Exemplary Elves Part 3 High Elves
This is a continuation of a series that seeks to re-imagine the standard races of Dungeons & Dragons as more unique and fully developed cultures. The last article dealt with the Einolar, a Wood...
Category: Game-Mastering Advice
Potions of Nap and Mana
We’ve been running a weekly collaborative D&D campaign since January using the Roll 20 system, and it’s been a great experience. The game is set in Oldstone, a crossroads city in a desert region...
Perfect Party Size? In 5th edition, it’s five.
I’ve been ruminating recently on an issue I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about: How many players are too few or too many? For most groups, this issue is more a matter of...
GET MEDIEVAL: Warfare in the Middle Ages, Part II Applying what we know about medieval warfare to a fantasy setting
This article is a sequel to Wallace Cleaves’ discussion of medieval warfare, in which the medievalist applies a scholar’s understanding of period warfare to his own fantasy world setting, the Vault. Warfare in the Vault...
GET MEDIEVAL: Warfare in the Middle Ages, Part I A medievalist delves into the differences from modern war
Although many fantasy games contain military elements, large-scale campaigns, wars, and sieges, few games seem to reflect how medieval armies really operated. When a military unit appears in a game, its structure is often simply a...
A Defense of the Humble Sling 5th edition rocks, but it has fired-and-forgotten what earlier editions knew
At present the enemy shoot and sling beyond our range, so that our Cretan archers are no match for them; our hand-throwers cannot reach as far; and when we pursue, it is not possible...
Getting Started as a DM
The file embedded below was originally created as a guide for members of our Facebook Group, Dungeons & Dragons Round Table. As such, all of its links — I’m afraid — route through Facebook....
The “Big Three” Ability Scores: Another Reason Adventurers Are Rare What an Analysis of Pregen Characters Reveals about Ability Score Preferences
Which ability scores are the most popular? Which are most likely to be dump stats? You probably have some gut answers about this, based on what you’ve seen first-hand. I know I did. But,...
SHAPESHIFTERS: The Lord in the Pit No one said intelligent magic items had to be swords. Or property.
Introduction Lord Blot is a sentient sphere of annihilation. It maintains a low profile in a remote area of a larger kingdom, where it enjoys both limited anonymity and territorial independence. Local rulers know it...
SHAPESHIFTERS: Farron, King of Baubles A dangerous NPC broker in the underground magical-items market
Shapeshifters is a new series on nonplayer characters. These NPCs aren’t literal shapeshifters. Instead, they fall into the “shapeshifter” archetype described by scholars of myth like Joseph Campbell. We’re talking about the Professor Snapes and Walder...
