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| Episode 91 |Announcements
ENnies voting is over, Gencon hotels are booked, and we’re looking forward to the con. Be sure to stop by our Kickstarter backer party if you’ve got time Friday night, we’d love to meet as many of you as we can in person. Also, be sure to check out our post full of what we’ve got going on at Gencon too, hopefully you can make it to our panel!
Topics 
5 Room Dungeon
We’ve dug up quite an old blog post about running 5 room dungeons, and it’s fantastic. The formula applies to “encounter areas” to put in system neutral terms and makes for a nice set of building blocks for either a small simple session, one shots, or basically whatever else you can think of. It covers all of the bases, what do you guys think?
Of Dice and Men
Entitled “A Book On The History of D&D and The People Who Play It“, Of Dice and Men is already being called the “Moneyball of D&D”. Aiming to peel back the layers of mystery D&D is wrapped in, the book is aimed at the folks out there who don’t quite know what the game is about. It’s got a great positive spin, and David Ewalt makes sure to inject anecdotal fun bits from his own home games within the pages. Are you excited about this book? We are!
Inspiration Mechanic in D&DNext
Per a recent Legends & Lore article, it seems that D&D may be taking a page from other recent RPGs with building in some role playing rewards right into the system. This feels a lot like bennies from Savage Worlds from what we’ve read, Micah and I discuss its mostly positive possibilities. What are your thoughts?
Tip Corner
EIIA Finalist Showcase – Platemail Games
Question
Gino Rodrigo AKA @reverseg asks: How do you deal with mopey, overly introspective players?
Listen to find out!
Music Credits | Intro: “Prelude” | Outro: “Stande Alone” | by LukHash |
Obsidian Portal is the award winning Online Campaign Management System for tabletop role-playing games. It’s free to use, it can be accessed from any web browser and it's built from the ground up for gamers by gamers. 
Thanks for linking the 5-Room Dungeon article. I’ve been wondering how to start my latest campaign and the system (Tri-Stat DX) is new to me so I’m still a bit unsure how everything will work. I think the 5-room model would be a great way to start and give the players a good feel for how combat works, how skill checks work, and give me a chance to give them glimpses of how the world will look and feel without forcing them (or me) into a huge commitment… But leaving enough to let us make the commitment if we want to.
One thought on Room 3. Even though the author gave examples of how to hinder the party, I think the “hindrance” doesn’t necessarily have to be a roadblock for the sake of being a roadblock. It could be a secondary or bonus objective that could give the players a boon if they complete it… Or hurt them later if they just totally choose to ignore it.
Think about the various side quests in the PC game Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. Yes, you had to kill the big bad evil guy, but there was at least a dozen little miniquests along the way… and the ending narration would tell you how bad you screwed up people’s lives if you didn’t do them.
Congrats on the Silver Ennie- you deserved the Gold imho…
That D&D Inspiration mechanic sounds intriguing. I am with you fellas on that one. It should be more of a ‘sidebar’ option. Thanks for talking about it.