The Why, What and How?

Why?

I've made this blog with two simple ideas in mind:

1. To showcase the methods I use to DM so I can get feedback from the DnD Community at large.  If anyone wants to use any of the material from this blog or the associated podcast feel free to use any/all of it.  The goal here is to help others make their games a better experience for their players and to use the feedback I get from the blog for the betterment of my players' experience at the table.
2. To work as a record of all the awesome ideas and epic moments that my players come up with at table.  To preserve their fun for posterity's sake.

What?

We are a long-standing group of players with something in the order of 80 years collected gaming experience on both sides of the screen.  As DM I am neither the oldest roleplayer at the table or the youngest, in age or in RPG experience.  We are a big mixed bag of players who like to have fun and are current neck deep in an ongoing campaign of DnD 4th edition.  I have long been thinking of recording our sessions and possible doing a blog or podcast but recent events, along with one of my players making it ridiculously easy for me to record the sessions, has pushed me over the hump.

The Campaign will be explained in a little bit of detail during the first episode of the podcast, but the main draw points are these:

• There is no defined plot.  Rather there are lots of stories going on in the world and lots of character avenues the players bring to table to act out in the cloak of their characters.
• There are no safety rails on the sandbox.  This means that if the players stumple into something way over their head they have to be creative, avoid the threat or be turned into character-flavored entrees.
• We do not use Experience Points.  Instead the players level when they complete certain in-game story goals.
• We play with a modified Inherent Bonuses system.  Magic in the setting is basically everywhere, but knowledge of how to use it is rare.  The world is also very young so ancient crypts left abandoned by centuries-dead kings of old don't exist.  If you are interested in this check out the Campaign Section of the blog (coming soon).
• There are two types of extra rewards the players can earn.  One is Rising Action Points and the other are Player Reward Cards.  RAPs are awarded to players who work on this outside of session to help immersion.  This includes giving me a background at some point in the campaign, writing me some sort of mini-article or journal entry for their character and helping me with the summary of last session.

How?

Ideally this blog and podcast will be divided into a couple of pieces.  The first layer will be the actual blog itself which will help to answer any questions people have regarding the campaign information.  The second layer will be the raw audio from the games themselves.  People are free to listen to them if that tickles their fancy.  The third layer is commentary from me combined with specific clips from the podcast to highlight certain elements of play.  If, for instance, I talk about the idea of the "Theater of the Mind Skill Challenge" I will edit in pieces from actual play where I used those principles.

This doesn't mean that I'm perfect on a lot of these issues.  Some of the early descriptions will contain a bit of my apologizing to one of the players for mismanaging something she wanted to do in game and discussing with another player about how he feels the balance between combat and political intrigue is handled in game. Hopefully I can use examples of things I do poorly just as often as I can use examples of things that I do well to help illustrate my flaws to myself and help others not fall into similar pitfalls.