The Tome Show

In this episode we take a different approach to looking at The Plane Below and the Plane Above. First, yes, I know I mentioned in the show that it was episode 134, but in reality it is episode 135. My bad. Guests for this episode are Matt James and Geoffrey D. Winn. Please swing by the forums to let us know what you think about the new review format. It'll be nice to see a bit of activity over there.

Sponsors:

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Supplement: Manual of the Planes

Retail $29.95 Sale $23.95

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Supplement: The Plane Below - Secrets of the Elemental Chaos

Retail $29.95 Sale $23.95

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Supplement: The Plane Above - Secrets of the Astral Sea

Retail $29.95 Sale $23.95

Links:

Loremaster - Matt James' great D&D focused website/forums.

The Portal of Penn - Game Store where Geoffrey D. Winn DMs regularly

Logan Bonner, recently of Wizards of the Coast, joins me for this episode where he gives us all some advice on the sort of things that you can look for as a DM to make your encounters simple to run, fast to play, and fun and evocative for the players. We also feature another segment from Sly Flourish on using fantastic terrain and Sarah Darkmagic also swings in for the first of many advice segments helping players do their part to keep an encounter fun for everyone.

Sponsors:

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Heroic Adventure: HS1 The Slaying Stone

Retail $12.95 Sale $10.35

Links:

Logan's Blog

Sly Flourish

Sarah Darkmagic

I discuss how to run a skill challenge with Quinn Murphy the At-Will blog and help Tracy from SarahDarkmagic.com build one for her game with Mike Shea from Sly Flourish.

Sponsors:

FRP Pick of the episode - D&D 4e Freeport Companion

Links:

At-Will

SlyFlourish

SarahDarkmagic

There are many D&D podcasts in the world today, and in this episode I'm looking to expose you to a few of them. You will hear about the Official D&D podcast, Icosohedraphelia (if that's how you spell it), Radio Free Hommlet, 3.5 Private Sanctuary/Know Direction, and Critical Hit from Major Spoilers. There are many others out there and if you'd like me to do another show like this looking at podcasts or blogs say the word at the Vorpal Network forums.

Sponsors:

FRP Pick of the Episode - Azagar's Book of Rituals

Links:

Vorpal Network Forums

D&D's Official Website (including the podcast)

Icosahedraphelia

Radio Free Hommlet

3.5 Private Sanctuary

Major Spoilers (with the Critical Hit podcast)

Skill Challenges have been a long developing, changing, and debated topic in 4e D&D. This month (April) I am calling Skill Challenge Month and towards that goal I am planning a couple of episodes of how to make them work and be awesome. To those ends, I am joined in this episode by Dave Chalker where we are going to build a Skill Challenge from scratch and talk about how to get the most out of a skill challenge as a player.

Sponsors:

FRP Games Pick of the Episode - Plane Above

Links:

Critical Hits

Forums

I am joined by Andrew Wilson of Silent7Seven Games and we set out to build a Drow Priestess of Lolth, discuss how to pick monsters for your encounters, and Sly Flourish bring us advice on how to use Divine Power to inspire your DMing.

Sponsors:

Noble Knight Pick of the Episode - Selling

Links:

Return of the Vorpal Forums!!!

Silent7Seven

Sly Flourish

Jeff's Drow Druid Level 1

Jeff's Drow Druid Level 11

Andrew's Drow Druid Level 1

To look at the PH3 I called on veteran Tome contributors Will Wong and Quinn Murphy from the At-Will blog. We examined the new races, new classes, and new features, like psionics, hybrid classes, and skill powers. All in all, we decided that this is the "psionics handbook" with some divine and primal thrown in along the way, especially when it came to classes, but that said, there is some GREAT stuff in this book.

Sponsors:

Noble Knight Pick of the Episodes - Diamond Dice set from GameScience

Links:

At-Will Blog

Vorpal Network (now with Forums again!!!)

Jeff's Underdark review at Fist Full of Comics and Games

Martial Power 2 is designed to give more options for your fighter, rogue, ranger, or warlord. To see if the book is successful at that I brought in Dave Chalker from Critical Hits as well as Jared Glenn from the Power Source podcast.

Sponsor:

Noble Knight Pick of the Episode - D&D Miniatures

Amazon via The Tome

Links:

Vorpal Network Forums (that's right, we're back!!!)

Critical Hits

The Power Source

Underdark is a book designed to make the dangerous underground setting easier to use as a setting for your adventures. In this episode I am joined by the Newbie DM Enrique, Chris from Icosohedraphelia, and Mark from the Dicemonkey's and RPG Circus.

Sponsor:

Pick of the episode - Dragonborn

Links:

NewbieDM Blog

Icosohedraphelia Podcast

RPG Circus Podcast

DiceMonkey Blog

Wolfgang Baur joins me in this episode where we build a monster called a Spark based on a Pathfinder RPG monster built by Adam Daigle for a monster contest at Kobold Quarterly. We then talk about how to make your character work in a group even though you like to always be the exception to the rule, the loner, the odd-ball.

Sponsor:

Picks of the Episode - Planes of Chaos and Kobold Quarterly

The Original Spark

Jeff's Version of the Spark

Wolfgang's Version of the Spark (provided with permission from Kobold Quarterly)

Links:

Kobold Quarterly

Wolfgang Baur on Twitter