There is a lyrical nature to Graeme Morris’s writing in Eye of the Serpent, the fifth of the UK series of adventures. He describes the view from the top of a mountain, down to the valley below, where a river winds like a serpent, an island some way along its length appearing as an eye to the dwarves who once lived there. It makes a … Continue reading AD&D Adventure Review: Eye of the Serpent
We played our fourth session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, October 2, 2023. (Yes, I’m behind. I know, I know. Less behind than with Shadow of the Dragon Queen!). The heroes began the session talking with Sildar and Sister Garaele. Remember, in the last session, Sildar and Garaele had helped rescue most of the party from the Redbrands! It was time for me to … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 4
One of the detractions you occasionally hear lobbied against Dungeons & Dragons is that it doesn’t handle skills well. This is particularly in relation to social challenges, but I’ve seen it in other contexts. The more nuanced version of the complaint is that D&D is too binary: that its skills are purely pass/fail. It does not handle partial successes. These, much though I hate to … Continue reading Skills in Challenges
Our eleventh session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen took place on Monday, August 14, 2023. In our last session, the heroes had defeated Belephaion, the leader of the Dragon Army forces in the City of Lost Names and prevented his plans for the city. However, we weren’t quite done with Chapter 6; there was still a couple of events to go. Those events were … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 11
My D&D 5E Greyhawk game is running through a series of adventures written for the Castles & Crusades game. Published by Troll Lord Games, C&C is one of the longest standing systems of what we now know as the OSR. It was first released in 2004. Castles & Crusades is a variant of the first edition of D&D, with a few interesting touches that set … Continue reading Thoughts on “A Stranger Among Us” – A Castles & Crusades adventure
Running an interesting wilderness travel session is hard. Part of that is because there are different reasons for that session. Do you just want to get from point A to B to continue the story? Or is there something in the wilderness you need to find? One of the odder random wilderness encounters in a published adventure was a multi-room monster lair. The problem? It … Continue reading Thinking about Wilderness Travel
One of the odder launches occurred this week: Dungeons & Dragons now has its own dedicated streaming channel. Except almost everything you’d assume about the service is wrong. Just at the moment, it is showing three original shows – “Encounter Party”, “Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!”, and “Heroes’ Feast” – and repeats of the D&D Cartoon from the 80s. Possibly other things, but I haven’t … Continue reading D&D goes F.A.S.T.
We played our tenth session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, August 7, 2023. In this session, the party continued through Chapter 6, exploring the City of Lost Names. In the last session, the players entered the city through the Path of Memories and restored their broken Dragonlance at the flooded Temple of Paladine. The city’s ruins were mostly abandoned, although they could … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 10
Our ninth session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen was played on Monday, July 31, 2023. In this session, we began Chapter 6: The City of Lost Names, The backstory for the city involves the killing of a good dragon during the Age of Might. Which really makes no sense because during the Age of Might the good dragons were all sleeping and/or absent. Whenever … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 9
We played our eighth session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, July 17, 2023, continuing through chapter 5: The Northern Wastes. At the end of the previous session, the characters had rescued a dragon egg and some sea elven captives from Camp Carrionclay, and then returned to Heart’s Hollow to recuperate. This left them with a few dangling threads. The leader of the … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, session 8
