iPlay4e & Masterplan

While Wizards of the Coast provide official tools with their D&D Insider subscription, there are also many unofficial third-party tools available. Some tools are created by professional companies while others are fan-made, some are for profit and others are free. I'm constantly on the lookout for new tools and resources that can improve my games and the sheer volume and range to be found is impressive.

One site that my players use is iPlay4e, which is essentially an online character sheet. It requires a Google account and is free to use, but requires you to upload character files created by the D&D Insider Character Builder. Once characters are uploaded, you can share the link with friends or create and join a campaign with them for a handy overview of the entire party. The character sheets are also interactive and can be used to keep track of things like hit points, healing surges, action points and power consumption. Dice rolling is also built-in; simply clicking the boxes next to the appropriate stat, skill or power will roll a dice and automatically include any relevant modifiers. If you have an active D&D Insider subscription, iPlay4e has a built-in Compendium browser that will look up details of anything on your sheet without requiring you to open another window. The icing on the cake with iPlay4e, is the mobile view; players can easily use their iPhones and other mobile devices as a small, interactive character sheet.

Another tool that I recently discovered is Masterplan. Primarily for dungeon masters, Masterplan is an "Adventure Design Studio". Once again, this tool is free to download but can optionally make use of a D&D Insider subscription to download creatures, traps and treasure from the Compendium for quick use in your campaigns. With Masterplan, a DM can easily create a flowchart of the campaign plot and connect encounters, quests and maps to each plot point. Creating encounters is simply a matter of dragging and dropping creatures, traps and skill challenges from a library, then Masterplan will calculate the total XP values and display the difficulty for the party level; an auto-build feature will even generate encounters for you based on a few criteria that you set. Building encounter maps is equally simple, just drag and drop dungeon tiles from your library or use auto-build to generate a map from the tile libraries that you select. If you have a separate display available, you can even use Masterplan to display information to your players; it's possible to run a full encounter with maps and tokens while tracking initiative, hit points, conditions and ongoing damage for each player and creature. Even if you don't use the player view feature, Masterplan is still an amazing tool to help dungeon masters design their campaigns.

D&D Insider

The original Dungeons & Dragons was published in 1974 and much has changed between then and now. D&D is traditionally played at a table with dice and stationery, but there is no reason that you can't use modern technology to enhance the experience. Whether it's simply an iPhone application for dice rolling or a projector to display maps on the tabletop, there's surely some digital tool that can improve your games.

I'll begin with D&D Insider, a subscription-based service from Wizards of the Coast. DDI provides the subscribers with access to tools such as Character Builder and Monster Builder (which is currently in beta), full access to D&D Compendium and monthly editions of Dungeon Magazine and Dragon Magazine.

Character Builder is a very useful interactive tool that guides you through the character creation process and will automatically fill out your character sheet based on your choices of race, class, feats, etc. There is a demo available that limits characters to levels 1-3, download it here: Character Builder Demo

D&D Compendium is essentially a huge database that allows you to search for information on feats, powers, rituals, items, monsters etc. You can view a demo here: D&D Compendium Demo

Dungeon Magazine is a resource for Dungeon Masters to help them improve their campaigns with world-building advice, new monsters and villains and even full pre-made adventures. Dragon Magazine is a resource for players with content to help expand character options beyond that of the Player's Handbooks; each issue contains new powers, feats, magic items, paragon paths and epic destinies.

Whether DDI is worth the subscription cost is really a matter of opinion. The tools are useful and excellent quality, though some have yet to see the light of day despite being announced years ago. The compendium is simply information that can mostly be found within the core rulebooks, but the ability to quickly filter and search is what makes it so helpful. It's also worth noting that if your subscription expires, you still get to keep all of your downloaded magazines and tools with full functionality, so even a 1-month subscription would grant access to a lot of content.

Other Role-playing Games

As a new player to the genre, my experience is mostly limited to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition which I feel is an excellent option for beginners; it only requires a basic knowledge of the rules to get started playing and the rest naturally develop over time. Everyone has their own needs and tastes however, and there are other games out there which are worth taking a look at.

To begin with, as the name suggests, D&D 4th Edition is not the only version of D&D available. Many people still play older versions of D&D; some don't want to buy a new set of rulebooks or learn a new set of rules, others simply feel that the old rules are superior. You can find out information on all of the versions of D&D with a list of differences here: Editions of Dungeons & Dragons

Wizards of the Coast released the d20 System used in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition under the Open Game License, which allowed other companies to use the system to create and publish their own games. One popular example is Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which is an adaptation of the D&D 3.5 rules. The design goals of the game were to improve upon the existing D&D 3.5 rules, add new options for players and attempt to be compatible with material already available for D&D 3.5.




Venturing away from the D&D systems entirely, we can find things such as the Generic Universal RolePlaying System. GURPS is purposely designed to be generic and universal so that players can apply the core rules to whatever setting they might want to role-play in. This means that if the traditional fantasy setting doesn't suit you, GURPS should work equally with guns and spaceships as it does with swords and magic.



Shadowrun is a game with a less traditional, cross-genre setting; a mixture of cyberpunk and fantasy in a near-future Earth where magic has returned. Mega-corporations, governments and even crime syndicates hire specialists known as Shadowrunners to do their dirty work. The game mechanics are based on a custom 6-sided dice system and characters are skill-based rather than class-based.



Lastly, I want to mention the World of Darkness and the Storytelling System by White Wolf. The World of Darkness is a setting and core rulebook used by (at least) 3 games; Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken and Mage: The Awakening. The games are set in a modern-day Earth where the supernatural is real, though generally hidden from human awareness. The Storytelling System is used in many games by White Wolf and uses 10-sided dice to roll successes or failures for various tasks.




It's a good idea to investigate and discuss the options with your group before diving in head-first. I'm definitely glad that my group began with D&D 4th Edition, but I would certainly like to try some of these other games in the future.

Pre-made Adventures

A dungeon master has many jobs, but they can be split into two categories; creating the game and running the game. With D&D 4th Edition, the basic rules can be quickly learned and more advanced rules will be encountered and incorporated naturally and gradually. After a few sessions, running a game should become almost second nature to a DM. Creating a game, however, can be a far more daunting task.

Anyone can imagine a fictional world, fill it with traps and populate it with monsters, but the art is in making it interesting to your players. The Dungeon Master's Guides are full of advice to help you create adventures that your players should find compelling; if you still don't know where to begin or don't have enough time, pre-made adventures and campaigns are another option.

My group have been playing a series of adventures released by Wizards of the Coast. The full campaign is a set of nine books that should take your characters from level 1, all the way to level 30. Wizards of the Coast released the first adventure as a PDF file that you can download for free from their site: H1: Keep on the Shadowfell

Keep on the Shadowfell is an excellent introduction to D&D 4th Edition. The adventure has an interesting storyline with plenty of background information for the DM to utilize as they see fit. The format of the book makes things as easy as possible for a first time DM. Each encounter has it's own chapter with descriptions to read aloud to your players and a map showing you how to place the enemies and traps. Every enemy has it's own stat block printed alongside the encounter, so you don't even need to cross-reference the Monster Manual. The book also explains rules that a new DM may not be familiar with, as they are encountered.

The series of adventures are divided into groups of three for each tier of play. The set of books for the heroic tier include Keep on the Shadowfell for characters level 1-3, Thunderspire Labyrinth for characters level 4-6 and Pyramid of Shadows for characters 7-10.



The set of books for the paragon tier include King of the Trollhaunt Warrens for characters level 11-14, Demon Queen's Enclave for characters level 14-17 and Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress for characters level 17-21.



The set of books for the epic tier include Death's Reach for characters level 21-24, Kingdom of the Ghouls for characters level 24-27 and Prince of Undeath for characters level 27-30.