I saw the Untold Encounters of the Random Kind book on Amazon a while back, and having liked the Loke Battlemats 2-book sets, I added it to my RPG Stuff list. It's a very long list. Today, I found it at one of my local hobby shops, just sitting on the shelf tucked away among a whole lot of other things I wasn't particularly interested in. I picked it up to give it a look-see and my immediate thought was, damn this is a heavy book. It feels disproportionally heavy for it's size. My second thought was, why do they have to wrap all these books in plastic? I'd really like to give it a flip through. It was $10 less than on Amazon, so I bought it. Having taken the plastic wrap off and given it a flip-through, I can now give you my initial thoughts on the thing. It's a heavy, 339 page book of random tables and idea prompts. There's not a bunch of highly detailed ideas and tiny adventures, this is a book of generalities. Which is how I like my ideas. The back cover br...

Tonight, I spent my Amazon credit to watch Secrets of Blackmoor: The True History of Dungeons & Dragons. It's not great, certainly not something for a disinterested audience, but if you're interested in the history of D&D or RPGs it's very interesting. Features a cast of alumni from the Blackmoor Group which was Dave Arneson's game group. An interesting discussion of how tabletop roleplaying developed and evolved to become the games we know today. Dave Arneson & Gary Gygax brought us D&D, but they didn't do so from a vacuum. There were a lot of other contributions pulled from the community of gamers from which they assembled their game. Much like today, it's the community of gamers all trying to make their games better and more fun that drives this hobby forward. 

Hey all, things have been shifting around pretty unpredictably for awhile now. I'm afraid Sunday morning D&D isn't going to work with my schedule any longer and I'm going to drop from the game. It's been great and I've enjoyed playing with all of you. If things change in the future I'd be happy to come back. I'll leave the DnDBeyond campaign up so you all can continue to use it, but I won't be at the table for the foreseeable future.

  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.

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 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...

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 ...

We use the Cyberpunk themed version of these Loke books in our game and they work really nicely. So I was inspired to buy myself some and of course I went overboard and bought three two-book sets. These aren't quite as large as the Cyberpunk maps, the giant books are 12x16 inches and these are 12x12 inches, but that still makes for a good size map. 12x24 if you use the two page spread or 24x24 if you combine two books as Loke intends them to be used. The quality is good. The art is fair. The usefulness... well, time will tell. I'm excited to use them and can envision a whole bunch of possibilities. Besides, each one of them comes with a blank grid map to increase their versatility.  I picked up three of the 2 book sets; The Dungeon, Castles, Crypts & Caverns, and Towns & Taverns. Like I just mentioned, each is a 2 book set of paired map sets. Meaning they can combined or used alone, depending on your needs and wants. You get 40 maps in each book, one per page or half th...

I have used a Chessex vinyl battle mat for years and outside of ruining a few of them with the wrong markers, have had no complaints. But as I've played more and more in public spaces the one thing I've noticed repeatedly is that identical tables do not line up identically when you push them together. And the more tables you bring together, the greater an issue this creates. This is not ideal for a supple and luxurious rolling battle mat. They much prefer a uniform level surface. This is true of the cheaper rolling mats and the large folded poster sheets as well. Even the folding stiff mats get wonky when the table heights don't match up. So, I started looking for options. These Andvari Battle Boards by GSM seem like they'll span the ridge without too much flex and solve at least part of the problem. I picked up the 9 board Mega Pack to give them a try. I don't know that I've found the ideal solution, but these ridged battle boards will work well with the foambo...

I'm still working through season 2, so no spoilers. Please. Today, I picked up copy of the roleplaying game based on the podcast, Old Gods of Appalachia. This a horror podcast written by Cam Collins and Steve Shell that debuted on October 31, 2019. The show is produced by DeepNerd Media and is distributed by Rusty Quill. If you care about that kind of stuff, I'm not sure I do. Anyway, the podcast was adapted into a role-playing game by Monte Cook Games. I really like the podcast, the ideas behind the stories, and Monte Cook Games tend to make pretty good stuff, so I have high hopes. I've been looking at this particular copy of the game for several months. Today, it decided to come home with me. Each episode of the podcast uses a combination of narration and audio drama to tell historical fiction stories based on Appalachian folklore. The stories are original fiction that draws on a mix of history and folk tales for inspiration and address strange things from witchcraft to t...

 Amazon delivered a couple packages of dice to my door today. Not sure why I'm buying as many dice as I am lately, but I really like the 11 dice sets as opposed to the usual 7 dice sets and both of these orders were for a pair of 11 piece sets.  First off, I'll show you the set I was eagerly anticipating. One set of black and white dice and one set of red and black from Sumind Store. These came with small felt bags for each and I think they are really good looking dice. I was less excited by this second set, but I was looking for 11 piece sets and this double set fit the bill. The red/black dice look a lot like the above dice, but they have tiny gold flecks in them. These are CiaraQ dice, and I've bought and enjoyed them before. These also came with a pair of black drawstring bags. I can say that I like them more than I expected too, that dark green is particularly nice. Now, I need to decide which characters to assign them too...

This session the table is made up by the following characters: Aurora Sylvan , helf-elf ranger Carsten Birch , human cleric Caverick Strawton , human druid Edgarial Grandsword , elf wizard-artificer Xaerv , human fighter Managing the chaos is the incomparable, DM Emily . Having followed the wide avenue into the heart of the ancient ruined city of the giants, we found an enormous amphitheater backed up against the rising wall of the ravine. Nesting comfortably within this once grandiose ruin we found a great feathered beast of a dinosaur, and I think rightfully decided this must be the King of Feathers we'd been warned about. The great beast was asleep as we stumbled upon it and we quickly retreated up into the stands to decide on our plan and leave us room for evasive action should the thing awaken before we were suitably prepared for the coming battle. Higher up in the stands we came upon a fellow explorer who was also deciding on a course of action. Aurora Sylvan, this half-elven...

The journey of the Deepnight Revelation continues...  Today the crew for this session of Brett's ongoing Traveller game consists of the following: Jeff "Mega" Credit in the role of XO, as played by Mike Will "Danger" Robinson engineer extraordinaire, as played by Brent Daryen "Lucky" Gavic the vagabond drifter and space rogue, as played by me (Ronn) Prime Directives? We don't have any such thing--go find the fungus and eliminate the threat it poses--that's our directive. Also, maybe, see what else is out there in the unexplored places in the universe... bring back the cool shit. Welcome to the Near Side of Yonder, maybe we'll find something cool... or at least a gas giant we can use to refuel the ship. We're so far outside charted space every jump is a surprise. The surprise this time being an arm of the Great Rift stretching across our planned course. Going around it will add years to our trip, so everybody is scrambling to find a c...

There seems to be some uncertainty surrounding the actual release date for the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, but based on my limited research of others work who have done considerably more research, it would seem the game was released in late-January 1974. Several of my sources have decided upon the 26th as the day to mark the anniversary and I have no contest with that date. And having prefaced this with all that, today is the 50th Anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Long live the king. The game has gone through many rule changes, variations, and editions in those 50 years, but it continues to thrive as both a game and an idea.  There had never been anything like it before and it continues to be a fount of inspiration and entertainment for those of us who love the game, the hobby, and dare I say, the lifestyle.  Dungeons & Dragons is my favorite game, it is my primary hobby, and it is the thing that probably most def...

Hey Chummer, there's a new crew on the streets of Night City, running the edge, sporting the look, and making everything more personal. Cyberpunk RED is about to get redefined, the rules are made to be broken and these Edgerunners are just lookin' for a chance to slammit on. Brett is our Gamemaster as we give the Cyberpunk RED system a try. The crew consists of three of the baddest Streetrats ever to run the edge. Bob is playing Mel the Nomad , a transport expert, ultimate road warrior, pirate, and smuggler working to keep the world connected. Weirdly, he has no gun, but that's just a sign of how off the rails this dude is. Mike is playing Grant M Phillips  the Medtech fixing what's broken, stabbed, or shot in the gang. He's not a sanctioned doctor or cyberware medic, but he's a steady hand at patching up meat and metal alike. I'm playing as Drago , a Solo assassin, bodyguard, killer, and soldier-for-hire in this lawless new world. We started off working fo...

 I blame the wife for this purchase and any other purchases that result from her showing me how much "D&D stuff" is on Temu . Mostly it's dice, but there are a few other things of interest. I needed some dice for Brett's Cyberpunk RED game so I ordered two sets of these, which leaves me extra, but they've got the right color scheme to feel apropos. These are Two sets because I wanted 5d6 and 2d10 with the single digits and even with it being an 11 piece dice set, I still won't get what I want from one. The brand name of these is LHSQIOQIO, but I don't know if that's the store name or the manufacturer. Just because the price was dirt cheap, I bought this 5 set of dice. They're just the usual 7 piece dice sets, but I paid less for them than I did for the single set I bought at the hobby store last time. I like the look of these, the color mix is nice, they're very legible, and they all look good with the gold lettering. The website says Allri...

Typically there are six of us on this bi-Wednesday game night, but a combination of factors left all but two of us unable to attend. Aviv and I were talking about what we wanted to do when a walk-in joined the table and made the nights adventure more viable. Aviv had his new MCDM Flee Mortals! book and wanted to discover if running straight out of the book was as easy as we've heard. So, Sharai and I spent a few minutes modifying our characters down to 3rd level. Actually, she leveled her character down to three and I put the finishing touches on a 3rd level fighter I'd worked up for the Early Sunday D&D game. Once we were done and Aviv had put the finishing touches on the nights scenario we jumped into the action. Aviv ran the game, Sharai played Aurora Sylvan, a half-elf ranger, and I played Solaris Marcel Grescian, a half-elf fighter. We drew the Judgement card from the Decuma deck and determined that our group had revealed the truth that the mayor of Lastlight was in al...

All the social media hype about the Dungeons & Dragons product hitting the discount outlets was mostly not something I was interested in. The stuff they were offering was either product I didn't want or had never heard of, but I was next door to Ollie's today and figured I'd just take a little look see at was on offer. They had some D&D stuff like action figures, the campaign packs, and a board game. Nothing I wasn't expecting. No surprises. I couldn't bring myself to buy the Dragonlance Warriors of Krynn game for $9.99, but at $2.99 each buying both of the Campaign Cases seemed like a fair trade. I'll show you a picture of the contents, but I'm not going to waste much digital ink describing them or their content. You can see what comes in the boxes in the pictures above. The boxes are cool looking and hold all the stuff that comes in them. Handy. You get a bunch of bases/tokens in the creature box and some dry/wet erase boards in the terrain box, bu...

I just canceled my Loot Studios  fantasy subscription, again, for the third time. I love their stuff and have almost every fantasy bundle they've put out, but I haven't done any 3D printing in 10 months and I don't know when I'll next get the chance. It just seems like a waste to keep paying for monthly bundles of figures. Besides, I have a very large backlog of grey plastic as is. I have things to paint, is what I'm saying. I'm reallocating that $15 to something else gaming related. I'm playing in two campaigns that are being run at The Gamer's Wharf hobby store. I like that they let us use the space, they've got a great stock of things I like, and the folks there seem like good people. So I'm going to take the money I was giving to 3D prints and give it to the hobby store. They have a Patreon  and I feel good contributing to it. Ideally, the perks of being a patreon supporter would be paid out in drinks and snacks, but alas, that is not the ca...

 Aaron is in the house and ready to bring the new campaign world to life. Eric is back. Ben and Alison are missing, but not gone? So I'm told. A couple new faces are at the table, Nate and Joshua. Best of the news is that I found my notes for the last couple sessions, so I can add posts for the last three sessions.