I’ve recently run a couple of D&D adventures that were just one combat after another. There have been times in my life when I’ve found that really fun – the interaction of tactical decisions, character building and fortune (dice!) that makes D&D combat so interesting. Hey, I might even enjoy it next week! But these times I wanted something more, and it would have been … Continue reading More Than Just Combat
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
A recent blog post by “Jester” David on problems with the Dungeons & Dragons hardcover adventures made me consider the use of sandboxes in D&D adventures. A lot of people talk fondly of sandboxes, but I’m unsure how many like the examples we’ve seen in official adventures. There’s a reason for that: Sandboxes, certainly in the context of a narrative story, are hard to design. … Continue reading Goals and Sandboxes
It’s a gift when you discover an NPC in an adventure that gives you great pleasure to roleplay. One that makes that list is Joy Hultmark from Lysa Penrose’s “Purging the Blood“. Lysa uses three paragraphs to describe Joy, and that’s what was needed. Joy has clearly defined goals, a personality, and a reason for interacting with the PCs that allows both the DM and … Continue reading A Few Thoughts on Designing NPCs
One of the issues that I (and many others) had during the Pathfinder 2 playtest was that wizards had been reduced in power to the level of ineffectiveness. I’m interested in how things have changed since the playtest, and so I bring you a selection of first-level Wizard spells, with notes on how they were changed from the playtest. With these spells, I’m looking for … Continue reading Pathfinder 2: A Look at some First-level Wizard Spells
Ill Met in Ylraphon uses a lot of skill challenges (or a similar mechanic) in its text. I didn’t discuss them in the review, but the skill challenge is a form of mechanic that I dislike intensely, mainly because most people use it so badly! For those unfamiliar with the mechanic, the basic way is to describe a challenge as a sequence of skill checks, … Continue reading Problems with Skill Challenges
In the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, there’s a place known as the Temple of Elemental Evil. Although it was originally situated on the World of Greyhawk, I’m sure it’s appeared on many self-created worlds over the years. In its most recent incarnation, a new Temple of Elemental Evil was built in the north-east of Faerun, in the Forgotten Realms. Here’s a very quick summary … Continue reading Thoughts on Elemental Evil
There’s a tendency in a lot of Dungeons & Dragons settings to have a vast number of deities. The World of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms are typical examples of such, with over fifty deities (not including non-human deities) described for each. Back in the day, I thought the Dragonlance setting had a small list of deities with a “mere” twenty-one! As I get older, … Continue reading Limiting the Pantheon
My happiest experience writing adventures for play in the D&D Adventurers League came courtesy of Robert Alaniz in 2017. He asked me to be one of a team (along with himself and Richard Jansen Parkes) to write the fourth (and final) trilogy of adventures set in Phlan for Baldman Games. On Good Friday, 2019, I finally had the chance to run the entire trilogy of … Continue reading Good Lord, Deliver Us! – Adventures in Phlan
Boxed text is used to provide an initial description of an encounter to the DM and players, with the intention that the DM read or paraphrase the information to the players. It has the following benefits: It alerts the DM and players to what’s important in the room. It conveys the author’s intention for the initial stages of the encounter. It can set a mood. … Continue reading On Using Boxed Text
