You’ve been wondering when this would happen, adventure fans … and the time is now! Episode 90 of the Icosahedrophilia podcast proudly presents “Keeping the Promise, Part 4,” played and recorded on April 24, 2010—in which our heroes return triumphantly to their ship, the Broken Promise! Please listen now or subscribe via iTunes, Zune, or plain old RSS. This episode features the following segments:

• Weighing Anchor: Fellow RPG blogger and podcaster newbiedm, calls for your initiative roll.
• The Staging Area: I briefly explain the background to the PCs’ need to retake their own ship, and refer new listeners to the “Story Thus Far” recap episode.
• The Weather Report: The PCs brilliantly implement their plan to retake the Broken Promise, igniting combat with the goblinoid pirates aboard.
• The Prop Shop: I describe my use of Combat Tiers to construct a 3D Broken Promise on the battlemap in Markathesh’s harbor. Neither of the Vorpal Network’s July sponsors carries Combat Tiers, so my FRP Games pick of the episode is Litko Aerosystems’ Flying Figure Stands for individual figures, available in round or square varieties, and my Noble Knight pick of the episode is the 28mm Body Part/Hit Location d12 by Koplow Games.
• Sea Shanties: This episode features “Racing the Wind,” “Gallows Jig,” and “High Seas” from the album Phantoms of the High Seas by Nox Arcana, ©2006 Monolith Graphics and “Degenerate Seaside Town” by Matthew Steckler, ©2010 Sonic Legends. All tracks were used by permission of the copyright holders.

I hope that you enjoy(ed) listening to “Keeping the Promise, Part 4,” and that you’ll join us when the adventure concludes in “Keeping the Promise, Part 5″!

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Preparations for retaking the Broken Promise continue as the PCs gather intelligence and solidify their plans. Witness the PCs’ next steps toward retaking their ship in “Keeping the Promise, Part 3,” played and recorded on April 24, 2010! Please listen now or subscribe via iTunes, Zune, or plain old RSS. This episode features the following segments:

• Weighing Anchor: DM Neil from the Nerdbound podcast, which also presents D&D 4e actual play, calls for your initiative roll.
• The Staging Area: I briefly explain the circumstances leading up to the adventurers’ visit to Markathesh, and refer new listeners to the “Story Thus Far” recap episode.
• The Weather Report: The PCs continue to gather information about the goblinoid pirates, establish surveillance on the ship, and set in motion their plan to retake the Broken Promise—though the real action must wait until our next episode.
• The Prop Shop: I credit Exemplars of Evil as the source of inspiration for Captain Gnash, Pog the navigator, Crunglutch the first mate, and Fecar the Unclean—and make that book my Noble Knight pick of the episode. My FRP Games pick of the episode is Paizo’s recent GameMaster Map Pack: Boats and Ships, which I wish had been published before my April 24 game so that I could use its contents to populate the Markathesh harbor. Instead, I used ship tiles from last year’s DM Rewards mailout from Wizards of the Coast.
• Sea Shanties: This episode features “Racing the Wind” and “Gallows Jig” from the album Phantoms of the High Seas by Nox Arcana, ©2006 Monolith Graphics and “Degenerate Seaside Town” by Matthew Steckler, ©2010 Sonic Legends. All tracks were used by permission of the copyright holders.

I hope that you enjoy(ed) listening to “Keeping the Promise, Part 3,” and that you’ll join us when the adventure continues in “Keeping the Promise, Part 4″!

I have more to say about this …

Like many of you, adventure fans, I’ve followed with interest the buzz, speculation, and previews relating to the Dungeons & Dragons Essentials line coming this fall from Wizards of the Coast. Like many of you, I’ve heard (on podcasts) or read (on blogs) everything from cogent commentary to the wildest speculations. I thought I’d chime in with my own opinion, which I can sum up in one phrase. Essentials isn’t 4.5, it’s 3.95.

For more details, please follow the “more to say” link below. I apologize to anyone who finds this “splitting” of the post annoying, but the whole thing became quite lengthy, and I didn’t want it to dominate the front page.

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Our heroes have been in Markathesh for half a day, and the Broken Promise still remains in the hands of bugbear pirates! Witness the PCs’ next steps toward retaking their ship in “Keeping the Promise, Part 2,” played and recorded on April 24, 2010! Please listen now or subscribe via iTunes, Zune, or plain old RSS. This episode features the following segments:

• Weighing Anchor: Ed Katayama, proprietor of A Hidden Fortress in Simi Valley (my friendly local game store), calls for your initiative roll.
• The Staging Area: I briefly explain the circumstances leading up to the adventurers’ visit to Markathesh, and refer new listeners to the “Story Thus Far” recap episode.
• The Weather Report: The PCs uncover the secret behind Markathesh’s recent “troubles.”
• The Prop Shop: I describe my use of various props to create the Markathesh waterfront. My Noble Knight pick of the episode is one of those props, the GameMastery Map Pack: Waterfront by Paizo. My FRP Games pick of the episode is the Reaper P-65 Heavy Metal Wereshark, the miniature I used to represent the wereshark the PCs encountered during this play segment.
• Sea Shanties: This episode features “Racing the Wind” and “Gallows Jig” from the album Phantoms of the High Seas by Nox Arcana, ©2006 Monolith Graphics and “Degenerate Seaside Town” by Matthew Steckler, ©2010 Sonic Legends. All tracks were used by permission of the copyright holders.

I hope that you enjoy(ed) listening to “Keeping the Promise, Part 2,” and that you’ll join us when the adventure continues in “Keeping the Promise, Part 3″!

I have more to say about this …

I’ve already made my love for the Sonic Legends line of RPG soundscapes well known here on Icosahedrophilia and on DriveThruRPG. Six of Sonic Legends’ initial wave of offerings were inspired by and keyed to the FantasyCraft adventure The Cleansing of Black Spur. I’m not familiar with that adventure, as I don’t play FantasyCraft (nothing against it, but my gaming time runs low), so in the comments that follow I won’t have anything to say about the coherence between the music and the specific story presented in The Cleansing of Black Spur.

• “Achela’s Ritual” by Christy Carew. I’m not sure what ritual Achela is performing, but this music makes it sound like she’s in a hurry—or that the heroes are in a hurry to stop her. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “Attack of the Wyvern” by Erika Lieberman. Some DMs and players might find the roars, screams, groans, clashing swords, whooshing arrows, and other sound effects in this track to be over the top, but I rather like them. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “Goblin Encampment” by Mike Worth. Percussive sounds that I can best describe as tribal drumming predominate in the first couple of minutes of this track, followed by ominous strings and the sound of high-pitched chittering. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “Pader Augustus’ Plea” by Christy Carew. Taking a cue from the title, I picture this track as the score for interaction with an important NPC, perhaps a potential patron or someone who hooks the characters into an adventure. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★★
• “The Ruins of Black Spur Keep” by Erika Lieberman. Although the name seems to suggest exploration, this piece strikes me as more appropriate for a battle scene. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★

During the week of July 18–24, 2010, I reviewed the following items at DriveThruRPG:

• Caltrops by Quentin Hudspeth for Hudspeth Games. This entertaining system-neutral supplement offers two games that you can play with d4s. Incorporate the games into your fantasy campaign using all the flavor provided, or just play them for fun. ★★★★
• Dead Tower Island by David G. Martin for Tabletop Armory. Nowadays, when so many different fantasy RPGs exist side-by-side, systemless adventures should prove very attractive. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★
• Deadly Toxins: Poisons by Geoff Habiger for Tangent Games. “Deadly Toxins: Poisons” serves three overlapping yet distinct audiences equally well: DMs and players who don’t know much about poisons to begin with, DMs who want to use poisons in their games to challenge the PCs, and players who want their PCs to use poisons. All three audiences will find plenty of useful information and ideas here. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★
• Dhanurvidya & Varman: The Arms and Armor of India by Michael J. Varhola, Alejandro Melchor, et al. for Skirmisher Publishing. I should state up front that I know next to nothing about the real-world history of Indian arms and armor, so my evaluation of this book rests entirely on its usefulness as a gameplay aid, without respect to historical accuracy or inaccuracy. As a gameplay aid, parts of it succeed brilliantly, and parts of it succeed with less glamour. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★★
• Fantastic Maps: Tribal Encampment by Jonathan Roberts for Rite Publishing. Although I usually prefer a more “realistic” style (i.e., fewer harsh black lines), this product delivers a very nice printable battlemap suitable for a wide variety of RPGs and miniatures games that use 1″ = 5′ scale. ★★★★★
• The Goblins of Summerkeep by Brent P. Newhall for Brent P. Newhall’s Musaeum. The author of this adventure, Brent Newhall, deserves props for trying to make life easy for DMs who wish to run this adventure. (Read more at DriveThruRPG.) ★★★

Although I’ve been DMing for thirty years now (albeit with a long hiatus during the D&D 2e era) and consider myself a pretty good DM (listen to the Icosahedrophilia podcast and judge for yourself whether I’m decent or deluded), I still appreciate a good collection of tips and tricks for DMs. Nowadays, I get most of those tips and tricks from podcasts and blogs—including Mike Shea’s Sly Flourish blog and daily Twitter tips. Therefore, I expected good things from his book Dungeon Master Tips, and although I tripped over a few grammatical and stylistic issues here and there, I wasn’t disappointed.

The book unfolds in three major sections:

• Build Your Story
• Design Fun Encounters
• Run a Great Game

I’ll make some comments about each section in turn.

Build Your Story. A DM who understands an RPG’s rules inside out but doesn’t give the players around the table (including the DM himself or herself) an opportunity to tell fun stories together will find himself or herself—and his or her players—frustrated. How can you enable great stories to emerge at your table? Following Mike’s advice in this section of Dungeon Master Tips will carry you a long way. Mike draws on the work of writers, creativity experts, and other great DMs to provide strong, simple advice that, if implemented reasonably well, should improve any RPG campaign.

Design Fun Encounters. Sometimes I fear that my encounter design threatens to grow stale or overly predictable. For a while now, I’ve used an encounter checklist similar to the one Mike offers in Dungeon Master Tips; mine was heavily influenced by “The List” presented in episode 37 of the Order 66 Podcast (another resource that I highly recommend). I particularly enjoyed—and hope that my players will benefit from—Mike’s advice regarding battlemaps and terrain features. However, the material that will make the greatest impact on my own encounter design is, hands-down, the advice on using minions and solo monsters. These are places where D&D 4e RAW don’t really quite work right, at least for the first wave of rulebooks, so I anticipate using some of Mike’s suggested house rules that I haven’t yet incorporated into my games.

Run a Great Game. I’ve done some of the things Mike suggests in part 3 for quite a while now. In particular, I really enjoy using props and other types of table dressing. If you want to implement Mike’s suggestion about timers, you can buy sand timers in a variety of durations from FRP Games, as I’ve done. In the matter of “table tools,” I’ve gone a different direction than Mike suggests. Instead of cheap table tools like pipe cleaners and index cards, I’ve chosen to invest in high-quality tools like Litko Aerosystems condition tokens and such—but I’ve played at tables where pipe cleaners or twisted wire with beads were used with great effectiveness.

I shouldn’t conclude this review without a word of praise for the half-dozen or so illustrations by Jared von Hindman. I don’t usually like a cartoony style for D&D art, but Jared pulls it off well, and somehow it really fits the DIY theme of the book.

I mentioned tripping over some grammatical and stylistic issues, and I seem constitutionally incapable of writing any review without mentioning such issues when they arise. Michael uses “they” and its variants as gender-neutral singular pronouns (“each goes off in their own previously unknown direction”). While I can accept this in theory, it grates on my ear, and Michael swings between singular “they” and expressions like “he or she”—I found the alternation distracting. Occasionally, the book exhibits inconsistent punctuation, as when the word “all-seeing” is hyphenated correctly in a paragraph on p. 23 but not in the subheading above that paragraph, or incorrect placement of punctuation. Also, for the sake of honesty, I must tell you that I did not like the layout, with its widely-spaced text and lack of paragraph indentation. Those conventions might work fine on the web, but they don’t translate well to a printed page.

Aside from those stylistic annoyances, Dungeon Master Tips is a great resource for all DMs, though less experienced DMs will find more value in it than old-timers. At $11.99 for 77 pages (including cover), the book costs less per page than a typical WotC softcover, and it’s worth it. I purchased the PDF version, and got all the goodies in digital form for just $7.99—a bargain, if you ask me. If I were rating this book on DriveThruRPG, I’d give it ★★★★ (it would rate ★★★★★ with more attractive layout and slightly more polished prose). Tell Mike that I sent you over when you purchase your copy.

Each installment of the “Dungeons & DJs” series presents you with a new collection of music—usually, a single, complete album—that you might find useful at your gaming table. This installment focuses on four tracks from the wonderful Sonic Legends library, specifically composed as gaming soundscapes and published in July 2010.

• “Ancient Archives“by Christy Carew. As the name implies, this track—in which pleasant harps and strings dominate—would work well under a scene of research or exploration in an old library or scriptorium, or perhaps while shopping for magical components or alchemical reagents. Like all of Christy’s contributions to the Sonic Legends library, this piece loops flawlessly, essentially giving you a backing track of infinite length. (8:14) ★★★★★
• “City of the Dark Elves” by Jonn Ollsin. Somber tones, light bells, and vague whispers set a perfect atmosphere for the Underdark. I might be more inclined to use this track for exploring a deserted drow city than for a well-populated place like Erelhei-Cinlu. A “thinner” sound earlier in the track adds depth as the piece progresses; this works very well, but allows an attentive listener to detect where the piece ends and begins when looping. (8:07) ★★★★★
• “Modern Military Base” by Alex Kovacs. This track begins with reveille—which, honestly, would disrupt the looping significantly—and then moves into some ominous-sounding chords with occasional deep percussion. The tempo and tension pick up around five minutes in. That’s also when the sound effects—I hear the stamping of combat boots—come in, yielding finally to machine-gun fire around six and half minutes in. You also get some sounds of aircraft flyovers and bombs bursting (in air?), blending perfectly with the music. I could easily imagine this as the soundtrack to a short film. I won’t use this track often, since I rarely run modern-era games, but I like it very well. (9:12) ★★★★
• “The Reaper” by Joe Matzzie.

Defying Blue Öyster Cult, Joe Matzzie definitely wants you to fear the reaper, and he uses low-pitched strings, vague vocals, and sound effects resembling the whooshing of batwings, the stomping of heavy feet, and the roar of a dragon or demon to accomplish all this. I can easily imagine playing this piece while hapless PCs battle Orcus. Unfortunately, this track loops a little awkwardly, and this one respect lags a bit behind some of the other Sonic Legends offerings. ★★★★

The Broken Promise has apparently been commandeered by bugbear pirates! What will our heroes do about that? Find out in our adventure “Keeping the Promise,” played and recorded on April 24, 2010! Episode 87 of the podcast presents part 1 of this adventure. Please listen now or subscribe via iTunes, Zune, or plain old RSS. This episode features the following segments:

• Weighing Anchor: Swordgleam, a.k.a. Hannah Lipsky of Chaotic Shiny Productions, calls for your initiative roll.
• The Staging Area: I go into a little more detail than usual about the background to this adventure, reminding listeners of the PCs’ overall quest and their most recent experiences, ending with their discovery of bugbears operating the Broken Promise in the harbor of Markathesh. As usual, I refer new listeners to the “Story Thus Far” recap episode.
• The Weather Report: The PCs begin to acquaint themselves with Markathesh, and start making plans to retake the Broken Promise.
• The Prop Shop: I give a little insight into the latest plot twist and identify some of the inspiration behind Thaddeus Muldoon. My FRP Games pick of the episode is the 4e Tomb of Horrors, currently on sale for 20% off the suggested retail price; my Noble Knight pick of the episode is the classic AD&D Tomb of Horrors, long out-of-print but still available from Noble Knight!
• Sea Shanties: This episode features “Racing the Wind” and “Gallows Jig” from the album Phantoms of the High Seas by Nox Arcana, ©2006 Monolith Graphics, and “Degenerate Seaside Town” by Matthew Steckler, ©2010 Sonic Legends. All tracks were used by permission of the copyright holders.

I hope that you enjoy(ed) listening to “Keeping the Promise, Part 1,” and that you’ll join us when the adventure continues in “Keeping the Promise, Part 2″!

I have more to say about this …

What do you do after killing a dragon? Find out the Broken Promise crew’s answer in “Exit the Dragon, Part 4,” recorded on April 3, 2010 and presented in the Icosahedrophilia podcast, episode 86! Please listen now or subscribe via iTunes, Zune, or plain old RSS. This episode features the following segments:

• Weighing Anchor: Andrew Wilson of Silent7Seven Games calls for your initiative roll.
• The Staging Area: I very briefly describe what happened in parts 1 through 3 of this adventure, give a micro-preview of what’s coming in this episode, and refer new listeners to the “Story Thus Far” recap episode.
• The Weather Report: The PCs strategize about their next moves, then set out across the desert to the port city of Markathesh. You won’t want to miss their first encounter with a strange structure in the desert, and the cliffhanger ending is a must-hear!
• The Prop Shop: I keep it short, just giving the usual credit where credit is due.
• Sea Shanties: This episode features “Racing the Wind” and “Gallows Jig” from the album Phantoms of the High Seas by Nox Arcana, ©2008 Monolith Graphics, and “Amun Ra” from the album Amun Ra by Medwyn Goodall, ©2008 MG Music. All tracks were used by permission of the copyright holders.

I hope that you enjoy(ed) listening to “Exit the Dragon, Part 4,” and that you’ll join us when the campaign continues in “Keeping the Promise, Part 1!”

I have more to say about this …