For the first time in almost 25 years, I’ve found myself at the Conquest gaming convention in Melbourne. It’s been held over the Easter weekend for as long as I remember, and for the first time I was going as an organiser of games. In particular, I was organising D&D Adventurers League games. Conquest is a small convention, which had an unfortunate hiatus a couple … Continue reading At the Conquest Convention
In this chapter, it’s all about the pacing. The end of Chapter 2 gives the adventurers several adventure hooks; missions suggested by the NPCs they’ve saved that give treasure and other rewards. Chapter 3 is the “sandbox” chapter, where the players can explore the Sword Coast doing little missions on the way. It’s all very Baldur’s Gate. The DM’s role here is to maintain the … Continue reading Running Storm King’s Thunder: Chapter 3
In my last article, I talked about the importance of the overall structure of campaign adventures. It’s very hard to run an adventure when you don’t understand the steps the characters must take to navigate their way through it. Each adventure has its own structure, and some have multiple paths. Hoard of the Dragon Queen is relatively straight-forward. However, there’s a couple of areas that … Continue reading Hoard of the Dragon Queen – Adventure Structure
I’ve run Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat three times each, Curse of Strahd twice, Out of the Abyss and Princes of the Apocalypse once each, and I am currently running Storm King’s Thunder and Tomb of Annihilation. By now, I’ve had a lot of experience running the campaign adventures of Wizards of the Coast. Many people evaluate adventures based on how … Continue reading The Structure of Campaign Adventures
Every so often, the players in my D&D games do something unexpected: They talk to the enemies! There are many styles of playing D&D. I came up through the school of dungeon-delving where almost every monster tried to kill you, and the rest of the challenges were traps. I was about ten years old when I started, quite shy and not used to talking to … Continue reading D&D Tips: Role-playing Strategies
A Lake Full of Mystery is a short, two-hour adventure for 2nd-level characters. It is full of misspellings, strange capitalisations and poor grammar. I want to mention that first, as they are prominently featured throughout the product. In the adventure, the adventurers are hired to deal with a “Small pest problem”. The person who hires the adventurers is a shady person, so he won’t tell … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: A Lake Full of Mystery
Hunter is an adventure for level 1-4 characters by Will Doyle and James Introcaso. It sets the adventurers the task of surviving the night in the jungles of Chult while a dangerous plant-based predator stalks them. The adventure first presents a description of the valley the adventurers are trapped in, then describes various NPCs – mainly members of the Flaming Fist – they can interact … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Hunter
The theme of star-crossed lovers inspires this tale of woe by Richard Jensen-Parkes. From Ancient Grudge is an adventure for character levels 4-5, which sets the adventurers the task of investigating a haunted mansion and putting the souls of two cursed lovers to rest. It’s a very well-constructed adventure, which should provide a session or two of entertainment for your players. The structure is relatively … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: From Ancient Grudge
Shawn Merwin’s Return of the Lizard King is an adventure for levels 1-4 characters that provide an alternative opening for Tomb of Annihilation. It has no relationship to Tomb of the Lizard King, a 1E adventure by Mark Acres. The adventure starts in an unusual place: a misfiring teleport spell takes the adventurers to the Feywild. There, they discover the realm under the effect of … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Return of the Lizard King
Player character backgrounds don’t do much if they stay in the player’s possession and you don’t see them. That’s the way of many, many campaigns – certainly most of mine. The players come up with backgrounds for their characters, and they rarely see play. The construction of many D&D campaigns relies on the main story being presented by the DM. The DM offers adventure opportunities … Continue reading Dungeon Master Tips: Backgrounds and Adventure Ideas
