Are you thinking about playing D&D or Pathfinder or some other roleplaying game (RPG) like Starfinder, Call of Cthulhu, or similar? Of course you need players, and one player designated as the person (usually called the "Dungeon Master" or the "game master") to "play" the game world itself. The best...
Are you thinking about playing D&D or some other roleplaying game (RPG) like Pathfinder, Starfinder, Call of Cthulhu, or similar? You might be confused by all the trappings of such a game. For instance, there's a special important-sounding title for one of the players, like "Game Master" or "Dungeon...
At the time of this writing, Wizards of the Coast is continuing their attempt to revoke the Open Gaming License. It doesn't much matter, at this point, whether they succeed. They've made their intent clear. They've made it impossible to trust them as caretakers of the legacy of the world's first rol...
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 3: Dragons in play.
This chapter is all about what part Dragons might play in your campaign. In my opinion, the first 2 chapters hav...
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 2: Dragon Magic.
There are just 7 spells in this chapter, which takes up about a third of this 9-page chapter. The rest of the pages...
Shadowrun's character build process is explained in the 5th Edition Core Rulebook, but there are a lot of possibilities. This post describes a linear build process for a Shadowrun technomancer, and is designed to help new players.
Note that this post is for Shadowrun 5th Edition, even though...
The Tomb of Horrors by Gary Gygax is probably the most famous dungeon in all of D&D. Part of the appeal of D&D for many gamers is the shared experience of playing common adventures, and because The Tomb of Horrors has been around for such a long time and has gained such a reputation for being a...
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 1: Character Creation.
There are three ancestries in Chapter 1, each one an alternative to the Dragonborn ancestry listed in the Pl...
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 true Dragonlance tradition, the first section of this book is a poem. The poem is called Elegy for the first world, and it's the vehicle the book uses to push...
Shadowrun's character build process is explained in the 5th Edition Core Rulebook, but there's a lot to filter out because there are so many possibilities. This post describes a linear build process for a Shadowrun adept, and is designed to help new players.
Note that this post is for Shadow...
Sometimes, a story just begs for a double-cross. Somebody hires the player characters to complete a job, everything goes fine, until right at the very end the PCs discover their employer was the baddie all along! Now their employer wants them dead, or refuses to pay, or intends to conquer the world...
In D&D, an interesting thing happens when you cross the threshold from Tier 3 (levels 9 to 13) to Tier 4 (levels 14 to 20). No matter what the DM throws at players, the players have answers. By Tier 4, the players have likely accumulated magic items, astounding feats, powerful spells, multiple attac...
When Curse of Strahd was released for 5e, I didn't buy it because I already owned owned Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, a perfectly serviceable Strahd adventure. The Expedition to Castle Ravenloft adventure, released for D&D 3rd Edition, was itself a re-release of sorts, of the original Ravenl...
I don't own Curse of Strahd, arguably one of the most famous D&D 5e modules. I love that module, partly because I'm a sucker for horror and also because it's a really good module, and I do own Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. However, I'm the happy owner of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, the...
My favourite Shadowrun Fifth Edition supplement is the Run Faster source book. Run Faster is easily an essential general purpose book, not only because it expands player options but also because it makes character creation easier and, in many ways, a little more fun.
Note that this post is f...
Recently updated for 5e, Spelljammer has been around a long time, and the D&D team used to release a lot of material during previous editions. One source for new adventures was Dungeon magazine, which contained adventure after adventure for various AD&D settings. In issue 36, published in 1992,...