The ninth adventure in the fourth D&D Adventurers League season, The Tempter, has a lot to recommend it. It makes use of a number of gothic horror tropes that I adore, and it ends with the players having to make a decision that properly evokes the major theme of the adventure: Temptation. The characters might be sent to a Lady’s manor to bargain for supplies, … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Tempter
Life’s been a little crazy recently, so while D&D games have continued, blog updates have not. Many apologies for that! When we last saw our brave band of adventurers, they were heading off to Vallaki to find a wedding dress for the Abbot’s “Bride of Strahd”, but as it turned out, they decided to go back to the Wizard of Wines winery to pick up … Continue reading Running Curse of Strahd, part 4 – Yester Hill
There has been an ongoing debate over the effectiveness of the Beast Master ranger archetype, with its supporters pointing to the excellent beasts available in the Monster Manual and how they function with the class. Meanwhile, its critics point to the problems the beasts have at surviving and their limitations. A recent episode of The Round Table saw Dan Dillon and Schuyler Esau discussing why … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: The Beast Master Companion
Kobold Press’s Unlikely Heroes offers the discerning 5E player a selection of eight new character races and four backgrounds in a 27-page document (available in pdf and print versions from their webstore; the print version is also available from Amazon). Written by Dan Dillon, with addition design by Wolfgang Baur, several of the races are normally evil in alignment, although this is not true of … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Unlikely Heroes
Andrew Cawood’s The Travellers’ Handbook is a grab-bag of various tables and charts that may offer some inspiration or aid during a session. As the product’s title states, the overarching theme is things that can be useful while travelling. Thus, it begins with a summary of the general travel rules – detailing the rates of travel, the costs of hiring mounts and vehicles, what activities … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: The Travellers’ Handbook
There’s an excellent concept inside The Broken One, the eighth adventure of the current D&D Adventurers League season. It’s got some fantastic imagery, a moral dilemma and an exciting conclusion. It’s also an adventure I found very difficult to run. A large part of the reason for this is how dependent the adventure is on interacting with NPCs. This adventure begins with a meeting with … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Broken One
In our previous installment, the adventurers had defeated the druids and blights that had taken over the Wizard of Wines winery. It was now time for them to go to Krezk with the winecarts, fulfilling their pledge to the villagers and thus gaining access. The trip back occasioned a couple of minor attacks by wolves and stray blights, but both those threats were dealt with … Continue reading Running Curse of Strahd, part 3: Krezk
Last night, my Wednesday night group continued their quest through Curse of Strahd. This is the second group I’m running through the adventure, and they’re making different choices from the first group. Occasionally very different choices. And last night, most of the group were pretty tired. So they weren’t paying as much attention as you might expect. This led to a few interesting situations… It … Continue reading The Two Doorways – Tales from Curse of Strahd
One of the groups at my local gaming store had an interesting approach to the final encounter of Mike Shea’s The Innocent, which they played last week: they slept through it! It appears that upon reaching the final encounter, they were quite hurt and out of resources… although the bard had one casting of Leomund’s Tiny Hut left. So, they cast it and rested. Meanwhile, … Continue reading The “Power” of the Tiny Hut
Tony Petrecca’s The Darklake Strikes Back is the second of his Journey Through the Centre of the Underdark adventures. Designed for four to six 4th-6th level characters, the product presents a set of encounters to use during play of Out of the Abyss or any campaign set on an underground water system. There are four short encounters and one longer encounter setting (an island of … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Darklake Strikes Back
