The Drunken Dwarf Inn

I was pondering this the other day, and thought why don’t I ask the good people of the internet:

When you create a new character, how do you decide what to play?

I’m going to start the ball rolling and explain my reasoning and methods behind character generation……….

Firstly, and being brutally honest, we (the players with the nominated DM) sit around a table and discuss options, we pretty much discuss it in a MMORPG kind of way – roles to fill pretty much fit the basics of MMORPG’s perfectly, that being, Tank, DPS or healer – sure there are utility classes, but as we mostly play with 3 player characters, we tend not to have enough flexibility to fill utility roles until we have a few levels of experience behind us and can then consider multiclassing.

Once our role in the party has been identified it’s up to choosing the exact class you want to play, in my current campaign I’m the tank, so I had a good look at my options (using 4th edition D&D in the example, although it works for pretty much all RPG’s) I had the PHB2 available when I rolled this character so I chose the Warden class, which has a good selection of defensive capabilities, and some nice defence abilities.

Once I have the class, I do the same with races, I start at this point to get a feel for the character, creating a story why am I adventuring, what gain is there, where’s the meeting point, why would I be adventuring, if I can answer these questions sensibly then I change direction of the character, change class etc, I think it’s a bad character choice if the only reason you can think of for adventuring is: “I wanted to gain wealth and fame” whilst it might be an end result of adventuring, it’s not the best reason and doesn’t give ideas for hooks or plots to the DM.

Now you have the class and the race (in my case, a shifter warden) now I pick up the dice, and create the physical / mental attributes, and fill out the character sheet.

Usually I take some time to write up some bullet points with a outline story for the DM, something that will provide potential hooks and plots and something that tells the DM I’m taking his campaign seriously and intend on developing the character.

So over to you, how do you generate a new player character.

MadAsToast

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Do you or dont you?

It’s an interesting question really because this doesn’t just affect you as a gamer but it affects the whole group, if one of you decides to run with the errata then all players should really run with the errata otherwise you’re not all singing from the same hymn sheet (anyone playing bullshit bingo can mark off another square), ideally the errata / no errata call should be down to your GM/DM, and to be brutally honest errata IS important it balances the rule set it clarifies rules that are perhaps not clear and on the whole makes things run alot more smoothly, with the internet being so easy now for most people to get onto (work, home, libraries, internet cafe’s) it’s an absolute breeze to upgrade and use the new rules.

So having decided that we’re running the errata, how do you guys keep a track of whether a change has been applied to a rule, power, item etc – do you chave lots of cut outs all over your treasured books, do you write footnotes alongside things saying check errata? Personally I use “post it” type page markers little sticky notes that can be peeled off without leaving the glue behind use them to identify a rule change, then I can grab the trusty errata at that point – genius no?

Anyways, I guess I should mention what really made me post about errata is that Wizards have made another 4th edition errata available to download from their site, being a nice guy I’ll link it here so you dont have to do loads of searching to find it. ERRATA see a nice big link for you to follow, that link takes you to the download for “everything” in one pdf, alternatively you can download just the errata for the relevant manuals, for these downloads here’s another CLICKY both will open another browser window.

Would love to hear your comments, thoughts and general ramblings about errata, or indeed any other topic – so leave a reply, or alternatively CLICK HERE to visit our forums.

That’s me done, stick a fork in me

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Well, this could be the moment you’ve all been waiting for, you can now get your mitts on the first run of The Drunken Dwarf Inn T-Shirts, yes thats right you heard it here first, with the help of the really nice people at Cafe Press we have just launched a range of t-shirts sporting some excellent art work done by “Battle Rager” one of the original members of our group.

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I got that Friday feeling, and for us lucky people in the UK, we have a long weekend to look forward to.
Hopefully going to spend some of my weekend in front of my computer starting to convert Retuirn to the Temple of Elemental Evil to 4th edition, and that in my thinking is going to take some time.
I need to look at the legal standing on that as to whether I can share my notes etc on here, so if we have any legal types that know whether my notes, not the original adventure is acceptable to share or not, get in touch with us.
Across the top menu you might have noticed the syndicated feeds this page will show you some of our favourite RSS feeds, this will be expanding soon, check them out and feel free to make suggestions of feeds we can add to them.
Adverts…… We have room for some adverts which will be shown free for week at a time, so if you want your site advertised freely on the front page then please drop me an email to madastoast at drunkendwarfinn dot co dot uk, make sure you attach your 125 x 125 button and the URL you’d like the link to point to and we’ll do the rest, the only thing we ask in return is that you post an article or small post introducing us.
Have a great weekend.

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So we’ve got a twitter account now if you wish to follow us, then please feel free to do so, point yer favourite twitter software / web browser to our feed and click on the follow button at the top, we’ll use this feed to try to keep you up to speed on what we’re doing, when there are new releases etc – and at the bottom of the front page you’ll see the last few posts from our feed – great eh? what ever will they think of next?

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A review of the Players Handbook, as Wizard state it is one of the “core rulebooks”

First thing to note is that I’m not going to review in great extent about the ruleset in this post, thats best left for another day – this is to review the book itself, the quality and to help you decide whether it’s something you want to part with your very hard earned cash for.

Lets open with the pretty obvious question:

Do I really need it?

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Guys, I’m going to be frank, I need help…….

This site needs like minded individuals who’d be prepared to give a little time (any amount of time) to write articles, moderate forums etc if you think you have what it takes to be part of the team, head over the the forums, sign up and lets us know in the “I’d really like to be part of the team” thread in general discussion.

MadAsToast

Popularity: 43% [?]

And…….. they’re open.

Well, the skeleton of what will be our forums is now open – please take some time to register on the forums and to spend some time joining in, the more people post the more chats develop, so what yer waiting for?  The forums can be found by clicking here or by following the link under “sponsors” it’s the round table – I’ll get links in other places soon.

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I’ve spent a bit of cash recently, so I reckon i’ll need some reviews writing.

Like I said previously I’ve been focussing on 4th Edition alot recently so that’s as good a place as any to start reviewing.

In the near future I’m going to be converting Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil to 4th edition too, so I’ll post my notews etc onto the forums, so those of you who have the adventure can get the encounters changes etc (should you want them) obviously I’m not going to post the maps and the text as that’ll be a breach of copyright etc but my work is my work eh!

Anyways short post today but more to come soon.

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It’s been far too long, and in all honesty a strange, strange journey.

In 1999 (September to be exact) I started a MSN Live group aimed at bringing like minded individuals together to start talking, playing and generally getting excited about Role playing games, along the way we had a blast, we had highs and lows but mostly we’ve been around to chat to each other. Over the last two years we’ve had a long extended break – I personally lost touch with the great awesome people that helped make the Drunken Dwarf Inn a really great place to visit, and finally after a long PnP RPG break, I’m back.

My RL group have started playing 4th Edition D&D and I’m finding it fresh, new and vibrant – the chance to get around a table and play PnP D&D again has been like a breath of fresh air, the group I used to play with years ago have been “roughly” staying in touch and finally got back to playing – not all of us, but most of us – with a new face or two.

So what to expect, well dont expect miracles – rome certainly wasn’t built in a day, altho it’s rumoured that alot of it was I’m back, so is the Drunken Dwarf Inn.

If you’re a new visitor – add a comment – even if it’s just Hi, please add a comment so I know that people are here, if you’re an old friend then dont go without saying hi either. The new forums will be open soon, I want a fresh start here.

Enjoy you’re stay, and more importantly enjoy our ale.

MadAsToast

Popularity: 59% [?]