I’m midway through reading a bunch of different RPG products at the moment, none of which I’ve really dived into enough to feel confident about writing a full review, but I thought I’d give you a few thoughts on a couple of products relating to wilderness play. Uncharted Journeys (Cubicle 7) I’ve written quite a bit about this already as I’ve been using it in … Continue reading RPG Products I’m Reading
We played our thirteenth session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, January 22, 2024. We were proceeding through Chapter 6. It was an unusual session. One of our players (Vel’rali) had lost his voice. So, he communicated to us throughout the session with posts on Roll20 chat while the rest of us talked on Skype. It worked surprisingly well. I will mention this here: I … Continue reading The Shattered Obelisk, session 13
The publication of Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits in 1980 was an important event. After about a two-year wait, we finally had the conclusion to the Giant and Drow series. However, the author of the adventure wasn’t Gary Gygax, who’d written the first six modules, but instead Dave Sutherland. Gygax explained the substitution in the adventure – he had written the first six modules over a … Continue reading Classic D&D Review: Queen of the Demonweb Pits
You’re playing Dungeons & Dragons the right way. Unless you aren’t. What’s the right way? Well, the best indication is that you’re enjoying it, and your friends are coming back each session, eager to play more with you. That’s really the only metric we have. Every bit of advice we have on the game comes from someone’s own experiences, and what makes it so hard … Continue reading Your Own Dungeons & Dragons
We played this session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, January 15, 2024, the first session after a long break. Vel’rali was back, and Nymia’s player had chosen to create a new character – Killin, a NG earth genasi paladin (Oath of Ancients) following Mielikki. Syzoth and Jake the rogue henchman made up the rest of the group to rescue Simeon, Nymia, and the others. … Continue reading The Shattered Obelisk, session 12
In B/X Dungeons & Dragons, the structure for an encounter with monsters goes like this: Similar procedures were used in other early editions, and elements of them appear in later editions as well. Incidentally, I’m using “monsters” in the old sense, when a “monster” is anyone the character meet, friend or foe. Let’s break down some of the aspects of this structure. Encounter Distance All … Continue reading D&D Procedures: Monster Encounters
On Friday, February 2, 2024, we got together to play the latest session of our World of Greyhawk campaign. Characters are around 10th level at this stage, and in the previous session, they’d obtained the Staff of Xan-Yae, which when taken to her holy shrine far to the west would allow the goddess to protect the Paynims against the great horde coming towards it. And, … Continue reading Adventures in Greyhawk: The Plains of the Paynims
The Golden Age of Dungeons & Dragons is over. What was the golden age? Well, I’m defining it as the time people spent the most money on the game. Which, according to my – likely inaccurate – calculations were the years 2020-2022, otherwise known as the Time of Covid, when more money was spent on gaming as a whole than of any other three-year period … Continue reading The Future of Dungeons & Dragons
We played our eleventh session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, December 18, 2023. During our last session, the group had fared very poorly in their first expedition into Zorzula’s Rest (part of Chapter 5). Simeon, the fighter of the group, had been captured. And for this session, one of our players couldn’t make it. I typically play Simeon as an NPC, so that just … Continue reading The Shattered Obelisk, session 11
Of the classic Dungeons & Dragons campaigns of the early AD&D era, we talk about three: Temple of Elemental Evil, Scourge of the Slavelords, and Queen of the Spiders. All three were collected into three supermodules, and it had been our original plan to play through all of then and then go to the Bloodstone Pass series. Now, we finally got to the second of … Continue reading Memories of Greyhawk Campaigns Past: Slavelords
