The Saltmarsh modules for AD&D were pretty well-known as, I think, highly reasonable adventures to run. They weren't the kind of huge adventures that threatened to blow up Greyhawk, but neither were they boring fetch quests for a standard dungeon crawl. They were unique, with subtle plot twists that...
The Curse of Strahd module for D&D 5e has manœuvred itself into the realm of classic modules, and with good reason. I still run Expedition to Castle Ravenloft myself, but I've played parts of Curse of Strahd and it's a good update of the story and setting. It starts at Level 3 though, and so t...
I bought a starter set for The One Ring not because I'm starting to play The One Ring (although I am, incidentally) but because I wanted The One Ring dice and a nice copy of the map of Eriador, and the boxed starter set contains those items. Confusingly, however, there's not just one starter s...
As a writer, JRR Tolkien is often a master of understatement. Very frequently, he speaks of Middle Earth objectively, like a historian. He doesn't try to "sell" Middle Earth to the reader, he just tells the reader about the events that took place there, and takes no responsibility when the reader in...
At high levels in dnd and Pathfinder and similar games, combat takes literal hours to get through. If you only play for a few hours at a time, then there are some game sessions that you're not playing a roleplaying game, but a wargame. You may be roleplaying in the sense that you are using your char...
I design dungeons in idle time, and sometimes I even run them. I also run lots of dungeons other people have designed. In both scenarios, there are times when I encounter a thing in the design of the dungeon that makes it suddenly complex to run. I tend to be mindful, now, of this when I create my o...
Many mechanics in D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2 are exactly the same. There are a few, however, that differ substantially, and oddly I don't see much discussion about it online. This blog post is my effort to remedy that.
Proficiency isn't global
In 5e, you have exactly one Proficiency Bonus. It start...
I finally watched Red Sonja (2025) and, with several caveats, I liked it. First of all, I'm both the target audience and the dreaded nemesis of a movie like this. I'm very familiar with Robert E Howard's Conan, so I'm always (maybe whether I like it or not) ready to find things I don't like about...
Roleplaying games and wargames have drifted apart considerably over the past several decades, but they still retain common elements that sometimes go unnoticed. I've told people that roleplaying games were invented as a sort of alternate format for wargaming, but it doesn't resonate for someone who...
Me and my players used to wonder about why numbers get so big in Pathfinder. Any Pathfinder player knows that rolls of 35 and 45 aren't uncommon at high levels. It's tempting to fall into the assumption that any big number is the same as a small number once you've found the lowest common denominator...
I was excited about Kobold Press's Labyrinth release. I thought that if anybody was going to come up with a compelling alternative to Planescape, it would be Kobold Press. I was, and still am, intrigued by some of the concepts from Labyrinth Worldbook, but ultimately I felt that it was oddly dis...
Last year around this time of the year, I got a Kickstarter notification that Mantic Games was running a campaign for advent calendars that contained pieces of little wargames. There were 5 unique games being offered, so I went in for all 5 because I thought they would make great gifts for my gami...
I've played most of the Fallout video games, I'm a frequent player of the board game, and so far I've watched both series of the TV show. I didn't become aware of Fallout until Fallout 3 (I did go back and play the first 2 games to find out what I'd missed) but I do consider myself a fan of...
Models by Games Workshop tend to be humanoid, including humans, elves, and dwarves. However, Games Workshop does release some monsters and beasts as model kits, or included within model kits. This blog post is a list of all the monsters from Games Workshop I could find on the website in 2026.
Defi...
Several months ago, my gaming group started playing through the Labyrinth Adventures book, and frankly it's been tough going. We were surprised to find that Labyrinth Adventures is not actually a campaign, but several stand-alone adventures with a perfunctory side quest to provide the illusion o...
One of the most famously unsung heroes of Middle Earth is Farmer Maggot, the borderlands hobbit who turned away a Nazgûl, and who bravely transported Frodo and his friends (in the book, but not the movie) to the ferry to ensure they had safe passage on their journey. I've been stocking up on hobbits...