We played our fifth session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, October 9th, 2023. After our previous session, the group was now aware of where Cragmaw Castle was and were keen to find and explore the location where Gundren was meant to be held captive. I have a very inconsistent approach to random encounters these days. Typically, when there’s story-based adventuring to … Continue reading The Shattered Obelisk, session 5
The primary goal of a published adventure should be to get the DM excited about running it. There are many, many adventures that don’t do that. Now, I hear you say, “What about being a good adventure?” Well, that should also happen, but more than anything, the DM and players will never find that out if the DM doesn’t want to run it. It starts … Continue reading Published Adventures – Their Goals
We played the penultimate session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, August 21, 2023. The characters had entered the Flying Citadel, and were making their way through the tunnels that combed its base, looking for a way to disable the blasted thing. Honestly, I’m pretty happy with most of this section. But the one thing that obviously no-one at Wizards considered is the … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 12
In 1978, the first (official) published adventure modules for the AD&D game were released. This was a new thing. There had been third party D&D adventures before this – Palace of the Vampire Queen in 1976 generally takes the title as the first. And, in 1975, the Blackmoor supplement for OD&D, had included a scenario of Dave Arneson’s design, Temple of the Frog. But for … Continue reading AD&D Review: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
It was a long time ago. In the late 80s, I managed to meet up with three other like-minded individuals – that is, people interested in this strange game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and we began a campaign. The DM had already played a similar campaign with a friend, and he wanted to introduce us to the idea. And so, the four of us … Continue reading Memories of Greyhawk Campaigns Past: Beginnings
There is a lyrical nature to Graeme Morris’s writing in Eye of the Serpent, the fifth of the UK series of adventures. He describes the view from the top of a mountain, down to the valley below, where a river winds like a serpent, an island some way along its length appearing as an eye to the dwarves who once lived there. It makes a … Continue reading AD&D Adventure Review: Eye of the Serpent
We played our fourth session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, October 2, 2023. (Yes, I’m behind. I know, I know. Less behind than with Shadow of the Dragon Queen!). The heroes began the session talking with Sildar and Sister Garaele. Remember, in the last session, Sildar and Garaele had helped rescue most of the party from the Redbrands! It was time for me to … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 4
One of the detractions you occasionally hear lobbied against Dungeons & Dragons is that it doesn’t handle skills well. This is particularly in relation to social challenges, but I’ve seen it in other contexts. The more nuanced version of the complaint is that D&D is too binary: that its skills are purely pass/fail. It does not handle partial successes. These, much though I hate to … Continue reading Skills in Challenges
Our eleventh session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen took place on Monday, August 14, 2023. In our last session, the heroes had defeated Belephaion, the leader of the Dragon Army forces in the City of Lost Names and prevented his plans for the city. However, we weren’t quite done with Chapter 6; there was still a couple of events to go. Those events were … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 11
Running an interesting wilderness travel session is hard. Part of that is because there are different reasons for that session. Do you just want to get from point A to B to continue the story? Or is there something in the wilderness you need to find? One of the odder random wilderness encounters in a published adventure was a multi-room monster lair. The problem? It … Continue reading Thinking about Wilderness Travel
