settings


D&D 5e: Expanded Background Assets 3

In D&D 5e, Backgrounds grant a modest assortment of equipment and a pocketful of starting cash. For many campaigns, this is fine and appropriate. You’re playing wanderers, sellswords, not to say murderhoboes, and a broader base of social and material assets will at best be in a town halfway across the […]


Campaigns I’d Like to Run: Dread Sigil 3

Some time back, Kainenchen and I were talking about campaigns that pit multiple factions of antagonists against one another, and for the PCs it’s devil take the hindmost. We came up with two different takes on the same high concept: a Planescape/Ravenloft mashup. I’m going to discuss both of them a […]


Birthright: the Regent of Style and Substance

I’ve mentioned Birthright a dozen or more times over the past few years of writing this blog, especially while playing around with SIFRP hacks, but I’ve never written a detailed post of why it deserves its place in the canon of D&D’s settings. If it weren’t wedded pretty heavily to its […]


Forgotten Realms: Odi Et Amo, Excrucior

In the past couple of months, for whatever reasons of nostalgia (and reading about the new expansion of Lords of Waterdeep), I’ve been thinking about the Forgotten Realms setting – likely the single most loved and hated setting in all of D&D. Hence the title of this post quoting Bernard Cornwell, […]