The games I run for my home Dungeons & Dragons games vary wildly in quality. There are times when I’m just not inspired to create something exceptional. Well, okay, that’s most of the time. Getting it to “good” is a goal. However, even when I come up with very boring scenarios, we’re likely to still have a good time. And that’s the magic of Dungeons … Continue reading Indifferent Scenarios, Good Friends
Once upon a time, a noble knight opposed the witch Iggwilv. However, Iggwilv was the lover of the arch demon Grazzt. And Grazzt used his power – and an opportunity given by a traitor – to banish the knight and his entire castle from the World of Greyhawk into the Abyss. A few hundred years later, it has returned. Guess what my group are now … Continue reading Into the Demon-Infested Castle
One of the odder products I’ve seen recently is this free adventure from Wizards of the Coast, Giants of the Star Forge. A companion adventure to Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, this adventure is for level 16 characters and should take a single 3-or-4-hour session to play. Or possibly longer. I’ve seen how some groups take a long time to resolve combat. I say … Continue reading Adventure Review – Giants of the Star Forge
One of the weirder situations in my gaming career occurred yesterday. For the last several months, we’ve been playing Adventures in Middle Earth, a 5E-based RPG in the Lord of the Rings setting. In the previous session, we killed a dragon, which – as you might imagine – was a pretty big deal. Yesterday, we were in a tavern, investigating a missing metalworker. This was … Continue reading Of Dragons and Consequences
In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, you gained XP for treasure acquired. Typically, this made up 80% of your total XP, the rest came from slaying monsters. One of the fun things is that not everyone liked giving XP for treasure, so there were various attempts to change this. One of the factions (no XP for treasure) managed to make that the base … Continue reading Wandering Monsters and Experience
I finished my first play through of Final Fantasy XVI on the weekend. 65 hours, or thereabouts, it took me. I did most of the side quests, and all the main story. I had an absolute blast. The next day, The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg arrived. This was the product of a Kickstarter I was quite looking forward to – a reproduction of Greg Svenson’s … Continue reading Final Fantasy and The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg
I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XVI recently. If you’re wondering, I’m really enjoying it. I’m also over 40 hours in, and wonder how people with normal lives will take to play it. I’ve been on holiday this week, which has allowed me more time than normal. One of the features of the game is that it has really cinematic boss encounters. The … Continue reading Boss Encounters
I have a sneaking suspicion that telling players how many encounters there will be in a session may end up with an improved Dungeons & Dragons experience. D&D began with explorations into a dungeon, where the players went for long as they felt able, then returned home. As this continued, players developed the concept of using all expendable powers and spells in the first encounters … Continue reading Another way to manage player resources
You might say you want to start a session at 7 pm, but what’s likely to happen is a lot of catching up first. Or waiting for Roll20 to load its images. (My internet connection is not the best). So, starting the session at about 7:20 pm was pretty good going! We began the second session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen with the players … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, Session 2
The latest session of my 5E Greyhawk campaign saw the players investigating a pocket of the Demiplane of Shadow that was accessible beneath their hometown. In our previous campaign, the town of Brusington was endangered by Shadow Fey, before the heroes of that game managed to negotiate a treaty with them. This time around, the Shadow Fey had requested a favour of the townsfolk: that … Continue reading Greyhawk: Into the Demiplane of Shadow
