Our second session of Descent into Avernus saw the characters continue their attack on the sewer-based hideout of the cultists of the Dead Three. Ye gods! We’d ended the first session with them winning in a tough fight against two cultists: a fist of Bane and an iron consul. The first order of the day was taking a rest. The dungeon, as written, doesn’t have … Continue reading Running Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, part 2
Face the Music is a short encounter for use with third-level characters that you can use in a variety of situations. It features a set of animated magical instruments, which can form a combat encounter, as well as a few secrets for the party to uncover. I estimate it should take around thirty minutes to one hour to play. I think it’s a charming product, … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Face the Music
This is a second part of a series of articles examining the history and challenges facing the D&D Adventurers League since the beginning of Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition in 2014. This is an outside view of the program, which, while I’ve been involved in many facets of the league, I am not privy to the internal discussions and research of Wizards of the Coast … Continue reading Seasons of the D&D Adventurers League, part 2
My thoughts on including stat blocks in adventure text are shaped by a lot of very poor examples of how to do so in the third and fourth edition era. Dungeons & Dragons fourth edition used a format that we refer to as the “delve” format. It was premiered in the final days of third edition and presented most encounters on a one or two-page … Continue reading On Stat Blocks and Adventure Presentation
In 2008, much to our surprise, Wizards of the Coast blew up the Forgotten Realms. That’s not literal. Rather, Wizards of the Coast took a setting that had been happily available as a published setting for Dungeons & Dragons since 1987, and decreed that it was now 100 years in the future. Almost everyone you cared about was dead, and the world had significantly changed. … Continue reading Once upon a time, Wizards blew up the Forgotten Realms!
The Magician’s House is an adventure for level 4 characters in which those characters explore – well, I guess you know what they explore. It’s also a 161-page pdf. Those 161 pages cover approximately 19 locations in around 110 pages (some have more than one encounter in them), and then there are a further 50 pages of appendices. It’s not that the areas are insanely … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Magician’s House
My local group has just started playing Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus. We began with an hour or so of character creation and background determination before moving into the adventure proper. I consider it fairly important to determine the party’s makeup together. You want a party that can handle the threats that a published adventure throws at them, because you don’t have the same flexibility … Continue reading Running Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, part 1
The new official D&D Campaign Setting book has been announced – and it is part of the Critical Role campaign world! The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount is its name, and I know almost nothing about it, except that a lot of people that I have a lot of respect for worked on it. So, it’s likely to be very good. That said, I probably won’t … Continue reading On Using Published Campaign Settings
Infernal Insurgency is an adventure for level 5 to 10 characters set in Avernus and part of the official DDAL line of scenarios. It continues the story from Faces of Fortune. The characters, now they have a base in Avernus, must scout a nearby research and weapons facility run by goblins and lesser devils and then cause enough damage there to draw away forces from … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Infernal Insurgency
Faces of Fortune is an adventure for level 5-10 characters set in Avernus, the first layer of Hell. As the first of the DDAL Season 9 adventures at Tier 2, it has the job of introducing you to Hell and the place that will be your home base for the next few adventures: Mahadi’s Travelling Emporium. Along the way, you get chased by Infernal War … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Faces of Fortune
