I have been spending a lot of time listening to podcasts and reading books on history over the past couple of years. The history of revolutions. The history of Rome. The history of the late medieval period in Europe and the transition to the modern world. The study of the Late Middle Ages is of particular interest to me because of Dungeons & Dragons and … Continue reading A Sense of History
My Greyhawk game has reached the City of the Gods. And they met some blue “goblins”. After sneaking around in the previous session, it was time for a fight! So, the session began. And the “goblin” leader opened his mouth and said, slowly, “Do you understand me?” Yes. Not goblins, but in fact explorers from an advanced technological plane! Which led to a hilarious conversation. … Continue reading Two High-Level Encounters
My World of Greyhawk campaign has now reached the quest for the fifth segment of the Rod of Seven Parts. The characters recovered the fourth from the lost treasure vault of the Great Kingdom. For the fifth part, I decided to set it in the most northern City of the Gods, which lay somewhere within the land known as Blackmoor. For those unaware of the … Continue reading Adventures in Greyhawk – A City of Gods
In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, the rulebooks gave various methods of determining what monster was randomly encountered. The earliest tables used a flat roll – roll a d6. On a 1 it is an orc. On a 2 it is a goblin. And so on and so forth. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gave a more nuanced approach: Percentile tables, with different probabilities … Continue reading Random Encounters: 1d8 + 1d12
As I continue to examine the older documents of my Dungeons & Dragons campaigns set in the World of Greyhawk, I discovered this oddity – a list of rumours assembled after the fact to describe what happened for several years of the campaign. It is a long document, so here I present only the events described for 581 CY. This is in the period leading … Continue reading Rumours from the World of Greyhawk – 581 CY
Examining my old archives, I found the following entries relating to campaigns played 20 years ago or more… We played the events in 578 CY in 1997-8, if I recall correctly, using the AD&D 2nd Edition rules (using the Player Options books). The later events came from a campaign begun in 2000, in the weeks leading up to the release of D&D 3E and beyond! … Continue reading Memories of Greyhawk
My home Greyhawk campaign continued with the characters seeking the third part of the Rod of Seven Parts. The group teleported back to Brusinton, a small town in the west of Veluna, after slaying the dragon. This has been their home base for several months, but it was now under occupation by the Shadow Fey. Checking in at Home The Shadow Fey had concluded an … Continue reading Adventures in Greyhawk – The Company Goes South
My home Dungeons & Dragons group have finished the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and are now heading south in search of the third section of the Rod of Seven Parts, but they stopped along the way to kill a white dragon. That is all Mike “Sly Flourish” Shea’s fault. In Sly Flourish’s Fantastic Adventures, he placed a suit of armour that could detect white dragons. … Continue reading Adventures in Greyhawk – Hunting the White Dragon
I often begin my campaigns with megadungeons. I sketch out a couple of maps of the first two levels, stock them with monsters, traps, tricks, and treasures – usually using a combination of choice and random selection – and let the players go explore. I have never, however, spent the entire length of a campaign exploring one. Stories suggest themselves to me as we play. … Continue reading Enter the Megadungeon
The type of fun you enjoy in a Dungeons & Dragons game depends on the group. It may also just depend on how they feel when you play the session. For us, we are currently enjoying a fun romp through dangerous monsters, strange caverns, and many varied treasures. Yes, we are running the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. There is not much of a plot to … Continue reading Adventures in Greyhawk – More fun in Tsojcanth
