I am fascinated by the process of designing adventures to be published and used by others. There are many, many factors to consider. I came up with three – which I posted on Twitter – then M.T. Black offered some more. The three I posted: You want to present a path through the adventure You want enough detail so the players can go beyond that … Continue reading Thoughts on Designing Adventures for Publication
As a follow-up to my post about the Plotless Campaign, consider running the first chapter of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden in such a manner. In this structure, the characters are wandering adventurers, start each adventure walking into a new town, quickly discovering it has a problem, and solving it. What is different about this from the standard Rime? You ignore the rationale about … Continue reading The Rime with No Name
There is a style of Dungeons & Dragons campaign that I quite enjoy. It is one that does not use a campaign-long plot but instead provides a picaresque experience, with the adventurers travelling from place to place and dealing with various situations as they encounter them. It is one that is very easy to construct, especially for new DMs. The characters may be heroic, or … Continue reading Running a D&D Campaign without a Plot
I would like to think I buy adventures to play (run) them rather than read them, but honestly, a large amount of my shelf space at the moment is adventures that I have not even had the time to read! There are a LOT of adventures out there at the moment. Adventures are funny things. It is occasionally said that adventures have three audiences: The … Continue reading Who Reads Adventures?
I have recently been playing quite a bit of the board game Etherfields, a campaign/story game where you explore a Dreamscape for something you have forgotten. In theory, the story becomes apparent as you play, but I have not progressed far enough into the game for it to reveal itself yet. However, one of the reasons I have not progressed far enough is because Etherfields … Continue reading Etherfields and the Death Spiral
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything has landed! Hooray! I immediately turned to the DM section to see what it could offer me. The answer is rather mixed, but that is to be expected: I am an experienced DM who is rather set in his ways. Advice on Session Zero is not new to me, and I tend not to include puzzles in adventures I design. I … Continue reading Negotiating Desires
In the beginning: The original cleric class debuted in the first version of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. There were only three classes in those days: Fighting Man (Fighter), Cleric and Magic-User (Wizard). The Thief (Rogue) came along the next year with the Greyhawk supplement. The original cleric was good at fighting but initially could not cast spells. Instead, it gained that ability at level … Continue reading The Cleric in Dungeons & Dragons
One of the flaws I have seen in Organised Play adventures (such as the D&D Adventurers League) is this: Starting the scenario with a wide-open question and no set goal. For instance, you start in a town’s marketplace. Or a tavern. And the next question is “what do you do?” What is missing here? An immediate goal for the characters! Why are they in the … Continue reading On Opening Scenes of Organised Play Adventures
The skill system in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons says only a little about what each skill can do, certainly when compared to previous editions. 3.5E, for instance, was very detailed about what skills covered. However, with that lack of definition comes freedom – and confusion. Especially when one player moves to a different group and discovers that the skill does not do what they … Continue reading Thoughts about Skills in Dungeons & Dragons
I have recently been contemplating the Runequest game, which I find fascinating and challenging to approach at the same time. One of the reasons I find it so difficult is that the stat blocks in the game are long. And there are a lot of them. One of the introductory adventures features the characters defending a town against raiders. And every single raider has their … Continue reading On the Complexity and Length of Stat Blocks
