Donjon Design: More than Just a Cellar Full of Monsters

So after a six month hiatus, I'm getting ready to dive back into running Fourth Edition D&D, albeit on a limited basis.  I'm taking over one of Citizen Ben's three D&D games for a brief spell and I'm also planning a massive weekend long mega-dungeon in celebration of the 30th anniversary of my escape from the womb...   As as I get together my notes and actually start the design process, I've started keeping a list of goals for how I want to design these two dungeons. **Note, for the purpose of this post, consider Dungeon to be synonymous with Adventure.**

(brainstorming for Iskender's Tomb)

GM Commentary: The Hydra and the Viper or Last Rest Episode 8 vs. Fading Suns Chapter Two

First, The Abyss from OGLAF (this link is SFW, but much on OGLAF is delightfully NSFW, so fair warning.)  I'd like to think the PCs in my game are like the Thaumaturge, but I suspect they'd rather be the commoners as that's the much more enjoyable path.


"Self," I thought to myself, as I am wont to, on Tuesday afternoon, "You're going to keep things moving & not going let tonight's Fading Suns become a Plot Gobbler, right?"  "Yes, other self," I told myself, and I'd like to think I succeeded.  Truth is, I've been running lots of Plot Gobbler sessions lately, where I, as GM, do a piss poor job of keeping things moving along or at least staying enjoyable and instead let the game slow to a grind of intra-party dickering and pointless NPC interactions.  While I was able to reign it in for the last Fading Suns session I ran, I'm unsure it it will be as easy when I run my next session of Reign...  Part of it is Final Fantasy NPC Syndrome and part of it is in the different Nature of the Beasts of the two games I'm running.

(as always, you'll be better served if you read my Episode summary at the Last Rest blog, though this last one was a little threadbare and not up to my usual standards)