D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Thirty - My Favorite Thing About Playing D&D

My favorite part of playing D&D has to be DMing. I've DMed since I was first introduced to the game. I've introduced probably ten or twelve people to D&D, though some of them haven't continued gaming. I love running games. I love creating new adventures, running memorable villains, and showing people why D&D is such a fun game.

To break it down further, my favorite part of DMing has to be introducing new people to D&D. There's nothing like seeing a new player roll a critical hit, come up with an interesting solution to a puzzle or obstacle, or become invested in their character. Some of my best times behind the screen have been with new players, particularly when their characters are in a tough spot and they're starting to feel tense when they're rolling the dice to get out of it. There's nothing like introducing someone to this awesome, amazing game and watching them have a blast with it. I love gaming, and getting new people involved in the hobby has, in my experience, always been a rewarding, worthwhile experience.

It's amazing how much fun you can have with a sheet of paper and some dice.

Note: As with the last two blog posts, I changed the topic of this post as well. Originally, it was “The Best DM You've Ever Had,” but I'm a DM far more often than I'm a player. Most of my games, aside from some online games, have been with me sitting behind the screen. Because of that, I switched things up a bit to talk about why I like DMing.

And that's the end of the D&D 30 Day Challenge! Thirty days, thirty blog posts, all about D&D. This challenge was a lot of fun, and I'll probably look into finding another gaming-themed challenge in a couple months to try it again.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Nine - The Best Game I've Run

The best game I've ever run was back in 2007. I was running a 3.5 game for a few friends once a week or so for two or three months, and everyone except me was brand new to the game. I ran through the Scourge of the Howling Horde module to start off. It was a pretty basic “go kill a goblin bandit group because they're raiding our town” scenario, but the whole twist (SPOILERS) is that the goblin tribe is led by a young black dragon (though I changed it to a blue dragon, because a black dragon felt out of place due to a lack of swamps in the area).

Another great first adventure for new gamers, incidentally.

The whole time I was running the module, every time the goblins talked about their leader (the party took a few goblins prisoner and interrogated them), the goblins only ever said “Noak is the leader,” never mentioning that Noak was a dragon. I never claimed Noak was a goblin or hobgoblin; I just conveniently never revealed that it was a dragon. I even threw in a clue or two that there was a dragon somewhere in the goblin lair (cast-off scales, for example). Eventually, they finally made it to the boss encounter, the dragon's lair, and their goblin friend (who defected to the PCs when he realized the tribe was getting stomped by these guys) dropped to his knees and yelled, “Almighty Noak!”

It was the first, and so far only, time I've had jaws literally drop at my table. There was a solid three seconds of silence where my players were just absorbing it, and then one of them (I think he was playing a paladin) just said, “You glorious bastard. None of us saw that coming!”

Best. Game. Ever.

Note: As with yesterday's post, I changed today's topic. The original topic, "the number you always seem to roll on a d20," didn't really fit as, for the most part, my d20s are all acceptably random. The only time I ever had a d20 roll a particular number more often than any other is the story I wrote about in this post.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Eight - Favorite Kind of Adventure

With all the different styles of adventures out today, my favorite is still the classic dungeon crawl. It's tough to beat a straight delve into some kind of underground cave, ruined citadel, or abandoned wizard's tower.

Time to go exploring!

Dungeon crawls have a lot going for them. There's the exploration aspect, where the party is finding new places and filling out a previously-blank map, the loot aspect from plundering the dungeon, interaction/combat with NPCs or monsters, and world-building and other adventures from finding interesting items in the dungeon (a treasure map, an ancient scroll describing another adventure location, an evil artifact that can only be destroyed in a specific way, etc.). It's just very interesting to me in a way that most city or plot-heavy based adventures just aren't.

Plot-based adventures can be fun, especially if you've got a good DM that has several plots available to give the players a choice on which to follow up on, but nothing beats a good hack 'n slash dungeon crawl for me. “Go into the dungeon, slay some monsters, and grab some loot” is how D&D started, and 40 years later, it's still a damn fun way to play.

Note: In the original D&D 30 Day Challenge, Post Twenty-Eight was supposed to be about a character I'd never play again, but I don't really have characters I would never consider playing again. There are a few characters I've had that died, but most of those were one-shot PCs and none were really memorable. So, I changed the topic to something I feel is slightly more interesting.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Seven - A Character I'd Like to Play

There are plenty of characters that I'd like to play but have never rolled up, but I'd really like to play more warforged or dragonborn characters, or characters of classes I've never played, like a 4E Battlemind or 3.5 Druid.

So for this post, since it specifies one character I'd like to play, I'll go ahead and choose a human artificer of House Cannith in an Eberron campaign. Much as I love Eberron, I haven't gotten to play in that setting very much, and House Cannith is one of my favorite setting elements. So let's see, a human artificer of House Cannith, and if I had to set some sort of goal for that character, it would be to go on an expedition to Xen'Drik to find information on the ancient warforged of the old giant civilizations.

I know I could write up a longer story for this character, but that's plenty to get started. If I ever do make a Cannith artificer, I'll tailor it to the campaign rather than having a pre-written character already worked up.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Six - Favorite Mundane Item

This is a tough one, but I think for my favorite mundane item is probably the ten-foot pole. It's easily the most classic item that all D&D groups need to have to go dungeon crawling. The thief thinks there might be a pit trap around and wants to check the floor? Ten-foot pole. The party wants to test the depth of a pool they find? Ten-foot pole. The party needs some extra firewood on the way back to town? Ten-foot pole. The thief gets the brilliant idea to pole-vault over a chasm to explore the tunnel on the other side? Ten-foot pole.

It's an item with dozens of different uses that every adventurer worth his salt should have.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Five - Favorite Magic Item

My favorite magic item in D&D is probably the Sword of Kas. The illustration in the 3E Dungeon Master's Guide is easily one of the best magic item illustrations in the book as far as I'm concerned.

Aside from the illustration, I really like the story behind it. An insanely powerful lich being betrayed by his vampire lieutenant and losing his hand and eye to a magic sword? Yes please. Vecna is one of the more interesting deities in 3E, and anything relating to his rise to godhood is of interest to me.

The Sword of Kas has had multiple different forms over the various editions, and it varies between being a short sword, longsword, or greatsword, but it's always an evil, intelligent artifact with its own agenda. If I ever use an artifact in a high level game, the Sword of Kas is the first one I think of. Other artifacts are undoubtedly cool, but there's just something about that sword that really works for me. I could easily see it being the focus of a series of adventures to destroy it. It could also be a major player in a Vecna-oriented adventure (as I understand is the case with the Vecna Lives module).

Seriously, how awesome is this illustration? Photo taken of my original D&D 3rd Edition DMG

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Four - Favorite Element

This post is very similar to my earlier post about my favorite elemental monster, and the answer is pretty much the same: fire.

It's the classic dragon breath weapon. It's a key part of one of D&D's most iconic spells, Fireball. It's often the byproduct of a wizard gone amok.

Fire is interesting because it can take so many forms during an adventure. It can be a living threat in the form of a fire elemental. It can be a part of multiple spells (think pyromancer). It's a red dragon's signature weapon. But, it's also an event. A village burning down, for instance.

It's also a good thing for adventurers, though. Most parties wouldn't get very far without a healthy supply of torches, after all, nor would they even get to most dungeons without camping in the wilderness and using fire to light up the darkness and keep them safe at night.

Fire is both helpful and potentially devastating to adventurers. That's what makes it so interesting.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Three - Least Favorite Monster

I don't know that I have a single least-favorite monster. There are plenty of monsters I generally don't use, but none really stand out for me. Overall, probably, the monsters I really don't like using most are the law and chaos aligned monsters. I'm not a huge fan of alignment to begin with, but good and evil make more sense to me than law and chaos. To be fair, I rarely use demons, devils, or angels either, but the ones I do use (like the balor and pit fiend) are more iconic and interesting to me than monsters like slaads or inevitables.

I don't really have much to say on this subject. At one point or another, I've used (or at least planned on using) most of the monsters in the 3.5 Monster Manual and Monster Manual 2.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Two - Favorite Monster Overall

This time, I'm going to have to go with a cliché: my favorite monster is the dragon. They're the ultimate monster, as far as I'm concerned.

Dragons are not only monstrously powerful in a physical sense, with their claws, breath weapon, and massive jaws, but they're also intelligent and, in most editions, natural spellcasters. Great wyrm dragons are incredibly scary monsters because not only can they eat an adventurer in a single bite, but they can also cast high-level spells, possibly incapacitating entire parties with spells like Power Word, Kill or Mage's Disjunction.

I'll have a longer post up in a few days or so detailing a lot more about dragons, their lairs, and items they may value in their hoards, but for now, I think it's worth mentioning that there is a reason dragons are in the name of the game. These are classic “boss” monsters, and they should be treated as such.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty-One - Favorite Dragon Color/Type

This is a fairly easy topic. My favorite dragon type is probably the black dragon. They've got really interesting lairs, they breathe fire rather than acid, and they're more likely to be swimming than flying.

Black dragons typically lair in swamps. The default dragon lair is, at least in my experience, some kind of mountain cave, maybe with some lava or at least high temperatures (because the default dragon breathes fire), and is kind of a standard dungeon as far as environment goes. Black dragons throw that out the window: underwater entrances and emergency exits, swamp-dwelling monsters like lizardfolk, and utter darkness (rather than having fire burning like in a red dragon's lair). I love the swamp theme: air so humid that the walls are dripping, deep pools of water that may contain monsters or hidden treasures, moss and pond scum growing everywhere, and complete pitch blackness.

Going along with the swamp theme, black dragons always have lots of water in their lairs. Their hoard might even be deep in a pool. The dragon could have a much higher chance to surprise the PCs; it's tough to miss a massive dragon sitting on a pile of gold, but if the dragon only has its eyes and nostrils above water (like a crocodile), it's much harder to spot.

On top of that, black dragons spit acid instead of breathing fire. Their breath doesn't light up the darkness – it just eats through the PCs while they fumble around in the darkness. I'd even rule that the acid could put out a torch if it hits a PC carrying one.

Black dragons, to me, seem way more like sneaky, devious opponents than standard red dragons; where reds may just rush into combat, hoping to burn and claw their enemies, my black dragons use darkness and water to get the drop on adventurers, taking their time to attack rather than blatantly exposing themselves to attacks.

As an aside, my fondness for black dragons might stem from my first experience reading about dragons of any kind. I read Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman when I was ten or so, and the scene where Onyx rises out of the well to attack the group, casting a darkness spell and breathing acid on Riverwind is one of my favorite fantasy scenes ever.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twenty - Favorite Humanoid Monster

Out of all the dozens of humanoids in D&D, I think my favorite has to be the kobold, particularly how they were portrayed in 3.5. They were small, dextrous, and deviously clever. Kobold lairs were like miniature versions of dragon's lairs: lots of traps, lots of areas where the characters were vulnerable, and devilishly tough to survive. Any trap you could possibly think of, the kobolds had at least one.

Their lairs were small, cramped, tough for human-sized creatures to move in, and absolutely lousy with traps. Rolling boulder traps, spiked pits, acid-spraying mechanisms, completely empty chests protected with poison needles and spiked walls that closed on the characters; you name it, the kobolds had it, and the worst part was that the kobolds were always in a position to counter attack the characters at their most vulnerable.

Not only were the kobolds masterminds of traps, but they were the descendants of dragons. There was always a good chance to find some kind of draconic item or a dragon-blooded kobold at one point or another. Even at higher levels, kobolds were still a threat because of the sheer deadliness of their lairs and the love of wealth they shared with their draconic ancestors.

Possible Traps in a Kobold Lair

1. Empty chest with a pressure plate in front of it attached to a poison dart mechanism.

2. A deadfall – if characters move a specific piece of treasure or hit a pressure plate, the ceiling collapses.

3. A pit with a gelatinous cube at the bottom and greased walls.

4. Two logs hung from walls that smash together when the trap is triggered, crushing anyone between them.

5. Vials of alchemist's fire that drop from the ceiling onto the characters when the trap is triggered.

6. A floor that sinks into a pit of acid when too much weight is put onto it.

7. A trap that sprays the adventurers with oil, in a room filled with candles and a fire pit.

8. Hidden blades set into the wall, high enough that the kobolds are in no danger, but that can swing out and decapitate larger adventurers.

9. Spikes that spring out of the floor, stabbing into adventurers' feet to hobble them.

10. A round boulder of the perfect size to roll down the sloping, conveniently round tunnel.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Nineteen - Favorite Elemental Monster

Continuing with the favorite monster theme, for this category I'm going to choose the fire elemental. Yeah, it's simple, and it's not a big bad villain-type monster this time, but I love the simplicity of the fire elemental. It burns, and that's it's big attraction. It's an uncontrolled blaze that managed to get itself summoned to the material plane (at least that's how it usually works).

It's possible to use magic to control them, but the interesting part is what happens when the magic fails. What happens if a wizard loses control of his fire elemental in the middle of his laboratory? All the arcane stuff in there is bound to have some sort of effect on the elemental. Or what happens when a fire elemental gets loose within city limits? The townsfolk generally can't hope to contain the blaze – that's where the PCs come in.

It's a simple monster, but it can lead to bigger situations than just “okay, there it is, let's kill it now.” That's where the draw of the fire elemental is for me.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Eighteen - Favorite Immortal/Outsider Monster

For my favorite immortal or outsider monster, I think it's got to be some variety of devil, probably the pit fiend. It's got the classic devil form – horns, wings, red skin, massive musculature – and it's intelligent and utterly malevolent. They're smart enough to be the evil mastermind, but also strong enough to go toe-to-toe in melee combat.

The fun part about pit fiends and other devils is not using them as just another foe. Pit fiends are the masters of the other devils. They should be major antagonists over the course of entire campaigns. At low levels, the PCs might face a devil cult with pit fiend imagery in the cultists' lair. At medium levels, the pit fiend may send lesser devils after the group, either to destroy or corrupt them. At higher levels, the PCs can finally track down the pit fiend on its own plane to try to find a way to permanently kill it.

The pit fiend is not only the classic devil, but if it is played well, it can be an enemy that the players remember for years afterward.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Seventeen - Favorite D&D Animal

I'm going to have to go with dinosaurs for my favorite D&D animals. Seriously, how often do you get to smash together a fantasy game with Jurassic Park?

Whether they're a natural part of the setting or some wizard's magical creations, dinosaurs fit all sorts of different roles. Looking for a lizardfolk equivalent for cows? Triceratops or stegosaurus fits the bill. Druid's animal companion? Why not go with a deinonychus instead of a bear? Pissed off halfling doesn't want to ride a pony? Deinonychus works for that too. An underwater adventure needs something a bit more intimidating than a shark? Throw an elasmosaurus at the party. The group needs a way to fly without using a spell? Giant pterodactyls are the answer. How about a wizard's thrall, guarding his tower? Tyrannosaurus rex seems appropriate there.

This is a short entry, but there's not much to be said here. If you want to have a more prehistoric or reptilian feel, dinosaurs are the perfect replacements for regular animals.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Sixteen - Favorite Aberrant Monster

My favorite aberrant monster in D&D is most definitely the illithid. Also known as the mind flayer, they're some of the most interesting Big Bad Guy monsters out there. They're almost always ridiculously intelligent, they've got their mind blast and tough psionic powers, and they're generally surrounded by their thrall minions. On top of all that, they eat their victims' brains.

From the Far Realm (or your campaign setting's equivalent), mind flayers are utterly alien and irrevocably evil. With their intelligence and penchant for enthralling some of the tougher victims they catch, they make great boss-type enemies. They're perfect for dungeon crawl adventures; given that they're intelligent and often psions or wizards, they make for a great way to combine the classic wizard's laboratory and a standard cave-style dungeon. They're great for Underdark adventures, but with all of their history, they're an even better enemy for multi-planar adventures, especially if the githyanki or githzerai are involved.

On a different note, I've been trying to put together a big blog post detailing some setting stuff I've been working on, a few ideas on implementing new-school races like warforged or dragonborn in old-school games like Swords & Wizardry and Dark Dungeons, and maybe a few adventure hooks and ideas. I'm hoping to get it up sometime this week, but I'm not going to make any definite statements yet. Once this D&D 30 Day Challenge is finished up, I plan on making at least two posts a week, but for the most part, they'll be longer than these challenge posts.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Fifteen - Favorite Undead Monster

When it comes to undead, my favorite has to be the lich. Yeah, skeletons and zombies are classic, but not only are liches powerful magic-users, they're also immortal. They're very similar to dragons in that they're almost certainly going to have deadly lairs filled with devious traps and undead minions.

So, liches have a ton of advantages that make them dangerous foes for adventurers. They're functionally immortal. If their body is destroyed, it will regenerate unless their phylactery (which is sure to be magically protected in at least one way) is also destroyed. They have access to a ridiculous amount of magic, mostly because they have all the time in the world to research new spells (even if they're clerics).

Now, liches do have some major disadvantages. They're susceptible to turning (though if a cleric is high enough level to turn a lich, the lich has more problems to worry about), and if their phylactery is destroyed, they're out of luck on the whole immortality deal.

However, a lich's biggest adventage is that they have a lot of experience. Over the course of a lich's unlife, chances are that they've seen most things that adventurers can dream up. They've typically got hundreds, if not thousands, of years of experience learning everything they possibly can.

The most devious, deadly, horrifying dungeon crawl in the history of D&D, the Tomb of Horrors was the home of a lich, Acererak. I rest my case.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Fourteen - Favorite NPC

Note: Yesterday I accidentally entitled Day Thirteen as Day Fourteen. That has been fixed, and here is the content for Day Fourteen of the 30 Day Challenge.

Choosing a specific favorite NPC is tough, especially given all the various types of NPCs across all the games I've played and run, so I'm going to choose an NPC archetype instead: the super villain.

I'm not talking about a comic book super villain like Lex Luthor or Venom. I'm talking about the big bad guys, the boss monster at the end of the dungeon, the major antagonists that players love to hate.

I've already mentioned that I love the dragon's lair as a dungeon location, but a lot of that comes from the fact that I absolutely love smart, evil, dedicated villains as NPCs. Sure, the classic “some orcs in a room guarding a chest” scenario is great; there's a reason it's a classic, after all, but those orcs aren't really interesting unless there's something more there. The orc chief, the hobgoblin warband leader, the dragon leading an army of kobolds, the archmage throwing arcane minions at the party, the slick mayor who's got the town guard in his back pocket: these are villains. They're not just enemies, they're not crossbow fodder, they're villains. The man with the plan.

In my experience, it's the true villains that are interesting, and I mentioned super villains because there's definitely a comparison to be made there. In a comic book, the focus is rarely on the groups of faceless thugs attacking Batman; rather, the focus is, and should be, on the Joker. The Joker is interesting, he's unpredictable, and he's absolutely ruthless. That's what a villain should be: interesting.

Villains are interesting because they provide a counterpoint to the PCs. Where the PCs want to save the townsfolk, the villain wants the town under his control. If the PCs are going after a magic artifact, the villain does what he can to make sure they don't get it. The PCs go after something themselves, while the villain has minions to do his bidding.

That's why villains are so interesting: their sole purpose as a game element is to provide more than “a few orcs in a room guarding a chest.” They give the PCs a reason to adventure: to stop the villain.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Thirteen - Favorite Trap

Whenever I DM, my favorite trap is almost always the pit trap. It's classic, it's versatile, and it can be triggered a thousand different ways.

The pit trap is easy to make interesting and deadly, even at higher levels. At low levels, it's pretty common to just have a straight ten-foot-deep pit with a solid stone floor. It does some damage, but it's usually pretty easy to get out of it if the party is carrying rope (and really, what self-respecting adventurer doesn't carry rope?). At higher levels though, the pit can have spikes at the bottom for extra damage, it can be deeper, or it can have something waiting in it.

My favorite pit trap for high-level parties is to have a pit trap with greased walls and a pit of acid ten-feet down. It's tough to get out of something like that. Or, even better, have it be a regular pit with walls angled so that the pit is wider at the bottom than at the top (to prevent climbing) and have a family of monsters living down there (carrion crawlers, wolves, dire rats, anything like that). Or, go with a classic monster and have the adventurers fall directly on top of (and into) a gelatinous cube.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Twelve - Favorite Dungeon Location

My favorite type of dungeon is almost certainly the dragon's lair.

Dragon lairs are awesome for a few reasons. One, they're the source of a major decision for the party; either A) go in and possibly get killed by a monstrously powerful dragon, or B) walk away and ignore the massive pile of treasure at the end. Dragons are a huge part of D&D (who'd have thought?), and making a good dragon's lair takes a lot of effort. As a DM, you've got to balance good encounters and traps to keep the party on their toes before getting to the dragon without using up so many of the party's resources (spells, healing abilities, hit points, etc.) that they won't be strong enough to face the dragon at the end. You've also got to make the reward worth it, so even if the party loses a member or two, there will be enough treasure to make it worth the sacrifice (maybe with enough gold for a Raise Dead spell or two).

The other major difficulty in using a dragon's lair is the dragon itself; a fight with a dragon has to be climactic, epic, and tense. While some of that falls on the dice and how well the DM and players are rolling, it also has to do with making sure the dragon is a suitable opponent for the party: too tough, and the party isn't going to succeed at all. Too easy, and the party is going to stomp over the dragon and won't feel like they've really earned all that dragon treasure.

Sometime soon, I'll be writing another, longer post about how to make memorable dragon lairs.

D&D 30 Day Challenge: Day Eleven - My Favorite Adventure

My favorite adventure that I've run has to be The Sunless Citadel by Bruce Cordell. It was not only the first full-length adventure I played through, but it's also the first adventure I ever ran.

What I like about The Sunless Citadel is that it kind of breaks the mold for what I think of as a typical first-level adventure. Normally, for a first-level adventure, I think the cliché is “rescue someone or retrieve some item from some goblins or orcs, and get a few gold out of the deal.” Pretty simple stuff, really.

In contrast to that, The Sunless Citadel has a ton going on: the kobold/goblin feud, the goblins working for Belak, Belak and the Gulthias Tree, the mystery of the twig blights, and the missing adventuring party. Not only does it have all of that, but there's also foreshadowing and references to a dragon called Ashardalon, along with a map that leads to the next adventure in the series, The Forge of Fury. On top of that, there's even a dragon in The Sunless Citadel. What more could you ask for out of a first-level adventure?