Since the 3rd edition (or what we now call Pathfinder) of D&D, the mathematical process of the world's most popular roleplaying game has been the same. You roll a d20 to establish a base level of success, and then you boost that chance of success by adding points you've earned during character cre...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. Chapter 3 covers over 30 domains, so I'm posting about it as I work my way through the different domains.
The section on Borca is, in spirit, everything I'd wa...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. Chapter 3 covers over 30 domains, so I'm posting about it as I work my way through the different domains.
All I knew about Bluetspur prior to reading this sect...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. Chapter 3 covers over 30 domains, so I'm posting about it as I work my way through the different domains.
The first domain described is also the most famous. B...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter.
Chapter 2 is about creating your own domain of dread. I love story starters, plot seeds, and D&D and horror, and that's mostly what this chapter is. I have to...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter.
Chapter 1 provides new player options, including new races, subclasses, backgrounds, some "dark gifts", and some horror-themed trinkets. It opens with another...
I picked up Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter.
Ravenloft is a D&D setting named after a very particular castle just outside of a land called Barovia. You have to separate the name "Ravenloft" from "Castle R...
I picked up Fizban's Treasury of Dragon and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. In this post, I discuss Chapter 6: Bestiary.
I say it about almost everything in D&D, from spells to magic items to player options, but I'll say it now about Dragon...
Dragonlance Chronicles starts at the end of the 5-year personal quests of the book's heroes. The Preludes series provides some specific stories from the 5 years leading up to Chronicles, and Tanis, the Shadow Years, the sixth and final Preludes book, is about Tanis Half-Elven. In this stor...
Dragonlance Chronicles starts at the end of the 5-year personal quests of the book's heroes. The Preludes series provides some specific stories from the 5 years leading up to Chronicles, and Flint the King, the fifth book, is about the dwarf Flint Fireforge. Interestingly, we already know wh...
Dragonlance Chronicles starts at the end of the 5-year personal quests of the book's heroes. The Preludes series provides some specific stories from the 5 years leading up to Chronicles, and Riverwalk the Plainsman, the fourth book, is about the barbarian Riverwind. In a way, there are few o...
Dragonlance Chronicles starts at the end of the 5-year personal quests of the book's heroes. The Preludes series provides some specific stories from the 5 years leading up to Chronicles, and Brothers Majere, the third book, is obviously about Caramon and Raistlin. You might wonder whether Ca...
A unique thing about tabletop roleplaying games is that when you buy them, you're mostly just buying rules. Some rulebooks also describe in-game items, and some even come with a sample adventure tacked on at the end, but the thing you carry from game to game is a book on how to play, not what to p...
I picked up Fizban's Treasury of Dragon and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. In this post, I discuss Chapter 5: Draconomicon which, despite the its name, is not actually all about Dragons.
In previous chapters, I felt a little strange that d...
I picked up Fizban's Treasury of Dragon and have been reading it cover to cover. This is my review of the book, chapter by chapter. In this post, I discuss Chapter 4: Lairs and hoards.
Look, the fact is that in D&D, high level players run the game. After level 10 (Tier 2), the Dungeon Master is...
Like all tabletop games, an RPG is a group effort. As long as everyone playing the game is determined to have fun, the game goes as well as it needs to go. You might not get all the rules "right", but the game master makes rulings that work well enough for that game session, and everyone has fun. Pr...