A Taste of Trouble is a short D&D 5E adventure by M.T. Black for level 1-4 characters. The characters explore the cottage of a missing hedge wizard as they try to find her, facing various challenges along the way. The adventure will most likely take 2-4 hours to complete. I find it an utterly charming adventure. It’s not big. The cottage is a mere four … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: A Taste of Trouble
The Stealth rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5E (2014) were some of the more developed skill rules in the system. Most skills had very little rules text. As hiding is somewhat important to D&D games – especially those with rangers and rogues – you sort of want them in the game. My main problems with the 2014 rules were that they were scattered throughout the … Continue reading Stealth Rules in D&D 2024
My level 16 Greyhawk campaign, now in its third year (and 64th session) saw the characters back in their home town of Brusington after an extended foray against stone giants serving Incabulos, the plague deity. It had been tough and punishing. They wanted some time off, and so I gave them a few months of downtime to do with as they wanted. We spent an … Continue reading Greyhawk Campaign update – MM2025!
There’s an interesting statement in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. “The Game is Not An Economy”. It goes on: “The rules of the game aren’t intended to model a realistic economy, and players who look for loopholes that let them generate infinite wealth using combinations of spells are exploiting the rules.” As I was considering this statement, and the fact that D&D 5E has been … Continue reading The Reward Economy
Few of the published Dungeons & Dragons adventures make use of a home base that you return to again and again. This is not, in fact, that surprising. When you think of classic fantasy adventures, I bet mostly you think of adventures that take place far from home. The Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, and many more – they feature trips to exotic lands … Continue reading Home Bases as Adventuring Hubs
Looking up at my shelves, I can see a lot of published Dungeons & Dragons adventures. It’s sort of the thing I really enjoy, so I’ve collected many of them – but by no means all. And (sadly), I’ve tended to concentrate on the official ones rather than spending lots of time going around what other authors are doing. But you’ve got to start somewhere. … Continue reading The Big Adventure: Home Bases
I’ve been running Empire of the Ghouls for the past few months, and one thing it has a lot of is wilderness travel. Like, a lot. “Road Trip: The Adventure.” And this brings me back to how difficult it is to run engaging wilderness travel in Dungeons & Dragons. This is a problem that goes back to the early days of the game. In The … Continue reading Wilderness Travel Redux
Given the recent changes to twitter, I will rarely be posting there from now on. Unless things get significantly better. You can follow me on Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/merricb.bsky.social Continue reading Goodbye, Twitter
One of the things that amuses me on the internet is people telling other people that a computer game isn’t a RPG. For those of us who mostly exist in the tabletop space, well – computer RPGs typically lack the one distinguishing feature of a tabletop RPG: A Gamemaster. You don’t have the human interaction and creativity that allows the game to deal with any … Continue reading What is an RPG?
I have never played a Persona game. I gather some of the mechanics I describe in this article come from there. (And likely other games I’m unfamiliar with). However, I am now playing Metaphor: ReFantazio. 20 hours in. Very much enjoying it. It’s a JRPG set in a fantasy world, where the assassination of the king sets off a quest to stop his assassin becoming … Continue reading Time Management – Metaphor: ReFantazio
