RECENT UPDATES TO KISMET'S DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

Older Updates

01/31/12

After posting it in sections on my Facebook group, I put up a full article on what I've learned from playing and running campaigns through email.

01/24/12

I've cleaned up my reviews of 4 Winds books and written up some quick recommendations of some of my old favorites. Welcome to the new year, and don't think I've gone away! I'm running a World of Darkness campaign currently, but I'll be back to D&D again sometime soon, in all likelihood.

08/10/11

After developing some ideas on my Facebook group, I have put up the final results for three half-drow variants. I am also rewriting and restructuring my women in gaming pages to make them more accessible (and hopefully to pave the way for new content in that section).

06/17/11

I put up a Pathfinder sorcerer bloodline for the aranean, which is designed to complement my previous aranean template. I also updated my page that explains why I made my templates the way I did. I don't know why I feel compelled to explain such things or if anyone will ever care enough to read it, but I did a quick write-up, anyway.

06/16/11

I added the aranean to my small collection of racial templates and did some minor modifications to my other templates (as well as to a few other creations) so that they are more Pathfinder-compatible. I updated the PDFs associated with them, as well.

06/02/11

I've added a few more suggestions to my page on Suggested Gaming Music. I also added a small addition to my Reasons for Taking Captives page, based on a reader's observation. I am slowly but surely putting in a little work on my next article and I would like to update my pages on Thay soon to reflect the current state of our campaign. Alas, real life will require most of my attention for a while longer, but as soon as I get a break, I am looking forward to going on a gaming bender!

05/24/11

I have taken an in-depth look at how you can use and portray divorce in your games as a part of my section on sex and love in D&D. I honestly hadn't thought there would be so much to say, but then I started translating the usual mess into game terms and the article wrote itself. Even if player characters never get divorced in-game, they can use it as a part of their character's backstory. DMs can weave it into their storytelling as a major problem facing NPCs of all descriptions, from followers to friends to enemies.

05/08/11

After reading over my old page on creating and portraying nuanced NPCs, I decided to rewrite it so that it is entirely more useful. It is meatier, covering everything from initial concepts to personal histories, and built with examples taken from play. I hope that it turns out to be a better reference all around.

05/07/11

I got an interesting question from a visitor to this site a little while back, and I've been composing this answer in small stages (which is all I've had time for lately). Now that it's done, I present to you DM Tips & Tricks: Adding Depth to a Campaign.

I also got word from Facebook that my original group is going to be archived, since they are phasing out the old group format. So I've started a new page to post updates, gaming links, observations, and other gamery things on a regular basis. Drop on by and click 'like' to join the stream!

04/10/11

The next week's update is being posted a little early, since I'm not sure I'll remember to do it during the week. It focuses on Reasons for Taking Captives and is a part of the new Slavery in D&D section. When writing something like this, you see the reasons why real-life slavery is so terrible and why it should have stopped ages ago. It's the kind of horrible that we should only see in stories.

04/05/11

This week's update is the addition of a discussion I've wanted to get to for years: Slavery in D&D. I've used it in good campaigns and it is a major feature of my current evil campaign, and I've seen it in other games, as well. A while back I dug up an old thread on my message boards - from 2007 - about how much I wanted to write more in-depth material about it. As the walrus said, the time has come.

Although it's placed in the Dungeon Master's section, I'm going to be writing it with players in mind, too. Right now it's just an introduction, but I have quite an outline I am eager to fill in.

04/01/11

I know I'm posting this on April Fool's Day, but the update to the Character Name Compendium PDF is no joke! Over 1,000 names have been chosen and added, and though I tried to remove any duplicates, if you catch any, feel free to let me know!

On a related note, April marks the ninth anniversary of this web site and the meaning of that has just started to smack me upside the head. I'd hoped to have even more written and available here, but I'm really glad for what I have done because it reflects a decade of gaming and it allows me to share resources with other gamers. It's also been a source of fun that I've been able to return to despite everything else going on in my life. There's a special kind of relaxation I feel when I sit down just to work on something here and there's a particular happiness that I get when people let me know that they've enjoyed my stuff.

It's in that spirit that I will be trying to update more often, and if I can manage it, I'll see if I can get something up each week this April. Even if it's just a blurb, even if it seems like free time is more precious than gold pieces, it'll be worth it.

03/24/11

Today I received some nice feedback from a visitor who suggested I udpate my pages about my first campaign - and then I realized that I hadn't put a notice up that my first campaign has come to a close, at least for the foreseeable future. I know that I tried to write something about it a couple of times but I ended up being too upset to continue. I haven't had many responses about that section, so I figured I wouldn't need to explain.

I know how silly it sounds to get upset about such a thing. I know that most people will not understand how a game can come to symbolize a time in your life and the relationships you cherished. And since I try to keep my private life out of my gaming web sites, you have no way of knowing why this has such emotional resonance for me, even now. I had a lot of fun with my first campaign and am very proud of all the care we put into it, and I might try to cover some of the later developments in future updates. But if I can't write this much without tears, it'll be a while before I can manage more.

03/19/11

I have worked on bits of site cleanup that you probably won't notice (but it makes me feel better!). All of the pages should now be converted to the newer layout. I took down my old version of the sorcerer class, since I had meant to ditch it a long time ago and was never very happy with it. I realized that my links page was not linked to the site, so I renewed that. I do have some new content in the pipelines, but due to real life, it will probably take a while for it to be ready.

01/29/11

The new year on Kismet's D&D starts with a favorite pasttime of mine: name gathering. Today I realized that I've generated a good number of names for my evil campaign, all chosen along a theme, and hadn't shared a one of them here. Now that's changed! Behold the Thayan name list!