The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is an Old School death trap of a dungeon. Originally released as a tournament module at Origins in 1979, the adventure was subsequently published as a module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. In 2017 it was updated to D&D 5th Edition and released as part of the Tales from the … Read more
RPG-a-Day is an annual event in which bloggers spend a month talking about different aspects of role-playing games. Rather than spread this out over several blog posts, I’ve rolled up my entries into one mega-post. Day 1: What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now? Dungeon World (or one of the other … Read more
When D&D 5th Edition came out, my gaming group launched two playtest campaigns. Obsidian Frontier was a sandbox campaign set in the early days of our homegrown city, Obsidian Bay. It was focused on trying out the new rules and running a typical D&D campaign. The second campaign was Heart of Darkness, a story-driven game … Read more
April 2017’s RPG Carnival topic is “Carnival of Megadungeons!”, during which the gaming blogosphere looked at this staple of fantasy (and occasionally science fiction) role-playing games. I suspect most gaming groups of a certain age have a megadungeon that they call their own — it’s a trope of Dungeons & Dragos that calls to us like dragons … Read more
The January 2017 topic for RPG Blog Carnival was “Prophecies and Omens”. Hosted by Tales of a GM it asked how the art of predicting the future can be incorporated into your campaign. It’s a hard topic for me because we’ve haven’t used prophecies and omens much in our campaigns. I’m not entirely sure why, … Read more
It’s a funny thing to sit down to write your next adventure in a campaign and realize that somewhere along the line it went from “campaign” to “long-running campaign”. That’s what happened with Obsidian Frontier, a sandbox-style campaign set in the World of Greyhawk in the early CY 500s. We launched it as a playtest … Read more
Live video streams and vidcasts are the big thing in role-playing games right now. Combined with the throwback Netflix series Stranger Things and the 80s-infused gamer novel Ready Player One the shows have helped produce a resurgence of Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. Unfortunately aside from Tabletop (which is more of a board game … Read more
As I wrote last week, the Blackrazors and their children will be running through the venerable module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands as part of our D&D Kids campaign. We’re playing D&D 5th Edition, and are running a version of the module updated for that edition. We chose B2 for a couple of reasons: … Read more
The next generation of Blackrazor Guilders have strapped on their fathers’ swords, sat down at the gaming table, and begun slinging dice. We have three kids (two boys, one girl) in the immediate group who want to play, and we have two of my son’s friends (both boys) who are also eager to start casting … Read more
I owe most of my esoteric knowledge of mythology, religion, art, and culture to role-playing game. Much of it was learned at the literary knee of Gary Gygax in the form of the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual, both of which were packed with strange monster names, advanced vocabulary, and random loot tables. In … Read more