I am a fan of wandering monsters and random encounters. The concept, in case you were not aware, is that every so often while the party are exploring a dungeon or travelling through the wilderness you make a check to determine whether they have an encounter. The encounter is not necessarily combat, although it often in the sort of combat-heavy games I tend to run. … Continue reading Worldbuilding through Wandering Monsters
For some reason, I wanted to design this monster with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons statistics. I have no idea why. And I am sure someone else has done this before me. But I wanted to put it out there. TETRAHEDRON FREQUENCY: Very RareNO. APPEARING: 1-4ARMOR CLASS: 4MOVE: 4″HIT DICE: ¼% IN LAIR: NilTREASURE TYPE: NilNO. OF ATTACKS: 1DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-4SPECIAL ATTACKS: MaimSPECIAL DEFENSES: Surprise on a … Continue reading The Most Fearsome Monster (AD&D stats)
Exploring the wilderness could be a dangerous endeavour in the early forms of Dungeons & Dragons. If the random encounter table indicated an encounter with goblins, OD&D suggested that the party discovered 40-400 of them! It paints a view of a dangerous world. Outside of the civilised nations, large warbands of monsters stalk the land. It was only the humanoid monsters (orcs, kobolds, goblinoids, bandits, … Continue reading I Track the Monster to its Lair!
Back in AD&D, each class had its own experience point table. Partly this was because the characters gained abilities at different rates, so a thief gaining levels quickly kept it more in line with the abilities of the fighter. And part of it was because that is just how they did things then. Different classes, different rates of advancement. The most iconic advancement was the … Continue reading If 5E Experience Tables worked as they did in AD&D
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?
From the mind of Rodney Thompson, the latest Superhero RPG in a box has arrived! Spectaculars! This is a game I kickstarted a little while ago, and the first copies are just arriving as we speak. My copy arrived this week, so I thought I’d show you what’s in the box. There’s quite a bit! It begins with a pad of character sheet and a … Continue reading Spectaculars has arrived! (An Unboxing)
