Forge of Fury is my favorite published adventure, for sheer playability through two generations of gamers. The first time I encountered it, the Forge of Fury formed the foundation of our dwarven Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition campaign. We all played dwarves intent on reclaiming the forge for our clan, eventually re-establishing a hidden dwarven … Read more
My most memorable character demise was Zilanderan, at the hands of the resurgent Fire cultists of the Temple of Elemental Evil. He was a starting character in the Blackrazor’s Redshirts campaign, in which we all played first-level characters who belonged to the Blackrazor Guild (our fictional adventuring guild in the world of Greyhawk). We had … Read more
Out of all the many PCs I’ve played, Merywn the Spellsword is my favorite character. He was my second character for the Blackrazors’ Return to Temple of Elemental Evil campaign (aka the Redshirts campaign, featuring no-name, low-level minions of the Blackrazor Guild getting in WAY over their heads. My first character, Zilanderin, died at the … Read more
Vince Hendricks was my first RPG game master. There were other game masters before him, but Vince ran the first real, ongoing, sustained campaign I played in. Vince was my first college roommate – a senior when I was a sophomore (I transferred in that year) and he introduced me to a ton of gamers … Read more
My first RPG played this year was Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, but that’s almost always the answer. I started 2023 by pitching my Elemental Apocalypse game to the Blackrazor Guild (my Sunday online game). The campaign asks the question: “What if the Temple of Elemental Evil rose … and the World of Greyhawk fell?” Eight months … Read more
Twenty years ago, the Temple of Elemental Evil rose, Oerth fell, and the Elemental Apocalypse began. Vortexes of power – unleashed by factions loyal to the four elemental princes – devastated the world with concurrent apocalypses; city-shattering earthquakes, nation-drowning tidal waves, forest-consuming infernos, and punishing hurricanes. Gods died, slain by the ascendent Elemental Princes who … Read more
Back in the 1990s, when the Greyhawk resurgence was under way, the great mystery of the campaign setting was … who is Philidor the Blue Wizard? Introduced by Carl Sargent in the From the Ashes boxed set, Phildor is a super-powerful wizard (25th level?) in a campaign setting where ultra powerful NPCs are not the norm. Sure, there’s … Read more
My main gaming group, the Blackrazor Guild, are serial campaigners. We almost can’t help ourselves; if a campaign gets past the first few sessions, it’s very likely to run for for a year or two. Our biggest, most memorable campaigns were all multi-year affairs: Our namesake Blackrazor Guild campaign The Redshirts (aka Return to the Temple … Read more
For this post, I’m going to substitute “game” for “campaign”. My all-time favorite campaign is also my longest-running: The Blackrazor Guild Campaign for various editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Set in the World of Greyhawk, the initial campaign kicked off in 1996 and started in the Common Year 586 … which at the time was Greyhawk’s … Read more
Sigil, City of Doors, because from there, you can use its myriad magical portals to go anywhere in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. I thought of Sigl because my first answer was the City of Brass, the famed effreti city on the Elemental Plane of Fire that was featured so prominently on the back of the original Dungeon Master’s … Read more