Annihilation Hold is an adventure for characters levels 10–16 by Alan Patrick and Jeff C. Stevens. The setting of the adventure is the ruins of an orcish citadel. Within, the heroes can discover many undead orcs and a particularly dangerous artefact. Yes, it’s a dungeon crawl, where the primary motivation is a treasure. A magical treasure! However, calling it a dungeon crawl doesn’t quite do … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Annihilation Hold
Going back through my past reviews, I discovered this one on a defunct website, so I’m reposting it on my main blog. Wizards released Races of Stone in August 2004 for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition. This review originally appeared on 3rdedition.org, but sadly that site has been defunct for many years. Races of Stone represents a departure by Wizards of the Coast from the … Continue reading 3E Supplement Review: Races of Stone
The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide has many fascinating sections in it. While it often fails to elucidate the rules in a clear manner, it’s nothing if not full of inspirational material for DMs. From glimpses of the sort of campaign that is proposed for Dungeons & Dragons, to manifold tables to help stock dungeons, towns and the wilderness with interesting monsters and … Continue reading Adventures in Greyhawk: Shrine to the Wind Dukes
The first adventure in the new Oracle of War campaign set in the Eberron campaign setting is The Night Land by Shawn Merwin. Designed for a party of level 1-4 characters, it introduces the party to the town of Salvation. There, they and others work as salvagers, taking trips into the shattered lands of the Mournland to recover valuable artefacts. A Town Named Salvation The … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Night Land
When I turned 33, many years ago, as a treat for myself (and possibly my friends), I took them through part of the original White Plume Mountain, using the AD&D rules. This is a report I wrote at the time, to give you an idea of why I enjoy this adventure so much. I wasn’t sure how many people were going to turn up – … Continue reading White Plume Mountain session report
In this article, I’m going to start on an examination of the history and challenges facing the D&D Adventurers League since the beginning of D&D 5th Edition in 2014. This is my outside view of the program, which, while I’ve seen a lot of it through organising games and conventions, writing adventures and being a community representative, is limited. I am not privy to the … Continue reading Seasons of the D&D Adventurers League, part 1
Look what’s turned up on Amazon… (and two d20s of the same size, yay!) What are “miscellany”? Maps? Encounters? A guide on how to run away? March 17th, 2020 is their release date, it appears. There’s also a new hardcover coming out in March. What is it? (Is it going to be called the Explorer’s Handbook? – it probably won’t be called “Coming Soon“!) My … Continue reading More pretty dice are coming!
My ongoing Greyhawk campaign has spent many weeks (months) running through Courts of the Shadow Fey, an adventure by Wolfgang Baur originally written for a previous edition of the system, and since then released for other rule sets. I’m using the 5E version, which follows Kobold Press’s strategy of making the monsters a bit more dangerous than you might expect from their Challenge Ratings. The … Continue reading Tales from the Courts of the Shadow Fey
I’m posting a couple of forum posts I made a few years back, talking about the concept of Balance in RPGs. Balance… is tremendously important to any RPG. If you don’t think it is, then you don’t understand what balance is. It doesn’t help the clarity of discussions that there are actually two types of balance with regard to playing RPG, both of which get … Continue reading On Balance in RPGs
