Backgrounds, volume 1 is a short pdf of 10 pages that presents four new backgrounds for the D&D game: Animal Trainer, Flying Cavalry, Innkeeper and Teamster. One of the attractions of designing new backgrounds is that they’re light on rules material; they’re not as intensive to design as (say) spells or monsters. However, the focus becomes much more on your writing skills. Thankfully, the supplement … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Backgrounds, volume 1

B Simon Smith’s Plants and Fungi of the Realms is an unusual supplement. Over its 31 pages, it presents a very large number of plants and fungi that can be used to distinguish the vegetation of a Forgotten Realms game – or any other fantasy game – from the real world. Some of the descriptions are just that – descriptive, with a little bit of … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Plants and Fungi of the Realms

The original release of Dungeons & Dragons presented dragons at six various ages throughout their life – at Very Young, Young, Sub-Adult, Adult, Old and Very Old. At the time, six-sided dice were used for hit points. While for an ogre you’d pick up 4d6 and take the total, Dragons assumed that each dice had the same result. Thus, very young dragons had 1 hit … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Dragons!

The latest set of WizKids Icons of the Realms miniatures for D&D has been released: Monster Menagerie. It consists of 44 figures randomly packed in 4-miniature blind booster packs, and one “case” figure sold separately, the Treant. As this set has a couple of figures in the set I was interested in, I picked up 2 b    ricks of the set (separately, so they weren’t from … Continue reading D&D Miniatures Review: Monster Menagerie

James Haeck’s The Temple of Shattered Minds is an adventure about an elven village that is being preyed upon by an insane mind flayer and his minions. The adventure is written in three parts. Part I: Alkai Tor describes a village (hamlet?) of humans and elves that has lost most of its members to thralldom and murder. The remaining twenty villagers are paranoid and unsure … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Temple of Shattered Minds