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
I have recently seen some discussion about the confused messaging Wizards of the Coast is giving about its One D&D project. You know, the new core rulebooks it is releasing in 2024, marking the 50th anniversary of the game. The rules we are currently playtesting? (Or avoiding playtesting). And it occurred to me that the compatibility between editions of the game is not entirely dissimilar … Continue reading Why is Dungeons & Dragons like a PlayStation?
I recently saw a commentator on 5E be very disappointed at the character options in Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. And it made me think: What do you release when an edition is ending and the new one is soon releasing? Funnily enough, it’s not something that has come up that many times in the history of Dungeons & Dragons. When OD&D transitioned into … Continue reading What do you Release at the End of an Edition?
Well, it’s finally that time when we learn a little more about the D&D books that are coming out. I was updating this site a couple of days ago, refreshing the Amazon links to the side, and was tremendously surprised to find there were no upcoming books on Amazon. But today, there is news – mostly about their prices and release dates! It’s hard to … Continue reading Thoughts on the Upcoming D&D Releases
We began our campaign of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, May 22nd, 2023. In what was a 2½-hour session, we played through the first half of Chapter 3, with the characters advancing from level 2 to level 3. And we also had a lot of fun. This campaign is being played on Roll20. I’ve purchased the adventure on Roll20 (which has the nice … Continue reading Shadow of the Dragon Queen, Session 1
How many people are actually playtesting the new D&D rules? One of the weird things about the process is that, for many people, perhaps even most people, the old rules work just fine. So, the impetus of throwing a changing set of playtest rules into their games is not the most appealing. It’s a completely different state of affairs than with the D&D Next playtest, … Continue reading D&D Playtest Unthoughts
Beginning this Monday, we’ll be starting our play through of Shadow of the Dragon Queen. For those unaware of the adventure, it was released in December 2022, and is the first official adventure in a long time to be set in the Dragonlance setting. I delighted in the original Dragonlance novels and adventures, so exploring the new take on the story is exciting for me … Continue reading Preparing for Shadow of the Dragon Queen
The Haunting of Hargrave House is a D&D 5E one-shot horror adventure for up to six level 3 pre-generated characters. Yes, you’ve got that right: pre-generated characters. The main conceit of this adventure requires them. Normally when reviewing adventures, I give an overview of the story and happily spoil many areas of the plot. This time? I’m not going to do that. Because the chance … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Haunting of Hargrave House
