D&D Next: Priesthoods Esoteric and Solemn

In order to give the players in my Aurikesh campaign a range of options suitable to the setting, I have created two new “deities” for clerics to choose at character creation, and one new spell (as I was dissatisfied with the extant options in the playtest packet). I place deities […]


Four More Magic Items of Aurikesh

As I continue to flesh out the Aurikesh setting for what I hope will be its first adventure in the coming week, I am also working on getting comfortable with design inside the rules structure of D&D Next. Especially for magic items, they’ve created two really interesting hooks to hang […]


D&D Next: Off the Cuff, Round 4 2

Hey, awesome, so there’s a new playtest packet from Wizards of the Coast, and like usual I’ll be commenting on it as I go. I have a slightly different context this time, as I have to figure out which rules my new Aurikesh game will be adopting, or if there […]


More Free Content for D&D Next

On suggestions from Stands-in-Fire, we worked out two more new healing-based Specialties. During character creation, one player wasn’t quite satisfied with the Artisan to cover being a full-time physicker, so I created the Physician Background as well. The mechanics probably have some rough edges that need sanding off, but I […]


D&D Next: The Healer Specialty 3

One of the Specialties available in D&D Next is the Healer. Now, a Specialty is a pre-packaged path of feats, and these feats primarily deal in expanding or improving a character’s combat functionality. This might be an improvement on your class’s existing functions, such as a wizard that takes the Magic-User […]


D&D Next: Character Sheet

Sooo I have no idea if Wizards of the Coast will yell at me for this. If they do, I’ll take it down with most sincere apologies. However, until then I have created a (very crude, but sufficient to my purposes) Word file (.docx format) and PDF for character sheets, […]


D&D Next Playtest: Further Commentary 1

Wizards of the Coast has posted a new update on what to expect in the upcoming D&D Next playtest packet. Naturally, I want to comment on them! Some bullet points: Levels 1-10. Happy about this – though I’ll have to give some serious thought to whether or not Aurikesh continues […]


Experimental Mechanics for a D&D Next Campaign

Sometime within the next month or two, I plan to start up a new campaign, now that my Mage chronicle of a year and a half has ended. There are a few other short-run games that we’ll play first, which means I have a bit more time to plan both […]


D&D Next: Off the Cuff, Round 3

So hey, there’s a new D&D Next Playtest packet that arrived last night. Neat! According to the playtest summary, they’ve updated monsters and experience points, added a chapter on magic items, and updated the Caves of Chaos adventure. Obviously, I would have liked a new class update also, blah blah […]


Game Review: Choice of the Star Captain

A few days ago, based on some advertising on ENWorld, I picked up Choice of the Star Captain for the Kindle Fire ($2.99). Well, okay, first I played the first three chapters for free on the Choice Of Games website. I enjoyed that enough, with its combination of Paranoia-like humor in the […]