When you’re designing an encounter for use in your home game, you probably not putting down everything about it on paper. Some you will improvise at the table, other pieces you’ve already decided but live in your head rather than in any written form. Getting that head space into a publishable form? That takes more words than you might expect. It does, however, depend on … Continue reading Home Encounters vs Published Encounters
After a couple of months off, it’s time for my Friday Night group to begin a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign! At the end of the previous campaign, the 20th level characters stopped a war between Ket and Veluna – and banished Xan-Yae, goddess of the twilight, back to the Plane of Shadow. Ten years later… Most of my campaigns are set in the World … Continue reading A New Campaign!
Gary Gygax designed Dungeon Module T1: The Village of Hommlet as a part of his World of Greyhawk campaign. It was an area to accommodate the new players and characters that were joining the game. Nearby was the fearsome (and ruined) Temple of Elemental Evil, but – as it happened – the players in that campaign were too frightened to go anywhere near the place. Instead, … Continue reading AD&D Review: The Village of Hommlet
It is tremendously important to recognise that Dungeons & Dragons is primarily a game that involves rules. While, as Gary Gygax notes, that the game in unlike Chess in that the rules aren’t cut and dried – they are, in many instances, cut and dried. The genius of Dungeons & Dragons is that you can go beyond the rules. However, without the framework of the … Continue reading Mechanically Speaking
I have been spending a lot of time listening to podcasts and reading books on history over the past couple of years. The history of revolutions. The history of Rome. The history of the late medieval period in Europe and the transition to the modern world. The study of the Late Middle Ages is of particular interest to me because of Dungeons & Dragons and … Continue reading A Sense of History
Although G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is not the very first adventure published for Dungeons & Dragons, it is close enough. And it is fascinating. The framing of the adventure is simple: Giants have attacked the lands of men, and you must explain to them that such is a bad idea. With as much force as you can. To make things simpler, when … Continue reading Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
Secrets of the Drowgar is a 28-page PDF supplement available on the DMs Guild that introduces a new playable race to the game: the Drowgar. What is a Drowgar? It is what you get when a Drow and a Duergar love each other very much. The trouble with introducing any new race into the Dungeons & Dragons game is that not only do you have … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Secrets of the Drowgar
I played Mork Borg the other day. For those unaware of Mork Borg, it is a role-playing game inspired by early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, set in a world that is dying, and where the lives of its inhabitants are likely to be unhappy and short – especially if they are the player characters. The game presumes familiarity with D&D or similar games to … Continue reading The Map and the Mapper
Search for the Sanjivni is an adventure for 5th level characters that sets them on a quest to find an antidote to a poison that is killing the characters’ prince. Rakshasa and daanav feature as both friends and foes of the party on their quest. It is notable that the rakshasa are not the fiends of the Monster Manual, but instead draw more on their … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Search for the Sanjivni
My Greyhawk campaign continues in its fortnightly fashion, and the highest-level character in it at present is 15th level. By many players’ standards, that is a level higher than they are prepared to play. There are lots of reasons why campaigns never get so high. The group can fall apart. The campaign can finish telling its story. (If you liberate the peninsula at level 10, … Continue reading Running High-Level Home Campaigns
