The original Baldur’s Gate computer game had a massive problem. The side content was more entertaining than the main quest! It’s a funny thing about designing open world games, which a lot of D&D is. It works fine as long as everything is side content – a smorgasbord of options that the players can choose. Which quest to go on? Which dungeon to brave? But … Continue reading Goals and Side Quests
Wizards of the Coast have put out several big campaign adventures for D&D. And many of them left some DMs wondering “How the eff do I run that?” It’s important to note that this feeling is not confined to their products. It’s true of every adventure publisher, but people are most likely to have seen those big campaign adventures for D&D. I believe that some … Continue reading Adventures, Designer Assumptions, and GM Capabilities
How often do your characters rest? Where do they rest? Do your characters always fight to the death? Further to my last article on the effects that the availability of healing has on the game, I was considering how other mechanics change the flow of the game. To some extent, the mechanics are elements of the old-style dungeon explorations that I still enjoy very much … Continue reading Wandering Monsters, Pursuit and Resting
I recently ran a session of Tomb of Horrors. Not the new version from Tales from the Yawning Portal, but the old version. The AD&D first edition version. With the pregenerated characters included in the adventure. Seven players, seven heroes. In a two-hour session they reached about half-way through. The dwarven fighter began the session on 90 hit points, a very good total in those … Continue reading More Thoughts on Healing
Pools of Cerulean is the second adventure of the Tier 4 D&D Adventurers League adventures for the Tomb of Annihilation season. The adventurers are tasked with recovering a shard of the Soulmonger before a party of Red Wizards recover it first. If this seems like the plot in Streams of Crimson, you would be correct. It is the same plot. What differs is the location … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Pools of Cerulean
For the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring Omu, the Forbidden City of Tomb of Annihilation. We haven’t finished yet, and it’s likely to take a few more sessions before we do. At this point in the story, the players know that the Soulmonger is in Omu, but not exactly where. During the initial exploration of the city, I was aiming for a real sense … Continue reading Running Tomb of Annihilation: Entering Omu
There’s a lot of wilderness in Chult. You’re likely to become very familiar with it in the early levels of Tomb of Annihilation, as the adventurers search for clues. It’s easy to become distracted by the rules given on the adventure: Roll three times each day to see if an encounter occurs, then determine what it is. The problem with this is that it eats … Continue reading Running Tomb of Annihilation: More on Wilderness Adventures
When we left our brave adventurers, they were in the middle of the Valley of Dread and needed to make their way to Port Nyanzaru, many hundreds of miles to the north. Welcome to the part of Tomb of Annihilation that I like the least, and had hoped to avoid completely by running Return of the Lizard King. Guess not, huh? For those unaware of … Continue reading Running Tomb of Annihilation, Part 5: Hexcrawling
We’d reached the climax of the Return of the Lizard King, as the adventurers braved the ancient ziggurat wherein dwelled the Lizard King who had raised up the Akabkan lizardfolk against the other races of Chult. The adventurers were guided by a yuan-ti pureblood, Salida, who opposed the Lizard King, though for reasons of her own; she wasn’t entirely trustworthy. The Akabkan tribe were gathered … Continue reading Running Tomb of Annihilation (Return of the Lizard King) – Part 4
Did you know that bears have trouble fitting through doors? That was what we learned this session of D&D! The session began with the adventurers on their way to Eelstead, a frontier outpost in the land of Chult, where the adventurers’ guide, the lizardfolk Lungan, feared that something bad had happened. The journey to Eelstead, a 50-mile hike through the tropical jungle of Chult, would … Continue reading Tomb of Annihilation (Return of the Lizard King) – Part 3
