Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

During one of my recent wandering on the tubes, I came across a site called The Monster Engine where the artist started off with the children's drawings and then add light and shadow, depth and shading, all the while retaining all the physics-defying, physiology-stretching, lack of reality from the original drawing. The results are highly disturbing, and from a D&D point of view, look like something right out of the Far Realm . I could easily see the "finished" creatures being stat'ed up as something truly bizare, like something from Raistlin's Lair of the Live Ones (see Jeff Easley's painting here). Alternately, I could see a modern horror game centering around the original children's drawings, only for the heroes/investigators to confront the manifestations of those drawings (and showing the finished art for that reference). Either way, I highly encourage you to check out the The Monster Engine .

This story begins a few days after the last issue . Once again, we start with a nice little paragraph from Astinus recapping previous events and setting the stage for this issue. The wolf-clan dwarves are disposing the bodies of the dead neidar (hill dwarves) in a ritual fashion. Wolfthane stops the clan shaman's ritual short, not caring about his "mumbo-jumbo" and fearing the shaman's horn might cause an avalanche. Meanwhile, the surviving neidar, including Theolin are camped nearby, huddled around a small campfire and saddened that they must wait for another day to honor their dead. Elsewhere Riva tells Stonehelm a story from her childhood. One day as a little girl, playing in the courtyard of Castle Silvercrown, Riva came upon a clutch of eggs. As she reached out to touch one, the mother goose, trying to protect her children, let loose a wild attack upon the little girl. She cowered in fear until her father chased away the goose and pulled Riva to him. She ...

While many people think of Dragonlance as the creation of Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, there were a lot of other people involved. Remember, Dragonlance originally started out as a campaign setting and module series before the idea of writing accompanying novels was added to the mix. One of the people who was involved in the early creation process of the setting was TSR employee Jeff Grubb. Mostly known for his work on the Forgotten Realms and Al-Qadim settings, it turns out Mr. Gurbb spent more time on Dragonlance than evidenced by the pair of novels he wrote for the setting (Lord Toede and Tymora's Luck). The Grubb Vault is a page collecting details on many of Jeff's contributions to the setting. Of note are several links detailing the gods from Jeff's personal campaign that were appropriated for the Dragonlance setting. Happy reading!

This is the second of the two part series on planning tools for the Dwarven Forge Room sets. Last time I release a PDF of simple illustrations for the Room Set. This time I'm following up with another PDF of the Rooms and Passages set. Note, I also updated the PDF of the original Rooms set. If you've downloaded that one when I first posted about it, you may want to check out the new version. Both PDFs are available here .

I was recently surprised when I learned that prior to the TSR/DC Dragonlance comics series that ran in the 80's, there was a pitch for a Dragonlance comic that was made back in the earliest days of the setting. Stephen Sullivan, and author (including several books in the Dragonlance New Adventures series) worked with noted comic artist Tim Truman. While nothing every came to be from their proposal, the pitch did include 2 sample pages. Stephen's website includes images of what those pages looked like... the very first Dragonlance comics. Check them out on his website .

Hopefully by now you are all well aware of Wizard's Open Window policy on submissions for the online publications. Just as hopefully, you've been working hard on your best ideas to send in (I know I've been kicking around two or three for the last month). Now if you haven't heard about the open window, check out the posting on their website about it here . It has all the info you need, including some helpful advice. For the rest of us, this is just a friendly reminder, that their window is fast approaching. It ends at the end of this month. So get those ideas in and help make D&D the best game it can be!

A little know official Dragonlance monster, the gray dragon, first appeared in issue #146 of Dragon Magazine (cover date June 1989). Appearing as part of the magazine's dragon theme issue, it was one of several new dragon types described in an article titled "The Dragon's Bestiary". The article offers a few other new dragon types, but none of them are specifically stated as coming from Krynn. The gray dragon is very similar in size, nature, and habitat to a white dragon. In the 3.5 Bestiary of Krynn book, gray dragon's are presented as just a list of adjustments to a comparable white dragon of the same age. The forth edition book, Draconomicon - Chromatic Dragons, offers up a gray dragon, but has no connection to the previous versions in terms of description, or similarity to white dragons.

There's a lot of great D&D humor on the Internets, but one of my recent favorites is also one of the best. The videos are short, most under 5 min, and most take the form of the Dungeon Bastard responding to read emails. The production values and video quality are top notch, and with such a simple setup, it gets right into the D&D humor right away. If you haven't checked out the Dungeon Bastard, you should do so at his website for all the YouTube links, or check out one of my favorites below.

After last month's slight departure to the realm of Spelljammer, we return to the regular ongoing Dragonlance comic. This issue finds us back in time, just after the War of the Lance, when Riva was still on Ansalon and not yet a knight of Solamnia. The story opens with a splash page and text (from Astinus , no less) that sets the time frame for the story. This is a pretty good idea since for the last 8 issues (since issue 22 ), we've been following her adventures in Taladas several years after the War of the Lance. The story opens in northern Solamnia, during winter. A group of neidar (aka hill dwarves) are in route to Castle Silvercrown with a cache of weapons that they will sell to feed the village for the winter. Along with the neidar is Andvari Stonehelm, a hylar (mountain dwarf) mercenary they've hired as their peaceful community finds itself under assault by unknown forces that always strike under cover of night. On the trail, springing out of hiding are a barb...

Recently, while prepping for an upcoming D&D session, I was re-reading the module (I always review the 3 or 4 encounters I think the party will get through during an upcoming session) and I noticed two things: the seemingly underpowered opponents the module was calling for, and the repetitiveness of the encounters. The previous session, my players ended up having 2 of the three battles that evening against stirges, which I don't think are interesting enough to take up 67% of the combat. It just so happened that the party went from encountering them in a room, to the main lair where the rest of these fantasy-mosquitoes hung out. In retrospect I should have gone "off script" and changed up the encounter, running something else in that second room, and had the stirges menace both groups, or moved the stirges' lair to another room, or dropped them all together. That's sometimes one of the downsides to running pre-made modules, and I'll talk about in anothe...

As the new proud owner of a Dwarven Forge - Room Set, I was very eager to use it in my game at the first opportunity. But I had no easy way of planning what rooms I could layout with my one set. I could, of course, pull the actual pieces out and arrange them on my dining room table, but I'd like something a little easier. I've also seen references to some PC programs that would help with the planning task, but I'm a Mac guy and I wasn't looking for something that elaborate (maybe if I had a bunch of sets that might be more useful), but for me and my single set, I was looking for something quick and low tech. Basically, all I really wanted was a PDF with paper versions of the pieces in the Room Set that I could print, cut and arrange as needed. The nice thing about the PDF is that if I had multiple versions of a given set, I could just print out extra copies. Or, if I was planning something elaborate, I could print out as much as I needed and that would show me ho...

Exile on Taladas We take a slight break from the regular Dragonlance comic reviews to take a look at this interesting little gem I recently uncovered. While I was an avid reader of the Dragonlance comics, I also dabbled in some of the other TSR/DC comics of the day. I read the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comic for at least the first year, and the Forgotten Realms comic through it's entire run. Some of the other titles, like Spelljammer and Gammarauders, I only read a handful of issues before moving on. So I was very surprised recently when I learned that this issue guest-starred Riva Silvercrown, the only ongoing character in the Dragonlance book. If you're not familiar with the Spelljammer setting and concepts, check out the wikipediia page for some reference information. The story starts off with a spelljamming ship crash landing on the Krynn continent of Taladas. Riva and Ktarrh see the burning ship from the skies and investigate. On the ground, a lone human...

This has nothing to do with Dragonlance or Dungeons and Dragons, and yet every word I write, every digital image a create, every post, tweet, or status update usually involves one of the many devices he brought about that has helped usher in the world we all live in.

If you haven't already heard, the Wombat's Gaming Den of Iniquity blog is in the middle of running a blog festival called "Winter is Coming". The idea is that several different folks wrote up anything game related (from adventures, classes, creatures, etc), for any gaming system, with the common theme of winter. So, grab your favorite warm beverage and check out the submissions here , or click on the image above. And be sure to check out my submission, my first ever collection of D&D 4e items here .

Not since the heyday of the DC Comics/TSR agreement back in the 80s, has there been so much new Dungeons and Dragons comic material, plenty of which you might want to consider taking a look at. First, IDW has a license to do trade reprints of those old DC/TSR comics. Currently available are volume one of the Dungeons and Dragons comic and the Dungeons and Dragons: Forgotten Realms comic, which are both actually set in the FR setting. Here's a little back story to clear things up. The Dungeons and Dragons comic was originally release as the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons comics (since it was during the days of 1e/2e). This book was set in the city of Waterdeep and followed a diverse group of characters including the paladin Priam Agrivar The Dungeons and Dragons: Forgotten Realms comic was started about a year after the first comic, with Priam leaving the Waterdeep group and meeting up with a new group. The first 2 volumes of the Dungeons and Dragons comic will feature Priam be...

A Sort of Homecoming This issue starts off with Riva and her friends still on board the ship of Captain Antara. They are (once again) in the middle of a shard storm and trying to get into a harbor cave, but the magic password Captain Antara knew no longer seems to work. To avoid slamming into the heavy doors at the mouth of the cave, the tiger elves Sulia and Maraghiz work their magic to pry the door open. Once inside they are meet by the local council, including Aris (whom Antara seems to know), and Krey, a mage recently appointed to the council. We quickly see that Krey is a brash youth rigidly following his people's traditions. Just then, from outside the cave (and just as the raging storm has passed), the local harvest fields are besieged by a swarm of horax (huge bug-like creatures). Riva and her friends spring into action along side other glass folk in an attempt to keep the horax from destroying their food supply. During the fight, Krey unleashes a fire spell that ...

"I'm going off the rails on a crazy train" - Ozzy Osbourne As I get ready to prep for tonight's game session, I'm reminded of how much time I try to spend getting ready, and how much of that prep comes into play during an actual session. More often than not, I read, re-read, and plan out the various encounters I expect the party to get through in a given session (I'm familiar with the whole module, but there's no point focusing on the dragon at the bottom level when they are still cutting teeth on the orcs at the top of the complex). Needless to say, my party at least, rarely moves in a predictable path. If I expect them to go right, they go left. If I plan for them to go down a level, they decide to head back to town. Some DMs might find this frustrating, but more often, I find it the most enjoyable part of a session. Now I'm not some kind of sadist who enjoys watching all his prep time washed down the proverbial drain, but there is a part of...

Several days after returning to Blackwater Keep , when Marzena was feeling better, the party got to talk with the wizard about the Black Scourge and the bone shards still embedded in their bodies. Marzena told them what little she knew. It seems there were various mentions of this elder dragon, a piece here, a paragraph there, in various documents and journals she'd come across. Interestingly, one of the most detailed accounts of the Black Scourge came from one of the most unreliable--a kender tale. Note: 'kender tales' is a krynish euphemism for a story where the veracity of the details is highly suspect. It seems that Brother Eglin, a librarian at the Temple of Gilean in Flotsam, had been corresponding with Marzena on the subject of dragons, along with all the official documents and papers he could find, he sent along a collection of children's stories, all featuring a young kender girl who gets into one mischief after another. In one fragment of a story, the...

Little known Daily Power of Orcus, Demon Price. Once per day he can summon scrubbing bubbles that follow his commands. Remember, they work hard so Orcus doesn't have to!

It seems inevitable in my games that when the PCs finish up the meat of an adventure--when the princess has been rescued, or the one ring destroyed--they start acting like a piece of cornbread at the end of a meal, sopping up the last bits of gravy from the adventure. In almost every game, there seems to be rooms the PCs skipped, or failed Search checks that leave them thinking they've missed something useful. In these cases, when the bulk of the adventure is over, my players at least, start retracing every step, rechecking every room, and researching every scrap of paper they can find. In times like this, part of me wants to call a time out and move on to the next story point in the campaign. At the same time, I understand as a player wanting to find all the loot, defeat all the creatures, or learn all the secrets. In trying to understand why my players behave like this (and why I behave like this sometimes as a player), I think part of this stems from the reward system bui...

This year, for the second year in a row, I got to attend the Mac Daddy of gaming conventions, Gen Con . If you're not familiar with this legendary convention, you certainly owe it to yourself to do some research, and then, hopefully, plan to attend next year's gathering. This year, due to some real life issues, I wasn't able to head out early for the con. It's typical for folks to start arriving Wed afternoon (or earlier in some cases) even though the convention doesn't start till Thursday. In my case, I didn't arrive until Thur night, having missed most of the first day. I was lucky enough to get over to the convention with plenty of time to get my badge and walk around the con. The Dealer's Room was closed at that time, but everything else was in full gear. That first night I even ended up playing one of the Dungeon Delve scenarios in the Dungeons and Dragons area of the con. Personally, I think the Dungeon Delve is a great way to sample 4e at a ...

It's been way too long since my last comic post (or any post for that matter). Luckily, this is a standalone issue so no previous storylines are referenced here. This issue contains two stories, one featuring a minotaur of the Imperial League, the other featuring a lowly hobgoblin questing to be the leader of his tribe. Sadly, while Myrella (the female wizard last seen in issue 16 ) appears on the cover, she does not actually appear in either story--already this issue is off to a bad start! The Path to Power The first story starts off with an arena combat where a minotaur, Cantavian, defeats another minotaur, Platius. Afterward, the Emperor talks with Cantavian and the leader of the Black Cloaks minotaur legion. Due to his win in the arena, Cantavian is grudgingly given support for creating a new unit similar to the Black Cloaks. Apparently this plan was originally the idea of Cantavian's cousin, who it turns out to be was General Axantheas (last seen in issue #25 ). W...

I know I haven't been on this blog lately, but I'm working on several related items that I'll be writing about and sharing with you in the coming weeks. To that end, I'm going to try and write on a regular basis. I'm setting a goal of at least one post a week, while I continue to figure out how to juggle my games, my family, and my job. I just came back from Gen Con and feel re-energized about my D&D game and what I want to contribute to the community at large. Part of that will start within these posts.

AKA: Creating My First Skill Challenge Recently, I was working on an original adventure for my gaming group. My goal was to try and apply the principles from Wolfgang Baur's excellent Adventure Builder article series from the WotC archives but something unexpected occurred as I was reviewing my work. As I looked over the adventure, and the party's goals, it started to occur to me that I had unwittingly left myself open to incorporating a skill challenge into my adventure. Needless to say I was quite shocked... especially since I'm running a 3.5 edition D&D game! When I first heard about the Skill Challenges concept, my initial thought was this was the death of "Role" Playing; that the new edition was trying to codify and distill some of the most exciting, spontaneous, and free-form moments from my games into a series of dice rolls. The more I thought and read about Skill Challenges, as well as listening to several different podcasts from the communi...

For a while now I've been looking for ways to give back to the hobby that I love so much. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 2nd edition AD&D. During my earlier years, I had created a bunch of forms and props and other content for my various games, but not so much during the 3.x and 4e years. Recently, I was prepping a game session and I knew I was going to have a bunch of spiders menace the PCs. This meant I also needed to account for spider webs. Then I recalled something I built back in my 2e heyday, pages and pages of tokens, standups, etc, including a page of various sized web tokens. Since I'm not an artist, these tokens are all based on the same piece royalty free clipart I had available. So click on the image here to be taken to a page for the PDF download. If you like the product, let me know, and maybe I'll dig up some more of my older game content for future posts. Note: Don't let the 4shared preview scare you. The page looks like the im...

One of the things I like about 4e is reading the "why"s, why one rule was changed, created, or abandoned. Even though I'm still running a 3.5 game, as a DM, I get a lot of mileage out of knowing the thoughts of the game designers, folks who focus on this game much more than I have the chance to do (case in point, my new Second Wind rule for my game). Recently I've been thinking about the critical hits. In 4e, there is no critical threat/confirm critical for the simple reason that if you threat and fail to confirm, you go from being a hero to a loser in 2 seconds, and that certainly isn't as much fun as being the hero. Now, I'm not ready to adapt the 4e style for crits (especially since the threat range is kept much smaller than it can be min/max'ed in 3.5). But I do think something should be in order. Going forward, I'm going to try the following: On a Nat 20 (not necessarily a crit), if the player fails to confirm the crit, they still get +2 damage. ...