Unearthed Arcana – Three-Pillar Experience
Just finishing up a long weekend here in Canada and I realized it’s time for August’s Unearthed Arcana. Mike Mearls provides an alternative system for awarding experience points that equally weighs all three of D&D’s pillars (combat, exploration, and social ...
The Monk Class, Part Nine
At last, after a month of covering a few other topics, we come to the conclusion of the History of the Monk, with its 5th Edition iteration. (Assuming someone doesn’t suggest another version that I really want to cover. My ...
D&D Beyond Full Launch August 15, 2017
D&D Beyond, the official digital toolset for D&D Fifth Edition, is launching August 15th, 2017. Michael Long of Tribality had a chance to ask Adam some questions about D&D Beyond back in March. Today, we’re seeing some press and lots of ...
Plane Shift: Amonkhet Breakdown
James Wyatt recently released the fourth conversion of a Magic: the Gathering setting to D&D 5e. Amonkhet is an Egyptian-inspired dark fantasy setting, which James describes in the Introduction as “outside the core D&D experience,” but I’m not completely sure ...
Designer Interview: Craig Campbell
Through a mutual acquaintance, I recently met fellow Atlanta-area game designer Craig Campbell, creator of the Murders & Acquisitions tabletop game, part of NerdBurger Games, and co-host of the NerdBurger Show podcast. M&A successfully crowdfunded through Kickstarter last year, delivered in December, ...
UA: Greyhawk Initiative Breakdown
Several weeks ago in Twitter, Mearls explained a variant initiative system that he had been playing round with, and today in Unearthed Arcana, he has explained it in full so that people will stop arguing about a piecemeal presentation of ...
Unearthed Arcana – Greyhawk Initiative
After the flurry of Unearthed Arcana articles this year, we’ve had to patiently survive a short break. This month’s Unearthed Arcana offers a different look at initiative. The ‘Greyhawk Initiative’ variant was inspired by Mike Mearls’ preparing to visit to ...
Magic: The Gathering (Plane of Amonkhet) Setting for D&D 5e
The Amonkhet expansion for Magic: The Gathering was released on April 28, 2017, and a few months later we get a 40 page PDF providing details to run adventures in this setting. The desert plane is heavily inspired by ancient ...
Hit Points, Dying, and Death
Quite some time back, the estimable Tim Baker sent me this:
I had an idea for a topic or maybe even a series that you could consider covering in the future. I'd love to hear your take on damage, dying, and ...
The Monk Class, Part Eight
At a reader’s request, I’m going back to the 3.0 Oriental Adventures and covering the monk prestige classes found there. In this series’ broader conversation on monks, this and the 1e Oriental Adventures are our only examples of settings that ...