This is the second monster posted for NaMoMaMo.

The living vortex is a strange being from the Far Realm. It is an engine of destruction, seeking only to consume everything around it. It resembles an elemental creature, but it is a being of pure force, given sentience by alien powers. Those who encounter a living vortex rarely escape its inexorable pull.

[Edit: added NaMoMaMo link.]

This is my first post in NaMoMaMo.

The tome golem as a very rare type of golem, as its construction requires the sacrifice of a large number of precious arcane books. Books of various descriptions make up the golem’s body, and these books of magic give it power. It has the ability to absorb and redirect magic directed at it, as well as to steal the abilities of a creature that it touches. It is, however, extremely vulnerable to fire; when set alight, it blazes like an inferno, but continues to fight while ablaze.

[Edit: added NaMoMaMo link.]

Somewhere, someone on Twitter mentioned something about a National Monster Making Month, where everyone would create one monster per day for the month of November. 

Well, in honor of NaMoMaMo, I’m going to endeavor to do just that. Starting tomorrow, November 1, I’m going to try to post one new monster on my blog every day of November.  I may miss a day here and there; I am going to be on an airplane for the bulk of the 5th, after all.  In instances where I do miss a day, I’ll try to make up for it the next. 

My goal is, by the end of November, to have 30 new monsters on my blog.  I encourage all of you who have blogs to do the same.  If you don’t have a blog of your own, feel free to email me monsters to host; I’ll give credit where it’s due.  My email address is engard at gmail dot com.

Happy monster making!

I really like the idea of skill challenges; I like that they add some structure to what otherwise might be hard to quantify with mechanics. I like that they provide a framework that allows the DM to know how to adjudicate things outside of combat, and how to reward non-combat encounters. However, I’ve run skill challenges–and seen skill challenges run–and I’m often underwhelmed by the results. I feel that the Rules Compendium provides a lot of good advice on how to run and create skill challenges; the example of play does a great job of illustrating how they can be run well.

I think that one of the main reasons why a lot of DMs are confused as to how to run a skill challenge is because of the way they’ve been structured in print up to this point. A skill challenge is generally structured to start with the goal of the skill challenge, then a list of primary and secondary skills that can be used, then the consequences for success and failure. While this structure is functional from a mechanical standpoint, I think it’s misleading. It implies that skill challenges should be run in a far more mechanical way, with far more black and white actions, than I feel that they really should be. I’m of the opinion that skill challenges should be run in a very organic, roleplay-driven way, with the players driving the action and the skills that are used, and the DM reacting and narrating appropriately. Rather than talk more about it, I’m going to provide an example of how to write a skill challenge to encourage this style of play.

Murder Investigation

(Complexity 2; 6 successes before 3 failures)
Setup: The PCs have arrived at a local inn to talk to a contact of theirs. However, upon arrival they have discovered that the contact has been murdered!
Goal: Investigate the murder scene and see where it leads.
Possible Actions
Analyzing the Scene (Suggested skills: Perception, Insight, Heal)
The players can look for clues, examine the body, and make inferences based on what they find. They can discover the following information by analyzing the scene, using moderate to hard DCs.

• The lock on the victim’s door has been picked by someone extremely skilled.
• The victim was killed using a curved, sacrificial knife.
• A few smears of trailed blood indicate that the murderer left through the window.

Questioning Witnesses (Suggested skills: Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, Insight)
The inkeeper, Tam, can provide some information.

• Three patrons, other than the victim, were in the bar last night: a young elven woman, an older human man named Brek, and a male gnome (easy DC).
• One of the patrons–the elven woman, left the bar, but Tam never saw her leave (moderate to hard DC).

In addition, a passerby is able to provide some additional information.

• A slender figure was seen hurrying away from the bar, toward the docks, late last night (moderate to hard DC).

Success: Each successful skill check should provide one piece of the information above. If the PCs succeed in the skill challenge, they also learn that the elven woman (whom they should realize by now is probably the murderer) was seen boarding a ship called the Sea Bird late last night. The Sea Bird left early this morning, headed for a nearby town upriver. If the PCs hurry, they can make it to that town in time to find the elven woman. In addition, they get a general description of the woman.
Failure: Each failed skill check provides one of the following pieces of false information.

• The window was broken from the outside.
• The victim was killed early in the evening, before the elven woman left.
• The gnome is a known ruffian and scoundrel.

In addition, the PCs find out the above information about the Sea Bird if they continue to investigate the elven woman, but by the time they discover this information, it’s likely that they won’t make it to the next town in time to catch her.

There’s a technique that I use when I plan an adventure that works really well for me. ‘Technique’ may be the wrong word; it implies that I sat down and developed it somehow, then started doing it. Really, this ‘technique’ flowed organically out of the way that I think about games. See, when I’m DMing a game, and I’m in the middle of planning a session, I get really excited about the upcoming session. When I’m excited about something, I tend to think about it a lot.

In the case of a D&D session (or other RPG session), what I wind up doing is playing through scenes from the upcoming session in my head, as if they were a movie. I go through possibilities for what might happen, deliver the lines for both the PCs and the NPCs, and think about how the scene might play out. Often I’ll do this multiple times for a given scene, playing it out a bit differently each time.

This has a number of benefits for me, as a DM. First, it helps me to get into the mindset of my NPCs. If I think about what the NPC’s motivation is, what that NPC might say, how he might react to what the PCs might say, it helps me to understand how he thinks and how he’d react to different situations. It also provides me with a number of pre-scripted dialog choices for that NPC, should those specific lines be needed.

Second, the fact that I’m playing through these scenes multiple times, and varying the way the scene plays out each time, forces me to think about what the players might do. It forces me to plan for different eventualities, and often allows me to come up with ideas for handling curveballs that I might not have otherwise had.

Doing this also helps me structure the scene in my head. I know how I want to start the scene, and I know one or two ways I’d like it to end. Knowing these things helps me frame the scenes, helps me get the players involved in them, and helps me steer them toward a conclusion that’s satisfying for everyone.

Finally, it gets me more excited about these scenes. This is quite possibly the most important benefit of this technique, because the more excited you are about a particular scene, the more you’re going to think about it, the more prepared you’re going to be for it, and the better it’ll be when it actually happens.

It should be pretty obvious that this technique is useful for roleplaying scenes, scenes with a lot of dialog and acting. It can be useful for combat sequences, too. I envision these scenes as I would a scene from an action movie. This helps me visualize the action, which in turn gives me more tools to use when I describe it to the players. Knowing what your villains would do in a fight is also just as important as knowing what they would do in a conversation.

One last thing I’d like to mention is that I rarely write any of this down. I find that, if I just keep on thinking about it, the cool, important stuff will stick in my head, while the stuff that wasn’t that exciting will get filtered out. If I wrote it all down and relied on my notes, I’d be more likely to focus on the wrong things, or cause delays in the action while I referred to my notes.

This technique has served me really well in the past; hopefully it’ll serve you, too.

[Edit: Updated URL for Twitter.]