My wife and a friend immediately showed interest when I talked about 4E, but unfortunately I couldn’t really find any additional players on a short notice. I don’t like playing with strangers, so we decided to give it a go with just two players. The problem is: 4E doesn’t play well with small groups. The whole encounter design is meant for a balanced party of about four to five players. At first I tried scaling down existing 4E adventures but this proved more tedious than I anticipated and most of the adventure modules I had access to weren’t really to my liking.

One D&D adventure I always wanted to run was Against the Cult of the Reptile God, which was originally written for AD&D 1st Edition. So I took the module as a basis and created encounters suited for a two player party. This was certainly doable although I noticed that 4E is somewhat lacking when it comes to low-level monsters. But with some reskinning this was not too big a deal. I placed the town of Orlane into the southern part of the Nentir Vale to the west of the barony of Harkenwold and wrote a new introduction to get my players on their way to Orlane. While travelling in the vicinity they stumbled upon a family attacked by hungry wolves. A short combat ensued in which the player characters and the slightly too powerful family of peasants defeated the wolves in a couple of combat rounds. The combat was fun and I really liked making use of these nifty flat miniatures, but I noticed that properly balancing things is harder than I anticipated.

The family thanked the player characters for their help and told them about strange happenings in Orlane. Of course my players immediately took the bait and went to Orlane. After arriving in the village they immediately started exploring and talking to the villagers. This part of the game went pretty smoothly and was a lot of fun to everyone involved. They carefully avoided getting into trouble but were almost ambushed during the night. After about four hours playing we called it a day and talked about what they thought about the game and the module. We all agreed that the adventure had been a blast so far. We had a lot of great roleplaying opportunities and my players enjoyed the exploration and investigation angle of the module. But we also agreed that the module didn’t really allow D&D 4th Edition to shine. I also had to admit that preparing the game had been much more work than planned. After some discussion we agreed that we wanted to keep playing the module but switch to a more suitable system.

Was this D&D 4th Edition’s fault? Of course not. I still think it’s a very cool game and if I ever get the chance again to run a game for a larger group I might pick it up again. Using a 1E adventure was probably a bad idea as well. We are currently trying to decide what we should switch to. AD&D 1st Edition might be the most logical choice but perhaps one of the more recent retro clones or something like Castles & Crusades might work better for us.

If you plan to run D&D 4th Edition in 2025, please don’t make the same mistakes as I did. It’s still a great game and can be a lot of fun but be prepared to put in a lot of work as a DM if you have less players than the game was designed for and/or if you want to use adventures not designed for it. What probably also didn’t help that while preparing for the 4th Edition game, Daggerheart had been released, which I am extremely hyped for (yes, I have the attention span of a squirrel of caffeine sometimes).

Have you tried getting back into 4E recently? What are your thoughts on this controversial edition of D&D? Please share your thoughts and experiences below!

If you like Daggerheart and want to learn more about what they are working on right now, check out “The Void”.

Even though I think I never watched a full Critical Role session, I’d consider myself a fan. I totally adore their animated series and I own several books related to CR including a book about the group, several comics and two books about the setting of Exandria. When they announced their own fantasy RPG – Daggerheart – I was immediately excited. I didn’t actively participate in the playtest but I followed the game’s development and I liked a lot about it. Eventually I preordered the deluxe boxed set.

Unfortunately I am among the unlucky few who didn’t get their boxed sets on release day. For some reason some of them got delayed. Darrington Press didn’t get into detail about what caused the delay but they apologized and offered anyone affected by the delay access to Daggerheart on Demiplane and an Art & Token pack on Roll20 for free. The PDF was included in the preorder so I was able to check it out as soon as I got home on Tuesday. Please note that this will not be a proper review since I haven’t even read everything but rather my very first impressions on the PDF version of the game.

My first impression is extremely positive. The 415-paged PDF (including the core rules, various sheets, maps, and all Domain cards) is absolutely beautiful. Darrington Press has production values on par with much more prominent RPG publishers like Wizards of the Coast or Paizo. The included art is stunning and everything is well layed-out. But what about the content?

Daggerheart contains all the rules for players and GMs to play and run the game. There’s an extensive bestiary, equipment for all tiers of play, random loot tables, nine classes with two subclasses each, and 18 (yes, eighteen. That’s not a typo!) ancestries with rules on how to mix ancestries. There are 9 communities to pick from. I haven’t counted the Domain cards, but there’s plenty of those. Domain cards contain the various Abilities or Spells a character can pick up. The format reminds me somewhat of D&D 4th Editions powers which isn’t really a bad thing in my book.

The core mechanic is quite interesting. You roll with two d12 against a set difficulty. One of the dice is the Hope die, the other is the Fear die. When your Hope die has the highest result (this is called Roll with Hope) you get a Hope point which is a kind of meta currency which players can use in various ways including fuelling some of their abilities. If the Fear die is higher (which is called Roll with Fear) the GM gets a Fear point which he can use to trigger certain GM moves (like in PtbA games) or activate enemy abilities. If both results are the same the roll is considered a critical success and is also counted as a Roll with Hope. Rolls with Hope may lead to positive side-effect even if they fail while Rolls with Fear usually mean some kind of negative consequences for the player characters. I like that.

Daggerheart doesn’t come with a particular setting to play in, but with multiple campaign frames which can be used by players and the GM to collaboratively build a campaign. The included campaign frames are The Witherwild, Five Banners Burning, Beast Feast, The Age of Umbra (which will be an 8-part series by CR in the near future), Motherboard, and Colossus of the Drylands. Each campaign frame give enough information to get started and some even come with additional mechanics. Even if you don’t want to play in any of these it should be easy enough for any GM (even inexperienced ones) to create a campaign frame of their own. Daggerheart looks to be pretty flexible and can be easily adapted.

What I particularly like is that they included a lot of tips for new players or people new to the system. There are character guide sheets for each Class which give players assistance when creating their first characters. From what I’ve seen so far there’s a lot of GM advice on how to run Daggerheart with a focus on new GMs. It’s obvious – at least to me – that they want Daggerheart a great if not perfect entry for people new to the tabletop RPG hobby.

What I am most excited about is the freeform combat in Daggerheart. There’s no initiative, no action count or turns like in classic TTRPGs. Combat plays out much like noncombat scenes. This might be also the hardest thing for me to adapt to if I run or play Daggerheart. Turn-based combat has been a core concept of most TTRPGs for the last 50 years or so. At the moment I am not 100% sure how Daggerheart’s combat plays out at the table, but I’m sure they’ll give a proper explanation or example somewhere in the book. Remember: I haven’t finished reading the PDF, this is not a proper review.

I can’t help myself, but Daggerheart is a game that immediately grabbed me when I started learning more about it. There’s a lot of potential there and if I hadn’t already planned to run D&D 4th Edition, I’d probably switch to it in a heartbeat. Is Daggerheart the D&D killer? I doubt it. My guess is that it will get a healthy amount of players and GMs pretty quickly as word starts to spread. I’m interested in what might happen if Critical Role switches to Daggerheart for their main campaign, but I think they’ll probably stick to D&D 5th Edition for their main campaign – at least for the time being.

I’ll definitely dive deeper into Daggerheart‘s mysteries over the coming weeks and months and if I find the time, I’ll post about it here. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: I added a short section about the core mechanic.

It’s unbelievable that D&D 4th Edition was released almost 17 years ago. In the meantime we saw the release of Pathfinder, its second edition and the release of D&D 5th Edition which even got a minor overhaul recently. D&D 4th Edition is old news at this point. But is it old enough to give it another chance?

Over the years I noticed that I have definitely become more relaxed and even tried several games which I vowed never to touch with a ten foot pole. To my surprise I am very much enjoying Pathfinder 1st Edition and its highly tactical combat even though I initially was highly skeptical. It wouldn’t be that strange if a second look at 4th Edition were more positive than back in the day. Nostalgia usually plays a role in this. But sometimes it’s just the change of perspective.

When I had another look at 4E recently I noticed that I still like a lot of what it offers. I still think that 4E has some of the most interesting classes and the changes to the cosmology and the accompanied lore were definitely a breath of fresh air. I also like that 4E characters are much tougher than their 5E counterparts and that the rules in general allow for a more super-heroic game style. This may not be for everyone but at the moment it feels quite appealing to me. I also have a soft spot for the “Nenthir Vale”, the implied setting for 4th Edition, which was fleshed somewhat in adventures and the Monster Manuals. At a point I actually considered using it for a 5E game.

D&D 4th Edition has still quite a few flaws (at least to me) but with hindsight it’s easier to fix or alleviate some of them. Combats can still take ages, true, but it’s easy to reduce the enemies’ hit points and overall reduce the number of combat encounters in a game session or adventure. The changes made to the game in the “Essentials” line back in late 2010 were a change in the right direction, so using those in favor of the original ones might help as well. A lot of people say that 4E is probably the best designed and most balanced edition of D&D out there. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Some of the adventures released for 4E are considered among the best WotC have ever released and the Dungeon Master Guide 2 is praised by many as THE best guide for GMs period.

So should we give 4E another chance? I have to admit I haven’t made up my mind up yet. I still get why I was truly excited about the game when it first came out and while rereading parts of the core books I thought more than once: “I’d love to run this!” But I also remember the things I didn’t like. I am still a bit worried about the “dissociated mechanics” ruining the game for me even though I think the miniature combat isn’t such a big deal for me anymore. D&D 4th Edition has been compared (mostly unfairly) to a MMO back in the day, but the aspects which caused this perception may actually be its strengths – or at least what sets it apart from every other edition of D&D.

Even if you decided you wanted 4th Edition another chance, there are some availability issues, IF you prefer printed books. Things might be different in the US, but over here in Germany, it’s pretty hard to find some of the more rare D&D 4th Edition books on the second-hand market. Luckily things are looking much better if you don’t mind using PDFs. Basically the whole 4E catalogue is available on DriveThruRPG at this point. I’ve noticed that a few titles are even available as POD.

What are your thoughts on D&D 4th Edition? Did it get too much flak from fans back in the day or was this well deserved? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

One problem D&D faces is that the people in charge over at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast don’t seem to understand what Dungeons & Dragons is. They don’t understand the TTRPG culture. For them it’s just another intellectual property that is “under-monetized“. They also think that the popularity of D&D was their doing…

One of the secrets behind D&D 3rd Edition’s success back in the day was the Open Game License. The OGL allowed basically everyone to create D&D-compatible products and sell them if they followed a few simple rules. This was a win-win situation for Wizards of the Coast and the third-party publishers. People had to buy D&D core rules to use the third-party products (at least in most cases) and the third-party publishers could write material for the most well-established TTRPG. A lot of settings designed for other games were released for the d20 System. Everyone was happy. That’s at least the short and simple version.

But then the people in charge got greedy. With the release of 4th Edition D&D came the Game System License. While use of the OGL was free, GSL was not (at least not initially). The GSL also would have forced people to stop using the OGL if they wanted to release D&D-4th-Edition-compatible products. Many third-party publishers were appalled. Eventually WotC gave in and made significant changes to the GSL, but the damage was done and they lost many third-party publishers including Paizo which created Pathfinder to be a direct competitor.

D&D 4th Edition was also not as popular with the fans as WotC had hoped. Common criticism was that it was too much focused on combat which also took way too long to resolve. Another criticism was that the new mechanics felt too much like MMO mechanics. Personally I liked a lot of what D&D 4th Edition tried to accomplish, but ultimately playing it wasn’t a lot of fun for me.

D&D Next was an attempt at getting the fans back. WotC promised a system which both new and old gamers would enjoy. There was even talk of making the game modular in a way that allowed GMs to easy customize the rules to their liking. Unfortunately not much of this made it into the final version of D&D Next which eventually was called D&D 5th Edition. What we ended up with was a game which had a lot in common with 3rd Edition D&D but slightly simpler. It’s probably not the most innovative design out there, but it was enough to get a lot of people back into D&D. Oh, by the way, the OGL was back as well!

Something else helped D&D 5th Edition a lot: actual plays on Twitch and YouTube and particularly the success of Critical Role. Critical Role (as we all know) is a group of voice actors and friends who had started a campaign back in the 4th Edition days. They eventually switched to Pathfinder. When they started streaming their gaming sessions, the decision was made to use the new 5th Edition rules. The rest is history…

For most people it was recognizable that the success of Critical Role was one of the main drivers of D&D 5th Edition’s success. People wanted to experience for themselves what they had watched in the streams. Other popular actual play series helped to fan the flames even more. Eventually Critical Role got that successful that they ran a Kickstarter to fund the production of their own animated series based on their D&D campaign.

Things were great for a while then someone at WotC and/or Hasbro got greedy again. They asked themselves, why all these people were making millions of dollars with their IP? The success of Critical Role or popular Kickstarters from companies like MCDM made them want a bigger piece of the pie. The resolution was quickly found: let’s axe the OGL! What a splendid idea since it worked so great back during the 4th Edition days!

To no one’s surprise history repeated itself. The plans got leaked, people were angry, several third-party publishers decided to move away from the OGL and create their own games including the aforementioned MCDM and Critical Role. So WotC/Hasbro had to pedal back, restored the OGL and even released basically all of D&D 5th Edition under Creative Commons. but again, the damage was done.

I think you can see a pattern emerging. There are so many other missteps I could write about: the fact that WotC had neglected providing proper digital tools for a long time for example. Some people are probably still waiting for the VTT they promised when 4th Edition launched. It also didn’t help that the team at WotC which was partly responsible for the overwhelming success which was Baldur’s Gate 3, a video game by Larian Studios, was fired almost immediately after the game released. WotC/Hasbro was already infamous for firing people shortly before Christmas each year, but in this case it seemed especially brutal. It was also pretty dumb because the CEO of Larian Studios is an outspoken critic of this kind of corporate capitalism who used every opportunity to talk about this. Even without calling out WotC directly everyone got the message.

Recently Wizard of the Coast released their virtual tabletop called Sigil. I haven’t tried it myself yet but from what I’ve heard it definitely needs more work. Too bad it’s not only D&D the higher-ups at WotC and Hasbro don’t understand. It’s also software development. Insiders said that they didn’t understand what a VTT is and how it’s different from a video game. Shortly after Sigil was made available to the public, WotC laid off about 90% of the developers. Ouch. So the VTT is basically dead on arrival, Larian Studios moved on to a new project unrelated to D&D and its highly unlikely they will ever work with WotC again. At this point one could be asking if this is just bad luck or incompetence at WotC and Hasbro.

That’s why I think Dungeons & Dragons is doomed. It’s in the hands of a corporation which doesn’t understand anything about the roleplaying games hobby. They expect that they can treat it like any other IP. They don’t understand that Dungeons & Dragons has always flourished when the whole industry profited from it. They can’t wrap their head around the fact that D&D is more than just a product to many people. It’s not a simple toy, not a video game. And the worst of all, they don’t want to accept the fact that profit margins are small in the TTRPG industry. In my opinion corporate culture and tabletop RPGs don’t mix. D&D would be better off in the hands of a smaller independent company which understand its customers better. But as long as Hasbro controls Dungeons & Dragons its future looks bleak.

A couple of days ago I got an email from FeedSpot. It’s founder informed me that our blog has been selected by their panellists as one of the Top 90 RPG Blogs on the web. A couple of years back this news would have been extremely exciting to me. These days I shrugged and almost deleted the email on the spot.

The main reason is probably that my excitement for blogging has waned. Back in 2008 when I started this blog, we were still a community. The RPG Bloggers Network tied everything together. The more experienced bloggers supported the newcomers. People wrote guest posts for other blogs and helped to shine light on less well known sites. It was an exciting and fun time.

Slowly but surely social media started to draw traffic and reader interaction away from the blogs itself. Nowadays blogging often feels like yelling into the void. Sure, there are still blogs with good or even great content out there, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Perhaps it’s also my age showing. Heck, when I started this blog I still had hair and it wasn’t grey. ^_^

The other thing that bothers me is that these Top 90 RPG Blogs mentioned even contain the Official RPG Maker Blog which is a blog run by the company which creates RPG Maker for various platforms including PC. It’s a video game or rather a tool to create video games. Another one listed is “The CRPG Addict” which I personally love, but again, it’s not about TTRPGs. I feel that the “panelists” just did a sloppy job. This further devalues the significance of being a “TOP RPG BLOG”.

The vast majority of the blogs listed are proper TTRPG blogs, though, and from what I gathered most of them are even still active. If I wasn’t an old curmudgeon I probably would have recommended you check out some of the blogs on the list.

Vagabond // Pulp Fantasy RPG

Let’s start with my current favorite: Vagabond. I stumbled upon it a couple of days ago when I was checking on what’s new on DriveThruRPG. Vagabond is an about 200-paged TTRPG compatible with B/X D&D but comes with a lot of exciting changes.

There’s a new and simple roll-over resolution system which includes simple skills. It’s written not only with regular group play, but also solo or co-op in mind. Vagabond’s (non-Vancian) magic system is brilliant and gives characters a lot of freedom on how to cast their spells. The core rules come with 6 ancestries and 18 classes. It takes inspirations from many popular TTRPGs like the aforementioned B/X, but also Dragonbane, Mörk Borg, ShadowDark and many more.

I especially like the extensive bestiary included. I could probably ramble on about how much I enjoyed reading Vagabond for hours. I highly recommend you to check it out. By the way, the author, Taron Pounds, is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund another print run. At the time of this writing the KS has already been fully funded but there are still over 50 hours to go. There’s also a free Basic rulebook containing four ancestries and six classes you can check out right now!

Bugbears & Borderlands

Bugbears & Borderlands is what happens when you use 5E’s mechanics and use them to create a more streamlined version inspired by B/X D&D. All the basic character races from D&D 5E are included, but there are only three classes: Fighter, Expert (basically B&B’s version of a thief/rogue) and Wizard.

The last class is the most exciting since it’s not your regular D&D wizard. For starters wizards in B&B can cast spells which are usually reserved for clerics as well as the familiar wizard spells. They also get to choose a “Magical Bond” at level 3 which has a huge impact on the character. For example the “draconic” bond grants the wizard draconic powers and changes their appearance into some kind of half-dragon while the “divine” bond turns them into warrior clerics and grants various weapon and armour proficiencies. I just wish they picked a better term than Wizard for the class.

B&B isn’t as innovative as Vagabond, but its take on the wizard class made it stand out for me. I also think that the author, Roderic Waibel, managed to achieve what he set out to do: to create a basic version of 5E inspired by the classics. Like Vagabond it comes with a full bestiary and the whole thing is even available for free. You can also get B&B in a POD format either as one softcover book or two hardcover books (Players and GM Guide).

Chromatic Dungeons

Chromatic Dungeon is another OSR D&D clone created by Roderic Waibel. It’s his attempt to combine an old-school gaming experience with more modern sensibilities and design philosophies. It actually managed to tick most of the boxes I had on my “the perfect D&D retro clone” list: ancestries and customisable heritages – check, ascending AC – check, d6-based thief skills – check, same level up XP requirements for all classes – check. It shares a lot with the aforementioned B&B, but its 5E influences aren’t as prominent and it looks and feels more like a game from that era. The layout is directly inspired by the AD&D core rules. Like with my other recommendations it comes with a full bestiary.

Chromatic Dungeons has received quite some flak from certain parts of the internet because inclusive representation was one of its design goals. Why this could be seen as a bad thing is beyond me. When compared with Bugbears & Borderlands I think that Chromatic Dungeons is the more flexible game of the two. B&B’s wizard class is so much different from what we are used to, that it has major effects on the implied setting. Chromatic Dungeons is in a way more “traditional” and thus can be more easily used.

One last thing: Chromatic Dungeon comes with a dyslexic-friendly PDF which uses a special font designed to help people with dyslexia.

Bonus: White Box Cyclopedia

The works of James M. Spahn are always easy recommendations. I don’t remember any of his releases which didn’t immediately excite me. His take on magic items in “The Hero’s Journey Fantasy Roleplaying” was totally brilliant and why other games didn’t steal the idea of magic weapons and armour acquiring magic properties by usage. But I digress.

The White Box Cyclopedia is pretty much what the D&D Cyclopedia was for BECMI but for White Box D&D. It includes the full White Box rules and all the races, classes and other additions to the game James’ has written over the years. But it’s more than a simple compilation. Everything has been double-checked and James made sure everything fits together perfectly. In essence you’re getting a smorgasbord of options from which you can pick.

I love James’ works, I love White Box, but there’s one catch: it’s not out yet. A while ago the White Box Cyclopedia was successfully funded on Kickstarter but unfortunately it’s still in layout. But it was promised to the backers that the PDF release is close. That’s why it’s “only” a bonus recommendation.

A few last words…

In this day and age it’s really hard for smaller games to stand out. We gamers usually tend to focus on the “big ones”. In the general RPG scene this is Dungeons & Dragons 5E. In the OSR it currently is ShadowDark. Before that Old-School Essentials was THE game everyone talked about. I think the games I mentioned in this article are not talked about enough. So please, check them out and if you like what you see, share the word. Thanks.

I love James’ work and this is a project I gladly supported in a heartbeat. In fact, I plan to use this for my next campaign! At the time of this writing over 36,000 dollars have been raised by almost 800 people. The goal of initially $ 5000 have been raised in mere minutes. As far as I understand is the PDF version of the White Box Cyclopedia already ready to go and will probably sent out to backers as soon as the fundraising has ended in 22 days.

If you are interested in old-school gaming, I highly recommend you checking Whitebox Cyclopedia out on Kickstarter.

It has been a longtime tradition to make resolutions for the new year on New Year’s Eve and there’s one thing I decided to do, or rather not to do anymore: hunting white whales. For way too long there have been a few things I have been chasing for years now without ever getting any closer while at the same time frustrating me to no end. This has to stop! I am sure many GMs know this all to well and perhaps some of you may want to share your own experiences in the comments below. But let me first talk about my white whales…

The perfect system to rule them all

It’s silly, I know but for way too many years I have been looking for that one roleplaying game system which I could use to run everything. There have been times when I thought I might have found the one system I could use for everything while still being easy to play and run. At least for me, this system doesn’t seem to exist. For a time I thought FUDGE could be it, or maybe Savage Worlds, but neither of these games are the best fit for every setting or genre, nor do I always want to run games using the same mechanics. I also love to check out new games all the time, which totally contradicts this urge to find the one game to rule them all. So my resolution for 2025 is to give up on trying to find that special game in favor of just playing what’s fun at the moment.

The Great Fantasy Campaign

I guess everyone who’s ever played D&D or similar fantasy games has this dream about running an awesome, year-long fantasy campaign on par with literary epics like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. The longest campaign I ever run lasted for about half a year or so. Usually my campaigns ended because life got into the way, I lost interest in the campaign or I got overwhelmed for some reason or the other. Life getting into the way unfortunately happens way too often and there’s not much you can do about it. Players are moving away, are starting families or you’re just so busy at work that you don’t have the energy to run games in the evening. Getting overwhelmed is not inevitable. Not trying to turn every game into that Great Fantasy Campaign is a good start. I think it’s way better just to play what is fun to you and your players and if everyone comes back for more, you’re on the right track. But trying to force it is recipe for disaster. So, no more planning of Great Fantasy Campaigns for me.

Perry Rhodan and Ultima as tabletop roleplaying games

There are two franchises from my youth I have a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings for: the space opera series Perry Rhodan and the classic computer roleplaying game series Ultima. I still feel a lot of nostalgia for both and both are incredibly hard to run as roleplaying games. I have written about both on this blog before and I think I’ve also described what makes these setting hard to turn into tabletop RPGs. The Perry Rhodan universe is huge and the story spans thousands (if not millions) of years. There’s more than enough material there to run countless campaigns, but the sheer size of it all makes things hard. The stakes are usually high, characters are often extremely powerful, space ships are huge (spheroid space ships with diameters of 2.5 kilometers are not as rare as one might suspect), and there’s so much lore that even its authors get stuff mixed up all the time. For years I have thought about how to make it work, and it only frustrated me. To make things even worse: most of my friends don’t even care for the setting and they are the people I want to run games for.

Things are similar with the Ultima series. I feel a lot of nostalgia for the series (especially from Ultima VI on) but most of my friends haven’t played any of the games or even heard of them. Then there’s the issue that especially the games I am most fond of just don’t work very well in a tabletop RPG setting. Because of technical limitations the Ultima world is either extremely empty or extremely small. Both seriously mess with one’s suspension of disbelief. What makes matters worse is that the shape of world changed all the time. And don’t get me started on the canon and the constant retcons. Yes, I love these games, why do you ask? During the last holiday break I invested countless hours writing an Ultima RPG, tried to find ways to solve these issues, but in the end I realized that I would never be able to be truly happy with the outcome.

Conclusion

So I’ve decided I want to keep away from hunting these white whales in the future. Only pain and frustrations lie on this road, so I shouldn’t keep following it. I think these are reasonable New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps giving up on these unreachable goals will give me the chance to pursue a few reachable ones for a change. That would be something, wouldn’t it!

Then the opportunity to play the Beginner’s Box opened up. A friend offered to run it for me and my wife and we started creating characters using Pathbuilder 2E. I was surprised of the amount of options which were available to a level 1st character. I also liked how the game handles ancestries, heritages and backgrounds. As far as I remember I created a human sorcerer with a bounty hunter background, while my wife created a goblin alchemist with a focus on bombs. Unfortunately life got in the way and we never actually played these characters. But I was interested enough to eventually buy the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook Pocket Edition. The Pocket Edition is a smaller paperback version of the regular hardcover rulebook at a much lower price point, which I prefer because it’s much easier to lug around. I never got the time to thoroughly read it and put it onto my growing “pile of shame”.

About a week or two ago I noticed that the “Pathfinder – Happy Anniversary, Remaster!” bundle had gone online at Humble Bundle. For under €30 you get 72 Pathfinder 2nd Edition products including the new and remastered Player Core and GM Core. Since a lot of Flip-Mats were included in the bundle, I thought the purchase would be worth it for those alone. So I made the purchase and started downloading. Out of interest I checked out the Player Core and was immediately drawn in. There are a lot of mechanics to learn, but – oh boy – it’s a nice looking and greatly organized book. With the remastered edition Paizo has completely moved away from the D&D SRD the game originally was based on. I immediately noticed the new and exciting ancestries like the Leshy and the removal of attribute scores (yay, finally!!!).

The more I read the less intimidating it became. Sure, I haven’t played it yet, but it sounds doable – even for someone like me who has a busy life. I’ve also played Pathfinder 1st Edition for quite some time now, so 2nd Edition which feels more streamlined is just not as intimidating at it used to be. Eventually I read the rules included in the Beginner’s Box (which is also included in the bundle) and my stance immediately changed from “looks interesting” to “I have to run this!”. I’ve never seen a better introduction into a new game than this. I haven’t read the included adventure yet, but the rules portion is leaps and bounds better than what D&D 5th Edition has to offer at the moment.

Earlier this week I got the two Player Cores, the GM Core and the Monster Core in their Pocket Editions. I am still waiting for the Beginner’s Box to show up at my doorstep. My current plan is to familiarize myself with the rules from the Beginner’s Box first and create a couple of characters and probably run a mock battle or two. For next year I plan to at least run the Beginner’s Box adventure for a couple of friends before making any bigger plans. I own quite a lot of adventures for Pathfinder 2nd Edition adventures from this bundle alone, so running one of those might a realistic goal.

What are your experiences with Pathfinder 2nd Edition and especially the remastered core rules? What should I expect? Are there any pitfalls I have to avoid and what worked and didn’t work for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Still here? Let’s go!

I immediately became interested when the 2024 Digital & Physical Core Rulebook Bundle from WotC came up for sale. I wanted to see their changes to the rules; I use D&D Beyond, but I also like the physical books. This bundle and the savings it offered seemed like a good deal. I have ordered the D&D Beyond book and digital bundles before, specifically for Dragonlance and the Deck of Many Things, and I got the books promptly with no hassle. This bundle seemed like a great deal.

It’s my birthday in June, and my wife ordered the bundle for me as my birthday gift. She was thrilled, and I was elated. The transaction was done; all we had to do was wait.

September comes around. I get my redemption code and my book on D&D Beyond. I also happened to be traveling when the book came out and got a copy of the special cover, and I was sure I’d have the regular cover to read and use when I got back home.

The book has been out for a month now, and so far, the 2024 Player’s Handbook has not arrived in the mail. So, what happened? On September 24, I saw no book or shipping notifications from WotC, so I wrote to them and checked the order status.

The first hurdle was getting to reach customer support. WotC does not make it easy to find the “Contact Us” button; instead, it takes you to an FAQ and makes it purposefully difficult to get help via their support link. When you finally open a help ticket, you will wait over 24 hours for a response. The response that I got left a lot to be desired.

To quote a piece of it (the complete response is the image below), “A review of your order shows that items with different release dates have been purchased in this order. This means that your product will ship when all items on the order are available to ship. Full details can be found on our FAQ under “When will I get my physical product?”.” The FAQ does say: “If you place multiple orders with different release dates, then your order will deliver when the last item is available.”

But, and this is important, the bundle page clearly states that: “As they are released, each physical book will be shipped to you and each digital book will be available in your D&D BEYOND account.” See the image below!

This answer is a switcheroo by WotC, advertising one thing and then claiming another. False advertisement! I let the support contact know my displeasure with the situation, and a day later, I got a non-answer stating the same thing and saying sorry, not sorry. I reiterated my displeasure with the situation, opened another ticket requesting a solution to my problem, and provided feedback, clarifying my displeasure with the situation. If you follow me on social media, you may have seen my post about all this.

And since three days ago, nothing, not Rodolfo, the service rep, nor anybody else from Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond, has contacted me or replied to my messages.

After posting about it on social media, I have found other people who have similar problems, and some have reached out to me asking if I’ve been able to get any response or solution from WotC because, like me, they are at their wit’s end.

It would be an easy solution to reach out to the credit card company and log a complaint trying to get a refund. But this was a gift from my wife; she’d have to do it with her credit card company, and most importantly, she was so thrilled that she got me this as a birthday gift. I would hate to “return” her gift and sour the whole experience. The gift has sentimental value beyond the mere transaction.

So, I’ve come here to air out the situation and get some more eyes on it. I hope those affected can get a resolution from WotC by creating awareness. I’ve been a D&D Beyond client from the start, with my subscription, getting almost all the WotC books on the platform, but I will not buy another digital product from then until this is solved to my satisfaction.

It is a poor starting point for a version of the game I was excited to play. After the OSR debacle, WotC has tried to gain back the goodwill they lost with the fan base but continually seem to drop the ball, like with the latest information regarding the use of AI, and this is just another example of the messing up what should have been winning situation for them. My enthusiasm for the game has been dampened, and I hope we can sort this out to get our book. Balls on your court, WotC; what’s your play?

PS – I usually include many links to the pages and locations I’m referencing, but I don’t want to share the link for the bundle after getting all this grief with shipping. You can find the page pretty easily with a quick Google search if you want to check it out.

Except for the D&D Mentzer Red Box, an excellent book to learn the game, the AD&D 1e rule books were written in a style amicable to a much more niche audience, but I digress.

Reading the new &D 5.5 rulebook and looking at the illustrations and esthetics has brought to the fore a topic I’ve been thinking about for months now, certainly since watching the D&D Honor Among Thieves movie (which I very much enjoyed, BTW!), watching the Vox Machina animated series on Prime, and watching the awesome, made in Puerto Rico and highly recommended actual-play Juego La Mesa.

When you watch the D&D movie, the Vox Machina series, or the La Mesa actual-play videos, you see a fantasy world quite different from the one I grew up playing and reading about. Cards on the table, I’m a 50-year-old gamer who’s been playing one ttrpg or another for 38 years. When I first picked up D&D, my references for creating a fantasy world were the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table, the movie Excalibur,  reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, seeing the animated films about those stories, Conan movies and comics, Beastmaster and other myriad fantasy b-movies the flooded the video stores in the mid-80s. The Elfquest comics also greatly influenced my storytelling. Dragonlance was formative for my development as a Game Master and world builder, but I discovered those after starting to play D&D.

These stories and the game presented a very different fantasy world from the one we see today in games with more modern sensibilities. The division between the various peoples, what used to be called races in the game, and I understand the connotations involved in this concept, now called species in D&D 5.5, ancestries in Pathfinder, was marked and rigid. Orcs and goblins were painted with a broad stroke and cast as evil antagonists.

I grew up playing a game where, for example, the animosity between elves and dwarves was baked into the game; see the Racial Preferences Table from the AD&D 1e PHB, page 18.

In these worlds, the species lived separately and distrusted each other. The otherness of, for example, the half-orc was codified and made explicit in the rules. The good races were good and civilized, and the evil races were bad and barbarous.

With some reflection and introspection, we can now see that while some of these might be attributed to some literary sources, which does not excuse them and requires careful consideration of those works themselves, they also came from a mindset of biological determinism, colonialism, discrimination,  and projecting outdated, often racist, and downright hurtful beliefs into a game. It is not good enough to say these were products of the time or the author’s outdated views. These games were written merely half a century ago, within my lifetime! Many creators were alive until recently, and since we still pay them, it is valid and essential that we analyze, question, and try to address these problematic ideas.

No one is telling anyone else how to play your home campaign. If you enjoy a more simplistic black-and-white morality in your game, have at it. But don’t expect other people not to question, analyze, and discuss these issues because that is important in the larger social context where these games take place. This discussion and analysis is about making the hobby accessible and respectful and addressing the problems in the games we enjoy. If you think this is an attack on you and how you play, then that may require introspection on your part.

Let me get off my soapbox now and continue with this post. So, what does the rant of the last four paragraphs have to do with what I started writing about? As much as I recognize that the above-discussed analysis of our hobby’s origins and problematic elements is important, I am not immune to the effects of growing up playing with a different fantasy paradigm and suffering culture shock with newer fantasy worlds.

I was taken aback when I first watched the Honor Among Thieves movie, with aarakocra and tabaxi living among the humans. The campaign worlds seen in the Legend of Vox Machina and the Juego La Mesa are cosmopolitan, where many of the game’s species live together in multiethnic societies. Not without conflict or challenges, but a far cry from the xenophobic worlds of racial distrust of early D&D.

Funny enough, I was also incredibly thrilled when I saw the movie. The aarakocra are one of my favorite species from the original Fiend Folio, especially after reading an article in Dragon Magazine #124, from August 1987, detailing their ecology and stats, The Wings of Eagles. The fact that aarakocra are among the player characters in Juego LA mesa also delighted me.

D&D has always been about adding new options and species as player characters. Since the beginning of the game, people have looked for ways to play other fantastic beings. D&D 4^th edition expanded the classical roster of human, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, and halfling. The dragongborn, the eladrin, and the tiefling were now options in the core book, but no gnome or half-orc in the PHB when 4e came out. Those three new species added in the D&D 4e PHB existed in previous editions in one form or another, but they were now even more integrated into the world of D&D, even in the classic campaigns published by WotC.

I included those new options when I created my points-of-light campaign to play D&D 4^th edition. They eventually entered my long-running campaign and many other options from Eberron and other campaigns. More character creation options for players is always a benefit from my perspective.

Despite recognizing the value of this variety in the rules and wanting a world that embraces and respects diversity in the world around me, I  did not create fantasy worlds that reflected that. My long-running homebrew campaign was developed based on the old paradigms of fantasy I grew up with.

In a way, D&D is no longer a reflection of the fantasy worlds it was trying to emulate at its inception; instead, D&D shapes the expectation of what fantasy is. I must consciously deal with my reaction to fantasy worlds where all the races live together, where the party composition includes rabbit folk, fairy folk, and dragon people. The people playing the hobby now come to the game with different influences, from video games to anime, manga, and literature, which are often more varied and inclusive than what I enjoyed while growing up.

I can recognize that some of these options are not for me. I sometimes enjoy a different campaign, but that’s ok. The game is not created or marketed solely for me. It’s sold and should be aimed at another audience, a younger generation discovering the game for the first time.

The younger generation always overjoys me, and I refuse to dismiss them because I genuinely see in them a more compassionate, tolerant, and open generation than we ever were. Whenever I have my knee-jerk reaction that says, “That’s not my fantasy,” I rein myself in and think, yes, it is not my instinctual concept of fantasy; it’s a broader, more varied view, which is a good thing.

It may be time to put on my world-building hat and try to create a world more like modern D&D and fantasy. Make it a personal challenge. If the World of Greyhawk is the default setting in the upcoming D&D 5.5 Dungeon Masters Guide, I wonder how they will mesh this with one of the original fantasy campaigns.

I am looking forward to that.  

To paraphrase Morgan Freeman as Azeem in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, a movie that certainly has issues with representation, but humor me in this instance… I am thankful for the wondrous variety of games we play.

This is how my Kickstarter backing breaks down:

• 399 Projects Backed.
• 2 are currently ongoing as of 7/27/2022.
• 383 were successful.
• I canceled 14 for several reasons.
• 99% of Projects have been in the Games category.
• 1% have been in the Art, Comics, or Film & Video categories.

Of the 383 successful pledges as of 7/27/2022:

• 339 have been successfully fulfilled (89%)
• 23 are unfulfilled but on time (6%)
• 14 are late (4%)
• 6 are unfulfilled for a variety of reasons (2%)
• 1 backed with no reward.

The 6 unfulfilled projects represent a total of $135. This looks good to me!

One year later, in 2023, I did not do a deep dive like the year before, but I had backed 464 projects by then.

Last night, I realized I had not received the digital rewards for one fulfilled Kickstarter. I contacted the creator, and the situation was solved quickly and painlessly. But this led me to do a deep dive into my crowdfunding-backed projects, not just on Kickstarter, but on Game on Tabletop, Backerkit, and Verkami, the main platforms through which I’ve backed crowdfunding projects. Kickstarter remains the main platform, though I’ve backed crowdfunding projects, and 96% of all the projects discussed below are on Kickstarter. Game on Tabletop presents a disproportionately larger total of pledges because most of the projects backed there were rather costly Torg and Fading Suns projects, for which I pledged proportionately larger amounts.

Here is some data on the projects I’ve backed over the last 13 years in the four platforms mentioned above since 2011, when I backed my first Kickstarter crowdfunding project, Far West, from Adamant Entertainment.

As of 8/31/2024, the crowdfunding projects I’ve backed broke down as follows.

• 505 Projects Backed.
• Of that total:
  • 458 have been successful.
  • I’ve backed out of 30 for several reasons.
  • The creator canceled 9.
  • 8 were unsuccessful.
• There are currently no ongoing projects; all have ended.
• 99% of projects have been in the games category.
• 1% have been art, comics, or film & video categories.
• There are currently 37 (7%) unfulfilled projects. Of these, they break down as follows:
  • According to their fulfillment dates, 22 (4%) projects remain unfulfilled but on time.
  • According to their fulfillment dates, 15 (3%) projects remain unfulfilled and are late.

Out of the 505 projects backed, one (1) was backed for no reward, and five (5) projects will likely never be fulfilled. One was derailed due to legal problems between creators; in one instance, the creator passed away before fulfilling the project, and the creators abandoned three with no updates, and thus, I consider them lost.

• These unfinished projects represent 1% of the total crowdfunding projects backed.
• I have lost a total of $55 in those 5 projects.

I’ve invested a substantial amount in these sorts of projects, but crowdfunding took over much of my discretionary spending on games in the changing tabletop gaming landscape. I still buy gaming books and materials, but if you aggregate both, the total is similar to my past game expenses.

One hears of so many failed projects; I consider myself incredibly lucky to have so few backed projects that never deliver any reward and to have lost so little money. I have waited an exceedingly long time for many projects. Still, I always think of these crowdfunding projects as investments in the creator’s ideas, not pre-orders, and I know that the final product I receive may differ from the original concept. I’ve discovered new creators, people whose work I would have never seen otherwise, and have even become friends with a few creators through their crowdfunding process. Overall, my experience with crowdfunding has been positive.

What has been your experience? I’d love to know. Tell us in the comments.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Dragons. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 1: Describe a monster.

The Sleepers Awake: The Return of Dragons

The Great Engine hums mournfully, the massive Wyrm Trap exposed as the walls protecting the engine’s core crumble, filling the cavernous room with dust and debris. The Tracker’s tattoos pulse and shift while his body writhes; unable to control the energies within, he collapses into the arms of Lady Cashara Nazar, convulsing. “What is happening?” she yells at the Curse Bearer. The old man kneels beside the young man, “The power that courses through him seeks to fulfill its purpose, but the curse in his blood, the gift of the Nocturnal Potentates, fights against this. What is his burden must now be mine.”

The Curse Bearer places his hands on the Tracker’s chest and the convulsing stops. He opens his mouth in a silent scream, and a dark miasma spills from his body, absorbed into the Curse Bearer. The old man’s tattoos shift, adding distorted images of darkness over his flesh, and he crumbles. Weakly, he whispers, “Now…”

The Tracker stands with the help of the knight. The tattoos on his body shimmer, and he unleashes the power contained within. He breaks the Wyrm Trap, releasing the dragons into the world.

The Primal Dragons, or the Dragons of Creation, are primeval forces of creation, the manifestation of the energies that birthed reality. They embody the creative potential and the destructive power of the birth of universes. These dragons flew from the Fountain of Creation and wove together the myriad worlds and dimensions that makeup realities. These dragons populated the worlds they wove together and lived in their creation. The Wyrm Traps in the skyships trapped their energy to power their dimension-traveling powers, weakening the fabric of reality.

Now released, these dragons strengthen this world and give new hope to the mortals that their battle against darkness will now have a chance of success.

And so, this crazy experiment, in which I tried to world-build through a series of posts with diverse themes and different challenges, comes to an end. I think I was successful in some ways but not so in others. I thought about naming the world today and even considered some names but ultimately decided to leave it nameless. Care to suggest a name?

Thanks to David Chapman and all the folk who support RPG a Day year after year, make sure you visit David’s Autocratik blog. Again, thanks for reading. See you all next year for RPG a Day 2025.

I have reached a certain age where the death of friends, acquaintances, and even loved ones is not necessarily unexpected. Last year was particularly hard; two close and dear friends died, and their loss is still acutely felt. Both were near and dear to my heart, people I had known for many years and who had been very influential. One was José Javier Rivera, a mentor, business partner, and friend; the other was Samuel “Sammy” Maldonado, a friend and fellow gamer who played my games for years. I would like to remember Sammy today.

I’ve mentioned Sammy in previous posts, in 2010, 2011 (twice), 2013, and 2014 (again twice!), on Days 11 and 14 of RPG a Day 2016.

I met Sammy in 1990 when the Rifts had just been published. I was in High School, and my local comic store did not have the books. The salesperson at the store mentioned a gaming store with the books. A gaming store? He explained to my grandfather how to get there, and he drove us; the Gaming Emporium store, the first FLGS in Puerto Rico, was in Sammy’s house, and we knocked on the door and called out before he came out of the game room in the back and sold me and my friend Luis Miranda the books.

That was my first contact with the man, the legend! We remained connected through gaming for decades. We shared friends and hung out in the same circles, and eventually, in 2002 or thereabouts, he joined our weekly game. Sammy was a talented player. He created memorable characters; the concept was always more important than the rules. He would play the characters he wanted, even if they were not optimal. The bard Oberon and his horseman barbarian, resurrected as a halfling, are but two of the most memorable. Oberon profoundly changed and influenced my campaign world.  

But we grew close outside the game. We would spend time together after the game, and Sammy joined a book club with my non-gamer friends. We eventually moved our weekly game to his house, where the Gaming Emporium store used to be. He had a gaming room in the back, with a huge table and a room full of books and minis. He called that game room Sammy’s Playhouse. His regular gaming groups that met there were known as the Mequetrefes.

Just look at the table!

When I divorced in 2005, hanging out at his house and going out for dinner and drinks became commonplace. Eventually, my friends planned a trip to GenCon in 2007, and I went with them and Sammy for the first time that year—seventeen years ago!

Sammy was a brilliant man who talked knowledgeably about myriad subjects. He also marched to his beat, rarely taking the well-traveled path and often taking positions meant to elicit a response from his interlocutor. His humor could be biting, and he frequently mischievously pushed the envelope to the brink.

We had different personalities, upbringings, and life experiences and approached relationships differently. These differences led to our distancing. We had different visions of the boundaries humor and jabs should have concerning your friends’ significant others. We had a falling out; I stopped playing at his house, and our regular weekly group split up. I kept playing, but my closeness with Sammy was sundered.

However, we remained friends, kept in touch, and eventually renewed some closeness. We didn’t see each other as often, but we talked and saw each other occasionally. He wanted to play our weekly game again, but we had too many people at the table, and I have a strict policy these days not to bring additional players to the game without the group’s consent. Some in the group were concerned about his personality and how it would affect group dynamics.

We occasionally played together, but he didn’t sit at my table as a regular player again. I regret not doing so more. I could have been more effective in managing our differences, but would he have been amicable to that? Some things remained unsaid, and I regret it. But there is no use in dwelling on that now. I’d rather remember the good times we had together.

He loved Middle Earth, and his MERP games were legendary. He also played the most recent versions of Middle Earth, which used D&D 5e rules with gusto. That’s how I like to remember him, having long conversations with him about what he wanted to do with his campaign when he got to play. His health declined after Hurricane María, and I could see the toll it took on him. He died too soon. He was only sixty years old.

In his typical irascible humor, Sammy would joke that certain members of our gaming group were first-line friends, “amigos de primera fila,” and that he wasn’t in that select group. I never felt that way, and he was always a first-line member of the group and a first-line friend. I miss you, Sammy. Thanks for playing with us, the memories, and your friendship.

When I learned of his passing in September last year, I wrote this: Today, we said goodbye to a great friend. Sammy was smart and dedicated, a passionate teacher, generous with his friendship, and often a curmudgeon or a contrarian. He marched to his own drumbeat but left a deep, indelible mark in our lives. Let us not remember the sad times but the many happy moments we shared. ¡De primera fila Sammy!

As we approach the first anniversary of his passing, I would like to raise the dice and roll in his honor. Chukling!

Post-Scrip: This past month, I’ve had to be away from home often due to work. RPG A Day this year has been a refuge on those nights I wish I was home, and it kept me busy. I love the RPG a Day community. I apologize if I haven’t been that active and haven’t been interacting with more people. It’s been a strange month. Big thank you to David Chapman and everyone who makes #RPGaDay possible. Also, thanks to Michael Wolf, aka Stargazer, for always having a place for me here, even when I disappear for months. But most of all, thanks to you all for reading!

See you all for RPG a Day 2025.

Day 25: Desirable dice – So many dice, so little time. This is a recent want, but I saw them and just wanted them—the D&D 50th Anniversary Holmes Retro Replica & Modern Inspired Set by Fanroll. If anybody wants to gift them, message me, and I’ll give you my address.

Day 26: Superb screen – I don’t often use GM Screens, but when I do, I prefer the World’s Greatest Screen by Hammer Dog Games, specifically the landscape version. Customizable screens are just the best. I own two.

Day 27: Marvelous miniature – The D&D Icon of the Reals: Gargantuan Tiamat by WizKids. Stretching the definition of a “miniature”, this humongous sculpture of the Queen of Dragons is marvelous. Here’s another gift you may get me if you feel very generous.

Day 28: Great gamer gadget—I have this! I backed the Kickstarter, and I love it. The Hexcrawl Toolbox is a series of hex tiles for creating worlds and running hex crawls. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Day 29: Awesome app—I know it will be D&D Beyond for many people. Don’t get me wrong; I have a subscription and own a few (just a few!) of the books there. It is good, but as I am currently running Savage Worlds, my favorite “app” is Savaged.us, a suite of tools to run Savage Worlds. It is very useful.

Day 30: Person you’d like to game with – I’d like to play with the man who created this blog, the Stargazer himself! I’ve known Michael for so many years, and we’ve never gamed together. I’d love to sit at a table and game with him.

You may ask yourself, what about day 31? I have a special post planned for that. See you tomorrow.

Want to know more about  #RPGaDay? Check out David Chapman’s Autocratik blog post for RPG a Day 2024.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Trap. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 4: Invent and item.

The Great Engine: The Wyrm Trap

The Great Engine of the downed techno-magic skyship, the Great Reaver, was before them. Long ago, dragons left the world. The stories of the Order of the Sleeping Wyrms told how dragons had left the world in the age of mortals only to return when needed. But the Curse Bearer told her the truth. Invaders from another dimension, another world, had created these engines to power their skyship. Engines that trapped the might of dragons and made powerful their conquest across the reality.

A wyrm trap is an artifact created to harness dragons’ life force, magic, and primal ties to reality. It uses that energy to power great reality-warping skyships that could travel across realities. Despite myriad realities, dimensions, and worlds, no two dragons are alike in any of the countless reflections of creation. In all their creative and destructive majesty, they embody the creative forces that gave birth to reality.

In time immemorial, a race of tinkers in a far-off distant world had built machines that ravaged their world, and they sought to create an artifact powerful enough to recreate their world. They tapped into the power of dragons to do so and made the ships, their servants of flesh and steel and the disembodied minds that came to be known as the Aye Eyes, to control the might of their creation. The ships were sent out with these Wurm Traps as their source of power to harness the life force of the dragons.

While this endeavor occurred, the ship’s creators and their world died, and the fleet continued its quest with no end in sight. Some ships disappeared in countless realities, and others conquered whole universes, but gradually, they absorbed the dragons, stripping the worlds of their power and fracturing reality. Now, only the Great Engine in the runs of the ship deep within Ravall. In it pulse the powers of the dragons that remain, trapped inside the core, as this world, like many others before, slowly dies and fades away.

In the final gambit, the players are in place. See you tomorrow for the final post!

2024 has been a celebration of all the beautiful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Thanks to everyone who has read the posts this year.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Knight. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 2: Create and NPC.

Lady Cashara Nazar of the Order of the Sleeping Wyrm

Lady Cashara Nazar was born in the city of Ylliris on the coast of the Sapphire Sea. The daughter of an artisan and priestess, she lost her family when a summer storm guided a tribe of sea devils to the shores of Ylliris. The creatures massacred the city’s inhabitants, and the Order of the Sleeping Worm adopted her.

The great warriors of that ancient but dying order raised her. When Cashara was knighted, less than thirty knights were left on the order. In the distant past, the order was rumored to have been composed of dragon riders, but the passing of dragons had left them without their majestic companions.

Their priest told the tale that dragons had fallen into a deep slumber during the age of mortals but would return when needed. The agents of the Darkness hunted down the few rumored dragons left in the world.

Lady Cashara Nazar traveled to the Rixes River Valley to join the Alliance of the River Kings troops. She served under Captain and later General Arago. She led the Heroes of Reavefalls, who evaded the last protectors of Ravall by following the underground rivers that entered the caverns beneath the ancient city of gears and steam by the great falls that empty into the caverns.

These heroes destroyed the Fleshmaster Brain that controlled the other Fleshmasters. With their foul leader dead, the other Fleshmasters fell, allowing the troops of General Arago to death the automatons of Ravall.

Lady Nazar had a vision that a great sleeping wyrm would awaken from the depths of Ravall, and she remained behind. In these caverns, she met a tattooed old man who, like her, sought a vision of The Tracker. The Curse Bearer revealed that the man all the allied Kings and the other free people sought was here. She saw this as a poof of her vision and journeyed with the Curse Beare deeper and deeper into the depth beneath Ravall.

A new player this late in the game!? She’s traveling to the final scene with the Curse Bearer from Day 18. See you tomorrow!

It is never too late to join #RPGaDay2024. If you find a topic interesting, write about it, comment on it, or talk about it on your socials. The goal is to celebrate all the wonderful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Don’t forget to tag your contribution with the hashtag and share it with us here, on social media, and in the #RPGaDay 2024 Facebook Group.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Mimic. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 5: Write a legend or rumor.

An excerpt of the famed Treatise on the Origin of Mimics

Presented to the Assembly of Scholars in Veriall,

on the Summer of the17th Year of the New Dynasty

“While many explorers and scholars may know of the common Mimic, a creature with a mutable shape that can assume the appearance and texture of inanimate objects. While a chest is a familiar image of the beast, there are stories of larger Mimics, some as large as a house. However, the recently unearthed secret tomes of the Cabal of the Masters of Sakai propose the origin of Mimics.

These fallen warlocks propose that Mimics are related to the Fleshmasters of Ravall. They are similar creatures created by the Aye Eye master of the skyship the Great Reaver that crashed to Ravall in antiquity and came to form the great dungeon under the capital of that long-ago kingdom. These creatures were taken by tomb robbers who made their way to the ruins of Ravall, taking them to other lands and spreading them throughout the world.

However, a story claims that the ancient skyship the Great Reaver was an amalgam of metal and flesh and that large parts of the ship were alive. To validate these claims, those who adhere to this theory refer to the events of the destruction of the Great Engine in Ravall and the Rise of the Wyrms twenty-three years ago.

The stories claim the man who has come to be known to us as The Tracker was hiding in the ruins of Ravall, in the tunnels of the Great Reaver, and that the profane Lich Necromancer Karuthos, servant of the Darkness, had awakened the remains of the Fleshmasters to hunt and destroy The Tracker.

The foul undead creature that Karuthos had created hunted The Tracker, finally cornering him in the grand corridor that led to the Great Engine in the depths of Ravall. The Lich and their monstrosity were set to consume the mortal the Darkness feared most. But as they prepared for their final blow, the corridor shook. The ruin itself was not made of stone or metal. It was a living creature that consumed the Necromancer and the animated amalgam of the Fleshmaster. Allowing the Tracker to Escape and reach his final destination.”

I’ll see you all tomorrow. I hope you’re enjoying these as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.

It is never too late to join #RPGaDay2024. If you find a topic interesting, write about it, comment on it, or talk about it on your socials. The goal is to celebrate all the wonderful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Don’t forget to tag your contribution with the hashtag and share it with us here, on social media, and in the #RPGaDay 2024 Facebook Group.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Shapeshifting. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 1: Describe a monster.

Undead Pit of Fleshmasters

The Lich Necromancer Karuthos walked down Ravall’s now silent corridors. In the depths of the catacombs are the Fleshmasters, the remains of ten, perhaps twelve, some torn apart, others fallen with their shapes half melted. The Heroes of Reavefalls destroyed the genetic pits and the Fleshmaster Brain that resided there. But Karathos can feel the flesh, the lifeless mass, and calls forth the power residing there, awakening it in death. The remains of the Fleshmasters slide and crawl, forming a boiling, roiling mass of alien flesh animated by the lich’s necromantic powers.

An undead pit of Fleshmasters is the remains of a clutch of the shapeshifting alien creatures animated by dark necromantic arts. It can shapeshift into giant creatures that are dead and lifeless. It cannot speak or communicate; it screeches and bubbles. In its natural form, it falls upon enemies like a wave, consuming them with its acidic touch. Leaving behind the bleached bones of those it absorbs.

Karuthos looks at its creation. His control over the awakened creature is tenuous but enough to give it a simple command. Hunt The Tracker! He hides in the ruins of Ravall, and you will kill it for Karuthos master, the Darkness.

Will the undead Fleshmasters find The Tracker? Join me tomorrow, and we’ll find out together.

It is never too late to join #RPGaDay2024. If you find a topic interesting, write about it, comment on it, or talk about it on your socials. The goal is to celebrate all the wonderful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Don’t forget to tag your contribution with the hashtag and share it with us here, on social media, and in the #RPGaDay 2024 Facebook Group.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Tattoo. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 3: Write a bulletin board quest.

Wanted!

All across the Rixes River Valley and beyond, this wanted poster is posted in every town square and handed out to every noble and guild. General Arago has commanded every soldier in his army to look for this man. He sent forth questing knights of the Order of the Silver River to find this man who Gavinia the Mighty believes holds the key to final victory over the powers of the Darkness.

Wanted! Alive and safe. The Alliance of the Kings of the Rixes River, the Clans of the Great Ruhn, and the Conclave of the Cities of Autumn seek this man. He is known variedly as the Tracker, the Curse Marked, the Witness of Secrets, or the Mageflame. We seek his aid in fighting for the world’s freedom from the oppression of the Darkness. The magical tattoos he bears change color and shape and can be sensed as a potent ensorcellment to any with the sight of magic.

The gathered enemies of the allied free and good people of the land hunt for him and seek to destroy him. This man may be incapable of controlling the energies he can call forth through the tattoos he bears and may affect those who wield magic in unpredictable ways. Those who escort him to the officers of General Arago will receive titles and lands for their heroic actions. Let no stone be unturned until we find him!

Continuing the story of the Tracker, some time has passed when he returns to the world, and the power he wields through the tattoos he bears is harder and harder to control. The forces of good and evil seek him for very different reasons. Will adventurers find him and deliver him safely to those seeking help, or will the hordes of the Darkness destroy him? We’ll find out this week!

It is never too late to join #RPGaDay2024. If you find a topic interesting, write about it, comment on it, or talk about it on your socials. The goal is to celebrate all the wonderful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Don’t forget to tag your contribution with the hashtag and share it with us here, on social media, and in the #RPGaDay 2024 Facebook Group.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Mutant. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 2: Create an NPC.

The Tracker

The infernal beast is vanquished, three Guardians are dead, and the other four, including the bandaged man, are using their magic to rebuild the Orrery of the Beyond. They pay me no heed. There are more pressing concerns. I feel the burn of the magical energies on my skin, but I won’t stay around to ask for an explanation. I saw other portals, like the ways that led me here in a smaller hall, time to jump into the unknown.

As I sneak down the corridor to my destination, I pass a fountain, bend down to splash water on my still-burning skin, and see it. I am not burned but marked—strange and enigmatic runes and symbols on my skin—no time for questions. I have to get out of there. I’ll figure this all out soon enough.

The Tracker is a young man trained in stealth and deception by the Pilfers’ Guild in the streets of Ceronia. The Sisters of the Merciful Mother gave an orphan to the Orphan House of The Abbey of Gullion, but the monks are drunks, and the children are often recruited because of their abilities. This young man was trained as a scribe by the monks, but he often climbed up the walls undetected to explore the city, recruited by the Pilfers, and promised a life of adventure.

He refused to kill at their behest, and shortly before his skin was inked for the Guild, he escaped the city and made his way as a porter, tomb explorer, and hunter. In this role, he learned that his skills could be put to good use to track those who did not want to be found. He worked for bounty hunters, warlocks, and jilted lovers, looking for the truth. One such job, to find a cursed priest, had begun this wild adventure, and now he was forever changed by the magic of the Orrery of the Beyond, with magical powers he was yet to unravel.  

So, he’s called the Tracker. The name came to me as soon as I read the topic today. Mutated by magic, how will our narrator fare now? Will he make it to the end of the story? I’m not sure; let’s find out together.

It is never too late to join #RPGaDay2024. If you find a topic interesting, write about it, comment on it, or talk about it on your socials. The goal is to celebrate all the wonderful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Don’t forget to tag your contribution with the hashtag and share it with us here, on social media, and in the #RPGaDay 2024 Facebook Group.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Antique. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 6: Create a random table.

This antique will do…

(This is a direct continuation of the post from Day 22)

The woman in the white and golden robes and the bandaged man with the silver and blue robes sand before the orrery, their hands outstretched, concentrating on whatever power allows them to control this magic. In the contraption, I see my world, a ritual gone wrong, and a foul infernal beast ready to attack. I know this is their doing. They have meddled and will doom my world to save others. I can’t allow it. I grab one of the knick-knacks around the structure; from the tables around the orrery, they all seem like antiques from distant places. This antique will do…

Roll 1d6 on this table to determine an antique from the tables around the Orrery of the Beyond.

1. A statue of a lion-dog hybrid carved from a blue rock with red veins. When picked up, the carving is warm to the touch and purrs. Dogs remain calm around the holder, and lions will not attack them.

2. A globe of translucent glass, its surface shifts, giving it the appearance of a soap bubble but retaining the consistency of solid glass. Inside is a whispy figure of a winged woman made of smoke. She begs to be released and promises to fulfill a wish if liberated.

3. A metronome made of dark oak and polished greenish metal. The person who activates it can hear the beat, but it sounds like a cacophonous, maddening shriek to others. It causes confusion and chaos to all listeners except those who activate it.

4. A gold abacus with gemlike beads enhances the cognitive abilities of those who count with it, but their affability diminishes. Once used to count, that person cannot perform mental math and must always rely on the abacus.

5. A metal replica of an alien tower, the tower’s shapes seem off, as if the corners and minutiae are somewhat skewed from other details. If you look inside the orifices in the miniature, you can almost notice tiny humanoid beings screaming in madness. Whoever takes the replica only gains half the benefits of resting and healing and cannot get rid of the item unless someone magically breaks the curse.

6. A glass dome holds the head of a four-eyed furry beast with sharp teeth; the severed head replies in any language it is spoken to. The beast answers truthfully or deceptively, flipping a coin to determine which. If the glass dome is lifted, the intelligence inhibiting the head switches places with whoever is holding the head, who remains trapped inside, answering questions until someone pries the eyes open.

I strike the man hard. He crumbles down, and the woman screams in anger or fear. I can’t tell which. The orrery shakes. She’s on top of me, trying to scratch my eyes out. The bandaged man groggily gets up and grabs the woman, who immediately calms down. “We’ve got to get out of here.” They look back and run. I look up to see what they are afraid of. The monster is crawling out of the orrery. Oh crap!

It feels like we’re close to the end of this month, and I’m telling the story. I hope you stick around to see it to the end.

It is never too late to join #RPGaDay2024. If you find a topic interesting, write about it, comment on it, or talk about it on your socials. The goal is to celebrate all the wonderful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Don’t forget to tag your contribution with the hashtag and share it with us here, on social media, and in the #RPGaDay 2024 Facebook Group.

19: Sensational session – What makes a sensational session? It’s a session where everyone playing, GM, and players have fun—where everybody is engaged and has something significant to do. People pay attention, engage with each other, respect other’s opinions and decisions, and allow others to shine.

20: Amazing adventure – What makes an amazing adventure? It is an adventure that provides the player’s agency, which is fun, engaging, and exciting for everyone, GM and players alike. An adventure that considers the character’s motivations, wants, and expectations, where the characters are the main characters, not mere observers, however lowly or lofty their roles may be. They are the main characters.

21: Classic campaign – A classic campaign is one everyone at the table enjoys; if they are having fun, the campaign will likely be remembered fondly. Whether short or long, a campaign where all involved, players and GM alike, collaborate to tell a compelling story is far more satisfying than one person’s showcase others get to visit. Some players want to be all-in on creating the world, while others are more concerned about their characters. As a GM, collaborate with them, use what they give you, ask for input, and don’t dismiss what they bring. Some games have mechanics that encourage this more than others, but we can all pitch in to make our campaigns more memorable.

22: Notable non-player character – A notable NPC is one the players remember, one that supports the characters, shares information, and is a motivation, be it a hated opponent or beloved ally. But most of all, a notable NPC never outshined the characters. I’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating: Game Masters, never fall in love with your NPCs; they are not “your character,” they are the supporting actors to the main characters, the player’s characters.

23: Peerless player – A peerless player is engaged, understands the rules, helps the GM and fellow players have fun, and is always ready for adventure. We are not perfect; we are not machines and have good days and off days. No one is perfect, but as long as we strive to be respectful, inclusive, helpful, and fun, we all aspire to be that peerless player.

24: Acclaimed advice – Don’t sweat the small stuff! You will forget the rules, and some sessions will be better than others. Know this will happen, accept it, and don’t beat yourself up about it. Strive to be better. Learn from your mistakes. RPGs are games, and they are meant to be fun, focus on the positive, and overcome the negative. Play, and don’t get lost in preparation or hesitation. Roll the dice and go for it.

I got philosophical this week, but the advice is heartfelt. I hope you find it useful.

Want to know more about  #RPGaDay? Check out David Chapman’s Autocratik blog post for RPG a Day 2024.

The RPG challenge theme for today is Ritual. Rolling a 1d10 for the quest. The result is 10: Draw! Oh no, I’m sorry.

The Broken Mirror

Gavinia the Mighty raised her staff above her. It cracked with power, focusing her might on the ritual. The soldiers of her beloved Prince Urthen stepped back in awe. They brought the Mirror of the Worlds Beyond after their prince fell in battle. She would not let his death be in vain. She unleashed the power, and the mirror cracked. The way to the halls of the Nocturnal Potentates would at last be within their reach. Captain Arago and his companions were ready to accompany her to face their world’s oppressors.

But the ritual backfired; the portal was not a door but a conduit. With the unrelenting pulse of energy the ritual had unleashed, the face of a great enemy could be seen…

I am no good at drawing, and that’s the result of what you see above—excuses, dear reader.

It is never too late to join #RPGaDay2024. If you find a topic interesting, write about it, comment on it, or talk about it on your socials. The goal is to celebrate all the wonderful things tabletop role-playing games bring to our lives and the positive elements of the community. Don’t forget to tag your contribution with the hashtag and share it with us here, on social media, and in the #RPGaDay 2024 Facebook Group.