This Was a Real Thing Buried deeply in the voluminous appendix of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide was indeed a “Random Harlot Table”. It included such gems as a “sly pimp”, “expensive doxy”, and “saucy tart”. For all those times […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Bland Boxed Text So much work has been spent on making the last two editions of Dungeons & Dragons easier for Game Masters, making monsters easier to create, NPCs easier to generate, and the like. But the biggest time sink […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Captcha-cha-cha The Tomb of Horrors is interesting. Most dungeons begins, have a little introduction, and then have a puzzle. Sometimes the puzzle even follows several combats. But the infamous Tomb begins with a puzzle. You need to solve a minor […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Sightless Eyes Mechanically, sexual preference probably wouldn’t matter; women are blinded by a nymph just as easily as a man. Unearthly beauty is apparently gender-blind. I’m surprised more people don’t play gay characters. Something like one-in-ten people are LGBT+ (or, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Replacement Three lame character backgrounds are the brother of a dead adventurer who is the same in every regard, the orphan who cares for nothing and no one, and the amnesiac. Replacement characters are either the result of a very […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Sudden Yet Inevitable Betrayal Let me set the stage. Your party has been summoned by your quest giver. He that tasked you to venture into the rotten heart of the Three Dooms Swamp to retrieve the final shard of the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Definition Exactly what makes someone an adventurer is a little ineffable, at least inside the fantasy of the game. Outside of the game the definition is easy: adventurers are characters being controlled by a player. But in-world what exactly defines […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Pick Up Group I don’t think I’ve ever had my party meet in a tavern. Even as a rookie Dungeon Master, removed from all the stereotypes and cliches I never had them just bump into each other in a tavern […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Hobo With A Longsword A curious term for D&D adventurers that I only heard recently is “murder hobo”. While mildly offensive it’s a pretty accurate description of what adventurers doing in a fantasy RPG. They almost universally lack permanent homes […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Into the Deep Vast subterranean worlds have become a big part of D&D but one that is not nearly as prevalent in the source fiction. There are occasionally small kingdoms or lost worlds under the earth, the token race of […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A Cowardly Annoyance I’ve been listening to the “Mines of Madness” podcast over on the Dungeons & Dragons site and could listen to Greg Bisland voice the goblin Hughug for hours. It was endlessly entertaining. At the same time, I’m […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
An Unassailable Position Once they reach a certain level, PCs start to feel unkillable. Their armour, skill, and magic make them unhittable by the common man and vast numbers of low level opponents are needed to bring them down. There’s […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
