I first encountered the Forgotten Realms shortly after it was released as a campaign setting, then drifted away from it in the AD&D 2E days, before reconnecting with it recently. Thus, my knowledge of Realmslore is either very old, or very new. Spellstorm is Ed Greenwood’s latest book, and it combines the very old and the very new. The major characters in the book – … Continue reading Book Review: Spellstorm by Ed Greenwood
The adventure Confrontation at Candlekeep was premiered at GenCon 2013 as a multiple-table event. How many tables? Oh, quite a few. The adventure, as written, assumes that there is a co-ordinating DM, the “First Reader” – a name of particular significance in Realmslore – for every four to nine tables. Set during the Sundering, the adventure sees the players defending the great stronghold of lore … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Confrontation at Candlekeep
The newest release from Adventures in Filbar, Penchant for Adventure 1, is a short adventure for a single player and DM. AIF refer to it as a “solo adventure”, but to me that conjures memories of the Fighting Fantasy series. However, when I tried to come up with other names for it, they were all taken by different concepts. Oh well. So, what’s the adventure … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Penchant for Adventure 1
Mike Mearls had a surprise for me (and lots of other D&D players) this morning: his latest Unearthed Arcana column presented the 5E take on one of the more popular concepts of 3E: Prestige Classes. It also introduced a new type of magic item, so for a six-page PDF, there’s quite a lot of content. I really like the idea and implementation of runes, and … Continue reading Runes and Things: A few thoughts on Prestige Classes
Including monster statistics – stat blocks – in adventures is a challenge. The earliest adventures – the Giant adventures by Gary Gygax – listed the name of the monster and its hit points and nothing else. It’s a little hard to tell if this was an aesthetic choice or one born from the fact that the rules were still somewhat in flux (the AD&D Monster … Continue reading A Short History of Monster Stat Blocks
Organised Play of D&D has had an occasionally rocky history at my local store in Ballarat. Back in 2010 when the D&D Encounters line first started, I volunteered to run it. And for the first year, we struggled to even have one table running. It ran fairly regularly for a while, but when Christmas came around, almost everyone went away and didn’t come back. It … Continue reading Growing the D&D Adventurers League in Ballarat
