I’ve been playing a lot of Mass Effect 2 lately, which I absolutely love. The role-playing elements (and by this, I mean things like characterization and choices that impact the game, not stat progression) are all very well implemented, and the combat is fantastic. In fact, there are a number of things about ME2 combat that, I think, are applicable in games like D&D. One thing, in particular, occurs to me now.

Waves: Many of the fights in ME2 take place in waves. You run into a room and fight five or six guys, firing from behind cover and trying to get the tactical upper hand. Just when it looks like you’ve got them mopped up, five or six more guys come in, these ones a little bit tougher. When they’re almost taken care of, something big and tough will sometimes come in, like a combat mech or a heavily armored and shielded commander of some sort.

In a D&D game, introducing enemies in waves can be a great way to have a really huge fight with a lot of peaks and valleys in the tension without making it overwhelmingly difficult for your players to get through it. When you introduce waves, it can also add verisimilitude to the game, making it seem like reinforcements from nearby rooms in the dungeon are bursting in, reacting to the noise of the fight. Setting up an encounter this way also allows for players to feel really clever if they manage to take out a group without alerting the others.

By way of example, you could have the encounter start fairly simply; a room full of minions with a few non-minion enemies, maybe brutes or skirmishers. The fight starts, the party wipes out most of the minions, and one of the non-minions sounds an alarm of some sort. A round or two later, a leader enemy, maybe an elite, bursts through the door with some other tough hombres–brutes or soldiers–and maybe a controller or an artillery or two. If you really want to add drama and tension, once those guys are on the ropes, introduce a solo. Let’s say you’ve got a room full of demon-worshiping gnolls. These guys are easy enough, and eat up few of the party’s resources. The next wave, though, has some gnoll soldiers a couple of archers, as well as a demonic scourge. Try to reserve the demonic scourge’s death for later in the fight, when a lot of the others are dead. Make it clear that the demonic scourge is possessed, and killing him might release a demon. When he does drop, a solo demon bursts out of his body and attacks; if the party tries to incapacitate him instead, the demonic scourge kills himself to release the beast.

In the next D&D session–which is on Sunday–I’m going to try a couple of new things.

The first thing I’m going to try is a new system of tracking initiative and conditions. I’ve heard about this on other blogs (namely Sly Flourish, Critical Hits, and Newbie DM), and I figured I’d give it a try. What I’ve been using is a big whiteboard with small, dry-erase magnets representing combatants. The problem with this is that it’s big and unwieldy (without an easel, at least), and doesn’t really make condition tracking any easier. So, I went ahead and printed out a bunch of folding cards representing combatants, which I will hang over my DM screen in initiative order. On my side, there’s relevant information such as passive Insight and Perception scores (for the PCs) and defenses and resistances (for the monsters), while on the PCs’ side are portraits representing each combatant. To track conditions, I’ve got smaller folding strips with the condition names on them. When a combatant is saddled with a condition, I grab the strip for that condition and pop it on top of his initiative card. We’ll see how it works in practice, but I’m optimistic.

The second thing I’m doing is trying to make terrain matter more. I really like the idea for terrain powers presented in the DMG2, but I’ve been at a loss as to how to get the PCs to actually use them. Then it hit me: they have cards representing all of their own powers and items and such; why not make cards representing available terrain powers so that they know exactly what effect they’re going to produce. This way, they can make a more informed decision as to whether to use the terrain power or one of their own. I’ll let you know how that goes, too.

The first session report of the new adventure (the first adventure for 4th Edition written entirely by me, and not adapted from a published adventure) is up. Also, there are some new NPCs and locations on the main page of the campaign wiki.

The recent session got me thinking about some stuff. One fight in particular, the one where the PCs were attacked by undead creatures, gave me some insight as far as what is and isn’t fun for solo monsters. I used a solo monster in that fight, a zombie abomination from an RPGA adventure (I got it from the Compendium). I used the monster as written, and I ran into some issues. First, it’s probably important to use a solo that is the same level as the party. This solo was a level behind, and its attack bonuses just weren’t up to par. Actually, I’m not sure why its attack bonuses were so low. It had trouble landing any hits on the part, and at one point it was marked by Chance, but in order to hit him it literally had to roll a natural 20. The abomination wound up being a big sack of hit points, but not really much of a credible threat.

Another issue with the abomination is its Rise Again power; basically, when the abomination is killed, it gets back up on the following round with half its max hit points. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this power; the zombie hulk from the monster manual has the same power. In the case of the zombie hulk, I think it’s okay. The hulk is a standard monster, with 88 hit points, meaning it’ll rise again with 44; a group with two strikers (like mine) should be able to take that out in a round or two, so you get some dramatic tension when it gets back up, but it doesn’t drag the combat out too much. With the abomination, though, has 232 hit points, so it gets back up with 116; that’s a lot of extra hit points. What I found is that the power made the combat drag on a little too long, after the party’s victory was already a foregone conclusion. In general, I think it’s a bad idea to give solos, and maybe even elites, abilities that make them harder to hit or give them too many hit points. You want them to last for a while, but you don’t want them to overstay their welcome or make the combat drag. Solos should also have pretty good attack bonuses, so that they actually feel like a big threat. As it was, I think the forsaken shell did more damage than the zombie abomination did.

I’ve also been reading the new Eberron Campaign Guide, and I’m definitely going to be stealing some ideas from it for my campaign. You may already have seen some of that in the newest session report, in my mention of a druidic sect known as the Wardens of the Wood. In that case, it’s basically just a name I liked, but there are other, more significant things that I’ll be borrowing and adapting for the campaign. Just wait and see.

As a long-time DM, I’m always on the lookout for tools and such that make my job a little bit easier. Since I really haven’t shared all this stuff with you guys yet, I figured I would. Most of this stuff is relatively inexpensive, if not downright free. Some of it is designed for RPGs some of it is not, but can be used for such. Anyway, in no particular order:

• Wizards of the Coast actually puts out some quality products that I use, and I would be remiss if I didn’t at least give them a mention on this post. First is their line of Dungeon Tiles, which are excellent. They feature good artwork, clean, easy to see and use, 1-inch grids, they’re modular, and they’re somewhat dry-erasable. Also, they’re only $10 a pop, which is nice. One caveat: I say they’re somewhat dry-erasable because I’ve got a few tiles with what seem like permanent marks from dry-erase ink that sat on the tile too long. So be careful. That said, if you find yourself having to replace some tiles, they’re not that expensive. Also useful if you use Dungeon Tiles is Jai’s Dungeon Tile Mapper, a free program for creating DT-based maps on your computer. It’s basically the same program that Wizards hosts, except that it’s actually been updated since the third DT set came out; the only one currently missing is the newest one, Hall of the Giant Kings, which may be added soon.
• Also by Wizards is their line of D&D Miniatures, which I am a recent enthusiast and collector of. Booster packs are reasonably priced, and are even more so if you shop around a little bit, but are randomized. If you want specific, individual minis, Paizo.com is a good resource, as is ebay.
• But what if you don’t want to drop all that money on minis? What if you need a mini that doesn’t exist, is hard to get, or you can’t wait for it to ship because you’re playing tomorrow? Cardboard counters are a good way to go. I usually make my own, printed on card stock, which is pretty cheap at Staples and other office stores. As far as images for said counters, there are a number of good resources available. Wizards hosts a number of character portraits, as well as a multitude of images from their catalog of products that can be chopped up in your favorite image editing software. You could also check out these D&D counters. Finally, the art forum on EN World is a fantastic resource for all kinds of RPG-related artwork; of particular note is Storn’s thread, not only because his artwork is excellent but because it’s all released under a Creative Commons license. Beware, though; EN World can sometimes run a little slow due to their massive server load.
• Another thing that’s often required for D&D (especially under 4th Edition) is small counters and beads of various descriptions to keep track of conditions like marked, cursed, bloodied, and others. You could go to a gaming store, but you could also go someplace like AC Moore or Jo-Ann Fabrics. They have lots of beads, as well as bead boxes that can be used to store and organize your beads or other things. I use bead boxes to store my Dungeon Tiles, for example.
• Finally, I recently found a website that has all sorts of great stuff, including a nice landscape character sheet, some cards for tracking conditions, and some very nice power and magic item cards (I use the Magic Set Editor, but these are nice too).

I hope this has been helpful to people out there who want to DM, or already do DM. Maybe I saved you some time.

I recently got it in my head that I needed a better method for storing my dice. I had been storing them in an Asian-flavored dice bag, and it was pretty and somewhat functional, but had the downside of making it difficult to find the right die at a moment’s notice. So, I went out to a craft store, bought a modular storage box, and adapted it for my purposes. Observe:

Of note is the fact that I have room for pencils, dry erase markers, and china markers (all useful), and that I have a compartment containing about a buck sixty in pennies. I’ve found that, from time to time, I need counters for things (particularly in a token-heavy game like Iron Heroes), and pennies are just the cheapest counters out there. Also, I’ve got some semi-home-made d2s and d3s in there.

[Edit: fixed the picture.]

I subscribed to both Dungeon and Dragon for a while (and, thruthfully, I’d like to subscribe again but don’t have the funds), and I enjoyed them both immensely. There was a lot of stuff in them that seemed really usable; the problem was that I never really used any of it. Once I’d read an issue, I shelved it and never really thought about it again. Recently, in an attempt to clean out some shelf space, I started going through all those old issues again. I needed to Get Organized. I needed to Do Something. So I did. I went out to Staples and bought a 1 1/2″ binder and a bunch of sheet protectors. Then I brought them back home and began to systematically rip the adventures that I liked out of those back issues of Dungeon and organize them within the binder. Now, after about an hour’s worth of work, I have a nice collection of adventures, organized by low-, mid-, and high-level status, and alphabetized for easy reference. It’s great. I’m taking a second look at all those old adventures, and I plan on using elements of all of them in the future. It’s a great reference and I’m glad I did it.

Next, I’ll tackle Dragon, organizing it into categories like setting info, classes, feats, monsters, and other such things. I’m convinced it’ll be just as useful; I just need more sheet protectors.