One of the odder launches occurred this week: Dungeons & Dragons now has its own dedicated streaming channel. Except almost everything you’d assume about the service is wrong. Just at the moment, it is showing three original shows – “Encounter Party”, “Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!”, and “Heroes’ Feast” – and repeats of the D&D Cartoon from the 80s. Possibly other things, but I haven’t … Continue reading D&D goes F.A.S.T.
On Monday, September 25, 2023, we played our third session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. We were missing one of our players but continued with three characters. I didn’t tone down the encounters, thinking it would be interesting to see how it went. Interesting is certainly one word for it! The session began with the characters with Halia Thornton, having realised she was … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 3
We played our second session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, September 16, 2023. This session covered the end of Chapter 1: A Dangerous Journey, and the beginning of Chapter 2: Trouble in Phandalin. We ended our previous session with the characters defeating the Cragmaw goblins and rescuing Sildar. Which led to the fun little interaction of me describing Sildar as a … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 2
Tonight, we played through a Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnel session. The adventure? Sailors on the Starless Sea. The experience? Unforgettable. As in, I’ve now done it once, and I never want to do it again. Dungeon Crawl Classics is an old-school revival game that takes the silliest things of old-school play – the things that you probably didn’t experience and only heard about – and … Continue reading The Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnel
Here’s my advice to anyone wanting the players to really bond with the other non-player characters (NPCs) in the setting. Keep them around. Keep them interacting with the heroes. But pay attention to which NPCs the players enjoy interacting with. Those are the ones you want to keep. The other side of it: You need to enjoy running the NPC! It’s no good doing something … Continue reading Keep Your Non-Player Characters Around
An interesting thread on EN World posed this question: What is the best introductory D&D adventure? Here is my answer: Are you asking which is the best first adventure for a group of new players, or is the DM meant to be new as well? Because I have substantially different answers depending on that. For a new DM, stay far away from Keep on the … Continue reading Great Introductory D&D Adventures?
Our third session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen saw us start on Chapter 4, bringing the characters and refugees from Vogler to the great city of Kalaman. (I note that I am writing this report several months after the session. I’m just preparing for the final session of the campaign.) At least, it’s a great city for the villagers. Krynn is mostly devoid of … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 3
One of the odder products I’ve seen recently is this free adventure from Wizards of the Coast, Giants of the Star Forge. A companion adventure to Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, this adventure is for level 16 characters and should take a single 3-or-4-hour session to play. Or possibly longer. I’ve seen how some groups take a long time to resolve combat. I say … Continue reading Adventure Review – Giants of the Star Forge
One of the weirder situations in my gaming career occurred yesterday. For the last several months, we’ve been playing Adventures in Middle Earth, a 5E-based RPG in the Lord of the Rings setting. In the previous session, we killed a dragon, which – as you might imagine – was a pretty big deal. Yesterday, we were in a tavern, investigating a missing metalworker. This was … Continue reading Of Dragons and Consequences
In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, you gained XP for treasure acquired. Typically, this made up 80% of your total XP, the rest came from slaying monsters. One of the fun things is that not everyone liked giving XP for treasure, so there were various attempts to change this. One of the factions (no XP for treasure) managed to make that the base … Continue reading Wandering Monsters and Experience
