The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is the first non-adventure book published by Wizards of the Coast for D&D 5th Edition since the core rulebooks. It’s an unusual book, as – unlike most of the campaign books released in the past – it is aimed primarily at players, not Dungeon Masters. This isn’t to say that Dungeon Masters won’t find it a useful book, but that it’s … Continue reading On the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
Chris Perkins gave a seminar at GameHole 2015 about Wizards’ future plans for D&D adventures and products. The Gaming and BS Podcast recorded the seminar and posted it. I’m very grateful to them! There were a lot of interesting topics covered in the seminar. I’ve written a summary of some of the key points below, although I may have misinterpreted some of what he said. … Continue reading Chris Perkins on upcoming D&D storylines and products
As a break from my busy RPG and work schedule, I spent a bit of today playing through the default Sword Coast Legends campaign. I haven’t really gotten that far yet – I’m in Luskan, uncovering the plot against the guild at present – but I now have the experience of several hours playing the game. And I’m enjoying it. A lot more than I … Continue reading An Afternoon with Sword Coast Legends
Cat & Mouse is an adventure by Richard Pett set in Kobold Press’s Southlands setting. It’s written as an introductory adventure for that setting, for 4-6 first level characters. Players unfamiliar with the setting will likely be surprised by a few of the plot points, one of which involves a gnoll proposing marriage to a catfolk. I know I was! The adventure has an urban … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Cat & Mouse
Cut to the Chase Games ran a successful Kickstarter to bring the Wrath of the Kobolds trilogy of adventure modules to us. The first two adventures: Caves of the Kobold Queen and Curse of the Kobold Eye are now available through DriveThruRPG, as is a prequel adventure, Night of the Mad Kobold, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. This is a review of WK1: … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: Caves of the Kobold Queen
Although hex-based exploration was the dominant form of wilderness exploration in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, a few adventures used a hybrid approach that drew on dungeon design. That is, they limited the ways that players could move between encounters. Occasionally they would be hard limits – the depiction of the Underdark in Descent into the Depths of the Earth was that way … Continue reading Entering the Wilderness: Tracked Exploration
Johua De Santo has written quite a few adventures by this point, and The Bards of Ur is the latest of his Patreon-supported games to see release. It’s a short adventure of 8 pages, and is apparently designed for mid-level adventurers, although I’m not quite sure what that means. Levels 5-10? Possibly. The concept behind the adventure is a good one: a group of mysterious … Continue reading 5E Adventure Review: The Bards of Ur
Dungeons & Dragons play is traditionally divided into three environments: Dungeon, Urban and Wilderness. Of those three, the Dungeon is by far the easiest to prepare and run. The Wilderness, on the other hand, is something I find particularly challenging to DM. The early D&D booklets suggested using the map of Outdoor Survival (an Avalon Hill boardgame) to represent the wilderness just around the dungeon, … Continue reading Entering the Wilderness: Exploration and Castles
With the prophet of the air cult now slain, the group were able to return to the Air Temple and explore mostly unmolested. A few kenku remained in the ruined underground city, but they scattered and fled from the adventurers – the few that did not quickly learnt the error of their ways, probably from a fireball spell exploding nearby! It was certain that the … Continue reading Princes of the Apocalypse, sessions 20-21
One of the more common pieces of advice to give new Dungeon Masters (and Game Masters) these days is that they should say “Yes” to their players. This is good advice. It comes from an understanding of the creative process: that you get more interesting results when you don’t shut down the creativity of the players. At one of the sessions I ran at PAX … Continue reading DM Tips: When to Say “No”
