The role of adventurers has evolved throughout the editions of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Initially, they were dungeon delvers, mercenaries, and treasure hunters. But the newer editions portray and depict the player characters as the heroes of epic tales. And yet many groups are little more than lawless murder hobos terrorizing the realm with their insane power levels and destructive capabilities. So I ask you, what would be the opinion of most folk be of these adventurers?  "What is an adventurer? One who goes on adventures? I say that an adventurer is a hero. And what is a hero? A hero is someone with the strength of heart, courage of spirit, and the might of will to go to strange lands and enact violence on the things there. We go to places where there are things that must be destroyed, and we destroy them. Wandering from town to town, getting into trouble, meeting in flophouses and taverns, and getting into scrapes with the law, and otherwise finding ourselves engaged in...

Just got back from The Gamer's Wharf  where I ran the first of two D&D adventures to cover the game slots usually occupied by Brett and Mike. They're both at GenCon and this seemed like a good time to show the group what my style of DMing looks like. I overpacked and under prepared, couldn't find half my notes, and just ran things the way I thought would be most enjoyable. I had fun. The players seemed to have fun. I think it went well and I feel like I set things in place for more adventure tomorrow. It wasn't really certain how many folks were going to make it to the game today. At minimum there was going to be three players, but attendance could have been as high as seven players. That would be a big, hard to manage group, but I prepared accordingly. We ended up with a very reasonable four players; Bob, Brent, Caroline, and Joshua. I made adjustments and things went well. No characters died.  So what happened and how did it go? For starters, that title " Pr...

I'm just gonna do it. Enough talk. If we don't push this bird out of the nest it'll just sit in the tree forever. And with that decision made, I'm going live with the Adventure: Tombs of Cathedra open table.  Saturday & Sunday I'm going to run a two part adventure for the Random Encounter group while our DM is at Gen Con. I'm expecting at least 6 players each day, maybe as many as 8. It's going to be a gang of 3rd level characters and I'm calling part one, Probably an Owlbear , and part two is going to be  The Anchorite Crypt . I've never run a game for any of these folks so I'm hopeful that my playstyle and theirs will mesh nicely and everyone will have fun. Starting Wednesday, and every other following Wednesday, I'm going to be running the open table at The Gaming Warehouse . I've got 3-4 interested players from the opposite Wednesday game that have expressed an interest, and that's a good start. I posted my event on the store...

The Dungeon Master for our D&D: Adventures in Eberron campaign took the night off and I took the opportunity to offer up a 1-Shot adventure for anyone who was interested. Three out of the four players who expressed interest showed up and that turned out to make for a great, fast moving game session. I provided some pregenerated 1st-level characters so that we could skip making characters and get right into the gameplay. Which worked out, because they were able to make it through the entire adventure in the 2.5 hours allotted to us. They chose a fighter, a cleric, and a rogue. Which is just about the perfect party for delving into an ancient tomb full of restless spirits and deadly traps. The Hook: The tavernkeep has been sponsoring scavengers into the ruins. His last group of proteges had a bit of bad luck and only one of them made it back to the fort. But... they did find a way in to the crypt. There is a cave above the tomb to the north. Some resourceful grave robbers have dug ...

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...

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 ...