It is rare in a game of Dungeons & Dragons that you’re not attempting to succeed at a goal. There may be odd encounters which are unexpected, but typically your party is working towards something, either self-generated or a task given by others. It helps to agree on what that goal is! Even an expedition into a megadungeon typically has a goal, such as these: … Continue reading Making Plans
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an adventure published by Wizards of the Coast set in the great city of Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms. It presents an urban scenario where the characters get to own a tavern, become involved with the various factions in the city, and go on a hunt for dragons – the gold coins of Waterdeep – that are stashed in a hidden … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review – Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
It’s the end of May, Ghosts of Saltmarsh was released this week, and we’ve started a new campaign that will play through the first five adventures (at least)! Hooray! This will be, as most of my book campaigns are, a D&D Adventurers League campaign. As you may expect, spoilers abound in this recap of the session. We began our adventures in Saltmarsh with the last … Continue reading Ghosts of Saltmarsh – The Adventure Begins!
Legacy and Virtue is a D&D Adventurers League-legal adventure for level 1-4 characters by Alan Patrick that premiered at GameHoleCon 2018. This is an adventure that makes me very happy. It’s a dungeon crawl, but one with enough attention to detail to allow the players to find interesting features in each room, provide opportunities for combat and a little role-playing as well. The adventurers are … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Legacy and Virtue
I finally have a copy of Ghosts of Saltmarsh; strictly speaking, I have three – Special, Standard, and D&D Beyond versions. Hooray! (And yes, I paid for each of them). I’m starting a campaign of the book on Saturday, so I’m now perusing it, trying see how everything fits together. Although I’ve run The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh before, the original adventure didn’t describe the … Continue reading Ghosts of Saltmarsh – Looking at the Town
When a group starts a new campaign together, one of the players’ first tasks is to create characters. Dungeons & Dragons is a team game. It requires the players to work together to overcome the challenges posed by the Dungeon Master. If you have a group that is lacking core skills, or whose abilities don’t fit into the context of the campaign, your experiences may … Continue reading Creating a Character – for a New Campaign
One of the fun things about Dungeons & Dragons is its system of other realities. Apart from the world you play in (often termed the “Prime Material Plane”), you have a selection of Inner Planes, Outer Planes, Transitive Planes, alternate realities, and other random planes that seemed like a good idea at the time. All of these give a lot of adventuring opportunities for players … Continue reading What’s an Avernus?
This is the first of a series of articles on D&D Adventurers League play, looking at the opportunities it provides and the challenges it faces. All of this is my opinion and may vary from other people’s perceptions! Dungeons & Dragons is a game played by millions of players around the world. A significant number of those players play under the aegis of the D&D … Continue reading D&D Adventures League Play – Conventions, Stores, Home, Online
My happiest experience writing adventures for play in the D&D Adventurers League came courtesy of Robert Alaniz in 2017. He asked me to be one of a team (along with himself and Richard Jansen Parkes) to write the fourth (and final) trilogy of adventures set in Phlan for Baldman Games. On Good Friday, 2019, I finally had the chance to run the entire trilogy of … Continue reading Good Lord, Deliver Us! – Adventures in Phlan
Into the Border Kingdoms is a two-hour adventure for level 1-2 characters by Dave Zajac, and the first of the DDAL-adventures produced by GameHole Con in the Border Kingdoms region of the Forgotten Realms. The plot is relatively simple: the adventurers are in a tavern interacting with locals when it’s attacked by undead, then they go to the source of the undead and deal with … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Into the Border Kingdoms
