The following is part adventure recap, part DM strategy session, and part after action report. I’m approaching this edition of D&D with game design/writing credits and a love for story and indy-game approaches. Ultimately, I want The Great Dungeon series to be informative to the reader, but also provide a method to refine the approach to my own DMing.
When Murder Hobos Liquidate a Dragon’s Hoard…
Let’s pretend our band of murder hobos exist in a world with real money instead of the nice, clean, decimal-based and universally exchangeable currency of gold pieces, silver pieces, electrum pieces, etc. etc. Rational, decimal-based currency with a coherent, internal logic is a mid-19th construction at best – the pound sterling wasn’t decimalized until 1971. […]
The D&D5e Alchemical Con Men
His Majesty is interested only in wizards, alchemists, Cabalists and the like, sparing no expense to find all kinds of treasures, learn secrets and use scandalous ways of harming his enemies …He also has a whole library of magic books. He strives all the time to eliminate God completely so he may in future serve […]
Starting from Scratch: The Great Dungeon
I tried to ask questions about what the group collectively wanted. After listening a bit, and trying to steer the conversation towards what game experience people desired, I scrawled out a grid of game traits and players. Then, I began marking off what people wanted (and didn’t want).
On the Great Divination Wizards Guild and the Black Chamber
Guilds are urban creatures. They cannot survive without cities. They are parasites on the fantasy body politic, reaching their spider-like legs into the deepest recesses of civic culture. Although membership is nominally voluntary everyone in town belongs to a guild: the doctors, the barbers, the bakers, the carters, the shoemakers and even the wizards. Especially […]
UbiDungeon World: The Elven Tower.
Find the ruined temple where the cult of Nam-Shub sits on one of the world’s last stockpile of pure Thaumium rods… and TAKE IT!
Tailor, Tinker, Soldier, Spy: the Bard as a Spy, Cryptography and the Fantasy Espionage Team
The party stands before the Duke and he gives them a charge: march up the mountain to a nearby kingdom and slay the Arch-Lich who lurks there. The Duke provides the party with maps to the mountain, a summary overview of what they might find (high level henchmen, nasty guards, a dragon chained in the […]
Fiat Magic Reagents, the God of the Market, and Modrons
A bard dashes through the back rooms of a palace with secret plans in his hands. The guards are after him. The bards desires escape and the best way to slow the guards down is to throw Arcane Lock on this door and then go out the window. It requires 25gp of gold dust. With […]
How the Identify Spell Destroys the World
This article assumes that 1st level identify spells are used in identifying and validating a large range of magical items whenever a magic item changes hands. For example, when an item comes out of a dungeon, when taken off an enemy after a battle, when validating an item’s nature, during a financial transaction, or with […]
A Little Debt Financing Between Friends Goes A Long Way. Plus Pirates.
The party stands on a beach on the other side of the world facing down an army of 30,000 heavily armed but lightly armored orks. And they wonder… how did we get here? King Stephan II is at war with his neighbor. He no longer remembers what the war was about or how it started. […]
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