I’ve talked about aging paper to bring a little more drama to the game table. Here is a technique for aging that I can’t recommend for safety purposes, but which I will nevertheless disgorge.

After following the normal paper aging process, simply apply fire.

Ok, perhaps not that simply. The idea is to scorch the edges of the paper, giving it a “saved from the fire” look. You can also (with great care and many failed attempts) burn holes into the document to erase portions of the message.

Before I go into the details of how, I have to warn you. You need to print your document FIRST. Printers do not like burned paper, so print it first. Have a completed document in your hand before scorching it.

Ok, so now you need a fire.

I recommend using a candle. You can use a match or a lighter, but this is delicate work that requires both hands and it can take a long time, so use a candle. The best candle of choice are plain white emergency candles. These are also the least expensive. You can get them at nearly any shopping center, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Bi-Mart, etc.

Take your candle outside and light it. Find a place out of the wind, but this not something you want to do in your kitchen. There will be smoke, and there will also likely be fire. Do NOT attempt this near dry grass, dry trees, dry flowers, or dry vegetation of any kind. Do NOT attempt this on public property. Do NOT attempt this in the middle of a wheat field. Remember that your mother told you not to play with fire! If you are going to proceed then you are directly disobeying your mother and all the bad things she said would happen to you will happen to you.

Make sure the candle has a good steady flame.

Now hold the edge of the paper near the flame. Do not put it into the flame, just hold it close. The paper will begin to curl a bit and turn brown. If you keep holding it there eventually it will catch fire. If it does catch fire blow it out immediately. If you can’t blow it out because the fire is too big then drop it and stomp the fire out. Please note that if you are wearing 100% polyester clothing that you may in fact light your clothes on fire at this point.

Remember, playing with fire is quite frankly dangerous and it is entirely possible that you could be arrested. Plan accordingly.

Use the flame to lightly scorch the edges of the paper. You may want to experiment with burning off the corners to get a more rounded feel.

If you are really feeling brave, you can try scorching portions of the center of the page. Hold the paper directly over the flame. It will turn brown quickly. Do not hold the paper too close or it will catch fire. A word of caution here. It is much more difficult to blow out the fire if it is in the middle of the page.

There you have it. The finished product will have a few scorch marks and look remarkable worn.

DISCLAIMER: Depending on where you live, handling fire in this manner may in-fact be against the law. If you are unfamiliar with fire you should not attempt this. If you are a minor you should not attempt this. You can (and probably will) burn yourself and may (will) damage property.

Have fun at the game.

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Ok, if you’ve read my information on making encounter cards, and have read my information on making monster cards, and have followed it, then this is really the easiest way to run any campaign. In fact, it means you don’t have to do ANY other preparation work whatsoever and can still have a great time. And the best part is: the players will never know the difference.

So, you went out and spent 40 bucks on the latest zero to thirty level pre-made campaign. You have a couple of great dungeons. You’ve started the PC’s off in a cool town and dropped all the hints you could. You even gave them a map to the dungeon AND told them about the treasure on level two. But those jerks decide to go wandering in the hills for the next thirteen sessions “looking for something to do.”

Enter encounter swapping.

I assume at this point that sitting at your side is a pile of encounter cards, all dutifully prepared from the premade campaign (though really once you get the hang of it you can do it yourself in less time). Each of them represents a block of XP and treasure, as well as some interesting NPC’s. All you have to do is hit the party with these encounters, adjusting names as necessary and dropping hints that the party really should go to the dungeon.

If you think of those goblins in room one not as the servants of Borath the Butt-Ugly, but as 125 XP and 25 GP the party need, this becomes much simpler. During the first day of travel the party will run into the cousins of Borath the Butt-Ugly delivering a message to him. Simply remove encounter 1 from the dungeon.

Down the road a few miles they will run into Borath’s other cousins. If they keep it up they will eventually run into Borath’s twin brother Dorath the Drop Dead Gorgeous.

Eventually, of course, you will run out of encounters from that dungeon. What do you do? Move on to the next dungeon, of course. What if the PC’s go back to that dungeon later? You have a couple of options here.

1. Play the dungeon as is (always makes for a good dose of déjà-vu)
2. Remove the dungeon entirely. Oh no, an earthquake ate it.
3. Continue the swapping madness. Now instead of goblins there are orcs there.

Just be sure to have your handy pile of encounters at your side and you’ll never have to worry where the PC’s go or what they do. Their balanced level progression is guaranteed. Which is seriously important. One of the quickest ways for a party to get completely un-balanced in game terms is for a DM to start throwing ad-hoc encounters together. Many players know this and will exploit it. So do a little prep work and save yourself the headaches later.

As always, enjoy the game.

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Here is a quick and easy to use name generator.  It isn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread but it sure will help out in a pinch.

I know that personally I often run into a bit of trouble when I’m trying to figure out the details for my character or if I have a lot of NPC’s that I need to flesh out for a campaign.

One thing you could do is to print up a page of the randomly generated names and have it handy for use when the party walks into the new town.  Now Bob the Orc has a name to go with his ugly mug.

Have fun with it!

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Let’s get one thing straight right now.  I am not an artist.  I make no pretenses about it and I’m not going to sit here and tell you how to make beautiful paintings or how to perfect your minis.  But I can point you in the right direction if you are interested in learning to draw better or if, like me, you like to sketch out your characters from time to time and you want to do it better.

The folks at Manga Revolution have collected some excellent tutorials and advice for drawing.  I love to draw horses myself.  Its just something I started as a child and always enjoyed.  I’ve struggled with drawing faces, and I always seem to get body proportions wrong.  Well Manga Revolution can help with that.

You can find step by step instruction for drawing nearly anything that has to do with manga and as far as I’m concerned that makes it worth the price of entry (which happens to be just one mouse click).

Have fun and draw something cool for your next game!

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Ok, here’s a tough one for more experienced players. So many times you get set to start a new campaign, and it turns out to be the most boring session ever.

DM: Your all in a tavern in a village in the hills, and you hear a rumor about a treasure in a dungeon.

It’s the cliché of all clichés. And as a player, I got bored of it pretty quick. One of the first things I learned to do (as a player) was to ignore whatever background glop the DM tried to feed me and proceed with my own antics in the inn and/or village, thence forcing the DM to come up with all sorts of nonsense on the fly. Now would be a good time to mention that many DM’s don’t like me as a player.

The point is I got bored. Bored players are dangerous players. They are dangerous to themselves, each other, and the DM, and they can wreck a session fast. Worse, they can wreck an entire campaign.

So, start things off with something original.

I generally run a weekly game, and when starting with a new party, or even with just a new character, I give my players a deadline, usually a few days before their first session to provide me a bit of background for the character they will play.

Guess what, 99% of the time they do absolutely nothing.

Which is why I proceed to give them a background. This is usually only a paragraph or two of information, and I try to keep the character specific stuff to a minimum.

Now, if you happen to have oodles of time, you can do a little pre-role-playing with your players. This is generally done individually, and is something I like to handle through instant messenger or email. It allows the player to ask some generic questions about the opening setting, and gets rid of much of that boring opening monologue.

Now, when you actually start the session, remember it is ok to start the party separately. If one character is in the town guard and some of them are just passing adventurers, then one or the other won’t have much to do for the first bit, that’s ok. Tell them to sit tight and you’ll get to them. A word of caution. DO NOT do this with a new player (either new to the game or new to you). Get them involved immediately. But if your group has played together before, you know who you can put on hold and who you can’t ignore.

Here are some alternatives to starting at the inn and overloading with monologue.

• Start them in the dungeon. (Was the party captured? Are they in the king’s fortress that is being assaulted?) There is nothing like a captive audience.
• Start them out in combat. No, they don’t necessarily have to be on the same team. Keep on the Shadowfell calls for an opening kobold ambush. What happens if that ambush is the start of the game, and the party is approaching the ambush from different sides and the players don’t know each other to begin with? Nothing grabs your players’ attention faster than opening the first session with the two simple words “roll initiative.” Then place their minis for them and off you go.
• If you don’t want to be so forceful, you can try grouping the party together in a way that makes sense. Two of them are town guards, one of them is the village priestess, another runs an apothecary, and the last was just attacked by orcs on the way to town. Together they join up to help this poor soul out.

The point is to be as imaginative as possible. Do your best to avoid that slow time during the first session where nobody really has anything to do.

And as always, have fun!

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I’m an old gamer so when I cracked the 4e PHB and found that Dragonborn top the list of races (alphabetic order or course) I did a double take.  Understand that I’m not a big fan of playing walking lizards. 

Back in the day we had lizardmen and they were just nasty to deal with.  Anyone else ever run the old Quagmire module?  (Sorry I can’t even find a link to it).  Anyway to point is that the art in the player’s handbook reminded me of lizardmen (not the new fangled lizard folk).  So I didn’t like dragonborn from the get go.

The only other point of reference is to the Dragonlance setting, where the bad guys were generally the draconic creatures.  If you ever played the old Dragonlance AD&D computer games (me and my commodore 64 spent many hours together), then you know the frustration of fighting these bad boys.  Everytime you killed one you either lost your weapon or got exploded.

But the 4th edition dragonborn have a different spin.  They are honorable, loyal, courageous - all of the good things you would want in a paladin leading the fray.  They sound pretty cool.  Also they get a nifty breath weapon, and that can be plenty of help in a pinch, I don’t care who you are.

My problem is still that I don’t like playing a lizard.  I guess I’ll just have to buckle down and get over it.  I have actually played one - but I can’t say I like the idea of being a talking lizard.  Like so many other aspects of the game it will grow on me.

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If you’ve taken the time to get yourself a magnetic gaming field, the next step is getting things to stick to it.  This really isn’t as hard as it sounds and can save you tons of frustration, especially if you play with a more energetic crowd.

You’ll need:

1. Magnetic Tape
2. Minis
3. Hot Glue (maybe)
4. Scissors (Heavy duty, not the little blunt paper cutting scissors you had in kindergarten).

 You can get Magnetic Tape at nearly any department store (Wal-Mart, etc.) in the craft section.  Just ask for it.  It comes in a couple of sizes.  I prefer the 1″ size.  Bigger is better, you can always cut it down if it doesn’t work.

Now take the scissors and cut the tape to match the size of your base.  If you are using the DnD minis, the bases will actually hid the magnets for you.  For Reaper minis and the like, the magnet will show, but nobody will notice, and for those minis with the narrow bases this is a real frustration saver.

A few words on making “permanent” changes to collectible minis.  First of all, for most of the minis this will not be a permanent change.  The magnetic tape comes off.  For those that you decide to make permanent via hot-glue, well, I recommend not doing this to your rarest minis unless you really don’t care.  The magnetic tape sticks pretty good to most plastic, metal, and ceramic surfaces.  It doesn’t do as good with wood, but by and large it should stick to your base without damaging it.

If you are going to be playing with a mini on a regular with a magnetic playing field it is worth the trouble to magnetize them.

A note to DM’s out there.  While I love this and I have used it many times in my games I don’t require my players to put magnets on their minis.  After all, some people collect things and collectors can be very particular.

Cheers, and have a great game!

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