found a serious printing problem and opted to hold it back for another week. The Wizards formal release announcement can be read here.

DDE Season 4 Session 5 (03/09/2011)

Another Wednesday night at The Gaming Goat and another good night of DnD fun. The regulars (DM Jack, Roger, Dave, Don, Robin, and Steve) were all present along with those that have missed a few of the sessions (Tim, Jorie, and Dustin), plus we picked up another first timer (Zach) last night. That meant we had nine players, so Robin decided to sit out for the night. Eight players would still be a challenge though, but after some discussion we decided to run as one table for tonight since there really wasn't a second DM that was prepared to run for the evening. At least two of our players announced they would miss next week, so we'll play it by ear for now.

News and Links

This is GM Weekend (Friday, March 4 though Monday, March 7). Online game stores are offering most of their PDF formatted products at 25% off. I have purchased from rpgnow.com and goodmangames.com in the past, but I know there are others. If there was something out there you ever wanted that was obscure, hard to find, out-of-date, out-of-print, or just long forgotten then this is a way to fill out your library with a little savings included.

DDE Season 4 Session 4 (03/02/2011)

Our mage was back this week, but our druid was sick. A new player, Dustin, joined us and played the rogue. The DM recapped last week for us - we had entered the courtyard to ensure it was safe, had been attacked by three ocher jelly's, but by the end of the night had defeated the jelly's and had inspected the four crumbling turrets in each corner of the runs of Castle Inverness.

DDE Season 4 Session 3 (02/23/2011)

We were missing our mage this night but we added Jorie, who played the Elven Rogue Keira. The game play this night did run a bit long - OK, it ran really long. We got off to a late start to begin with, some of the players were late, and I asked too many questions, but our DM patiently led us through the encounter and we had a good time. Also, one of the players had rolled up a Druid character with a wolf familiar - the wolf turned out to be very useful during the encounter, but we did have to consult the rulebook several times to ensure character/familiar actions were being played correctly.

Essentials Rules Point

For my 100th blog post (100! woo-hoo!) I wanted to walk through a wording and rules issue that came up at last week's DDE session. While the issue caused no rancor, the wording of the powers seemed a bit obtuse at the time so the DM and I agree to go with it as was last week and to then discuss it further outside the game session. I'm fine with that. I'm sure I played it wrong to begin with, but the rules as written severely diminish the power below the way I originally read and envisioned it.

DDE Season 4 Session 2 (02/16/2011)

Wednesday night at the Gaming Goat and all of the players from last week were back this week, plus Tim joined us to play one of the pre-gen characters (Valenae, the Eladrin Cleric Warpriest). Besides myself, Steve and Robin had made up their own characters via the Essentials Character Builder tool, although we all chose to build the same type of character that we played during week 1.