The Pink Dice Chronicles

I just haven't found a good DM screen for 3.5e.  I also haven't found a good way to transport minis outside of an old box.  Happily, an item came up on Kid's Woot the other day that helped fix this problem. The PlayMobile Knights Castle Take Along is the perfect foundation for a DM case / DM screen. The inside of the castle has lots of nooks and crannies for holding minis and supplies. The top is great for holding extra dice.  (I use spare bulk dice for hitpoint counters for monsters.) The tower tops are a great place to store PC minis and, during the game, a great place to roll dice to keep them from going everywhere. Of course, the missing piece are the tables for the DM, which I'll add later.  I'll drop a post when I get that done. -DM Dad

The girls want more hack 'n' slash.  There was also some mumbling about switching characters.  So, to give them what they wanted, I ran a Friday night dungeon delve based on the 18 volume collection of 5 room dungeons found here: http://www.roleplayingtips.com/articles/5_room_dungeons.html  The group had the usual rogue, ranger, and paladin.  The cleric was replace by a quirky little gnome bard played by S.  The not-so-smart fighter was replaced by a very stupid half-orc barbarian played by V. No computer tonight.  I drew the map on a battle grid as we went.  I had 3 sheets of paper describing the 5 rooms on which I had scribbled all the monster stats.  Part of tonight's goal was also to show the players a method that they could DM by in the hopes that I might get to play some day. The first room they found a green dragon (very small).  This freaked them out a bit, since all previous encounters with dragons had either killed PCs or ha...

So we moved our D&D night up to Tuesday since there is much preparation on Wednesday night planned for Thursday's birthday festivities. The one thing I am learning to count on as a DM is not to count on things 'going as planned'. Tonight the crew investigated some ruins where there were rumored to be orcs. The ruins opened by means of solving a dwarvan riddle which described the 4 elements (earth, wind, water, fire)  in a specific order, giving the order to press the runes on a plate.  The riddle took a while to solve, and was complicated by the fact that we had watched "The Fifth Element" the night before.  They were blowing at and setting fire to the runes trying to get the dungeon open. Once inside, the rogue rushed ahead and set off a trap.  Everyone was stabbed in a flurry of spears flying down the hallway at them.  Before the rogue can try to ensure that the trap was disabled, here comes the fighter, setting the trap off again, and getting ever...

So I used the dip method outline here: http://geekdo.com/geeklist/43744/the-dip-method-a-step-by-step-guide-to-painting-mi I still need to add the satin finish (they are a bit too shiney).

Our little group has been watching the videos of the Robot Chicken D&D group adventure in D&D 4. http://www.d20source.com/2010/02/robot-chicken-dd-jaundice-and-the-ballista I particularly like the DM commentary. I was particularly proud of the girls today when we visited our local RPG store.  The girls were able to name off what we were playing, including version. I am starting the trek into miniature painting.  So far so good.

So the group of fearless (and somewhat bickering) set of adventurers stock up on supplies in Wayford.  Suppertime takes them to a local pub.  Upon sitting down, a patron finds and insect in his supper and becomes irate.  After a brief angry discussion with the bar maid, she gets upset and walks out. The paladin is immediately questioning the irate customer. "Is there a problem?" The insect in his food is the problem.  They talk to the bartender.  They go outside and fail to find the waitress.  They go back in, and on an unlucky roll, one of the PCs finds an insect in their food.  More discussion. DM is bored with the party thinking that everything that happens must have some great meaning, especially since I have hundreds of random events that will occur in this campaign. So off to the magistrate of Wayford.  There are orcs wandering in from the Lurkwood seen near a set of ruins.  There are disturbances at the Wayford cemetery. ...

I've been digging through software and have pulled a few useful pieces out for use so far: AUTORealm -- map making FreeMind -- mind mapping software, good for organizing people, places, etc in a campaign RedBlade -- character generation Box of Flumph -- kingdom generator, also available on Redblade site Jamis Buck's D&D NPC Generator -- Download link not available (please let me know if you have it), an online NPC generator is here Encounter Level and XP Calculator OpenOffice Spreadsheet -- found on this page GoogleDocs / OpenOffice -- spreadsheets So how do I use these to build a campaign?  Here's my notes: Freemind is great for keeping a hierarchy of notes.  I organize into subnodes for Plot, Adventurers, Groups, Places.  Because you can open/close nodes, it is easy to flip to relevant info during a gaming session and it helps the DM to avoid railroading.  It is especially well suited if you are using a netbook with limited screen space. Und...