Just a little story, we'll see how this goes....

Well, the answer to that is "YES!"

Now, you're probably thinking "Please, elaborate!" So I'm thinking I will.

So, does music have a place in your D&D game? I think that it does. Now, that said, some of you might ask how one goes about getting that to work and with that, I would reply with a few solutions.

I think something like iTunes works best, if you have access to a computer and speakers (usually a laptop with some portable speakers works best). The bonus to this is that you have all of your music all in one place, you can create playlists that have all the music you want and you can even arrange them in an order that suits your needs. Other ways to integrate music would also be having a radio with a CD player nearby or some portable speakers for your personal MP3 player. Or having your own personal orchestra (but I know most of you can't afford those all the time, so we'll skip that).

So, more to the point, you want to have music because it can add a fantastic amount of atmosphere to your game. The major trick is picking music that will fit your scene but at the same time, not detract attention from the action.

Usually what you want is good ambiance. This can usually come from game soundtracks, classical music, movie soundtracks, etc. These (with the exception of some classical music) were usually made to accompany some kind of entertainment and provide atmosphere as well as increasing, emphasizing and sometimes just plain creating a mood desired by the creator (in this case, the DM).

The idea to this is pretty simple and I don't think it needs much explaining. I think what really merits mentioning is the idea of it at all. If you watch a small video clip of a man in a top hat walking down the street with no sound, and then watch it again with oboes and a pipe organ playing some dark funeral dirge, you'll get a certain feeling about that scene. Take that scene again and put some old western saloon piano behind it instead of the dark music. You'll get a different feel from that as well. Still the same visual though.

The point to all of this is to make clear that if you're not using music, you're ignoring an important story-telling medium that could enhance your game very very much. Below are some games that have some great music:

The Baldur's Gate series
Neverwinter Nights
Fable
World of Warcraft
Diablo
Age of Empires
Shadow of the Colossus
The Total War Series
Music by "Midnight Syndicate" (They actually made a Dungeons & Dragons soundtrack years ago)

Those are just some great ones. There are others out there but the point is that you should explore the medium. It's not for everyone but it can sometimes be the salt that a game needs to created just a little more mood. Creeping skeletons are more scary if you put some scary music behind it!

Well, thanks for reading and I hope this gave you all some ideas, if you hadn't had them already. Comment away and if you haven't, register and enjoy Take Talk!

~Andrew

Yes, folks, you heard it right. It's a new age and yep, you can even play D&D via your computer. Now, I'm not talkin' D&D Online: Stormreach, the MMO. I mean doing good ole' Pen-n-Papering right over your very own inter-web-nets!

Some people have asked me recently what I mean when I talk about playing D&D online and I thought "You know what? That might be good to explain!" So I shall. So gather 'round and you shall hear the tale of... well... how to play D&D online.

Essentially, the main thing you need is (aside from a computer itself) an online game table. Some of these are free, others you pay for (usually a one time fee but that fee can be anywhere from possibly $15 - $40+). Most of these will include at least these three things (most of the rest is bonus stuff):

Digital White Board: This is a sub-window within' the program that usually consists of a scaleable grid that can be drawn on. Most programs have a "snap-to-grid" feature where you can have lines snap to the grid to be straight and whatnot.

Dice Macros: These are handy-dandy buttons that roll for you. There are some programs that have pre-made macros like the d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20 (Open RPG has these). These little buttons generate a number that pops up in the chat. So, basically, you click the d20 button and it generates a random number 1-20, like a dice (although sometimes you can just swear that the computer's gimping your rolls but I think that's just gamer superstition coming through. lol) Just about all the gametables I've heard of also allow you to make your own macros through an easy to use little window where you just fill in the name of the macro in one blank and the other with what dice command you want (ex: 2d4 + 6). This will do a whole roll for you and add the numbers up accordingly. Some will even spit out what the actual numbers were (ex: 1+3+6 = 10)

Chat Utility: This is probably the most important thing because without talking of some kind, you've got no D&D. This will simply allow you a group-chat window so you can all talk to each other. Most game tables give the option to create a name to use (I'd always pick my character name) and the DM can label themselves DM. Some gametables also have the capability to private-message the DM and have messages sent privately from the DM to you. This simulates passing covered notes, such as when your character learns of something that the characters around them may not know.

If you have those things, you can play. Anything else is just nice extra features.

The two I recommend are either Gametable 2.0 OR OpenRPG. These both contain the above three features in at least some degree. I like them both for different reasons.

Gametable 2.0 (Link: http://gametable.galactanet.com/)

Gametable is neat. It's a sweet little *barely* no frills package that's free and easy to use. The Dice Macros are cake to use; the really easy little "fill in the blank" window allows you to create a whole litany of buttons. (I have about 16 for my lvl 3 Goliath Fighter. One for every move he can do as well as skills he uses frequently, etc). The Chat is limited. This is the one feature that I am not pleased with but note that they (on the website) said that it's being worked on. The things it lacks is, firstly, Chat selection. You can't highlight any of the text, therefore making it pretty much impossible to log your sessions, which may put a kink into some of you who like the nostalgia of looking back on games. The best you can do is create character journals to record the sessions the best you remember them. They also are lacking Word Wrap. This is a minor nuissance but it just means scrolling to the right with the scroll bar. It's not that bad but scrolling down and only down would have been nicer. Lastly, there's the whiteboard. This, I think, is pretty well done. You can erase sections, you can import little "pogs" (little pictures to represent characters) as .png files. If you're photoshop savvy, this is fun and easy. You can even take Character Builder files, pull them into photoshop, trick them out a bit, put a nice border on them and then just save the file as a .png file in the folder for the game table. This is a very friendly whiteboard with marquee-style erasing too. To use this program, you need to use a Virtual LAN (Local Area Network) program such as Hamachi. One person on the VLAN can open gametable, go up to the network button, select "Host", create the game name, password if needed, etc (just a few little blanks) and bam, it's hosted. The others can open the program, aslo go up to network and select "Join". They just put in the info for the "room" that the host has set up and they log in. Nice and easy and, most importantly, FREE!

OpenRPG (Link: http://www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?c=orpg&m=getorpg)

OpenRPG is a little bigger. Amongst the online gametables, it's probably the biggest, or close, next to MapTools, and some other bigger tables that you have to pay for. The whiteboard for OpenRPG is really a pain to use. Drawing on it is easy enough but the pain comes when you want to erase. You must select each little thing drawn, right click it, and select delete. Imagine if you accidentally drew 50 separate lines.... Yeah, not fun. This, I feel, is OpenRPG's worst feature (which isn't a terrible thing if you don't use the whiteboard.) Second, the macros are easy. Namely, it comes with the default buttons (d4-20 as well as a d100 button) all right there waiting to be clicked. These are nice. As far as I could tell, a macro making utility wasn't there or, if it was, I missed it. That said, to roll, you can simply type "/roll 2d4 + 6" (without the quotes of course) and it would roll and report out the same way Gametable 2.0 does. Finally, the chat utility is great. I really like theirs. You can select text, you have word wrap, it's essentially as good as any instant messenger. (I'm not sure if it allows you bold and italic text but that's not a big deal). It also offers tabs so you can private message the DM and possibly other players, if the need should arise. Running a game with this is a little different because OpenRPG runs off servers. You start a server with your game name on it and you can set passwords and whatnot. Players then open up OpenRPG and browse the hosts and find the one they're looking for in the list. They then select it, hit "Join", put in any passwords needed and you're good to go.

=====

ALRIGHT! After all that, you've probably got ideas rolling around in your head. This does open up options. There are other gametables, some REALLY elaborate ones with some incredible graphics, some come with really nice maps or map building tools, some are really complex, etc. Most of these cost a nice chunk of change. I remember seeing one that, for the DM license (the player license was cheaper) it was about $80 or so. Not cheap. Others tend to run between $15-$40.

This, in the end, breaks the "I've got no one to play with!" argument because, so long as you know some people somewhere who'd be willing to play, all you do is call 'em up, all download the same gametable, get whatever books you need at your desk and start playin'. It's not as good as being around the table for sure, but it certainly beats not playin' at all.

I hope this enlightened you guys and that you now have a new avenue to getting your game on! Thanks again to all you readers; the site just keeps growing! Keep talking to people and get the word out. Hope to have a new post up soon. Until then, check out Take-Talk and see if there's anyone on there to chat with! You can find me under there as, what else, "The D&D Take". Until next time, may all your rolls be 20's!

~Andrew

All new on the site, Take-Talk! This is a easy-to-use chat window that allows any of you Taken (and anyone else, for that matter) while at the site, to do some live talk. I was doing some thinking and I'm liking the way things are shaping up. We've got regular readers, the reader-base is growing and things seems to be going at a nice clip. I would like to be able to talk to you guys outside comments (but I still want lots of those!). I think this will be a great way to emphasize community and be a utility to connect with each other. So, with no further ado, I give you Take-Talk. Enjoy!

~Andrew

You know, I just had an interesting discussion today about some frustrations over D&D Insider. For those of you who don't know, D&D Insider is the subscription based plan that Wizards of the Coast offers for *around* 10 bucks a month. Not as much as an MMO but not dirt cheap / free either. Now, this said, it contains a lot of things, and those things are:

Dragon Magazine: Dragon Magazine used to be an actual published, buy-it-at-your-local-news-stand magazine, printed on that thing that's so becoming obsolete nowadays... What's it called? ... Oh yeah, paper. Anyways, Dragon contains so neat stuff. Mainly it contains stuff usable by players and DM's that tend to be, more or less, functional things. It has interesting game articles, it has stuff having to do with character creation, in-game locations (like cities and whatnot), etc. One of the other really cool things is that they publish content from upcoming books that tend to run about 35$ apiece, such as most recently, the Psion class available in the Players Handbook 3, which should be coming out in March of 2010, give or take a few months.

Dungeon Magazine: Dungeon used to be the sister mag to Dragon and used to also be on news stands most everywhere. This tends to be a magazine tailored to Dungeon Masters, more or less. It contains articles from the developers as well as actual designed adventures and encounters. Stuff you could throw into a game that way. Also a cool mag.

Digital Tools: This is super new (in relation to D&D) and it promised to be quite spectacular. The digital tools were meant to be downloadable tools which could be used to enhance your D&D experience. There were a whole list of awesome things coming down the pike. Among the original things slated was the D&D Character Builder, The D&D Compendium (an online searchable directory, not a downloadable bit of software), The Character Visualizer, Dungeon Builder and the D&D Game Table. Also, now, there is D&D Adventure Tools which includes the Monster Creator and only the Monster Creator, at the moment, but the opening "menu" has four buttons of five that are blanked out, looking to be spots for new applications to follow in the suite.

Now, all that said, there are some cool things and, truth be told, there are some things that are rather un-cool.

Amongst the cool things are the Character Builder. That's probably one of my favorite tools to use. It makes character building a snap and, so long as I'm doing online gaming and whatnot, I don't have to waste ink and paper. It also handily includes any races or classes released as bonus material in Dragon Magazine, as well as anything that's playable as a character out of the Monster Manual. It takes you through in nice easy steps, takes care of the majority of the math and sets up a great looking character sheet for you, to the point where you can even throw in a little .png file picture to use as a supposed character portrait so you can get an idea of what your character looks like. If you're Photoshop (or other picture editing program) savvy and artistically inclined, you can create your own pictures, save them as .png files and toss those in the file containing the pics and use your own. I really dig that.

Also within the realm of "cool stuff" is early viewing of content. I love getting my hands on a new class or a new race that gives me capabilities I didn't have before, that give me options I didn't have before and flavor i didn't have before. Granted, you COULD bend flavor around the other classes (you could have a fighter who's a theif, for example, but a rogue would just be a bit easier / more conducive to your goal, usually).

Now, unfortunately, there are some negatives. One big negative that I've heard talked about (and am still a tad on the fence about myself) is the subscription fee. Now, as Dungeon and Dragon used to be published magazines, I can understand the monthly fee for monthly content. That's understandable. That said, they've eliminated the need for paper, printing, publishing, etc. At least in big ways they've trimmed it down and saved money. I'm not saying that this negates costs altogether but I think it probably made it a lot cheaper. It makes me wonder about the price.

Also, an interesting little insight came my way and turned me on to the fact that some players really have a problem paying for updates to a program they buy, because once you download the character builder, you own it and can use it indeffinately with the content you've gotten while subscribing. This is where I'm on both sides of the issue. On the one hand, they're releasing new content on a monthly basis in the way of a new class, new race, new feats or whatever and once you've updated your character builder, you've got it and that's that. That said, a lot of people i've talked to think that the content offered isn't worth the money. I think it's cool and I like it but at times it does seem a bit sparse.

Attached to that is also the quality of the software. A lot of times there are bugs. Some pretty obvious or bad bugs. Bugs that are mentioned on the forum but, to my knowledge, seem to go unaddressed. Just about any patcher out there for software can do a hotfix for major issues. It seems that the software is still rather glitchy for a lot of people, leading them to believe to the extent that the company released, in actuality, something of beta test quality instead of final quality while still charging a price reminiscent of final version software.

Also a gripe with me personally is the promise of great things and then having them just go away. The above mentioned Game Table was going to be a utility that would allow gamers to connect all over the world. Gamer groups could connect with eachother thousands of miles apart and it could breathe new life into the game, even moreso than 4th ed did! It was a fantastic idea with high production value. It had a 3D dice tray with some physics to it where you could throw digital dice and, more or less, they'd react as real dice. There was a 3D window where a DM could import dungeons made with the companion Dungeon Builder and where players could import character figures custom created in the Character Visualizer and be able to play across the 3D map. This also had tools such as vision distortion for the players (also called "fog-of-war") which would hide things the players "can't see" yet and neat lighting effects. There's nothing out there on the market like this and I think that not making it was a huge loss and also took away from something that a lot of people payed good money for, thinking they were going to get it.

What's more, some of the software seems low quality. Now, I know what goes into making a game, I know that teams are tough and that schedules and deadlines need to be made and all the woes of production; I went to school specifically for game production. That said, it seems like the software quality is sub-par and if it isn't, the bug-fixing needs to happen more than a patch once a month. Included in that is the fact that even though a person is subscribing, they only get up to 5 updates a month. That's it. If they have errors and have to attempt updating again and lose their updates, that's it. Instead, I very much think that if you're paying to have some kind of software, as long as you're paying, you should have access to all the updates you need to keep things in top shape and best working order. Limited patches doesn't make sense and I feel it should be done away with.

Another gripe I have is perhaps with Hasbro or other company higher-ups with Wizards or someone who I'm not totally aware of. All I know is that, due to this economy (which is not entirely anyone's fault), Wizards of the Coast had to make lay-offs. This coming soon after they just released a great product and then they had to cut people. You know what people they cut? A big fat chunk of the Digital team. After that, you know what happened? The game table, the visualizer, the dungeon building utility, all shelved and the website was restructured to not indicate the existence of those things in any way. This frustrates me because, due to a decision made by some suits up top, a team got cut that could have HUGELY impacted the role-playing-game scene at large in a gigantic way. Those tools could have paved the way for entire new types of games, let alone new types of game-play. The tools also could have been fantastic marketing tools, as friends could get other friends who live very far away, into the game when otherwise, they might not get into it. That's free money that's just being turned down and it doesn't make sense to me.

*Sigh* I really do like Wizards and I love D&D. Like I've said a million times over, it's my favorite game ever. Sure, there are some things it lacks in a few places but overall, it's a blast and has brought more inspiration to me in the past years than anything else has in my life. But Wizards, you've got a great thing possible with D&D Insider and you're not using it to its potential; you're just not. Now, whether its the fault of not having enough dough, or whether it's having a vision that the players just may not know about or whether it's just a whim, I think that being in there and helping with the decision making, I'd change a few things and I'm pretty sure it would make a good deal of money. You are a business, after all, and I understand. I just think that changing gears and bringing back some of the awesome things that were promised at the beginning could really bolster your company in a lot of ways.

Guys, as always, thanks for reading and this, by no means, is me hating on Wizards, it's me trying to give some constructive criticism that, thanks to a buddy of mine, I was enlightened to today. I think it needs to be said and I think the players need to speak up more and try to let the company know what we really want. And maybe the majority really did want what they're doing right now but being a silent minority without even getting some answer, even if it's to the negative, isn't helpful. We can't gripe in the shadows but not get a word out asking for what we really want.

For me, it's more classes that feel different from the others, as well the old suite of D&D Insider software tools. If they got those back, I'd be a really happy camper.

Thanks again for reading and I'm thinkin' a lot of comments are comin' on this one. lol

~Andrew

When you see a good fantasy story, one thing I've found that they all have in common is diversity in location. Travel! In just about every fantasy story I've read, the characters move from one interesting locale to the next, sometimes back and forth, moving the plot along as they go.

Now, here's something I've noticed in Pen 'n' Paper rpgs versus video games. Travel gets overlooked! I've seen so many games where the players say "Ok, we're going to travel to this place." (which is like 250 miles away across the country they're in) and as they start traveling, not much is going on, players don't really RP any banter going on between them, no talk on the road, so it ends up coming to "Ok, four days later, you guys get there." That really disappoints me (espescially because I know I've done that).

I think that something I'd like to see more is an emphasis put on travel; on going places instead of just being at places. When you read 4th edition's description, it's a "points-of-light" world, and a sparse one at that. What this means is that the world is dark and frought with peril, save perhaps a few cities, settlements and safe havens that are dimly-lit bright spots in all the danger (I mean this both literally and metaphorically because, in actuality, most monsters don't go about lighting torches so most of the wilderness is, in fact, dark).

So, really, when you think about it, as much adventure takes place in cities and settlements, look how big a settlement is versus the space you usually have to cross to get to it. Now, look at that size in comparisson to the amount of stuff that goes on once you get to your point-of-light. Seems disproportionate, doesn't it? You get to this place, which, compared to the area surrounding it, is a pin-prick, and yet it has all this stuff going on and hardly anything going on outside of it (save maybe a few wild animals). I think it should be the reverse, or rather, I think that the wilderness needs to be buffed up a bit.

To all us DMs out there, this is a challenge to us all (myself included). When designing an adventure, come up with plot points that could relate to travel. Have some stuff happen to your players! Have them be visited by a mysterious figure or get sidetracked by some interesting things they pass or something (I don't want to lay out a ton of ideas, just in case i end up using them later and my players go "Oh wait, I saw him write about this on The Take" lol).

Have you guys had any interesting ideas about how to make "the space between places" interesting? Any little games you like to throw in there or plot hooks you find work particularly well? Do you perhaps design the entire journey around the road itself and leave out most settlements altogether? Lets see some ideas, I'm very interested!

Thanks for reading as always!

~Andrew

In D&D, as the heroes, you'll usually run into two different forces arrayed against you. The villain or the enemy. To put this simply, in D&D, I would say that an enemy is more of a minion. You will see enemies in groups. The little team of goblins you run into are enemies. The group of pushover human thugs you find in a greasy, seedy city back-alley are enemies. Essentially, enemies, in my mind, are bad guys that are made to go down and stay down, that you're not meant to run into again. That said, your character wouldn't really know that until the goblins are dead, but (even though this would be meta-gaming a bit) you know that those goblins are mostly and mainly exp pods waiting to be gobbled up. Not much more to say about enemies.

The villain is the star of the show (aside from the characters themselves, of course). The villain (or villains are much more NPCs than enemies are just meant to crush. Villains will, in some way, shape or form, push the plot. They will present challenges and plot points which the players / characters will (or at least can) interact with.

What I've seen more in just about all games is that personality isn't really wasted on enemies. They're, for all intents and purposes, fodder. Some games really put life into their "fodder" but usually there are so many of them and since their general purpose in "life" is to just get mowed down, they're generally mindless drones (in my experience). Villains on the other hand (the good ones at least) tend to drip with personality. They pull you in; they get you interested. A good villain is someone you love to hate.

Look at Batman: The Dark Knight; more pointedly, Joker. HE was the villain, those clowns that worked with him at the beginning of the movie, those were enemies. The villain, in a lot of ways, is another character; the DM's PC, if you will. They usually have recurring parts in the story, and they also have minor villains which you run into time and time again, who you'll usually take out before the big villain.

So, to conclude this little post, when you make enemies; all the little guys that are there to get smashed, give them a little flair but don't waste much time on them. The players understand what they are and (lets be honest) some meta-gaming is inevitable. Put your work into your villain (or villains). Make those antagonists shine and make the players want to know more about them and see them more. You could even make the villain so awesome that he may be able to entice a player to switch sides!

A good villain has unlimited potential for plot hooks, plot twists, great and interesting dialogue and, truth be told, a TON of fun role play opportunities for the DM. So, DMs, get your villain on and show those players what's up!

Thanks for reading and there's much more on the way! The the comments roll!

~Andrew