The adventures of both Thergale the Verdant and Walton Glaives have been put on hiatus for this Sunday so that everyone can spend time celebrating the Easter holiday in whatever fashion they will. I will be going to visit my in-laws where we hope to eat chinese food and enjoy each others company. Happy Easter! If you're into that sort of thing. Happy Sunday, if you're not.

Despite all my prep work, Thergale the Verdant isn't coming out of his folder today. I touched up the paint on his miniature. I reworked my character sheet and game reference materials. I'm just not feeling it. I just let them know in our Discord channel that I won't be there today. My voice is shot. This damn cough is annoying. And maybe I'm just tired, but I'm not feeling it today. But I will take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick's day!

The Three-Dragon Problem campaign is supposed to be running monthly, but it isn't. I've got lots of ideas and plans that will probably not come to fruition. I'm enjoying it, but its a rough haul. Monthly is a tough schedule for an ongoing campaign, I don't feel I'm getting as much investment in the game as I'd like and its tough to keep everyone engaged with that much time between games. The group made characters and had our session zero in January 2023, but then it was 22-days before they got to play those characters. We ran through a 2-part adventure where we had a 28-day break between part 1 and part 2. The next session was 13-days later, but it was something of a flop, where things got bogged down in town. Then there was a huge break of 70-days before the group made it to an ambush on the road leading to a goblin bandit cave. It was another 64-days before we got back together and they walked into the town they left for seven months ago in the real world. It...

I've been wanting to run a game and have been doing a bunch of prep for that possibility. Initially, I was thinking of running a traditional campaign sort of thing, but Adventure: The Three-Dragon Problem mostly fills that roll. The more thought given to the idea, the more it has evolved into an open table idea. Short excursions out from a central location. Adventures that are not dependent on what has come before, but which are interconnected with those and with adventures yet to come. Something that can support a wide a mix of characters and a diverse, but narrower, mix of both character level and player experience. I like the idea of the " West Marches " style campaign, but haven't had much luck putting the game in the hands of the players in that way. Everybody says they hate a "railroad" but nobody wants to drive the adventure, so in my experience you've got to give them a road trip: a straight line to where they're going with the opportunity t...

Today, I am joining a new group of fellow adventurers. It's another D&D 5e game, this time DMed by my buddy Bob, who plays the half-orc trio in Random Encounters and was part of our initial Cyberpunk crew. My understanding is that it'll be 6 players and every session will be a level for the first 10 levels.  I'm late to the party, because I thought I needed to leave room in my schedule for my own campaign. Apparently not; we haven't played since November, so that may have died the unspoken death. Anyway, they're level 5, so I assume I've missed at least that many sessions. I've decided to play a dwarf barbarian in this game and that's what I showed up to the table with... Druss Lorgan the Ironroar , blackest name amongst the Shield Dwarves of Icewind Dale. Mountain dwarf. Path of the berserker barbarian. Inspired by a mix of David Gemmell's Druss the Legend and Joe Abercrombie's Logan Ninefingers . He's a big, powerful dwarf who's see...

I enjoy The Alexandrian and think the author puts out solid advice and RPG commentary, so I preordered Justin Alexander's book as soon as I heard about it. But after buying the book in November, I realized my too be read pile is very large and I had no idea when I was going to get around to reading So You Want To Be A Game Master . But when I saw it available on audible, I threw a credit at it immediately and added it to my library. Having finished listening to it, I can say that it is very good, very well written, and packed full of good advice. I am looking forward to digging into my paper copy, doing the exercises, and giving it a more thorough going over. You don't need me to review this book for you. There are many reviews out there of this book by luminaries in the RPG industry, YouTubers, and regular folks like me. It's good. Lots of good advice for running games, coming up with campaigns, building adventures, and managing your table. It listens well, if a little o...

I do not like it when that one face on my die has a logo on it. I will stick with numbers, please and thank you.

Another cancelation. Another missed game. There seems to be a lot of these lately. I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I'm becoming increasingly discontent with the location we've chosen and our use of it. I'm not convinced they really want us there and we kinda take over the back of the store in a way that affects other patrons. Other than the food, which seems like a problem, we're not being unruly, it just seems that the place gets pretty busy after church lets out and other folks always seem like they'd use a table if we'd give up one of our four. Nobody else in the group gives it any mind, but it eats at me a bit. I just wish it felt more comfortable. Anyway, the bookstore we play at is doing an inventory count and opening late today. So, rather than do a delayed start and have a short session, we're not gathering to roll dice. We'll be back in two weeks to continue our adventures and see what Thergale the Verdant is up to. I'm going to tak...

Let’s look at character advancement in Dungeons & Dragons using the numbers from the core rules and assuming a medium difficulty encounter. You can see that the number of encounters per level to advance is all over the place, resulting in certain levels taking many more challenges to advance than others. Using the XP Table, you’ll face an average of 11.6 medium encounters to level a character. The actual number ranges from 6 to more than 17 encounters. This triggers something in our brains and makes us want to fix the system.  We're not even going to reference the Adventuring Day XP chart in the Dungeon Master's Guide … that is just a crazy thing that we propose you ignore. Player’s Handbook Dungeon Master’s Guide Adventure: Tombs of Cathedra Class Level Experience Points Medium Challenge  XP Threshold Challenges To Next Level House Rule Experience Points Challenges To Next Level 1 0 50 6 0 10 2 300 100 6 500 10 3 900 150 12 1,500 10 4 2,700 250 15.2 3,000 10 5 6,500 500 ...