The latest session of my 5E Greyhawk campaign saw the players investigating a pocket of the Demiplane of Shadow that was accessible beneath their hometown. In our previous campaign, the town of Brusington was endangered by Shadow Fey, before the heroes of that game managed to negotiate a treaty with them. This time around, the Shadow Fey had requested a favour of the townsfolk: that … Continue reading Greyhawk: Into the Demiplane of Shadow
Well, it’s finally that time when we learn a little more about the D&D books that are coming out. I was updating this site a couple of days ago, refreshing the Amazon links to the side, and was tremendously surprised to find there were no upcoming books on Amazon. But today, there is news – mostly about their prices and release dates! It’s hard to … Continue reading Thoughts on the Upcoming D&D Releases
We began our campaign of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, May 22nd, 2023. In what was a 2½-hour session, we played through the first half of Chapter 3, with the characters advancing from level 2 to level 3. And we also had a lot of fun. This campaign is being played on Roll20. I’ve purchased the adventure on Roll20 (which has the nice … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, Session 1
Beginning this Monday, we’ll be starting our play through of Shadow of the Dragon Queen. For those unaware of the adventure, it was released in December 2022, and is the first official adventure in a long time to be set in the Dragonlance setting. I delighted in the original Dragonlance novels and adventures, so exploring the new take on the story is exciting for me … Continue reading Preparing for Shadow of the Dragon Queen
If you’re writing a D&D adventure, one of the things you’re probably not thinking about is “Are the characters using flying in this adventure”. Unless you’re doing an adventure for your home group, and you know they will be. Most of the times when you buy a published adventure, it also doesn’t consider “do the characters fly?” What effect does that have on the adventure? … Continue reading The Perils of Flying and Adventure Design
Wizards of the Coast have put out several big campaign adventures for D&D. And many of them left some DMs wondering “How the eff do I run that?” It’s important to note that this feeling is not confined to their products. It’s true of every adventure publisher, but people are most likely to have seen those big campaign adventures for D&D. I believe that some … Continue reading Adventures, Designer Assumptions, and GM Capabilities
In the forty-odd years, I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons, most of the magic items I give out come from the core rulebooks. There are several reasons for this, mainly because I often use random magic item tables rather than selecting items to match the characters. The random tables typically only exist in the core book. And it becomes very hard when the magic items are … Continue reading Supplement Review: Vault of Magic
Area 1. Entrance Chamber (30 ft. square) Stone steps lead down from the ruins above to this chamber. An iron door, scratched and dented, stands in the middle of the opposite wall. The floor is likewise scratched and scored, and dried blood covers a lot of it. In the corners of the room, broken crossbow bolts and bits of metal rust away. The gnomes and … Continue reading Dungeon 23: Area 1 – Entrance Chamber
The Queen of Spades is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure for level 7 characters that should last from eight to sixteen hours. At its heart, it is an investigative adventure set in the Forgotten Realms, where the heroes must face a force of chaos and – especially – bad luck. The adventure does a lot of things very right. I am particularly impressed by how … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Queen of Spades
Warriors of Krynn is not the game I was expecting. When I heard that the new Dragonlance adventure, Shadow of the Dragon Queen, was getting a supplementary board game for resolving the clashes between armies, I though that it would be about, you know, battles between armies. It isn’t. Well, it is, but that’s in the background. Instead, it’s about the actions of the heroes … Continue reading Warriors of Krynn – First Impressions
