Hasta La Gadget!

John Baichtal of MAKE Magazine shared a hidden gem in Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons website. It turns out writer and illustrator Jason Thompson has been making comic strips of epic proportions for the D&D website. The strips take the form of huge maps based on D&D modules, i.e. booklets that outline preset adventures. Jason annotates the maps with the humorous experiences of a theoretical band of adventurers.

Jason’s drawings are relatively simple, but it’s his writing that makes the maps shine, from mild jokes about traps – “Assassin sticks hand into demon’s mouth to get gem, loses two ring slots” – to terrible player choices – “Leaving the Dining Room, party is attacked by 8 Gargoyle Statues… Shugenja returns to entryway to get his sandals, and is attacked by 4 Dragon Statues” – and even breaks the fourth wall at times – “Cleric of Pholtus and Cleric of Trithereon get in long loud argument about appropriate coverage in women’s armor.”  

I’m sure the people who’ve played through or are playing through these adventures will find his annotations even more hilarious. Plus, just look at how out of control the strips can get!

I’d share all of them here, but as you can see that would be doing a great disservice to Jason’s work. I highly recommend that you check out all of them on the Dungeons & Dragons website. Look for the ones with “Walkthrough Map” in the title, except for the latest strip, Ravenloft. If you like Jason’s work check out his other creations, King of RPGs, Manga: The Complete Guide and much, much more.

[via MAKE via Laughing Squid]

D & D & D. Dungeons & Dragons and Drinks. That’s what you’ll be enjoying when you fix your cocktails using this special d20 ice cube mold.

The two-part silicone mold makes a beautiful ice facsimile of an oversize d20 die. Just put it in a rocks glass with a little 130-proof whiskey and serve it up to deliver a critical hit on your opponents.

If you’d rather not make ice with it, you can also use the mold to create chocolate or soap d20s – though soap isn’t nearly as tasty as the other options. So gather up your gold pieces and head on over to ThinkGeek, where you can grab the d20 ice mold for $11.99(USD).

[via That’s Nerdalicious]

If you love playing RPGs, perhaps you’ve imagined what skills and prerequisites you’d need to have in the real world to reach your desired job or level of success. The folks at web development agency 352 Media thought of doing the same thing to their profession and created Dungeons & Developers, an RPG-style skill tree that outlines what you need to learn to become a master web developer.

As with a typical RPG, each icon in the tree represents a skill. The skills involve learning about things like CSS, AJAX & APIs and Advanced DB Management. When you learn a skill, your character gains stats and unlocks more advanced skills. But 352 Media took their geeky project a step further and made it possible so you could actually use the skill tree to help you learn about web development and keep track of your progress while you’re learning. Each skill contains a link to an educational resource such as a tutorial. Your skill tree is tied to a unique URL, so you can bookmark it to save your progress, then check back to see if you’re bound to level up.

Once you’ve learned a skill, simply left click its icon to add a point into it. Right-click on a learned skill to subtract a point. You cheater. Speaking of cheating, Dungeons & Developers also has a god mode. 352 Media says you can unlock 100% completion if you “go old school.”

Head to Dungeons & Developers to check out the skill tree. As a fan of RPGs I can’t help but point out that the tree is misleading. It’s missing a few arrows for the other prerequisites needed to unlock the ultimate skill. It’s no biggie though, just know that all of the skills at the second to the last row need to be learned before you can unlock Web Development Mastery. The earliest you can do that is at level 26, so get grinding!

[via Boing Boing]

A company called Inkwell Ideas has come up with dice that can help budding dungeon masters or spice up the adventures of long-time parties. Aside from being numbered, each face on a DungeonMorphs die contains a piece of a map. Roll the five dice and voila, you get a randomized area.

Note that each face on all five dice is unique, meaning you have 7,776 combinations with just that one set. Get more sets and you get a bigger and more varied dungeon.

ThinkGeek is selling the Adventurer Set of DungeonMorphs Dice for $20 (USD), but there are two additional sets available on Inkwell Ideas’ website.

[via Nerd Approved]

It’s been at least a decade since I last played a tabletop RPG, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are programs out there that augment players’ pens and papers with mice and keyboards. But here’s one that seems very easy to use. It’s called Roll20, a highly customizable web-based virtual tabletop.

I think the best way to describe Roll20 is that it’s an image editor for dungeon masters with a video chat app added on to it. If that sounds intimidating, don’t be. Its tools are mostly straightforward and employ commonly used commands like copy, paste and drag-and-drop. It also has a built-in search engine for assets, so you can go in empty-handed, look for characters, maps and even soundtracks, then setup your play area, all from within the app. It also has a dice-rolling feature that can even show a 3D dice onscreen to all of your party members. Don’t have any tabletop playmates? Don’t worry – Roll20 lets you join public games! How awesome is that? Watch the overview to get a better idea of what you can do with Roll20:

The best thing about Roll20 is that it’s free. The group behind it makes money by selling premium assets like character art and maps, which is entirely optional especially if your DM is awesome enough to make custom art for your adventures. Sign up at the Roll20 website and start building the adventure of your dreams. And your friends’ nightmares.

[via Laughing Squid]