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
Making a good economy in any RPG is a challenging affair. Many players have noticed how the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons has trouble providing things for characters to spend gold on. So, what happens when you invent a new currency for an adventure that the players can spend on stuff? Well, what’s most likely to happen is that the designers don’t think through … Continue reading Economy is Hard: Soul Coins
On Monday, September 25, 2023, we played our third session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. We were missing one of our players but continued with three characters. I didn’t tone down the encounters, thinking it would be interesting to see how it went. Interesting is certainly one word for it! The session began with the characters with Halia Thornton, having realised she was … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 3
We played our second session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, September 16, 2023. This session covered the end of Chapter 1: A Dangerous Journey, and the beginning of Chapter 2: Trouble in Phandalin. We ended our previous session with the characters defeating the Cragmaw goblins and rescuing Sildar. Which led to the fun little interaction of me describing Sildar as a … Continue reading Running The Shattered Obelisk, session 2
Tonight, we played through a Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnel session. The adventure? Sailors on the Starless Sea. The experience? Unforgettable. As in, I’ve now done it once, and I never want to do it again. Dungeon Crawl Classics is an old-school revival game that takes the silliest things of old-school play – the things that you probably didn’t experience and only heard about – and … Continue reading The Dungeon Crawl Classics Funnel
Here’s my advice to anyone wanting the players to really bond with the other non-player characters (NPCs) in the setting. Keep them around. Keep them interacting with the heroes. But pay attention to which NPCs the players enjoy interacting with. Those are the ones you want to keep. The other side of it: You need to enjoy running the NPC! It’s no good doing something … Continue reading Keep Your Non-Player Characters Around
