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Posts concerned with Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition
Recently I ran across an article, An ancient exploding comet may explain why glass litters part of Chile, by Freda Kreier and it kind of captured my imagination. The article is a fascinating look at this twisted glass that covers about a 75 kilometer long corridor within the Atacama Desert in Chile. I find myself… Continue reading A Desert of Glass
One last point from the article on Canon I discussed yesterday: The number of eyes on a stock beholder has been consistent throughout D&D’s history. No need to meddle with perfection, I say. On the other hand, if you’re familiar with old maps of Waterdeep, you might recall that one of its seedier avenues was… Continue reading Goodbye Slut Street, We Hardly Knew Ye
One of the things that I've struggled with for some time is this belief that I need to know everything about a setting to really "get" it. I've spent years reading into the lore of various settings in an attempt to understand where they're going and to make my own campaigns closer to the "true"… Continue reading The Freedom of DnD 5e Canon
In the most recent Unearthed Arcana, Gothic Lineages, Wizards of the Coast made the following clarification to their design process going forward: I'm actually a big fan of this change in design philosophy. By removing cultural characteristics from individual races actually makes it easier to ground the players' characters into the game world as their… Continue reading Changes in the Design Philosophy of Modern Dungeons and Dragons
Lately I've found myself thinking about different methods for rolling your basic Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) style ability scores; and because this has been kicking around in my head for a while I'm going to call this part 1 - even if a part 2 never actually develops. d100 Point Buy All abilities begin with… Continue reading Alternative Ability Score Rolling Methods, Part 1
One of the things that I often struggle with when I'm in the middle of a game is coming up with a community name for the various towns, districts, and cities that my players encounter. To help alleviate that issue I created this d100 City Names table that you're welcome to download from the link… Continue reading d100 City Names
When I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons it was with the 3.5 Revision (D&D 3.5). The game is wonderfully simple in some aspects and woefully complicated in others. One of those overly complicated aspects of the game comes from the skill system used (and which has lingered on ever since in various forms). Let's… Continue reading An Alternative Method for Skill Checks in DnD 5e
Pitch In a time of escalating tensions throughout the world one group of men and women stand between the law and chaos; they are the Greyhawk Police Department (GDP) and these are their stories. Each episode would follow a group of detectives for the GDP as they attempt to solve the crimes that haunt the… Continue reading Greyhawk & Order
Recently I started running a game of D&D set in the Forgotten Realms; and as I was describing where the players were in the world it occurred to me at how civilized the Realms (and my beloved Greyhawk for that matter) really are. The world still has wild spaces but there are clearly defined boarders… Continue reading Let’s Go Exploring – If We Can Ever Find Somewhere Unexplored
If you play any version of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) for any period of time and happen to mention your love of it on social media you’re bound to see the criticism that D&D is nothing more than a hack-and-slash slog played by murderous hobos as they go from location to location killing things and… Continue reading Is D&D Just About Combat?
Occasionally as a Game Master (GM) you're going to need to determine crowd size. Now there are several methods to do this but this is mine and you're welcome to it. The first thing I do is determine how large a crowd I'm going to need at that particular moment. A small coffee shop, for… Continue reading Determining Crowd Size
We were sitting in Ma Yang's Wing Hut people watching as she fussed about us not eating enough and getting too thin. Outside the streets were filled with crowds of shoppers lit by the neon glow of shop signs and the pale lights that spilled out from shop interiors. It was all so normal. And… Continue reading Dealing with Panicked Characters
We’re officially at the tail end of July and I’m still going with this blog! I’m not as prolific as I was hoping to be when I launched it in December of 2018 but we’re moving in the right direction. So what I’d like to do today is talk a bit about where I’m planning… Continue reading Projects and Progress
Fucking excited about this one kids. So first off the World of Greyhawk is my fucking jam, and while I said that I was considering doing another world not even two posts ago Ghosts of Saltmarsh is siting on my desk and I'm stoked. #Greyhawk
Since I first started running Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) fifteen years ago I have largely run my games within the world of Greyhawk. It was the sort of setting that allowed me to push the boundaries without having to run against the narrative constraints that are found with the current official setting of D&D: the… Continue reading Greyhawk is Home, but Traveling Elsewhere can be Fun Too.
Dragons Never Forget 