With the prophet of the air cult now slain, the group were able to return to the Air Temple and explore mostly unmolested. A few kenku remained in the ruined underground city, but they scattered and fled from the adventurers – the few that did not quickly learnt the error of their ways, probably from a fireball spell exploding nearby! It was certain that the … Continue reading Princes of the Apocalypse, sessions 20-21
One of the more common pieces of advice to give new Dungeon Masters (and Game Masters) these days is that they should say “Yes” to their players. This is good advice. It comes from an understanding of the creative process: that you get more interesting results when you don’t shut down the creativity of the players. At one of the sessions I ran at PAX … Continue reading DM Tips: When to Say “No”
With the recent release of the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, the D&D Adventurers League has allowed everyone to rebuild their characters. Although this is intended primarily so you can include material from the new book, the option to rebuild is open to all players even if their rebuild doesn’t use material from the Adventurer’s Guide. Normally, you can rebuild your character any number of times … Continue reading Rebuilding your D&D Adventurers League Character
Well, it’s been a fun (and exhausting) three days. We ran a LOT of D&D at PAX Australia. Yes, only four tables, but that’s four tables by THIRTY HOURS! Two of the tables were running 1-hour games, all the better to introduce players to D&D. And we had a lot of new players. (We also had players returning to play more. And we had to … Continue reading PAX Australia 2015 thoughts
One of the stranger things missing so far from the D&D 5E releases from Wizards of the Coast is an “Open Gaming” License directly applicable to D&D 5E. There have been hints of it going back before the release of the game, but – as of this writing – no license has materialised. (I just want to make clear that it’s not really the lack of … Continue reading Thoughts on the missing Open Gaming License
I use Microsoft Word to create most of my characters. Calculations? Form-fillable sheets? Nah. Good old word-processing. I’m not really much of a stylist. Anyway, one or two people asked about the templates I used to create the pregenerated characters I’ve been posting. I don’t really have templates, but I can share with you the basic word files if you want to fiddle with them. … Continue reading Character Sheets!
Avarium Academy is a board game for 2-4 players by Jared Cheah, although the board is mostly cosmetic. This is primarily a card game. In the game, you attempt to recruit students at a Magical High School to help you become Class President. Of course, your students will frequently fight the opposing students to help you get the presidency (it draws on a lot of anime … Continue reading Board Game Review: Avarium Academy
A couple of years ago, I ran the Council of Thieves Adventure Path for Pathfinder. It was the first of the adventure paths to be released using the full Pathfinder system rather than 3.5E, and although it had a great overall story and some memorable encounters, I had a lot of problems with the adventures: a lot of underpowered foes and some really badly written … Continue reading Pathfinder Adventure Review: In Hell’s Bright Shadow
The first adventure in the Expert series had been the fairly serious Isle of Dread. The second had been more of a funhouse dungeon in Castle Amber. Expert Set Adventure Module X3, Curse of Xanathon, wandered into some seriously weird territory. It is designed for 5-8 characters of levels 5-7. Douglas Niles had begun his writing career at TSR by writing the not-for-novices novice-series adventure … Continue reading Basic D&D Adventure Review – X3: Curse of Xanathon
Along Came a Spider is an adventure for first-level characters by Joel Flank released by Jon Brazer Enterprises as part of their “Dangerous Delves” series. The adventure has been released in both 5E and Pathfinder formats. This review is of the 5E version. The idea for the adventure is simple: A creature from the Deep Ethereal has possessed the mind of a spider and its … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Along Came a Spider
