man you sound like a way big fun DM, Kalshane.

I appreciate the compliment, though I feel like there are a lot of way better DMs than me out there. I read other people's campaign notes and writhe with jealousy at what they've come up with.

Even among people I've played with, I wish I could RP like one of our DMs, or world-build like another, or think on my feet like a third. The DM I've played in the most games with (and ran the campaign I made Kelric for) weaves incredible, epic stories that I wish I could emulate. His weakness is he tends to make give his PCs too much in the way of loot and power and we can sometimes stomp all over his carefully planned encounters. (The funniest, in a sad way, was a high level 3.0 game where he let my brother make a sorcerer to play as a one-off while he was in town visiting. The party is about to square off against some heavy-duty badguys, and the DM spends several minutes describing them to drive up tension. Initiative is rolled, the Sorcerer wins. "I snap my fingers to trigger my Contingency, casting Haste on myself. Then I cast Horrid Wilting on them twice." A few dice rolls later and the badguys were all withered husks.)

The campaign I played in with the one that did fantastic world-building also had great, memorable NPCs that you actually cared about, but he also liked to add new fiddly mechanics that didn't always work that well and sometimes caused frustration.

If I had to rate myself, I'd say I was somewhere in the middle, with game mechanics being my strongest suit by far, and RPing being my weakest, while being passable at storytelling, world-building and improvising. Thankfully, I have players that are perfectly happy to RP with each other, so I just need to use the NPCs to provide a catalyst.

I will say, one thing I love about the internet is the ability to borrow ideas from other DMs and put my own twists on them. I'm discovering that's especially helpful with a published adventure like Rise of the Runelords, where I can actually get blow-by-blow accounts from players and DMs that have already been through it and see what works and what doesn't as written. Obviously, a lot of it won't apply to my game, because the players make each game unique, but it gives me some ideas for when my players decide to go off the rails.

That was also the campaign the party foolishly decided to try to rest in a red dragon's volcano lair and woke up on fire when said dragon ambushed them by swimming through the lava and the person they had on watch blew their Spot check to notice it raising its head out of the pool on the far side of the room.

Because nothing says 'safe resting place' like LAVA.

I had a fight once with that setting too (fighting a red dragon in a lava chamber). This was with my primary Living Greyhawk character. When I was living in Philadelphia, I felt the need for a hobby that got me out of the house every once in a while, and that's when I decided to get back into D&D. Third Ed had just come out. I decided to build a CG rogue/wizard, using the Character Builder CD they packaged with the PH at that time. (Dex and Int were the major scores, of course. With hindsight, I'd probably have nudged Con instead of Str, and he did manage to die three times over his career. ...He got better.) His backstory developed more or les entirely from mulling over the name the character generator had given me, "Kerrick of Nyrond". I took him off to a local Con for my first D&D play experience in maybe 15 years, where he performed serviceably in clearing some kobolds from a gnome mine and narrowly avoiding a TPK against a druid-led lizard folk village, and I was hooked once again.

Anyway, once 3.5 came out, the new DMG had as one of the base prestige classes the Arcane Trickster. Perfect for my character's ambitions. That became my new goal. In truth, once Kerrick started multiclassing (he'd started in rogue levels), he was sadly underpowered. His sneak attack and BAB had fallen behind the curve, as had his best spells, and there wasn't much synergy between the two. But when he hit his 5th wizard level, he learned to fly, and suddenly it all came together. He could hold his own as a flying sniper. When he gained his second Arcane Trickster level, he was even a bit of a monster in the right encounter. For at this point, he had access to the orb spells - and to improved invisibility. Ranged touch attacks, no save, no spell resistance, and an extra 3d6 of sneak attack. For the final touch, I crafted a wand of Orb of Force. 10d6 of damage, and virtually nothing had any kind of resistance to it. All this delivered by an invisible, flying wizard with max ranks in Hide and Move Silently.

So anyway, here was our party in the lava room for the final encounter of the adventure. Up pops a huge red dragon and it's on. We had a decent party, but with the exception of Kerrick, we were a bit weak on ranged attacks, and the dragon was using the lava for concealment. A lot of our damage was coming from summoned creatures. I figure we had the dragon down to less than a third of its hp, but most of the party were close to collapse too (except Kerrick, who by this stage had Improved Evasion and was mostly shrugging off the fire breath). They all decided it was time to beat a retreat; the dragon took that opportunity to fly for the volcano's vent and take to the air.

I asked the GM, "Hey, dragon's aren't maneouvrable. It's going to have to change direction when it gets to the vent. Can I get one last shot at it?" He glanced at the dragon's remaining hp, shrugged and said sure. I hauled out my wand, took a shot from 150 feet away - and rolled a crit. 20d6 and one cheering party later, the dragon plummeted back into the lava pool. (We summoned a couple of fire elementals to retrieve the corpse.)

Later on, Kerrick racked up a one-shot kill against a huge white dragon (sneak attack with an orb of fire, did over 50 points of damage; it failed its system shock roll). The path leading up to his home is now flanked by the preserved heads of two huge dragons. he likes to maintain a low profile.

he likes to maintain a low profile.

nice.

once Kerrick started multiclassing (he'd started in rogue levels), he was sadly underpowered.

I always have this problem multiclassing rogues, especially when it comes to Disable Device.

I always have this problem multiclassing rogues, especially when it comes to Disable Device.

Multiclassing is fraught with novice traps in 3rd ed. Still major fun, though. (Not to mention chasing prestige classes.)

Hah. Nice. Touch spell sneaks are the only thing that makes that combo worth it.

We actually had a gnome rogue/illusionist/arcane trickster in the aforementioned campaign. His most-memorable moment wasn't nearly as dramatic as yours. During one battle the rest of the party was down or dead and he ended up playing hide-and-seek with a barbarian until the latter's rage ran out, at which point he sprung out of the shadows to finish him off with a sneak attack.

But yeah, unlike 1st and 2nd Ed, multi-classing a caster was a really poor choice in 3.x, though some of the prestige classes lessened the blow somewhat.

Multi-classing martial classes, though, could create some beastly characters.

You also had the skill point wonkiness, where if you wanted to be a remotely effective rogue/anything, you had to take your first level in rogue. (I had to do that with Kelric, even though backstory-wise, he should have started as a fighter.)

For my Pathfinder game I've adopted the fractional BAB rules from the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana and made custom rules for handling Save progressions to smooth out some of the wonkiness with those, while the default Pathfinder rules fixed the skill problem. (They don't give 4x skill points at 1st level. Instead you gain a +3 bonus on any class skills you put points in. Beyond that, a skill point is a skill point. So a rogue is going to better than a fighter at being sneaky, but the fighter can still spend points on Stealth if he wants and not feel like he's throwing them away. Plus you can always spend a feat on Skill Focus and effectively get the class skill bonus that way.)

I like how they're doing it in this latest round of Aquisitions Inc games. I think they're playing D&D Next. If you are trained in a skill you get to roll an extra die.

I have mixed feelings about what I've heard about D&D Next so far. I'll probably pick up at least the PHB with it comes out, but I'm happy with Pathfinder at the moment.

ION, I was just thinking about how running published adventures are less of a collaborative effort than running a homebrew game. In the latter I can easily steal ideas from my players when they're better than what I come up with. Whereas the published stuff is more set in stone (though I obviously can still pull the DM card and make changes where I see fit.)

Mild spoilers for "Rise of the Runelords":

My players are convinced the sheriff is behind the goblin attack on the town, which he very much isn't. And one of them has this whole conspiracy theory tying the sheriff to the spree of a serial killer five years ago that resulted in the death of the previous sheriff and the burning down of the old church shortly thereafter.

In a homebrew game, if I thought those theories made for a better story than what I originally came up with, I wouldn't have a second thought about running with them, but doing so with a published adventure would throw all kinds of things out of whack later down the line.

Of course, in this case it's a moot point, as I'm content to let them hare around after a red herring for now.

This may be of interest to some people here. I have now received a copy of the Battlestar Galactica Daybreak expansion. It includes the following:

• Awesomeness.

Seriously, I think there are some very nice elements in this expansion. There's only one optional module, and that part leaves me sceptical, but the rest of it looks pretty sweet. They include:

• New characters, twelve of them. There are four totally new characters, which we introduced in the last game (Romo Lampkin, Cottle, Hoshi and Hot Dog). There are also four revamped characters. You can play Apollo the politician, Baltar the cult leader, Helo the pilot or Zarek the mutineer. There are also four new Cylon leaders: Aaron Doral, D'Anna Biers, Simon O'Neill and Sharon "Athena" Agathon. (You can have both Athena and Boomer in the same game.)

• New skill cards. Each deck gets five new cards in three different flavours.

• The Treachery deck gets a full rebuild. The old cards are out, the new cards are in. All the new ones have skill check effects. The point value now varies from 0 to 5. Making checks Reckless is still risky, but function differently (there's a risk that Treachery will get added from the deck).

• New crisis cards, including six new Cylon attack cards.

• A new overlay for Colonial One, which now has four locations.

• New ships! The game comes with four assault raptors. Despite the name, they function like vipers, with a number of bells and/or whistles.

• First new mechanism: players' OPGs are now governed by miracle tokens. Cult leader Baltar's stock in trade is miracle tokens.

• Second new mechanism: Cylon leaders no longer get an agenda. Instead they get a total of four motive cards with different (simpler) conditions and a favoured team. In order to win, the leader must fulfil three of the motives, two of which are earmarked for the winning team. (I think this is a big improvement on the agendas, which varied widely in their degree of difficulty and value as a balancing mechanism.)

• Third new mechanism: Mutiny. This is a big one. There are now mutiny cards, that players can receive in various ways. They can be played as an action, and tend to cut both ways (for instance, one card lets the mutineer launch a nuke, but at the cost of all remaining nukes. However, if a player pulls two mutiny cards at the same time, they get brigged. This also replaces the Sympathiser as a balancing item. Instead, if the game has an even number of (non-Cylon leader) players, at Sleeper phase, one player becomes the Mutineer (hilarity ensues).

The optional part, The Search for Home, I'll save for another time.

The point value now varies from 0 to 5.

Oh maaaaan, that REALLY changes Treachery.

All of that does sound pretty interesting!