With this session, my group left the safe harbours of the D&D Encounters program and wandered into the murky waters of Casual play. All of which means that I’ve stopped ignoring the pacing guidelines of the D&D Encounters version of Hoard (which would have had us going for a few more weeks in any case), and are now working from the adventure text directly. And … Continue reading Hoard of the Dragon Queen, session 7
At the climax of episode 1 of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the weary players may see the champion of the enemy, Cyanwrath, come out before them and issue a challenge: Either the defenders of the village send out a champion to defeat him in mortal combat, or he will execute a family that he has captured. As he does so, one of the militia-men … Continue reading An Ethical Dilemma in Dungeons & Dragons – the Cyanwrath Challenge
We had our lowest attendance for D&D Encounters this week – a mere 30 players – although I expect numbers will rebound somewhat next week as several players return from birthday parties and the like. We were also missing two Dungeon Masters – as it happened, from the tables who were missing most of the players – so we merged those two tables and Sam … Continue reading D&D Encounters – Hoard of the Dragon Queen, session 6
Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the first of two adventures written by Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter set in the Forgotten Realms. The two adventures have the players coming up against the fresh plans of the Cult of the Dragon, a long-standing villainous group in the setting, to summon Tiamat from the Nine Hells. The designers of the adventure are experienced. They’ve been working … Continue reading Running Hoard of the Dragon Queen – Episode 1
A few years ago, Paizo Publishing released a horror-themed series of adventures for their Pathfinder system. To augment that series, Legendary Games released two short adventures that could be used as additional scenarios during its play, describing them as “Gothic Adventure Path Plug-Ins”. Legendary Games has now released rewritten versions of these two adventures for the new edition of D&D. Neither of the adventures are … Continue reading Adventure Review – The Murmuring Fountain
The original version of Dungeons & Dragons did not have a thief class. It only had three classes: the Fighting Man, the Magic-User and the Cleric. They have expanded on their capabilities greatly over the years. Gary Gygax introduced the thief in the first supplement, Greyhawk, which has very little to do with the actual World of Greyhawk and a lot to do with the … Continue reading Day of the Thief
Animal companions have had a long history in D&D. The Animal Friendship spell was not part of the original game, but was introduced as part of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This spell was usable by low-level druids and high-level rangers, and allowed the caster to permanently gain one or more animals to act as friends or defenders. Exactly what an animal companion could do was … Continue reading The Ranger’s Companion
In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords is the final adventure in the four-part Aerie of the Slave Lords series. It was originally written to be the final round of the AD&D Open Tournament at Gen Con XIII in 1980. There’s no doubt that In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords was a tournament module; it begins with the party, having been captured at the … Continue reading AD&D Review – A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords
This was the first session where we split the Encounters groups so that five of the groups played at 5.30 pm, and the final group played at 7.30 pm. It worked pretty well, and Kris was glad to be able to hear his DM in the later session. Overall, we were a little down on numbers, but that still meant there were 36 people participating. … Continue reading D&D Encounters – Hoard of the Dragon Queen, session 5
The fifth session of Lost Mine was a fairly short session, delayed as we waited for people to return from dinner, and it was spent entirely in the confines of Cragmaw Castle as the group went through two rather big battles that used a lot of the battlemat. By the end of it, the party were rather hurt, but there were a lot of dead … Continue reading Lost Mine of Phandelver – Saturday session 5
