Review: Origins Expanded

I was delighted to receive an Advanced Reader Copy of Origins Expanded: Background, Species, and Culture Options for 5.5e. Since I have this English degree, it feels great to be recognized as an advanced reader! (Oh, the life of a Gifted Kid.) It’s written by Lucas J. W. Johnson and […]

Three figures sit on a bench, with a diverse array of species and magical markings

LARP Design: Citadel Field Battles

Citadel LARP is approaching the end of its second year, so I’m revisiting series on field battle (that is, “climactic action on a Saturday night”) design to discuss some of the things we’ve done. For Citadel players and my fellow staffers, this isn’t intended as a postmortem on the implementation […]

Arcana Unleashed Breakdown, Part Three 1

Welcome back to my series on Arcana Unearthed! Today we’re wrapping up subclasses, then moving into Backgrounds and Feats. If you’ve missed the other posts up to this point, check the links below. Part One | Part Two | Part Three Transmuter The 5.0 School of Transmutation looks like a […]

Standard (non-collector) cover image of Arcana Unleashed. Depicts Alustriel Silverhand floating in air with her staff raised, casting a spell. She looks focused and powerful.
Standard (non-collector) cover image of Arcana Unleashed. Depicts Alustriel Silverhand floating in air with her staff raised, casting a spell. She looks focused and powerful.

Arcana Unleashed Breakdown, Part Two 4

Welcome back, readers! This time out, I’m hitting the next three subclasses in Arcana Unleashed, the new mostly-player-facing book from WotC. The first three looked pretty solid, so let’s see how the next hold up! Part One | Part Two It’s really strange that a book about unleashing arcana has […]

Arcana Unleashed Breakdown, Part One 6

It has been ages since I’ve written a breakdown post. Yesterday, though, I picked up a copy of Arcana Unleashed and AU: Deadfall from Tyche’s Games in Athens, GA, and I realized I miss the practice. This book is intended for all D&D settings, while using Alustriel Silverhand for its […]

Standard (non-collector) cover image of Arcana Unleashed. Depicts Alustriel Silverhand floating in air with her staff raised, casting a spell. She looks focused and powerful.

Twenty Merchants and Their Wares 2

I’ve really enjoyed creating collections of briefly summarized NPCs (see previous entries below!), and today I’m doing merchants. Whether you’re running a shopping session or an investigation in a fantasy version of the Marrakesh Night Market, these might be useful for making the place feel real, lived-in, and just a […]

Birthright: Revolution

A few days ago in Bluesky, some of my favorite folks were discussing their deep affection for the 2e Birthright setting. If you’ve read this blog for any great length of time, you know that I too am a devotee of Birthright, and co-DMed a BR campaign with Kainenchen for […]

Six New Archfey Spells 4

My wife has been playing Ileskku, an Archfey warlock, as one of her two main characters in Aurikesh since 2012, and a lot of my tweaks to the warlock class over the years have come from her experience with that character. This time, the issue is that the Warlock spell […]

Higher-CR Gargoyles 4

The Tome Show’s long-running deep dive into each monster of the 5.5 Monster Manual has made me realize how much I miss the higher-CR stat variants that are such a big part of the 4e MMs. I’m also aware of a recent release on the DM’s Guild, “More Monsters,” that […]

Add Mystery to Magic Items 5

This post comes from a conversation with Avantris Entertainment’s Lead Designer, Dan Dillon, the other day. He observed that 3.x and earlier editions of D&D had more secrets and surprises built into its magic items, such as items that initially appeared to be much more common versions, so that the […]