I began playing this game five days ago, having gone a little too long without playing any serious war-games. As with a lot of my war-gaming activity, I played this game solitaire. My ASL games with Michael are on hold as our schedules just haven’t matched up too well of late; most of the time we’ve got too many players so my multiplayer games come … Continue reading Squad Leader report: Hill 621
I’m very sorry to have learnt that John Hill, the designer of the seminal game Squad Leader, has died after a heart attack. I came to Squad Leader late, and was introduced to its successor, Advanced Squad Leader first, but there’s no doubt it’s been a game that I’ve very much enjoyed playing. By a strange chance of fate, I’ve been playing a solo game … Continue reading John Hill, designer of Squad Leader, passes
Waterdeep, City of Splendours. The city’s citizens had been worried by the appearance of a flying castle in the sky nearby, but the castle had moved off northwards, ignoring the city. The five travellers who came into the city’s gates, accompanying a wagon full of goods, were unaware of the panic their transport had sent the city into, but were glad to be getting back … Continue reading The Rise of Tiamat, session 1
“I want to pat you!” That was what Ice told the surprised White Dragon, who suddenly was confronting a halfling sorcerer who really, really like dragons. As Ice was especially charming – aided by having advantage on Charisma checks against dragons – the white dragon, whose name was Glazrael, acquiesced and discovered it was rather nice. Then he took Ice for a ride outside the … Continue reading Hoard of the Dragon Queen, session 18
Having thoroughly scouted most of the castle last session, the group now prepared to cause as much trouble for the cult as they did. Between sessions, I allowed some retooling of the characters, in particular with their spell lists, as the group was finding that some of their spells were proving far less effective than they needed to be. The most relevant change was that … Continue reading Hoard of the Dragon Queen, session 17
One of the occasional troubles with writing in a shared world is that the Powers That Be occasionally dictate a change of the world on you. Or determine that there’s a cross-over event that you’ve got to participate in. This might be a problem when you’re writing a tightly-plotted series, or it could be a spur for further creativity. The Sundering novels, set in the … Continue reading Book Review: The Adversary by Erin M. Evans (Sundering #3)
Secrets in the Dark is an adventure written by Dan Hass and available on DriveThruRPG both separately and as part of a low-level adventure package. The adventure is designed for 1-6 first level characters, although I’d be quite wary of running it with a single PC without modification. A party of characters is generally better at recovering from bad luck; running single character adventures has … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Secrets in the Dark
This is the third-last session report on Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Yes, my group has actually finished the adventure, but I’m a few weeks behind in writing session reports. I’ll catch up this week, so I’m all ready to report on The Rise of Tiamat when we begin that in the very near future. The last session had seen the group gain as an … Continue reading Hoard of the Dragon Queen – session 16
The latest adventure from Sacrosanct Games takes as its basis one of the earliest and distinctive of TSR’s adventure releases, the Keep on the Borderlands, Gary Gygax’s introductory adventure for D&D. Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands has a rather neat concept: About a year ago, the monsters in the caves were defeated by a band of adventurers, and now a group of humans and … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands
B1: In Search of the Unknown was written in 1978. This makes it one of the earliest adventures for Dungeons & Dragons. Mike Carr was the author, and the adventure was included in the first printings of the Basic Dungeons & Dragons game. Later on, it was replaced in that boxed set by Keep on the Borderlands, but it was still available as a stand-alone … Continue reading Basic D&D Adventure Review – B1: In Search of the Unknown
