From the DM’s Chair: Creating a Setting

Posted on July 15, 2018 by

Shadowonthewall

feats-feats-of-eberron Whether classic fantasy or a steampunk style like Eberron pictured above, every campaign needs a setting. Artwork from D&D Eberron 5e.

You’ve gotten your game group together and, now you’ve got your group of friends all set up, it’s time to start prepping for the actual game. The only issue is you, perhaps like me originally, might not have thought that far ahead.

Welcome to From the DM’s Chair, I’m Shadowonthewall and today, we’ll be looking at the setting of your Dungeons and Dragons game: some possible suggestions for setting, a few world-building exercises and an example of the world I built for my players for the new weekly game.

When I agreed to run a campaign, I soon realised I didn’t really have any ideas with what I wanted to do. There was one thing I did know, which is the same thing I consider every time I come…

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Grit and Persistence – An awesome lesson one can learn from games

Posted on July 15, 2018 by

Plant Powered Gamers

I received a text while I was at work from Grant today.  He was incredibly excited and wanted to let me know that he had finally defeated the “Yellow Devil” from Mega Man for the NES.  If one is not familiar with that game or the lore of older NES classics in general that could be easily passed over as a “that’s nice..” moment, but the amount of effort and practice and persistence it took for him to topple that monstrosity was enormous.  That doesn’t come naturally, grit and persistence is a learned skill and you better believe you can grow and improve that skill just like any other.  The cool “thing” about persistence is that it can help in learning and mastering other skills.

So let me take a moment to brag on my boy here.  I’ve been gaming since I first saw an Atari around age 6.  It…

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There’s No Escaping the Backlog

Posted on July 15, 2018 by

VIRTUAL BASTION

It wasn’t too long ago that I used to be a different kind of gamer. The kind of gamer who spent every moment of free time they had on finishing their next game. The kind of gamer who would play games through multiple times, and then revisit them every year to relive the experience. I was the kind of gamer who scoffed at those who had backlogs and didn’t finish the games they played. “How foolish!” I’d say, “How can they spend their money on a game only to never finish it. How wasteful!” I’d think. Oh if the old me could see me now. I’ve become almost the opposite of how I used to be, and the change was probably inevitable.

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Raids week 81

Posted on July 14, 2018 by

Micki's Delirium

Last week on Saturday I was quite late for raids, because I had put an add up to sell my car, and people wanted to come look at it right away. I hadn’t expected things to happen that fast. After selling the car, and taking care of the degus, I logged on at about 10.30 pm my time. Since it was late, and most of my regulars weren’t on I didn’t feel like posting for EE/R1, but switched to Maidae and posted for baba’s hard. Interest was high and I barely got the lfm up before people started joining, even had to reserv the last spot for Gaijya. As for the run I suggested our two mass frog chars go to different sides during puzzles, other than that I told people to split up evenly. Puzzles went well and I felt like people listened this time when I said to…

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Top 10 NES Games: Part 1

Posted on July 14, 2018 by

Ghosts of the Stratosphere

So similar to my other Top Ten Video Game lists such as my Top 5 Sega Master System games orTop 5 Super NES games, I figured it was time to give a list that was more universally known: Greatest NES games.

Growing up, it was my older brother, Dave, who had the NES. It was his, unlike the Master System which belonged to the family. He bought it with his own college boy money about a year after we got the SMS, when it became apparrent that all the Big release games like Castlevania and Mega Man weren’t ever going to be released for the Sega.

As such I didn’t really play the NES a whole heck of a lot. It was there during holidays and summer time when Dave would bring it home from IUP. And that was of course only when Dave wasn’t…

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The Delren Street Sewers

Posted on July 14, 2018 by

Dyson's Dodecahedron

While much of the city is served by “surface sewers” to move waste and water, in parts of the old town there exist proper underground sewers that date back to the previous empire’s attempts to clean up the city as a whole. Basements in these neighbourhoods occasionally incorporate parts of the sewer construction, or vice versa. And of course, in the trope of D&D sewers, they have become home to wererats and other foul creatures that represent the decay and seedy side of civilization.

Delren Street Sewers Delren Street Sewers

This map focuses on one of the more interesting parts of the sewers under Delren Street. The central location (top centre of the map) is an old basement that is no longer connected to the structure above it and that is linked into the sewers by a secret door. This basement is currently in use by Skittler, an old wererat sorcerer who maintains…

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No Place Like (The Party’s) Home

Posted on July 13, 2018 by

Cannibal Halfling Gaming

When someone says the word ‘adventurer’, the picture of a steady home life is not often one of the images called to mind. The dusty road, the shadows between the megascrapers, the space between the stars, these are most often the places that adventurers spend their time and make their fortune – or lose everything. While being an adventurer, or really any type of player character. almost universally involves going where others won’t either physically or mentally, I think there’s something to be said for breaking the mold and giving them a tavern, a ship, a base, a business, a home. While it might not be the one they were all born to, a party of adventurers with a place of their own can certainly turn it into a place that makes them feel like they belong.

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Theseus’s Ship: Upgrading Your Playstation 4

Posted on July 13, 2018 by

AmbiGaming

A long, long time ago, I began an adventure about starting a let’s play channel, and documented my mishaps along the way for entertainment and posterity. As someone with a fairly lukewarm relationship with technology, I had hoped that maybe the average person would benefit from the walk-through guide I had created, as I tried to include information that I hadn’t found in other places on the interwebs, and perhaps bypass a few of my mistakes.

Well, hold on to your keyboards, guys, because it finally happened: my Playstation 4 ran out of memory and I had to replace the hard drive.

20180617163938.jpg

After some initial apprehension, I did a little research and decided to replace the old 500GB hard drive with a 2TB solid-state hybrid internal hard drive. I used a drive that was manufactured by Seagate, and sprung for the kit that included a case for the old drive…

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Gaming’s most annoying couple

Posted on July 13, 2018 by

Later Levels

As part of last month’s Getting to know you post, I asked everyone to share the video game characters that most annoy them. I kind of feel sorry for Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends now as they appeared several times in the comments. I can’t say I disagree though, particularly when it comes to Amy; a character who exists solely to flirt with the protagonist and say things like ‘If I had to choose between the world and Sonic, I would choose Sonic!’ is bound to get on everyone’s nerves.

My own pick was one I can imagine a lot of gamers disagreeing with and is surprising considering I’m a fan of the adventure genre. But there’s something about George Stobbart and Nicole ‘Nico’ Collard from the Broken Sword series that grinds my gears. Don’t get me wrong, The Shadow of the Templars is a classic and everybody should…

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DDO: Don’t fear the Reaper 3

Posted on July 12, 2018 by

Bio Break

“Hey guys we should split up!”

“That’s the beginning of every bad horror movie, you know?”

And thus began another exciting group outing in Dungeons and Dragons Online, in which a group of slightly overleveled characters try — and succeed — in figuring out how to kill themselves doing low-level quests. We have a very special skillset that becomes a nightmare for people like us.

Before we get into all of that, night rainbows! Brought to you by Turbine and NBC’s The More You Know.

Also, I try to turn into an ursine transport for one of my dragon chums, but alas, mounts are not to be in this game. Wait, DDO doesn’t have mounts? I knew that. I just haven’t really thought about that in a while. That’s so weird.

Anyway, back to questing in the Harbor and Marketplace! With loads of buffs weighing us down and not a…

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