The Eberron Campaign

Part 1
The idea of a d20 game that takes a step away from traditional high fantasy values is a God-send so long as it doesn't go to far. Eberron hits the note perfectly by supporting some addded tech with enough magic history to make it work. Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms work rather well as settings if you want a bit of conflict and especially with Forgotten Realms a time tested world. Now I haven't played Eberron 4.0 but 3.5 had some nice additions; warforges, dragonmarks, and the insane balance of powers system in Khorvaire. All the material on this helps from a DM's perspective but there's so much that if you really want to engross the PC's in the campaign you really need to find a focus. I ran Eberron with the schema campaign path and then followed with the Grasp of the Emerald Claw and these were great as really adventerous adventures with lots of crazy turns and locales but if you don't want the unfocused approach pick one. Running all the above I only had one character care about the warforged renaissance, no one wanted dragonmarks, and everyone had a grand indifferent patriotism for Breland. With a world this interesting it can't be wasted on overstimulation.

The Miniature Dilema

I've bought several hundred miniatures for all the table top adventures I've run. I've got mostly D&D 3.5 and a few metal Reapers, but I've used odd 3rd party figures, dice, and a quite sizable replica of St. Basil's Cathedral (you had to have been there). But even with such a plethora of possibilities come the next stage of the adventure I find myself needing more. Using the proper miniature adds a whole new level to a gaming environment: 3D terrain, cheetos, and block text gorged with description help but these will all change as soon as you move to the next room. Actually seeing your battle clad dwarf stand alone against three rage drakes feels awesome. PC personal figures are a must. A lot of people use Lego figures which are pretty cool because you can change it up based on the situation, take that sword out and switch it with a crossbow or when disguised as a pirate throw a little hat on. I always use a D&D mini because they're cheap and some of the 3.5 sets look gorgeous, but I find myself switching to metal unpainted minis because they have better detail and if they're painted right they look really awesome. For NPC I'm split. Before a large campaign I'll always buy the super obvious figures I'll need. For the start of the Curse of the Crimson Throne I bought a Queen Ileosa figure and for a heavy undead module I was running I stocked up on nondescript zombies and vamps. There will always be NPC's and monsters you wouldn't or couldn't have thought out so instead of bringing the entire bin of minis around with me I always grab a catchalls. A few random human fighters, a couple goblins, one large, and some descripts in case the PC's don't have or forget theirs. This seems to work in case you don't have time to plan em out perfectly before hand or if you're running a random adventure. One problem I do have with any figure system is the hoard scenario. If you have more than say eight of the same monster on the board keeping track of em all is rough. This is when you pull out counters, spare dice (if you're fighting goblins or something else with really low health have the dice show how much health that creature has taken, sure the PC's will know they're health but at that low health it'll be obvious) or even your secret supply of 5 cents a piece cthulu statues. But of course with this many pieces on the board even if you do differentiate each and every mini from the actual creature it's representing you're going to forget which one lost how much health and when. Since hoards pretty much always rush in try to give them each a number going clockwise or something and keep track of their health on a piece o' paper. This way you can usually correspond the right health to the right monster and if you off by one monster over its okay because hoard fights normally have low ECl's and having one less monster on the board probably wouldn't mean life or death. I can't stand this encounter but with a lot of practice you can OCD them down to a science. Once in your lifetime make a gelatinous cube out of real jello and some random miniature bits its fun because you can actually eat adventurers by jamming em in there and upon its death you can hack it to pieces.

Music during RPG's

I don't listen to a lot of music except for a few classical and orchestral composers but even I can understand the need for music during gaming. My tabletop group has tried a lot of different approaches. Silence works fine but inevitably this leads to more backround talking from idle players or if there's a laptop in the room it will metaphysically find its speakers honed onto the high concentration needing, visually saturated youtube song such as Supersonic Electronic. I've tried a few tabletop specifics like Midnight Syndicate and the Eberron soundtrack but they're so super specific to the encounters at hand that they didn't work. Yes the Herioc Clash song would work great as encounter music if the encounter only ran 5 min. 46 sec. and not the hour it takes for 5 adventures with their menagerie of companions to heroically pick away at my Cadaver Collector. Sure you could put the album on loop but your casual NPC encounter will randomly get interrupted by the immersion breaking Undead Waketh song. What you need is something that you can leave running in the backround and just forget about. All three LOTR soundtracks are great but be sure to remove the vibe killers. If you're running a long encounter the music can help to keep the mood but dear god take out Gollum's song and Into the West, Pippin's song can stay... Round robin picking works. Pass a laptop around and everyone picks one song. Basic ground rules: check it at backround volume, nothing too rough, and the Ghostbusters theme, Katamari Damacy, and The Entrance of the Gladiators must be played at least once. Or if its easier go into the high hundreds channels and turn on non-stop classic rock or pull the Flob and turn on the endless hours of smooth jazz... Aww yeah....

Set Sails for Silly

I like a good monologue. My dream job would be to sit in a bar all day and inspire rabble to take up arms against the British, but seeing as the jobs market is lacking and I'm not Samuel Adams I will have to settle for ranting on the internet about geek stuff. My home port of Bear's Fury is the culmination of silly and creativity, and that's awesome but I need to rant. H.M.S. Fury sets sails for discussionary monologues on random topics that come up in my day to day life. Sometimes while prepping for an adventure I will have random out of body experiences where I will run an entire Seinfeld stand-up routine based on whatever it is I was doing that second or perhaps I'll have a long debate with my keyboard as to whether or not Edward James Olmos would make a good Dungeon Master or not. These crazy treatises on a multitude of topics must be released on the world somehow and I figure why not sacrifice them to the maw of internet longevity. Ah whatever. I'm gonna rant. You want to rant? Cool. Wow. I'm ranting about how I'm going to rant. That was a scary realization...