My favorite D&D media

What a time to be alive, D&D is likely at its peak popularity to date. Gaining more and more players and hobbyist since the release of 5th edition. With the rise in players, comes the rise in digestible media content from live plays, reviews and general game advice.

Not that anyone may care, but here is a list of my favorites along with links where you can check them out yourself:

- The Glass Cannon Podcast: from the humble beginnings of an actual play podcast of the Pathfinder Adventure Path: Giantslayer. There are now numerous actual play shows ranging from Dungeons and Dragons to Delta Green horror gaming. I highly recommend the original Giantslayer podcast and the 300 + episodes there. Good laughs and high drama mix into a show that makes you feel as if you are right at the table playing the game with them.

https://www.glasscannonnetwork.com/

- Me, Myself and Die!: Voice actor Trevor Devall plays through a solo RPG tabletop experience full of randomly diced determined choices and outcomes, all while role playing multiple roles. This is fantastic stuff and highly enjoyable to watch. How the narrative of the story builds out through random results is fascinating and Trevor's skill as a DM is fully highlighted and impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/c/MeMyselfandDieRPG/featured

- Tale of the Manticore: this seemingly simple podcast of a solo tabletop experience is finely crafted and brutal. Simulating the old-school feel of Dungeons and Dragons and use of the B/X ruleset, a fantastic story is told where the dice have true meaning in the outcomes of life or death.

https://taleofthemanticore.blogspot.com/

- Questing Beast: The hub and authority on OSR D&D content. Full of reviews, game advice and discussion with publishers and luminaries across the scope of history of our beloved game.

https://www.youtube.com/c/QuestingBeast

- The Lost Adventurer: Exploring the history of Dungeons and Dragons module by module. The walkthroughs and reviews of these classics from D&D's history are the hit of nostalgia I often need. No bias is given and the honest assessment of each book is spot on.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheLostAdventurer

Honorable mention since this channel has somewhat fallen off from the TTRPG content scene, but I am a huge fan of the Rollplay series from the itmejp content creator. My particular favorites are The West Marches and Court of Swords, the later DM'd by Adam Koebel who is a fantastic dungeon master.

https://www.youtube.com/c/itmeJP/playlists

Age of Worms (the current campaign)

Hello all, long time no see. I wanted to update what I've been up to this past year. Once my group finished up their crawl through Rappan Athuk, I decided I needed a break from 5E. As much as I think it is a really great system for ease of use, I also do not enjoy it for traditional D&D play. It is very much a story focused system with the power skewed to super hero type player play. It can be fun, but I am just not a fan and it wasn't working for me. So I decided to move the group back to the Pathfinder. I had been playing Pathfinder, run by another DM for a quite some time, and I have DM'd Rise of the Runelords previously, so it was a system I know quite well. It is definitely not a perfect system and can be crunchy, but I do enjoy the style of play and customization allotted to players.

I was in-between a few modules and adventure paths, but I did a bit of research and decided to go with Age of Worms, originally a 3.5 series of adventures published in Dungeon magazine by Paizo, before Paizo was the Pathfinder Paizo and still doing legwork for Wizards of the Coast. We are about a year in on this campaign, roughly thirteen 4-5 hour game sessions worth of play. Currently the group is in what would be adventure 4 of 12. 

So far, it has been fairly enjoyable. The first adventure, the Whispering Cairn is fantastic and in my opinion one of the best intro modules ever written. Definitely obscure, but you should find a copy of it, so good. The campaign is set within Greyhawk and serves as a tour de force of the notable NPC's and locations found within this historic D&D setting. The campaign opens in the backwater mining town of Diamond Lake where the adventurers will stumble upon an ongoing conspiracy more by accident than anything. It appears that someone or something is set upon bringing back the dread and forgotten god Kyuss, setting off the Age of Worms which would doom the world.

If run to the full length of all 12 adventures, the players should reach the heights of 20th level...will we get there...we'll see. Some of the adventures are much stronger than others and keeping the players hooked has been somewhat of an issue with this campaign as we bounce around. Each adventure sort of has its own theme and they are bit disjointed at times, requiring some work from me. The campaign started out a bit deadly, as two players died prior to level 3, but it has since stabilized and the players have certainly had the advantage in the last few major encounters. 

I will update our progress, but I'm leaning towards wrapping this one up by level 10 prior to the written conclusion. That said, I am enjoying running Pathfinder again and I've found much more joy as DM since moving away from 5E. Which given the recent announcement from Wizards of the Coast, could not have come at a better time. I've moved on them and their products at this time.

So question for anyone who has read this far, what are your favorite Pathfinder Adventure Paths? There are quite a few out there, let me know which ringed true with you.