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Board GamesCrowdfunding

Battlestations: 2nd Edition! Tabletop Starship Simulator – Kickstarter

Battlestations: 2nd Edition kickstarter will be closing March 3rd (tomorrow), and is currently 394% funded at $165k. Battlestations first came out 16 years ago, and has a following of avid players. You can read reviews of the first Battlestations here: ...
AdventuresD&D 5eRavenloftThoughts & Things

Death House – Free Adventure for Ravenloft (D&D 5e)

Foreword | Table of Contents | Gothic Trinkets | Death House Adventure | Haunted One Background Wizards of the Coast has given us the free adventure Death House to play at home last week as a preview of the Curse ...
Aquatic / PirateCampaign Trail

Creating Variant Backgrounds for D&D 5e – Sailor

This week on the Campaign Trail I thought I’d look at variant backgrounds and share a couple of homebrew variant backgrounds I created back in 2014 (for my Vodari campaign) that I didn’t include in Pirate Adventurers. The Castaway background ...
Columns

Gambling in Role Playing Games

Gambling is something that will probably come up in your campaign sooner or later whether you are running Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, or Numenara. Gamemasters shouldn’t shy away from them as they can be a great source of amusement. ...
ColumnsD&D 5eFeywild/ShadowfellMonsters & NPCsTribal Knowledge

Fey Chivalry

In the 5e Monster Manual, we find many of D&D’s traditional fey – pixies, satyrs, and sprites, among others. This… falls a little short of both the variety and threat level I would like to see for the fey. I ...
ColumnsSystem Agnostic

A Lich for Every Class: The Paths of Transcendence (Part ...

This is the second part of a multi-part series about the character classes developing until they become ‘lich-like;’ that is, following the path of their power until they become something more or less than human. You can read the first ...
Role Initiative

Dealing with Difficult Players – A DM’s Guide

If you spend enough time roleplaying, either as a player or as a DM, you will eventually encounter a player that can be best described as difficult. (There are also a few other select words that could be used, but ...
Thoughts & Things

D&D 5e Character Optimization – Monk

This week we have a character optimization for the Monk class by Yunru from the Wizards of the Coast community forums that was deleted. Lots of edits, formatting, additions and corrections.
Campaign Trail

Playing Younger Characters – D&D 5e

This week on the Campaign Trail I’m looking at player characters (PCs) that are younger than what is assumed by the player’s handbook. There are many reasons players ask to play a child character, such as my kids who want ...
Tribal Knowledge

Tribal Knowledge: Good Writers Borrow…

I’d be interested to learn of any methods that GMs use to “borrow” elements from another setting without making it obvious to players that they’re doing so (especially if the players are likely to have exposure to that setting).  Do ...