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.

The Best D&D Modules for Halloween

It's that time of the year, my favorite holiday; the night of spooks, goblins and ghastly things. Each year my group does a one-shot Halloween themed adventure and I figured I would give my opinion on what I consider the best Halloween adventures. Like everything on this blog, this is my opinion and I try to only evaluate modules I own and have run previously, so take it for what it is, but enjoy all of the amazing Stephen Fabian art incoming.

Ravenloft (I6): the original module from the Hickman / Weis team where we are first introduced to villain Strahd, a vampire with a tragic story. If running this one as a one-shot, skip all of the background and just run Castle Ravenloft itself. One of the greatest modules created is perfect for a Halloween scenario.

 

The Haunting of Harrowstone: Part of 1 of the Carrion Crown adventure path for the Pathfinder Roleplaying game. This adventure sees the characters come to a small village that is quickly becoming plagued by the spirits of an abandoned prison on the outskirts of town. Well those ghosts aren't going to go away on their own, the characters will need to venture into the haunted ruins and save the town.

Death Frost Doom: From Lamentations of the Flame Princess, you can likely expect things to go wrong for the players, and you would be correct in that assumption. An exploration of an out of the way cabin in a frigid country-side turns into the revelation of an apocalyptic cult and it's undead leaders being unleashed. Good thing we're just running a one-shot here, this campaign is ending sooner than expected! Really great and atmospheric module, highly recommend.

Night of the Walking Dead: Back to the domains of Ravenloft for this one. Themes are centered around a Bayou like village about to experience a night of terror. This adventure is clearly an homage to the pulp culture movie, Night of the Walking Dead with a Dungeons and Dragons spin. Props for not having the domain lord involved in this adventure, as the night goes on the threat increases unless the characters address the root of the issue driving the dead to march on the small village. This is a very underrated module and probably one of the best for the 2nd edition Ravenloft line.

Castle Xyntillan: This one may be a bit too whimsical and gonzo at times for some, but there is no better module to represent a romp through a haunted castle than this one. This is everything Tegel Manor should have been. A cursed family with dark secrets still plaguing the castle where riches are abundant for the brave and foolhardy to explore. This is one of the best modules ever produced for the OSR. The faction dynamics of dealing with the various and numerous family members presents a complicated mess for the players to weed through, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. This adventure is like being on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney expect you may not survive.

Does the hobby need gatekeeping? And, is it too late?

This has been a hot-button topic of late in the D&D community of late, where the new-guard (5E players and WoTC in particular) have turned aggressive to the old-school and long time player. It is no secret that WoTC injects their beliefs and political ideology into all of their products, often at the expense of making good content. Now it has turned to more aggressive attacks, in reference the NPC character Thaco (a clear stab at the OSR) that guard a tent in their recent module the Wild Beyond Witchlight. I recently reviewed this module and was generally a pretty big fan of them taking a different approach, but that one little jab sort of sat sour with me.

This has been followed-on by several bloggers and YouTubers coming out with the notion that you are either with us or against us in regards to playing 5E, and that playing any other system is actively harming the hobby. I chuckle at the absurdity of this, but really I'm not shocked given the insanity of the left's political stances at times, this should be no surprise either. For the past few years you've seen panels at conventions and hires at some of the bigger publishers targeting inclusivity as opposed to actual interest in the hobby and game, now the lid is off and maybe the future of the hobby is in question all together. Honestly, I don't think these people give two squats about D&D, they are just in it to push an agenda and make others bow to their beliefs. They are a disease, a cancer to society.

So...what to do? For one, I'm taking a personal stance to no longer buy any WoTC published material from here on out. I've run 5E games for nearly seven years, but I'm also dropping it from the rotation. Currently running my group in games using Pathfinder (1E) and Old-school Essentials in another game. Lastly, no more reviews or overviews of their product, they've made it clear they don't want people like me (and someone with much disposable income) to play their games, so returning the favor and not playing them.

It really is quite sad with all of the division and in-fighting in our country in numerous issues, that now our hobbies have been infiltrated by these activists, who in all likelihood could care less for the hobby, they are just hear to push an agenda. All myself, and many others wanted was to be left alone and enjoy the escape that D&D can bring, come together despite our various stances in real life and enjoy our time together, but that is not good enough for the purple hairs in Seattle. The bad news for them, is that many others will take a stand against this. The hobby won't die, even though, that may be their goal, but it will certainly shift. I've collected years of books and products from the various editions and off-spin games to last me several life times at this point, but the OSR will certainly be my new home for the games I run and enjoy going forward.

 

Make your VTT games better!

 

My group and I have been playing online RPG tabletop games now for several years now following a few of the members moving out of state. At first, I hated it, I missed the in person interaction, having the attention of the players while I DM'd, being able to see their expressions and reactions fueled some incredible roleplay and drama in our games. We moved our games to Roll20, so much of the below will apply to that specific application, but honestly this advice will help with any system you are using for your games.

The move to virtual tabletop was clunky at first, but over time, I've worked to refine and become much more proficient in the use of the virtual tabletop to make our games just as good as they were in person. Here are few tips to help your games:

1) Practice and learn the system you're using. Much like the DM should know the rules of the RPG system, so should they also know the workings of the virtual tabletop application. I cannot count how many times we've had games break or pause with questions on how to make rolls or use tokens or fix the visibility. Even knowing the application well won't prevent these issues, but it will hasten the correction to get back to the game.

2) Visuals Visuals Visuals!: I can't stress this enough. Art and imagery is an important part of the game. DM's can describe items until they are blue in the face, but a simple piece of art showing the object or character says more than anything I could describe in most cases. It helps with the immersion and setting of the game you are trying to portray to players. Google is your friend here, even when comes to tokens, maps and general handouts. There are many talented individuals in our hobby who have done the hard work to illustrate, use them!

3) To piggyback on imagery for your game, sound is just as important to set the mood. My group uses Discord for our audio and I've been lucky to find several Discord apps that let you play music / sound through the voice channel. Set the mood with a dark ambience as they venture into the dungeon or play that epic battle track from Conan the Barbarian when a fight erupts. It keeps the players engaged and immersed which can be a struggle at times online.

4) Fix the player tokens. Just like in person when the players would bring a miniature to the table, make their online tokens fancy with the image they want to use along with any system settings: such as vision, aura's, quick reference information like hit points and armor class. For Roll20, all of this can be preset by the DM and saved, so once established, you never have to touch it again. Make their life easier and it will makes yours easy too.

5)  Lastly, use the available resources and prebuilt modules / rules tomes. WoTC not including digital content with the purchase of the physical book is a whole other issue and a big one at that, but having the content preloaded from maps, tokens, handout, dynamic lighting; all of the heavy lifting work done for you is priceless when using a VTT. Save your prep time for what matters as a DM: making your players lives difficult haha, knowing the encounters and NPC's, not for drawing lighting on a map or custom loading monster sheets. Both Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds (especially Fantasy Grounds) have a plethora of modules and system rule books right at your fingers for purchase. Many will balk at essentially buying the book twice, if you own the physical book, but what you're really paying for is the labor to put all of that into a VTT for use, trust me it is worth it.

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (Thoughts, is it good?)

 

So let me preface this before I even dive in. I don't like to review modules that I have not run. Reading them is great, but you don't know how they play until you play it. Also, I give WoTC a lot of crap...most of it pretty justified, plus most of the employees there would toss me into a gulag based on my political views if given the chance...but is a totally impartial impression of my first quick read through on "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight".

There will be some minor spoilers here, so proceed with caution.....this is your warning players....seriously.....don't read this if you intend to play in this adventure, your DM will thank you and some of the spoilers are worth finding through play.

OK....all clear....here we go. This is a level 1-8 adventure for 5th edition D&D, published by Wizards of the Coast, this is their annual marquee adventure release. The book is available in both a standard and collectors edition copy with alternate art. The guts of the book remain the same through both copies. The setting is agnostic and can be placed in any game setting with little difficulty, this is a welcome change and I'm glad to see it. The Sword Coast has been beaten to death at this point.

Two new character races are presented: the fairy and the harengon. The summaries are brief, no real background or roleplay nuggets. The fairy starts with flying...yikes....and the harengon is anthropomorphic rabbit person. A few character background and trinket options specific to the adventure are presented and then it is onto the adventure itself. There the standard appendix goodies of new monster stats, NPC stats, magical items along with a NPC card section which is a new feature highlighting the personality and ambitions of many of the notable NPC's found throughout the adventure. I wish this on the same page as of the adventure where said NPC was encountered as opposed to a appendix area, but step in the right direction. Lastly there a few organizational charts provided to jot down the interactions of the players throughout the adventure as choices as consequences and possible rewards, I really freaking love this despite it being a lot of DM work....just note, please for the love god, don't write in your actual book....just photo copy or print this out haha.

To start the adventure there are a couple of lead hooks presented for use. One is magical man can't magic, hires players to go fix....blah....the other is more interesting, the players having previously encountered / visited the carnival lost something of note and have returned to seek it back. Go this route, there are fun roleplay criteria addons applied with having lost this "thing" and is certainly a more unique approach to kick things. The Witchlight carnival is detailed fully in chapter 1 of the adventure, presenting games, encounters, timeline of events and mood meter that the players impact by their choices and play. Really great stuff here, the games are unique and fun and I can imagine the players venturing every which way to try their hands in all that is presented here. I'll make a quick note that the maps in the adventure are beautifully illustrated, but it is definitely a tone shift from the standard grid/hex maps of previous adventures. Be ready to do lots of theatre of the mind as you run this module.

As things unfold and are revealed at the carnival, the players are presented the option to venture into the Feywild to further their search for their missing items. Chapters 2,3 and 4 detail the area of the Feywild called Presmire which is been broken up into three sections, each ruled by a different NPC, the areas are Hither, Thither, and Yon. I'll really keep the spoilers here low, but each section is unique in atmosphere and environment, presenting the journey through the realm to the eventual encounter with that realms lord. For the players to set things right, they must venture to all three domains and encounter the said lord. The domains themselves are very sandboxy in presentation, but there is still the driving plot which the players can follow as needed, encountering numerous flavorful NPC's and monsters throughout. There is an enchanted and fairy tale vibe in many of these which I adore....a bullywug kingdom ripe with political intrigue, a "lost boy" settlement living atop their treehouse on a roaming treant, and a heroic dandelion chasing his beautiful bee lover...flavorful, intriguing and memorable. Side quests can derail the players as they seek allies and items to aid their quest, but all funnel back to the end goal of seeking the lord of the domain. 

The last chapter of the book covers what I could call the more dungeon crawling part of the adventure: The Palace of Heart's Desire. Here the players must venture to finally free the true queen of the realm and return the Feywild to its "normal" state. Break out your 80's action figures because the League of Malevolence is back, albeit randomly. Warduke and Kelek are up to no good as usual...the players must venture through the enchanted gardens and castle, tackling difficult puzzles and avoiding a legit scary for a 7th level character Jabberwock that haunts the castle. With luck and some careful planning the characters may even get a great Easter Egg reveal of who the queen of Presmire actually is.

Overall, wow, I'm a huge fan of this one. This may be the best 5E adventure to date and I'm shocked honestly, I has such low expectations here, but I seriously want to run this one. It has been noted by many others, that the book presents alternative means to success outside of "hitting it with the axe" on every encounter and this is true. You could in theory do a full passive play through here with good roleplay and wits....to me, this seems unlikely, but I bet a number of groups will go this route or try....I would note that you certainly want to do a session 0 with the players to go over the feel and style of adventure you will be undertaking here, this isn't your standard heroes of violence scenario. As noted before, DM's will need to be heavy note takers as actions early on affect many as the adventure progresses all the way up to the end. 

I will eat my words here, great work WoTC for a change, more of this please...at least before they push the new edition changes onto us haha!!!

Rappan Athuk: The end of things

The group I recently finished up our campaign of Rappan Athuk, albeit a condensed version. In total the campaign spanned nearly two years of monthly games, each session about 5 hours in length. That is a lot of content regardless of how you look at it.

So how did it finish up....well quite easy for players, surprisingly err....maybe not that surprising given the 5E system. When we left off from the last session, the group faced a choice: live with the fact that the land was tainted with evil or open the portal to the abyss and face Orcus at the peril of their souls. Of course the heroes faced danger like they should! 

The characters decided to take the three keys back down the well to the portal that was discovered and discussed with the ancient wraith wizard Zelkor. Opening the portal they were drawn as if by gravity into far layers of the abyss, the layer of Orcus! The level is somewhat of a let down for the culmination of such a massive megadungeon and book, essentially a huge maze with the chance for random encounters. My group and I are playing through Roll20 and I really did not want to subject them to picking their way through a maze, so I set up a skill challenge with high DC's where failure prompted an encounter or bad event. This actually worked out pretty well, meeting the success push them closer to the exit while the failures gradually weakened them.

Ok before I go on let touch on where my players were at from a level perspective. All five of the characters had just reached level 12, this level of the dungeon as written assumes the players to be 18+. A long time ago in this campaign I had tossed out any notion trying to balance, because the players had a number of magical items at this point, including some of the custom / quested magic items I had created for them to pursue in their travels through Rappan Athuk. Let me be blunt here: magic items break 5E in a sense that players, which are already extremely powerful in 5E, become virtually invincible.

Exiting the maze, the group encountered a pair of CR 16 maralith demons sent to test the group. These were dispatched of without much fuss, onto the big guy himself. The final layer of Orcus is filled with undead (no CR undead sadly as written by FGG....this is something they do a lot...A LOT). Orcus greets and offers the group to join him like any other evil deity would do, sadly no takers and the fight was on. This was a crazy, many combat, very worth of a final boss fight, but I really don't feel as if the players were really challenged that badly, they were just so powerful at this point and this further reassured me of the need to go ahead and wrap up the campaign.

There were a lot of moving pieces and much fun was had (see above picture from the game that night), I really can't thank the group of guys I have as players enough, they are just amazing and I'm blessed to run games and play games with them. In the end Orcus was defeated, the portal out of the Abyss started to lose it's power but I presented one last moral decision before the group, the aspect of Death appeared and advised that one of them must now sit upon the throne of bone or all the dead in the world would revolt. The halfling druid Remus, thinking quickly took the Rod of Orcus, ran back towards the maze and in one final act of sacrifice he ignited his flaming heart (custom magic item) into a massive explosion blowing the rod apart, the group escaped just in time as he did. The final scene of the campaign though, was the dead hand of Remus twitching...perhaps the new Orcus!

In the end, I'm happy to be done with Rappan Athuk, the more we played through it, the more I wish we had not started on it (see my review in another blog post), but the group had a blast, so I must of been doing something right in the end. So onto something new: I kicked around a few ideas as to what to run for the next campaign, but I opted to take a break from 5E for a bit....so.....we just ran our first session of Age of Worms, converted for Pathfinder (1E) last week. Look for a review of that epic adventure and session highlights to come on the blog soon!