Five years ago, I wrote about the dangers of the mega dungeon. Now my group has returned to Dungeons & Dragons, and I’m contemplating the role of dungeons in the campaign. Time has shown that the folks in my group aren’t big fans of mega dungeons, but I think we still enjoy the challenge of … 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
One of the great things about Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is the re-emergence of recommending reading lists. The new lists (Appendix E in the Player’s Handbook, Appendix D in the Dungeon Master’s Guide) are patterned after Gary Gygax’s legendary Appendix N from the original 1st edition AD&D DMG.
I played D&D at GenCon, got in a few play tests with my regular group, and bought the three corebooks: the Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide. As I write this, my Sunday gaming group is playing D&D again for the first time since 2008. My lunchtime group is playing it.
I’m running two D&D 5th Edition sandbox campaigns set in the World of Greyhawk Obsidian Frontier (my Sunday campaign) and Broken Land (my lunchtime game). Both take place in a frontier town in a savage land overrun by monsters.
My lunchtime game is back on. After a six-month hiatus we’ve returned to our once-a-week, one-hour sessions, this time powered by Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Preparation is essential for the games. We play at a co-worker’s house, and I have to bring everything I need with me. With only 60 minutes I can’t be … Read more
The last time my gaming group ran a regular Dungeons & Dragons game was in 2008. It was our Dark City campaign, set in our homegrown city of Obsidian Bay and using the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules.
I’m back from GenCon 2014. As always it was an exhausting-but-fun four days of gaming, preceded by a few days visiting with my wife’s relatives relatives in southern and central Indiana. Adventuring with D&D 5th Edition My Dungeons & Dragons 5e events were decent — I played a pre-gen wizard who I was able to … Read more
One of the big reasons I come to GenCon is to play games, but it’s not the only reason: shopping is another. In 2000 I bought my first Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook there, in 2014 I’ll by my first 5th Edition PHB. This is where I got my Battlestar Galactica and Serenity RPG books, as well as more d20 sourcebooks than I care to mention.
After braving the rings of fire, the digital quicksand, and the firewall of eternity, I managed to download a copy of the D&D Next playtest. Unpacking the zip file and looking over the files, I had to smile. There was the cleric of Pelor. And a cleric of Moradin. A high elf wizard. A dungeon called “Caves of Chaos”.
A strong wave of nostalgia hit me, bringing with it memories of cracking open an ancient Red Boxed set and finding a module called “B2 Keep of the Borderlands” inside. A thousand memories of my Greyhawk campaign came rushing forward, carrying names like Kalib, Scrappy, Merwyn, Tanevier, Obsidian Bay and the Cult of Death Undying.
And all that was without opening the PDFs.