I’ve started running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist as part of my Roll20/Discord D&D games during the lockdown, but this is the first time that I’m doing so not as a D&D Adventurers League game. As a result, I’m going to be changing things up a bit. The fact is that the first chapter is as about as good as I want an opening chapter in an … Continue reading Running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist – again!
Dungeons & Dragons came from players of miniature wargames. And, in the earliest days, there was an expectation that the characters would become powerful lords and archmages and command territories and armies. The funny thing is that this rarely happened. The origin of the game came from the players assuming the roles of the leaders of the territories and commanding armies, but it dropped down … Continue reading Not a Wargame
In the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons, players rolled to determine their ability scores. On 3d6. In order. Creating a character involved rolling your ability scores and then choosing the race and class you wanted to play based on those scores. There was one element that alleviated the “3d6 in order” rule: You could reduce your scores in other abilities to increase that of … Continue reading Dungeons & Dragons Lore: Ability Scores
It occurs to me that I very much miss the original golems from AD&D. These monsters were absolutely terrifying. Let’s take the clay golem, and recast it in 5E terms… Clay Golem Large construct, unaligned Armor Class 14 (natural armor)Hit Points 133 (14d10+56)Speed 20 ft. STR +5 (20) DEX -1 (9) CON +4 (18) INT -4 (3) WIS -1 (8) CHA -5 (1) Damage Immunities … Continue reading Dungeons & Dragons Lore: Old-School Golems
When I started playing Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1980s, the game didn’t have much of a skill system. The only skills were possessed by thieves – their abilities to pick pockets, open locks, find and remove traps, and the like. A character might have had a previous profession, which allowed the possibility of knowing a few things related to that profession, but for … Continue reading How Do Your Players Know What Monsters Can Do?
My thoughts on including stat blocks in adventure text are shaped by a lot of very poor examples of how to do so in the third and fourth edition era. Dungeons & Dragons fourth edition used a format that we refer to as the “delve” format. It was premiered in the final days of third edition and presented most encounters on a one or two-page … Continue reading On Stat Blocks and Adventure Presentation
It’s tricky writing adventures that are easy to prepare. M. T. Black recently posted on Twitter that he wanted to allow DMs to prepare DDAL09-04 in as little as 15 minutes. While most DMs should spend an hour or more prepping a four-hour adventure before they run it, the reality of running adventures in a convention or store setting often means that the DM is … Continue reading On the Importance of Clarity
Two major groups of foes that have been in Dungeons & Dragons since the very early days are Devils and Demons, beloved by Dungeon Masters because they provide actual danger for high-level characters that many, more mundane, foes do not. In the original version of D&D, only demons appeared. Why was that? Well, it has a lot to do with the original form of alignment, … Continue reading On Devils and Demons
This encounter can be used in any dungeon where you might find it amusing – probably level 5 or higher. I originally used it as part of a dungeon where the players were chasing a vampire. Unfortunately, the vampire had a couple of tricks up his sleeve… The Vampire Crypt Read or paraphrase the following to the players: A thirty-foot square stone chamber is behind … Continue reading D&D Encounter: The Vampire Crypt
Almost everything you think you know about history is probably wrong (or at least staggeringly incomplete). At least, that’s the impression I’m getting as I spend more time learning about aspects of our history. Even if you know some of the bigger points – that there was a American Civil War, that there was a battle at Bull Run, and so forth – you’re probably … Continue reading History and Dungeons & Dragons
