Backgrounds in D&D 5e are one of those rules elements that I love, and that I feel don’t have the impact that I wish they would. I’m always excited to see new backgrounds, but new backgrounds, when utilizing the standard rules associated with them, don’t really end up doing anything more than what they have in the past. The best
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One thing I have really enjoyed about the more recent D&D 5e adventure offerings is that they have spawned a lot of interesting ancillary Dungeon Masters Guild products related to the locations and the storyline. For Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, we received offerings detailing Candlekeep, and alternate scenes that could be used to start the adventure from Elturel or
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There is a category of RPG product that I think has really flourished in the Dungeons & Dragons 5e era. That’s not to say this category didn’t exist previous to 5e. I know, for example, Legendary Games started off by providing supplementary campaign products to Pathfinder adventure paths, but the campaign supplemental product is well represented on the Dungeon Masters
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The product we’re looking at today has a pretty unique origin. James Introcaso decided to show the illustration of monsters from the D&D 5e Monster Manual to his father, and ask him the following questions: What is this creature’s name? What can this creature do? What is this creature’s story? From those questions, James and Lucian Introcaso and Hannah Rose
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Icewind Dale has a special place in my heart, as much because of the CRPGs as any inclusions in novels or stories set in the Forgotten Realms. I love cold, wintery settings, and I love the isolated, “starting over” feeling of the setting. Because of this, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden definitely snagged my attention, and supplemental material is
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Anyone that has followed me for a while knows that certain aspects of the Forgotten Realms setting inspire a deep, nostalgic love within me. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Candlekeep is definitely one of those elements of the setting that remains dear to me. I love the concept of this wild mish mash of knowledge from all over
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Magic items in Dungeons and Dragons started off as one of many, many tropes that got added to the game to emulate all the various sources that inspired the game. Everything from classic mythology and folklore to pulp stories describe various items, which got stats and could show up across the board. In early D&D, this meant people could randomly
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I am a big fan of having lots of NPC stat blocks, especially in Dungeons and Dragons. While I don’t think they were executed as well as they could have been, I liked the concept that D&D 3.5 attempted with adding in different “monsters” with class levels in the Monster Manual 3 and 4, and I think one of the
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For whatever reason, Dungeons and Dragons hasn’t quite spent as much time developing the hierarchy and politics of the fey courts as it has spent exploring the politics of the Nine Hells, the interaction between the layers of the Abyss, or even the mercenary tendencies of Gehenna. There have been products here and there, but not with the level of
Read moreIt’s time to dig into another Dungeon Masters Guild product. This is one that I meant to pick up a while ago, so I circled back around to it recently. I will always have a special place in my heart for Undermountain, Mirt, and Durnan, because I ran a pretty extensive 2nd Edition AD&D game that was set in Waterdeep,
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