D&D 5e: Spirit Domain

A friend of mine suggested the other day that he would really like to see a class similar to 4e’s shaman, with a strong focus on interacting with spirits in one way or another. You can make just about any caster class feel like a shaman with a very thin coat […]


D&D 5e: The Half-Orc Personality

I’ve been doing a thing for awhile now with personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws for each race, and this time around I’m taking on the half-orc. It’s a race I’ve never had any great amount of interest in, but I think a lot of that is the result of […]


D&D 5e: Alternate Research Rules 2

As anyone playing Dust to Dust or Fallen Earth knows, I think it’s cool for characters to perform research to unlock new content, such as spells or crafting formulas. Games have a lot of ways for combat or social power to leave a mark on a setting; research is a […]


D&D Dungeon Postmortem: Thanar’s Ruin

We just finished a pretty important side-quest in my D&D campaign and the session went really well, so I want to talk about some of the things that I did to prepare for it and how it all worked out. Special thanks go to Stands-in-Fire, who normally plays in this […]


D&D 5e Playtest: Light, Dark, Underdark 1

I’m a little late to the party on this, but at the beginning of this month, WotC released a new Unearthed Arcana, with subclasses and fighting styles particularly targeted at Underdark campaigns. The good news is, nothing in them requires the Underdark – their conditions just come up more often there. […]


A Fifth Year of Blogging

It’s five years now that I’ve been writing this blog. Each year has had slightly fewer posts than the year before it, though if you add in all of the articles I’ve written for Tribality, I’m well above the writing output of my first year. It’s been a busy year; […]


D&D 5e: Nightgaunt Rogue Archetype

It’s funny, I don’t normally go in for seasonally-themed game content. Halloween gets a pass, though, because creepy stuff and gaming go together like a good ribeye and liquid fucking awesome. In this vein, here’s the Nightgaunt rogue archetype: they wear masks and thrive on the terror of their enemies. […]


D&D 5e: The Gnomish Personality 2

Welcome back to my occasional series of posts with personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws specific to D&D races. This time I’m tackling gnomes, but it’s harder than you’d think thanks to their low center of mass. Er. Actually it’s harder because they’re not found in Middle-Earth, so I don’t […]


D&D 5e Playtest: Prestige Classes and Rune Magic 1

There’s a new Unearthed Arcana feature in town, and it’s kind of a double feature: both prestige classes in concept and the Rune Scribe prestige class in particular. As I start this article, I haven’t even read the whole thing yet – the Rune Scribe is a dense read, since […]


D&D 5e: Lantern-Bearer Ranger Archetype

My mental image. What if this guy were, you know, a protagonist? I’ve always liked heroes that have the courage and ability to wander in dark places. This ranger archetype focuses on that thematic element. (I’ve just this moment learned that there’s a group in the Pathfinder setting called the […]