A few weeks ago, I tried Dragonbane for the first time. It’s a great game—full review here—but it’s the map that got me thinking about today’s article. Take a look at it. Gorgeous, isn’t it? Francesca Baerald’s work is outstanding, and without knowing anything about the system, it lures me in and makes me want to ..read more

If you’re tired of 5e and really want something fun and fresh, then I cannot recommend this game enough ..read more

Here’s a confession I never thought I’d make: I’m not excited about D&D 2024. In fact, I have serious misgivings about it. And I thought I’d write an article about it ..read more

I thought it would be cool to have a kind of flowchart or checklist to help DMs design adventures around its principles. So: I made one ..read more

I have now completed the second part of Tier 2, 8th to 10th level. I hope you like it! Constructive feedback is always welcome. You can download it over on my Patreon (link). I see Tier 2 as the ‘fun and games’ section of your campaign—’the promise of the premise’ where all the ‘trailer moments ..read more

What if there was a way of making your character unique without any new rules? A way of making them more distinctive, more memorable? What if there was a way of creating new spells monsters without complicated new stat blocks? What if you could make the game your own with a quick and simple hack? It already exists! And it’s one of my favourite tools as a player and DM ..read more

The full text of this post is available on Patreon. Thanks for supporting me! This is probably going to end up as an appendix of The Campaign Handbook, and if you think I’ve missed anything, I could do with your help! There are a few ways of doing magic items in 5e. The two most common methods are a) to plant what you think the players will like, and b) to determine it randomly. Or c) a mixture of the two. But there is another way: to choose magic items that make sense for the setting. Which is what this list is about! I’ve tried to stick to items that are absolutely thematic for the sett ..read more

Over on Patreon, I’ve just added the latest packet for The Campaign Handbook, which takes you up to 7th level. That’s probably enough material for four months of weekly play! Tier 2 is probably my favourite part of the game, and I had three things I really wanted to achieve with this packet. First, a sense of a growing world: not just shire villages and sleepy forests but deserts, arctic wastes, high seas, even the Underdark. Second, I wanted this to be the ‘fun and games’ part of the campaign where players can roam far and wide and not worry too much about overarching plots. Finally, I felt l ..read more

This is the second part of a series on charms and enchantments in 5e. As I mentioned in the first post (link), these spells are tricky. It can be hard for DMs to know exactly what they can achieve. Hopefully this article will help! In this post, I’m going to focus on five spells: suggestion (and its high-level counterpart, mass suggestion), compulsion, geas, and dominate person. Suggestion As always, let’s start by looking at the spell description: Let’s have a closer look, with a particular eye to how this spell is different to charm person. Close range. 30 ft is six squares on a battle map ..read more

A couple of weeks ago, Sly Flourish recently featured my pass without trace article on the Lazy RPG Talk Show (which you should definitely watch). As part of the discussion, he mentioned similarly problematic spells like charm person, and I thought: yes, that’s my next article! But I thought it made sense to cover other charm spells at the same time, as it is often through comparing these spells that we get a better sense of how they work. As it turns out: there are quite a few charm spells, and they are all quite different! So I’ve decided to split the article into two or more posts. In this ..read more