The earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons saw Gary Gygax run many people through his Greyhawk campaigns, including a young Rob Kuntz. Rob, being something of an inventive sort, soon became a Dungeon Master himself. He DMed Gary through a number of games – giving the creator of D&D a chance to play the game he’d invented rather than just running it. One particular adventure … Continue reading AD&D Review: Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure
It is with some surprise that I find that I’ve been running the Dungeons & Dragons organised play at Guf Ballarat for the past six years. It began slowly, but now we typically have somewhere between 20 and 40 people playing with us on a weekly basis, coming to one or other of the D&D nights we hold or, for some players, both. We get … Continue reading New Players and the Slow Release Schedule of Dungeons & Dragons
The tenth adventure of Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts is The Artifact by Teos “Alphastream” Abadia. This is a fascinating adventure, which rewards players who like role-playing and investigation as opposed to straight combat. It’s also based on the classic game of Clue. (Did you know they once produced a D&D version of Clue? They did! Really!) This is not to say that The Artifact … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Artifact
When you run a game of Dungeons & Dragons, the intention should be to make it enjoyable for everyone at the table. The players and the Dungeon Master. There’s little point in running the game if you’re hating every minute of it, and if the players aren’t enjoying it, why should they come back for another game? This is especially important when running D&D Adventurers … Continue reading DM Tips: Making the Game Enjoyable for New Players
The ninth adventure in the fourth D&D Adventurers League season, The Tempter, has a lot to recommend it. It makes use of a number of gothic horror tropes that I adore, and it ends with the players having to make a decision that properly evokes the major theme of the adventure: Temptation. The characters might be sent to a Lady’s manor to bargain for supplies, … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Tempter
Life’s been a little crazy recently, so while D&D games have continued, blog updates have not. Many apologies for that! When we last saw our brave band of adventurers, they were heading off to Vallaki to find a wedding dress for the Abbot’s “Bride of Strahd”, but as it turned out, they decided to go back to the Wizard of Wines winery to pick up … Continue reading Running Curse of Strahd, part 4 – Yester Hill
There has been an ongoing debate over the effectiveness of the Beast Master ranger archetype, with its supporters pointing to the excellent beasts available in the Monster Manual and how they function with the class. Meanwhile, its critics point to the problems the beasts have at surviving and their limitations. A recent episode of The Round Table saw Dan Dillon and Schuyler Esau discussing why … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: The Beast Master Companion
Kobold Press’s Unlikely Heroes offers the discerning 5E player a selection of eight new character races and four backgrounds in a 27-page document (available in pdf and print versions from their webstore; the print version is also available from Amazon). Written by Dan Dillon, with addition design by Wolfgang Baur, several of the races are normally evil in alignment, although this is not true of … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: Unlikely Heroes
Andrew Cawood’s The Travellers’ Handbook is a grab-bag of various tables and charts that may offer some inspiration or aid during a session. As the product’s title states, the overarching theme is things that can be useful while travelling. Thus, it begins with a summary of the general travel rules – detailing the rates of travel, the costs of hiring mounts and vehicles, what activities … Continue reading 5E Supplement Review: The Travellers’ Handbook
There’s an excellent concept inside The Broken One, the eighth adventure of the current D&D Adventurers League season. It’s got some fantastic imagery, a moral dilemma and an exciting conclusion. It’s also an adventure I found very difficult to run. A large part of the reason for this is how dependent the adventure is on interacting with NPCs. This adventure begins with a meeting with … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Broken One
