Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

One of my players recently did some work on building a set of custom terrain pieces. Here's the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpIeih3kmyU&sns=em One of the things I really like is the flexibility of what he built. As the video shows, so many of the pieces can easily and quickly be reused in different configurations. I hope you'll give the video a look, and feel free to leave comments here, or on the YouTube page.

Do you know the enemy? Do you know your enemy? Well, gotta know the enemy -- Green Day - Know Your Enemy Images can be a powerful tool for DMs. Some of the earliest D&D modules (i.e. Tomb of Horrors ) included illustration books that helped DMs to further show what the PCs were seeing at certain key moments and locations in an adventure. Also, along those same lines, miniatures not only help show where everyone is during a given moment of combat, but the sculpts and paint jobs also help clarify who or what the PCs are fighting (otherwise you could just use chess pieces for positioning). Another area where images can be very useful is for key NPCs. In any adventure there are usually one or two antagonists for the PCs to face, from the town mayor, to "the evil necromancer" to the "goblin king". For some of these characters (the necromancer and the goblin king) miniatures might be useful, but for the town mayor, a miniature isn't probably very useful,...

As my past reviews here and here have indicated, I'm not very fond of the Kre-o Dungeons and Dragons figures, but considering how truly iconic the character of Drizzt is, I just had to pick one up. As for the figure itself I think it's a wonderful representation of the much beloved drow ranger. The kreon has a nice white hair piece, comes with two scimitars, and has great detail in the torso printing, down to the fur lining of his cloak. The figure also comes with a nice bow and pieces to make a small tree with a practice bulls eye. Unfortunately, that's all you get, and that's where this set, and all the Warriors sets in general, really miss their mark. For the extra price of the set, the Warriors sets run at least $1 more than the blind figure packs, all you get is a handful of extra pieces. In the case of the Drizzt set, just getting a lone figure doesn't really seem like an iconic presentation. Where is Guenhwyvar, his panther companion? The kre-o line ...

No other component of rpgs, from the earliest versions of Dungeons and Dragons to the latest Pathfinder or 13th Age releases, is more iconic or necessary to the game than The Map. The Map helps new and experienced DMs quickly describe a dungeon, lay out a town, or, in some cases, set up a temporal flowchart of actions and events. And the chief tool for setting any of these up is graph paper. Now graph paper is readily available in office supply stores and most retail stores. At 4 squares per inch, a single 8.5" x 11" sheet of typical graph paper yields 34 x 44 squares, which at 5ft per square (the de facto scale of modern maps) ends up being over 37,000 square feet of area to map. For most maps, this should be more than enough area, but what if you need something else? Maybe you want more area for a larger map, or to detail a major city, or what if you're like me, and you want extra area around the map to add all sorts of notes and legends? Then you might want to ch...

A couple of news bits recently in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. First off, the TV show Community is doing another D&D themed episode. Considering how well received their first episode was, this is probably required viewing, even if you're not tuning in to the show regularly. Check your local listings for air times. The folks at Dwarven Forge, who's miniatures terrain is often considered the gold standard for 3D pre-painted terrain is doing another Kickstarter. Last year they ran one offering dungeon terrain in a new durable plastic they call Dwarvenite. This time around they are offering Caverns in the new material. They met their initial funding in under 30 minutes and are now on their way to exceed $2 mil, all of which is unlocking plenty of stretch goals and add-on packs. If you are interested at all in using 3D terrain at your game, you definitely want to check out their Caverns KS . Lastly, looking forward to GenCon, Baldman Games has posted some info on ...

If you've been following along with the various game sessions and specifically the last Dragon Island session ( here ), then the start of this entry may seem a little jarring. Here's the real world story. In real life, one of the players, Eric (who played the kender thief Theo) was leaving town. He was starting law school out of state and would be leaving on a fixed date. I had planned for this adventure to be the capstone for the first campaign arc, and I was eager to wrap the adventure and the arc in the available time left. It seemed right that Eric, who had been a long time player (second only to Mike in seniority) should see the end of all the hard work they and their characters had put in to the game. Unfortunately, more real world events got in the way and I ended up not having the number of sessions that I thought I would. Still wanting to make this finale take place before Eric left for law school, I borrow the trope of the black-out time jump that would take the P...

" Ice-T records D&D Audiobook " When I first read this, I had to double check that I wasn't on The Onion. In fact I went to several different sources and even listened to the Ice-T podcast to confirm at least his claim of having recorded a D&D book for Audible. In the podcast, he claims it was a short story, which actually sounds plausible. Various anthology collections (Steven King coming first to mind) will use different narrators for each story. I tried to follow up with Audible Customer Service, but they had no details on what book or short story he recorded or when such a product might be available. If this is true, and actually gets released, I look forward to hear it (I think). File this in the Strange but True (for Now) category. Update: 8/12/2014 Seems this story is true. Ice-T's contribution is part of a short story anthology (as I originally suspected) called the Legend of Drizzt. Here's a link to the audiobook on Audible. Note f...