Baldur’s Gate 3 combat can be challenging. Especially if you never played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). This article series looks to teach you combat from the ground up. In the last article, you learned about the components of a combat round. This article is all about character ability scores. Understanding Ability Scores Character ability scores are one of the most important aspects in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). These numbers determine your damage and your hit points. They determine whether you convince a soldier to stand with you in combat or whether your spell successfully mind cont ..read more

2023 opened with a bang for table top enthusiasts. Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) announced a Open Game License (OGL) that “put the squeeze” on third party content. Evidently, the big brains at Hasbro (WOTC’s parent company) saw all the money trading hands in the the third party marketplace, and decided that they wanted a piece of the action. The new license gave them the right to take existing third party content and sell it as their own. It also provided them with the ability to revoke the license from existing creators. Yet, the true sauce on the crap sandwich was that the license was retroac ..read more

At recent session of a friend’s Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) game, I found myself growing restless. It was the climatic battle of a year long campaign. Major secrets were revealed and the fate of a world hung in the balance. Yet, I saw there were tons of tokens on the virtual table top. It was going to be a big fight. A true slog. Modern D&D is like that. It just doesn’t scale. Everyone needs to be on top of their game and plan out their turns ahead of time. The Dungeon Master (DM) has the hardest job having to manage everything else, keep the combat moving, and adjudicate rules. There ..read more

In 2019, my friend Ron and Adam got to talking. They both loved D&D and tabletop. They proposed an idea. “Let’s get our own game going,” they said. “Let’s play D&D”. I was reluctant. I grew up playing D&D. As a young boy, I found the game complex, unforgiving, and sometimes, just boring. Yet, there were times when D&D shined. In one session as a kid, we played a module one Friday night. There were six of us crowded around a table. We cheered each die roll. It was amazing. But that was the exception. A still from Stranger Things where the characters play D&D. While I had a ..read more

Note: This is a reprint of a post that I published on Medium on February 2, 2023 The new year started with a bombshell for players of the popular tabletop game, Dungeons & Dragons. In December of 2022, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), owner and publisher of D&D, announced a new version of their Open Gaming License (OGL). In January of 2023, someone leaked the draft to Gizmodo, creating quite the fanfare. Wizards of the Coast sitting on their massive pile of gold. AI image created by Midjourney. Linda Codega’s bombshell article detailed the license changes and it wasn’t pretty. This new OGL ..read more

Note: This is a reprint of a post that I published on Medium on January 20, 2023 Night of the Living Dead was an impressive testament to independent filmmaking. Made on a shoestring budget in 1968 using non-actors, the film’s rough edges and guerilla filmmaking contributed to the feeling that the audience was watching a zombie outbreak on the local news. That film would end up making millions of dollars but due to an error from the distributor, the filmmakers wouldn’t see a dime. Evidently, when the distributor changed the name of the film from “Night of the Flesh Eaters” to “Night of the Liv ..read more

Being a dungeon master is difficult. I want my players to have fun. I want them to feel like pulp genre heroes. Yet, I also want to be fair from a ruling perspective. The other day, I ran into a conundrum. One player is a Goliath Barbarian aptly named Rocksmasher. His strength is pretty high and he runs Totem of the Bear, making him a muscle powerhouse. So when he told me he wanted to tear a door I had no idea what to do. I mean, what does a DM do in that situation? First a little back story. The party arrived at a monastery run by a cult. The players had already visited the monastery as thir ..read more