Cast your mind back to the first time you played Dungeons & Dragons. If your experience was anything like mine, then you were spellbound not only by the game itself but also by the mysterious and beautiful polyhedral dice, that came in all sorts of varieties of number of sides, shapes and colours. I was […]
Author: duncan (Page 2 of 11)
I’ve seen people argue that there are only three fundamental adventure types in Dungeons & Dragons: Fetch, Kill and Discover. However, you won’t have to wrack your brains too long to think of a story that falls outside those rather narrow restraints. The blog Master The Dungeon proposes seven core quest types: Fetch, Kill, Escort, […]
One summer’s day in 2021, feeling restless, I walked down the leafy Passeig de Sant Joan boulevard in Barcelona and popped into the Gigamesh fantasy bookstore. Half on a whim, and half with an adventure idea in the back of my mind, I picked up a copy of the (then) recently published Candlekeep Mysteries and […]
I’m currently about half way through penning an epic post reviewing each of the adventures in the Candlekeep Mysteries anthology (it’s now live!). So far, the adventure that has spoken to me the most is The Price of Beauty, a 5th level adventure written by Mark Hulmes. ***For DMs ONLY. Contains spoilers for The Price […]
Not so long ago I quoted exhaustion as being one of the 15 reasons I love 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. Given the often deranged mental gymnastics we have to do to make hit points make sense, it’s great to have a second, separate mechanic that measures life force, and moreover one that – unlike […]
You know the scene. The corpse of the hero lies lifeless on a cold temple slab, his pale flesh lit by flickering orange candlelight. Meanwhile, the fate of the known world lies in the hands of the priests whose orations to their god represent the only chance to bring this chosen warrior back into the […]
I’m no D&D historian, but I think it’s fair to say that few, possibly none, have contributed more to the game’s lore than Ed Greenwood. The Canadian writer started writing novels set in his nascent Forgotten Realms as early as 1967 (aged 18 at the time), before developing the setting as the homebase for his […]
For some time I’ve been deliberating over designing a Name of the Rose-inspired murder mystery adventure for D&D. The imagery of weary travellers arriving at a remote monastery in the dead of winter has a certain romantic appeal, while the sinister atmosphere of a body count increasing in an isolated community feels like something that […]
Long before the pandemic began, D&D was already heading online. Digital toolsets like D&D Beyond are far more efficient than pen and paper at tracking hit points, gear and level progression, Discord servers can be used to neatly file campaign information, while the world’s first virtual tabletop, Fantasy Grounds, launched in 2004, challenging the possibilities […]
As the nights get darker and the days get colder (at least for those of us tuning in from the northern hemisphere!), it’s become a tradition at this time of the year for D&D players to embrace the scarier side of fantasy. Now, given that our favourite tales of horror are often rooted in helplessness […]
