The latest session of my Roll20 Waterdeep campaign saw the third-level party finally return to Waterdeep after a longer period away from the city and get back into some of the faction quests that actually related to Dragon Heist! They’d discovered a map showing an ancient treasure stored in the first level of Undermountain, but Onyx the Paladin realised they still hadn’t dealt with the … Continue reading Waterdeep Tales: Zhentarim and Undermountain
Once upon a time, I thought the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide was a great book. However, my appreciation of it has dimmed. I have read the book many, many times in the past few years; this isn’t an opinion based on old memories. The biggest problem with the book is that it often fails to explain how the game works. These days, those explanations are … Continue reading Where the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide Failed
The Surrounded is a one-shot adventure designed to be played with pre-generated characters that should take place over a four-hour session. Set in the Forgotten Realms, it sends a group of four 10th through 12th level heroes on a quest to recover a gold dragon egg from the red dragon that has captured it. It is a relatively short adventure with only a few encounters. … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Surrounded
The second half of Elturel concerns the rescue of Duke Ravengard and the revelation of what the players need to do next. Except, as you have probably guessed, the “revelation” is rather badly handled. The rescue of the Duke is nicely done. Here are the basics of the set-up: Duke Ravengard travelled to the cemetery to discover why there are so many undead there. In … Continue reading Running Descent into Avernus, part 7: Duke Ravengard
My Waterdeep campaign keeps going in strange directions. It began as a Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign, but it has become a Waterdeep sandbox campaign. The characters keep on going off and doing other quests. The characters have just spent a couple of sessions out of Waterdeep saving merchants from orcs, then exploring the very unusual dungeon the orcs lived in. The initial caves were fine. … Continue reading Tales from my Waterdeep Campaign
The plot of my ongoing World of Greyhawk game revolves around the nations of Ket and Veluna. This was not the intention when I started the campaign in the City of Greyhawk all those months ago. I expected to do a lot of delving into Castle Greyhawk and then bring up a threat from Iuz that the party would have to stop. It hasn’t worked … Continue reading Adventures in Greyhawk: Ket and Veluna
Exploring the wilderness could be a dangerous endeavour in the early forms of Dungeons & Dragons. If the random encounter table indicated an encounter with goblins, OD&D suggested that the party discovered 40-400 of them! It paints a view of a dangerous world. Outside of the civilised nations, large warbands of monsters stalk the land. It was only the humanoid monsters (orcs, kobolds, goblinoids, bandits, … Continue reading I Track the Monster to its Lair!
Late Dungeons & Dragons third edition introduced us to one a significant innovation in D&D adventure design: The “Delve” format, which laid out tactical encounters on a one- or two-page spread, including all the relevant information you needed. It became the dominant format of fourth edition adventures. Unfortunately, it was a disaster! It was excellent for its primary purpose: running set-piece combats. When you have … Continue reading The Doom that was the Delve Format
Back in AD&D, each class had its own experience point table. Partly this was because the characters gained abilities at different rates, so a thief gaining levels quickly kept it more in line with the abilities of the fighter. And part of it was because that is just how they did things then. Different classes, different rates of advancement. The most iconic advancement was the … Continue reading If 5E Experience Tables worked as they did in AD&D
Special Delivery is a short adventure by Shawn Merwin for level 1 characters. In it, a patron hires the adventurers to escort a carriage and its passengers to a border barony. It is not set in the Forgotten Realms, but instead in its own setting. I suspect you would have little problem adapting it. Although there is no lack of action in the adventure, it … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Special Delivery
