In June 2008, I began a new Greyhawk campaign, using the newly released 4E rules. In July 2014, that campaign will end. It’s now less than a fortnight until that day. During the course of the campaign, the adventurers have delved beneath Castle Greyhawk (Zagyg), have fought the necromancers of the Shadow Forest, have discovered a strange, forgotten temple, have explored several versions of the … Continue reading Preparing my final D&D 4E session
The Wizard character sheet from the Starter Set is now available, so it’s time to have a look what changed from the playtest (specifically, the interim rules in Dead in Thay, which were drawn from the last public playtest packet). Wizard not Mage: This is the big one – the class is back to being called a Wizard, not a Mage. Evocation Savant: This is … Continue reading Changes from the D&D Playtest: The Starter Set Wizard
There are very few adventures that are better thought of than Ravenloft. The adventure, written in 1983 by Tracy and Laura Hickman, was popular enough to inspire an entire campaign setting and brought the trappings of Gothic Horror to Dungeons & Dragons. However, it isn’t entirely smooth sailing. The Hickmans were being pioneers with this form of storytelling and so there are techniques of storytelling … Continue reading AD&D Review: I6 Ravenloft
For the past three years, I’ve been running an AD&D campaign on Saturday nights at my FLGS, Goodgames Ballarat. It has mostly run weekly, although there have been times when I’ve run it fortnightly. With the release of the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons just around the corner, I’m getting quite eager to run the Tyranny of Dragons adventure. As a result, I’m going … Continue reading Changes to my Saturday Night Dungeons & Dragons schedule
Posted by Wolfskin on EN World: Compared to the Hobgoblin Warrior in Scourge of the Sword Coast, this hobgoblin is outfitted with much better armour (chain mail + shield compared to ring) and thus has an 18 AC compared to 14. The Hobgoblin Warrior had Steadfast (a bonus against being frightened) and Disciplined (an action that allowed an ally to gain advantage with its next … Continue reading D&D 5E: The Hobgoblin – Stats and Comparison
The wonderful people on EN World have posted screen captures of the Unboxing Video which reveal some of the monster stats. Here they are in a cleaned up form, with comparisons to the playtest: OgreLarge giant, chaotic evil Armor Class 11 (hide armor)Hit Points 59 (7d10+21)Speed 40 ft Str 19, Dex 8, Con 16, Int 5, Wis 7, Cha 7 Senses: darkvision 60 ft., passive … Continue reading D&D Starter Set – Monster Stats
Now that we have the Cleric’s character sheet, let’s have a look at what has changed from the last of the playtest documents (October 2013)! Preserve Life: This was called Restore Health in the playtest. The restriction barring it from being used on constructs or undead has been removed, and the range has been increased from 25 ft. to 30 ft. Turn Undead: It now … Continue reading Changes from the D&D Playtest: The Starter Set Cleric
As previously related, early forms of D&D had trouble clearly describing an initiative system. Original D&D used the Chainmail initiative system, and other versions or clarifications were proposed in Eldritch Wizardry, The Strategic Review and The Dragon. As the Eldritch Wizardry system seems to be missing some key information, Eric Holmes had something of a problem when he was designing the initiative system for the … Continue reading Initiative in Basic D&D
On Equipment: Playing Cards are now an item instead of the more generic Gaming Set. Potions of Healing are described as being red. Spellbook is not described as a magic focus, but this might just be a difference between the full game and the basic game. Tinderbox now specifies that lighting more challenging fires takes 1 minute, instead of at least as long as a … Continue reading More on what has changed since the Dungeons & Dragons playtest
We had a new record for participants this week: 22 people were playing in our Dead in Thay session – 18 people playing at tables, 3 DMs, and one co-ordinator (me). It was nice to get back to co-ordinating between the tables, especially because, as the season progresses, I’m enabling more and more interaction between the groups. This was quite apparent in this scenario, as … Continue reading D&D Encounters: Dead in Thay, session 7
