Heavily obscured by the OGL scandal, and with the distraction of a Hollywood movie hitting the cinemas, DMs with a low passive Perception may have barely noticed the release of WOTC’s latest adventure anthology, Keys from the Golden Vault, sneaking up onto their local game-store’s bookshelves. Which is a shame, because it’s a really buccaneering […]
Author: duncan (Page 2 of 13)
One of D&D’s most infamous foibles is how frequently improbable, and even nonsensical, results are generated by the use of the d20, the game’s main determinant die. The classic example is the wizard (with 8 Strength) hoisting up the portcullis that the barbarian (with 18) failed to shift; with the barbarian later deciphering the esoteric […]
D&D works best as a game when it pits four or five player characters against a series of problems or obstacles and lets them go at it. However, in the reality of the worlds we create, often the most sensible thing the PCs can do is recruit some extra help, enlisting the local militia, city […]
While I really like the assortment of magic tattoos introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, they failed to meet some of my basic expectations on how arcane ink might work in D&D. Wary perhaps of allowing players to shop for powerful customised buffs, instead of offering us rules for getting inked at some kind of […]
This post was first published in Nov 2020, and updated in Jan 2023. As any Dungeon Master will attest, but particularly any who write and publish their own adventures, coming up with vaguely credible names you don’t hate for all your NPCs is a major pain in the @&$€. Something I’ve found myself leaning into […]
While fantasising about what changes 6th edition One D&D might bring to Dungeons & Dragons, I put buffing leather armour on my ‘nice to have’ list of changes and noted that the whole 5th edition armour table could do with revisiting. There’s some stuff that doesn’t really make sense there (what is the point of […]
Were I handed the reins to One D&D, fixing Exhaustion would be pretty close to the bottom of my things to do list. In fact, given how much I like the 5th edition rules, and how they offer experimental DMs a cool tool to play with, it probably wouldn’t have been on the list at […]
Last year I researched and wrote Candlekeep Murders: The Deadwinter Prophecy, a murder mystery adventure for 5th edition Dungeon & Dragons that I’m immensely proud of… hey, if Ed Greenwood gives you the thumbs up, you can afford to pat yourself on the back a little, right? My research not only included taking in the […]
…should take a long walk along a short pier. In my last post, I made some small use of all those ‘how to write and format a professional screenplay’ books I bought with stars in my eyes, and punched out a scene straight from the future of my D&D table in courier font. The point […]
