If you followed my History of Domain Rulership over in Tribality, which ran from March of 2016 to January of 2017, I mentioned there that I was going to try to build my own ideal domain rulership system for 5e. In this post, I’m showing the work as I go. […]
I still see a lot of conversation around the spell witch bolt, so I want to talk about why it’s bad in both straightforward math and in likely tactical situations. I’m also going to talk about easy fixes, possibly in multiple versions, just as I’ve done with a few other […]
In the same vein as my post on Villain Design in Dust to Dust, today I’m tackling the first hardback adventure series released for 5e: Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Spoiler warning, I am going to be talking in detail about who the villains are, their motives, and the adventure’s […]
I’m very happy to announce that the Kaiju Codex is now available from Rite Publishing on DriveThruRPG. I have converted this product to the fifth edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game, from Pathfinder rules. In this PDF, you’ll find stats, stories, and roleplaying notes for 20 different kaiju, as […]
I like creepy monsters with unsettling concepts or visuals as much as anyone, so I was thrilled when I was asked to stat out and expand upon the Alchemist Testing Apparatus, the Ledgerman, and the Red Leech Tide. These monsters were designed for J.M. Perkins’s Salt in Wounds Setting; click here to learn […]
The idea of henchmen NPCs in a D&D party goes all the way back to the earliest games, and was most recently part of official release in D&D 4e. Now, 5e characters are not all that complicated at low levels, but there are still a few more moving parts than one […]
I’ve talked many times in this blog about the format of my Aurikesh campaign, but today I want to dig into it in detail, both for its strengths and its weaknesses. The fundamental format isn’t in any way unique to Aurikesh; from what I have read, it seems to have […]
A little while back, I posted a collection of magic spears (and a magic helmet), and a reader requested a similar collection for maces. Another reader requested that I cover magic bows, and that’s also on my to-do list. Some of these weapons I treat as specifically needing to be […]
There’s a widespread acknowledgement, I believe, that the initiative rules found in D&D, and indeed in most games, are not great and even detract from the game, but they are the least-worst option available. In this post I’m going to talk a bit about the problems with the current model […]
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a game designer in possession of even a modest audience must be in want of a clever new way to talk about fundamental design.” — Jane Austen, on The Forge, circa 2003, probably. This is one of those abstract-theory posts that might be […]
