Ravenloft is finished… just in time for Wizards to release the Curse of Strahd adventure, which one of my other groups is prepping to play, hurray. I guess I can’t complain too much because they did expand it into a full 5e campaign that takes players from first to tenth level, and it includes some … More I6 Ravenloft for D&D 5e – Sessions IV & V
It’s been a long time since we managed to run Ravenloft—over a month, delayed due to various work trips, vacations, a national holiday, and various bullshit. Oh, and there was that weekend we cancelled everything and got snowed in at a gaming convention a few cities to the south. But return we did! This is … More I6 Ravenloft for D&D 5e – Session III
For 2015’s annual horror game, I offered to run a “one-shot” of Ravenloft. So far, we’re two sessions in and nobody has died. That will probably change. … More I6 Ravenloft for D&D 5e – Sessions I & II
Six months of playing the new D&D and it’s starting to come together real well. On the bright side, it has the most compact and streamlined D&D rules I’ve ever seen, with a lot of awesome design choices. Are there any downsides, though? Well… … More Some Thoughts on Five
I’ve never understood why GMs—particularly newbie GMs, who themselves were players not too long ago—assume that a gaming group will only ever make binary decisions: right and wrong. That the group’s best goal is to follow the one road that takes them to The Plot, and that every other avenue leads to Not The Plot. Maybe it’s because … More Those Darn Freewheelin’ Players
Original D&D had Appendix N, a list of recommended reading for the D&D gamer. 5th Edition has Appendix E. And it’s a pretty good improvement that takes the last forty years of fiction into account. … More Appendix E: Appendix N, Alive and Expanded
So, to update from my last post: Next is now going to have a free shareware edition, D&D 5th Basic, that will be a .pdf released for everyone for free come July. It’ll have full 1st-20th level rules for all the basic classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric) and four races (human, elf, halfing, dwarf), and things like … More The First One’s Free
Last week I heard a number of Pathfinder players talking about D&D Next’s organized play announcement, complaining that it lifts faction-based play from Pathfinder Society. The thing being, Society lifted the idea of organized play from the RPGA, established by TSR and inherited by Wizards of the Coast, who then toyed with faction/regional organization in their Living Greyhawk/Living … More Pricings & Predicaments
A while back, a friend of mine asked for a brief overview on the different D&D editions; at the time (June 2012), the “edition wars” were in full swing, dominating the message boards and the communal hivemind of most D&D players. I say “most” because there’s a lot of history, baggage, and bile for a … More A Brief History of the Edition Wars
I’ve always assumed the core of D&D was always about slaying monsters. It’s a big part of the game, especially in the newest editions. Combat is heavily prevalent in 3.5/Pathfinder, with a majority of the class abilities, spells, and feats focused towards slaying things. It’s even more prevalent in 4e, whose tactical teamwork dynamic eschewed … More [D&D] For Love Of Plunder
Logic is my Virgin Sacrifice to Reality 