The Vault of Iptiz is an adventure designed for 5th-level characters; the adventure is intended to be played in 4-6 hours, and consists of a 10-room dungeon with a new monster and four new magic items. The Vault is a lost dungeon – part treasure chamber, part death trap – that lies near the occupied city of Sulindal. An army of yuan-ti conquered the city … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Vault of Iptiz
Rod “Sacrosanct” Waibel’s Depths of Felk Mor is an ambitious product. 236 pages of adventure takes a lot of devotion to create. The adventure describes the caverns around Felk Mor, a subterranean settlement inhabited by several clans of humanoids. Nearby is the temple of Remahotep, an ancient god of evil. About half of the page count is the adventure text, the rest of the book … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Depths of Felk Mor
For some reason, DMs love putting traps in their adventures. I’m unsure exactly what that reason is. It probably differs from person to person. Some DMs like challenging their players; forcing them to think rather than just hack’n’slash their way through monsters. Some just want to give something for the thief of the party to do. (Remember, the Thief wasn’t included in the original D&D … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Traps
One of the best additions to 5th Edition D&D is the concept of Backgrounds. Designed to aid you in the creation of your characters’ personalities, the original Player’s Handbook presents a number of iconic backgrounds. Most people would agree that they’re not enough, as they by no means cover all of the potential concepts. James Introcaso, best known by me for his hosting of The … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: 15 New Backgrounds
I occasionally need to remind myself that not everyone studies the rules to D&D in the manner in which I do. (Indeed, most people haven’t been playing the game over thirty years!) Rules summaries and clarifications are very useful for people who don’t want to immerse themselves in the minutiae of several hundred pages of rules. And it is for those people that Sean Wicket … Continue reading D&D 5E Supplement review – Player Cheat Sheet
The fifth adventure of the D&D Expeditions releases, The Courting of Fire, brings the Cult of the Dragon to centre stage, as the party investigates the theft of several papers and tomes from Mantor’s Library. One of the ongoing flaws of the DDAL adventures is their introductions: many are vague and don’t really give the party a good reason to enter the adventure. Some of … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review – DDEX1-05: The Courting of Fire
The fourth novel set in the Forgotten Realms, Spellfire, was released in July 1988. It was the first novel of the creator of the Realms, Ed Greenwood, and it would prove to be his only novel for six years, as he was kept rather busy writing gaming material for the Realms. (Since 1994, he’s published quite a few more books…) Spellfire exists in two forms: … Continue reading Book Review: Spellfire
Dues for the Dead is the fourth adventure released by the D&D Adventurers League and the closest to a traditional dungeon crawl. Designed by Steve Winter, who has written and edited more adventures than more people (including Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat), it sees the player characters asked to investigate the catacombs beneath Valhingen Graveyard in Phlan. The characters are … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: DDEX1-04 Dues for the Dead
Alabaster Palace of the Dao starts in an interesting way. The universe has ended. Ragnarok has come, and now Chaos reigns. For many stories, this would prove something of an impediment. Rob Couture uses it in an entertaining manner: the player characters, once legendary heroes, have been resurrected by a Rakshasa and are asked to recover the four Jewels of Perfection, artefacts that will allow … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Alabaster Palace of the Dao
Including humour in a D&D adventure is a tricky thing. The fact is that, although most of us find the actions of our players incredibly amusing, we’re uncomfortable with the idea of entire adventures being devoted to humour. History tells us that they’re tremendously hard to write well. Gary Gygax handled the humour of Alice in Wonderland by making the Dungeonland adventure as deadly as … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Adamantine Chef – Supreme Challenge!
