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
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
