Merric Blackman is an Australian player of role-playing games and boardgames, who tends to write one or three words on the subject. He’s a fan of big fantasy epics (Wheel of Time and the Malazan Book of the Fallen) and Doctor Who. Especially Doctor Who. He’s happy that there’s a good Doctor Who RPG, and enjoys running it on odd occasions.
He began playing Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1980s, and has played every edition of the game. Mostly as a Dungeon Master, because that’s what he enjoys doing. In 2000, he started getting heavily into board games, and now has a collection of over 500 of them. His typical week involves 4-8 hours of playing board games and 6-10 hours of playing role-playing games. He then writes about them!
Merric helped edit Fifth Edition Foes and Quests of Doom from Necromancer Games, as well as doing most of the conversion work on The Book of Lost Spells. He’s released a few adventures of his own on the DMs Guild, as well as some official D&D Adventurers League adventures.
You can contact Merric through merricb@yahoo.co.uk, assuming the overly aggressive spam filter doesn’t eat your e-mail.
Merric does review things that get sent to him, but his reviewing schedule is *very* erratic.
what city are you in? Im in Melbourne
I’m in Ballarat – strictly speaking in Waubra, but my gaming is in Ballarat.
Good morning (or I suppose it’s about midnight where you’re at…)!
First off, I wanted to say a quick thanks for the reviews on Valdhum and Karak (even though you didn’t much like Karak, hehe).
Secondly, I was wondering if you’d like to do a review on Mithgarthr Entertainment’s first written-for-5E campaign (both of the products you’ve seen have been just conversions of old Labyrinth Lord stuff I’d done). It takes new players from level one up to level five-six, a detailed setting, lots of dungeons, etc. We’re looking at a January release (waiting on the cover’s art to be completed, and finishing up the playtesting), so it’d be a pre-release copy, but it’s 99.5% complete.
If you’re interested, please contact me: matt -at- mithgarthrentertainment.com
If you would email me at: reddeerrun(at)hotmail(dot)com I might mail you back a map I created so you can play over Christmas. Ask for citadel map.
I really appreciate the lists of adventures you have compiled. It would be great if you would add mine to it. You can find it at http://www.danhass.biz/dnd.
Hey Merric!.
Thanx a lot for the D&D New Player section! Really informative for new players and DM (like me).
Nice to find an Aussie gaming/D&D blog/resource! I’m in Perth and don’t get to play nearly as much as I’d like.
G’day, Filcha! Do you know Matthew Pittard by any chance? He organises the D&D Adventurers League games in West Australia. 🙂
No, I don’t as I’ve never played any AL. I am seriously considering it if I can get out of some of my other (non-gaming) mid-week commitments.
Hey MerricB. What happened to your Grand List of 5e Adventures? It seems to be down.
WordPress is having issues with pages. I’m waiting on them to fix it.
Hi could you remove the following doc from the list?
Tomb of the forgotten god by Jozsef Kovesi. Jan 17, 2016. (DMs Guild )
I transcripted it, but I have no rights, so I deleted. Please delete from the list.
I would like to speak with you concerning a project for D&D5E. My email is bphophix@gmail.com I do not want my email lost in a spam filter. So I thought it would be best to contact you first here about said project.
Merric! Rob Kuntz here. I sent an email to you and I hope it gets past that spam filter of yours!
Hi Merric,
It was great to meet you at PandaCon on Saturday! Thanks heaps for DM-ing the D&D Strahd adventure, I really enjoyed it (as I said in my blog post!). I’m sending here the link to the post I’ve written for the con on our blog, Games vs Play:
http://gamesvsplay.com/panda-tabletop-games-convention-2016-a-games-vs-play-wrap/
Please feel free to forward the link to your friends and networks. If you want you can also like our page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/gamesvsplay/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel.
No doubt I’ll run into you at another games convention. Take care until then.
Cheers, Martin
Hi Merric. Great to see an Aussie so active and involved in the 5e community.
I’m an game designer and author from Perth, and I’d love to talk to you about various aspects of the 5e game and get some advice on elements of module and supplement production if you can find the time.
Hello Merric, I’m an avid reader. I was on a Facebook D&D AL forum, and someone mentioned outlining adventure paths that can take a party from Level 1 to Level 10-11. The idea is to have a linear- or semi-linear adventure that keeps a narrative, without the burden of the hardbacks. If you’re interested in discussing the idea, you can email me at tbrun1977@yahoo.com or find me on Facebook.
I’m in Texas and I’ve read many of your reviews, I’m a fan. I’ve been looking for something I can’t find, so I was hoping to get your input.’
I’m DMing a Roll20 campaign of Storm King’s Thunder. My group wants to stay together after STK. I don’t do well creating my own adventures but can interpret really well what others put together.
I’m looking for a mini campaign I can get on Roll20. I’ve read your reviews on some of the AL Avernus Rising modules. It seems like they have multi chapter story arcs. My group doesn’t want just dungeon crawls or episodic affairs.
Can the later chapters of Avernus Rising meet this? How and where would you bring in a level 12-15 party? I know the AL stuff is pretty scalable.
I purchased Faces of Fortune on Roll20 and wasn’t impressed. Seems like there’s a lot of work needed to make it work right, including finding tokens and maps. I’m fine with doing the work, I just want to know if it’s worth the effort. This is a really good group that’s been around for about 2 years and I don’t want to disappoint.
If you don’t think this would work can you give me other suggestions?
I appreciate any feedback you can give.
Hi Merric,
I’ve just come across your site. It’s great to see someone actually doing reviews of D&D products. I’ve sent you a complimentary copy of my adventure released on Dmsguild to your email (Torment of the Blood Witch). It’d be great if you could take a look and give your thoughts. Cheers mate.
I hope to Dm a game for one player. I keep buying Kobold press material.
I am planning to use the “Labyrinth” to tie a mix of material together.
Frog God’s Bards gate plus other things.
Any suggestions?