We had a good session of Dungeons & Dragons today. First I am going to talk a bit about the players in this group. Then I am going to run down what happened in the adventure.

Have you ever lost your wallet or identification? I did the other day. The idea of having to replace my license, my debit card and all that other stuff was overwhelming. I am so careful about this kind of thing. I couldn't fathom how I had lost it.

After three days of suspense... I found it. It fell out of my laundry. I can't tell you how relieved I was.

I found the wallet about two hours before game time. This meant that I was going into the session in a good mood, which obviously always helps.

Sadly, my playtest group (who went through Dead in Thay and White Plume Mountain, among others) has splintered to the far ends of the realm, like the heroes in the Dragonlance Chronicles. Hack and Slash Guy is too busy with football. The brony has been banished to another table. And the kid who was the core of my games for six months has pretty much dropped RPGs in favor of this online video game called Destiny.

I have ended up with an entirely new group comprised mostly of kids. They are awesome. I have, of course, talked about the 4th grade girl who plays the legendary character known as Dark The Dragon Sorceress. Her dad plays a rogue. There's a few 13 year olds who are brand new to the game and very into it (also very nice and considerate). There's also a handy 25 year old who knows all the rules very well, which is great because he can field rules questions and help the players along while I am handling something in the game.

Today a new kid jumped in. His mom told me he was very nervous (Why do Moms yell this in front of everyone? That just makes the kid more nervous. Pull me aside and tell me that kind of thing... sheesh), but I think we put him at ease very quickly. His mom seemed pleased and came back later with cookies that she made, and I must tell you they were loaded with chocolate chips. She gave me a bunch to take home. They were a Meal of the Year Candidate, I kid you not.

On top of that, the store decided to hand out free dice. They had a pile of those awesome Dead in Thay dice left, so they gave them out. I think that is a great way to help keep people coming back.

Dark first commented that the Dead in Thay die did not "match" the color of her dice set (which is light purple). But she ended up rolling the new die all night. These promo dice are just a little bigger than regular d20's. They are awesome.

So yeah, I found my wallet, got free dice, got free cookies and played D&D with nice kids. It was an awesome session.

Last time, we blew through episode 2 in a single session. They did not get close to enough XP to hit level 3. When running this adventure in a home game, you can just have your players level when each new episode hits. But in the Adventurer's League, we have to hand out XP fairly strictly.

So I was worried that the adventurers would get slaughtered in this episode, which has a lot of deadly monsters with multiple attacks.

I decided to go soft on them in a major way. They are new, after all.

Our heroes returned to Greenest and rested. There was this weird part in episode 2 where there's a monk the heroes are supposed to rescue, but the monk says he doesn't want to be rescued. But at the start of episode 3, the adventure assumes the monk was rescued!

Welp, my group didn't. So I had Governor Nighthill deliver the monk's flavor text. The adventurers are asked to return to the enemy camp to find out more.

I gave the heroes the chance to load up on potions of healing. They're 50 gp and heal for 2d4+2. I warned them that this would be difficult.

I had them encounter some 'hunters' from the camp, who are tracking an elk. My idea here was basically to give them an easy encounter where they got the jump on the bad guys so they could remember how the game worked, and so I could get them some XP to help get them to level 3 as fast as possible.

The players were great with the new guy, helping him along on his turn without me having to say anything. It is a very nice group.

After they took down the hunters, the group came upon the camp to find that most of the enemy army had left - scattered in different directions. Basically, the only enemies that remained were in the caves (which held dragon eggs). I decided that the bad guys had dragged the monk in there, too.

The first encounter involves two guards who spot the heroes coming, hide in the shadows, and ambush them. But what happened is that Dark absolutely insisted on going first in the marching order (a sorcerer going first in a dungeon is a recipe for disaster, I warned her. She ignored my warning).

She then stopped, peered around, spotted the ambush and cast color spray on the two guards, blinding them. It was unbelievable! There was no prompting, no anything. Just high rolls and clever play.

With the guards blind, our group mauled them with no problem. Easy XP!

Next up, there was a fungus garden. To get to it, you either had to head down some (trapped) steps or drop down a 10 foot ledge. Our wary heroes mostly used the ledge. Two used the steps.

The trap is so old school. I am instructed to roll "any die". If the result is odd, the trap goes off. The PC is slid to the base of these evil fungi. I was quite taken aback when I read this. It's cool, I just did not expect it at all.

But nobody triggered the trap. There's two paths through the fungi. One path, unbeknownst to our heroes, held 4 evil violet fungi that look just like normal fungi.

Dark stopped. She peered around. She rolled high and sensed something was not right. Then she made a nature check. She rolled a 19. She spotted the violet fungi! At this point, everyone agreed that Dark the Dragon Sorceress needed to always be in front of the party.

They avoided the fungi and made their way to the next chamber. It was a large cavern with dead bats on the floor. Thanks to Dark's clever play, the whole group was trying to figure stuff out. The rules guy suddenly said, "Wait, I almost forgot. Always look up."

He looked up, and saw the ceiling was full of bats, with stirges off in a corner.

The idea here is that the heroes can sneak through the room without disturbing the creatures, but instead they threw a dagger. This triggered the encounter, which is yet another classic but never-used trope.

It goes like this. The bats fly around in the cave screeching. The stirges are among them, attacking the heroes. The stirges have +2 to their AC due to the bats. Very cool.

The stirges hurt our heroes, but they worked well as a team. The paladins did a great job protecting their allies with their little shield maneuver that makes the monster roll with disadvantage.

After an intense battle, the adventurers paused for a short rest. I had them decide where to go next: A trash room, a cold room, or a dark room. They picked the dark one. We'll do that one next time.

It was a great session. I'd give it a 9 out of 10.

This week I'm going to run down what happened in our D&D Encounters game and then at the end I will talk a little about how the other groups in the store are doing.

I got to the game store this week to run another session of encounters and to pick up the Monster Manual. I've begun going through it and am working on an article about it. The art is better than in the PH. Not much else stands out to me at first glance except for the way-too-dark drow image.

We added one more player to the group, and we're maxed out at 7 players. Here's the make-up:

- Four 14-year old boys who go to school together
- Rules Guy: 25 year old male
- DARK THE DRAGON SORCERESS: 4th grade girl
- DARK'S DAD: Dude in his 30's

Because we sped through some material, the heroes are 2nd level. This dungeon has some very tough-looking monsters in it. I was worried this would be too hard.
 

Room 7: Dark led the heroes through a corridor. She stepped on a trap that confused her (as per the spell) for one round. It caused her to run back from where the heroes had come from. She got lucky - that could have been bad.

The hallway led to a room that had four kobolds and one winged kobold. There's a pit with some drakes in it. The adventurers pummeled the kobolds and wisely let the drakes be.

Room 8: There are stairs that descend down to room 8. The top step is trapped. Dark stepped on it, and caused a partial collapse which mostly affected the people behind her. Dark was very amused that the falling rocks injured her dad.

They made their way through the rubble into a room with 6 kobolds and 6 winged kobolds. This looked like a rough one for our trusty heroes. After a moment of consultation with her dad, Dark declared to the kobolds that she and her friends were dragon egg inspectors!

I was vastly amused. I asked her to make a charisma check. She rolled a 19. The kobolds all nervously let the heroes go through as the entire group gave Dark a round of applause. She is one of the most awesome players in the history of D&D Encounters.

Room 9: This room is a shrine to black dragons. Dark has black dragon blood, so she felt a weird connection to this room. In here was the blue dragon-man Langdedrosa and two berserkers.
 

Langdedrosa breathed on half the party (they were in a line in the hallway) and hurt them very badly. The berserkers have a cool little gimmick where they have advantage to hit, but enemies also have advantage to hit them.

Dark charmed one of the berserkers, nullifying him. For some reason, Dark began a conversation with him about her sister. She explained to me that she and her dad had created Dark's sister at home. I think her name was Sabrina or something like that.

It was a rough battle. A couple PCs went down. But the new kid made a druid, so he had a few cure spells that brought people back up. He also really seemed to get a kick out of the Thorn Whip spell (which does damage and can pull an enemy 10 feet closer).

The adventurers took them down. What to do with the charmed guy? Why, open the trapped chest, of course!
 The group had spotted the chest and figured it was trapped. All but the two paladins left the room entirely. Good thing they did! When the chest is opened, the whole room fills with acid mist. This requires two saving throws, each for a different type of damage.

The berserker's face melted off like in Raiders of the lost ark. The loot was split and the heroes made their way to the dragon egg chamber.

Room 10: I decided not to use the roper, as we were running low on time. I thought the room was difficult enough.
 
This room has a bunch of stuff: A pit with four bomb-throwing kobolds, a lower cavern with some 3 foot tall dragon eggs, and a pair of guard drakes.

A wild melee ensued. The adventurers did surprisingly well. I thought the drakes would be too difficult, but that wasn't the case at all.

We wrapped it up. They got a pile of XP, and almost everyone leveled.

I scoped out our other two tables. Both lost a few players this week. I am kind of wondering if the 5e frenzy around here has peaked.

I noticed something else. Both tables are still in episode 1. One DM commented to me that basically they do one "Town Under Siege" scenario per session.

We blew through episode 1. As soon as people started hitting the XP, I ended it and jumped into episode 2. I didn't want to have a situation where players were sitting there playing entire sessions without getting any XP or treasure (this adventure is very skimpy on loot thus far).

I guess I am still in 4e "we gotta get through these encounters tonight" mode. I haven't gotten any complaints, so I'll continue our efficient run through this adventure for the foreseeable future.

This is part one of my extensive look at the Dungeons & Dragons 5e Monster Manual. I was unable to find the art online, so you'll have to suffer through photos I took out of my book, photoshopped and cropped to the best of my meager ability.

I'm just going to flip through it and make inane observations. I will complain and moan a bit, so turn away now if that sounds like your idea of a bad time. But for the most part I really like this book and I am happy with it in a major way.

I'm going to break this up into two articles, as it is proving to be massive. I should have the next part up in a day or two.

The Opening Stat Stuff:

I was hoping there would be a bit of elaboration on how challenge ratings work, but I guess they are saving that for the Dungeon Master's Guide. I just want to know how many lower level creatures are a challenge. Like, for example, are four CR 1 monsters an appropriate challenge for a level 4 group?

Legendary Actions:
 

I love this one.

There's a discussion of legendary actions and lair actions on page 11. I've already talked about these here. I love both concepts, especially lair actions. It's like they took the 4e terrain power stuff and integrated it in a more concrete and useful way.

My big pet peeve with these books is the weird stains and page tears they use as part of the design. There's these green cloudy blotches all over the place in this book. I really hate it. I don't even know what the point is. Why not just put the monster on the page? There's already all sorts of parchment texture stuff going on in the background.

Angels:

- There's a cool bit on fallen angels. There is a mention of Zariel, ruler of the first layer of Hell, which I believe is a change from 4e (I could be wrong). I think the pit fiend Bel ruled it. Tiamat was the original ruler.

- They changed Devas. They're still sort of like the 4e race (which I think everybody liked, although some didn't like the name... "diva"). They are not reborn with amnesia anymore and they don't wear their weird/cool armor anymore.

Beholder:
 
- The lair actions are great. And I love the death tyrant! Look at that! Their central eye shoots a cone of negative energy that raises those slain as zombie thralls. It has a death ray that does 55 points of damage. The target is immediately killed if it drops to 0. I really like the hovering eye spheres. I guess that would make for a lousy miniature, though.

Blights:

- Sorry, I have never been a fan of twig blights. I mean, come on... twigs? Even if I am running a level 1 PC, it feels like a pretty pathetic moment when a walking twig bundle is a threat to my cool character. I ran The Sunless Citadel, which is twig blight central.. it didn't do much for me. This book does refer to the Gulthias Tree in the blight entry, which is very cool. This book does a great job of referring to all of the D&D lore in a way that doesn't confuse new people. Just quick little blurbs seamlessly integrated into the monster entry.

Cambion:

- I've always thought they were cool. Half-demons are never not-cool, right? Apparently now cambions can be the spawn of either demons or devils.

Chimera:

- A chimera is a pretty iconic fantasy monster that doesn't seem to get much use. Has there ever been an adventure centered around them? There should be. I think they are great foes for lower level PCs.

Cockatrice:

- I am alarmed that these guys have a CR of 1/2! They turn you to stone! Two of them are an appropriate challenge for a level one party? They have 27 hit points, too. Yikes.

Death Knight:
 
- I like that they used Lord Soth as the depiction, though I kind of wish there was another depiction of a generic death knight as well. They even have a blurb about Soth's origin, which I didn't know. I love Lord Soth, he was the big bad guy in my best high school campaign.

Demons:

- They did a great job in very succinctly describing all of the basic cool things you can do with demons. Demon summoning is something there should be more of. How cool would it be to have an ongoing NPC who can help the PCs be a bound demon that the party spellcaster has to negotiate with?

Lamashtu belongs!

- The book lists the major demon lords. I was wondering if they would introduce a new one or two. Each edition should build on the lore. Regardless, I don't think anyone would disagree that some of the Pathfinder demon lords belong in the official D&D cosmology (I am thinking of Lamashtu and Nocticula to start with). I believe those entities are based on names mentioned in D&D products that hadn't been fleshed out.

- They covered up the marilith's chest in this. It makes sense, as she is a warrior, so she should have armor. I just don't want the game to be completely de-sexualized. I think it should be equal - there should be sexy men types in the books too. In fact, I wonder if someday there will be a sexy depiction of a transgender character in a D&D book (maybe Corellon?). I wonder how far away we are from that?

- The Quasit looks really goofy. I always get quasits and imps mixed up.

Devils:
 

The 4th Edition Erinyes

- Something we DMs need to remember: Devils and Demons killed outside of their home plane simply vanish and appear back in their home.

- Zariel is, indeed, ruler of Avernus. They have a snazzy list of current and previous rulers. How thoughtful. I am a big fan of sidebars and little bonus content like this.

- The Erinyes has been de-monsterized in appearance. In 4e, they deviled her up big time. Now she's a bit more dull-looking.

Dinosaurs:

- In 4e, there were "drakes" for most of the run. It is nice to see dinosaurs included here. Who doesn't like dinosaurs?

Dragons:

- They certainly didn't hold back! There are a billion types of dragons in this book. In 4e, the dragons were parceled out in different sourcebooks. I thought 4e did an awesome job of creating new dragon types in many different supplements.

- Each dragon has a few different stat blocks for different aged dragons. Each type has its' own lair actions. You could make a pretty awesome dragon hunter campaign just out of the material here.

Duergar:

- I used to hate these guys. The duergar dungeon in 4e's Thunderspire Labyrinth was so dreadful that it made me actively hate these guys. But then when I ran Scourge of the Sword Coast, I had these little dudes enlarging and "hulking up" and it was awesome.

Drow:

- That picture on page 126 is so dark, it's just a black smear.

Empyrean:

- Wow, these are cool. I guess they're like a stand-in for greek titans. They are children of the gods with immense power. They affect the environment around them with their mood!

Genies:
 

Helmed Horror - my favorite piece of MM art

- Marids (water genies) used to be big blue people. Now they look like fish-people. Well, that's the artistic depiction of them, anyway. Not kewl.

- Genie Wishes! Awesome! They are presented as a variant genie power (which seems like a smart idea). That is great. I blabbed all about genie wishes in my column on the wish spell.

- I know this has nothing to do with anything, but I really wish wizards had made a final 4e adventure. As in, an apocalyptic adventure where everything changes (to set the stage for the updated cosmology and rules for 5e). That seems like a missed opportunity for a truly epic poster map. I suppose the adventure should have somehow related to the primordials, as they were something of a focus in 4e.

Giants:

- There's a sidebar on giant gods. My friend, if you care at all about secondary deities, you should get the AD&D 2e Monster Mythology supplement. You can get it for a few bucks on ebay. That thing is loaded with official D&D monster gods, fully detailed.

Gith:

- I didn't think anybody could top the 4e art of the githyanki, but they did it here.

- I am a bit bummed that the events of the 4e adventure path Scales of War are ignored. The pact with the red dragons was broken, among other things. It is too bad, as the githyanki stuff in Scales was really great, probably the best stuff in the whole path. Vlaakith is listed as the ruler in this book, but in Scales the heroes fight her undead floating spine and that thing caused a TPK! It was very memorable.

Goblin:

- OK. As someone kindly pointed out one time, I am not an "edition war" guy. I like and use material from every edition. One thing I love is Pathfinder goblins. They just look cool. I think I own about 12 different Pathfinder goblin minis, and if new cool ones come out, I will not hesitate to buy them as well.

If I am Wizards of the Coast and I am designing the 5e goblin, I am going to try to make it as cool - yet different from Pathfinder - as I can. But this final version, this yellow guy with the weird nose... it doesn't even come close. It doesn't even really look like a goblin at all! Terrible. I think I might just say that in my games, the goblins look like Pathfinder goblins.

Harpy:
 
- I love the art of them. Very cool. Just monster-y enough. Sometimes they look ridiculous with all the feathers.

- They are a challenge rating 1! Seems low? Maybe not. I guess I'd rather have my level one PCs fighting cool monsters like harpies than the aforementioned piles of twigs.

Helmed Horror:

- This is my favorite piece of art in the whole book. I love that shoulder-piece with the face on it.

Homunculus:

- I love the way they look. They are distinctive and will not be confused with imps. They kind of look like bat/rat/frogs. Awesome.

Hook Horror:

- They are what they are. Nobody tried to reinvent the wheel here. I could really do without those stupid whiskers. We took a thorough look at Hook Horrors here.

Click here to continue to Part Two.

We had another good session at D&D Encounters. We finished Episode 3 and took a little nibble out of Episode 4.

Dwindling Attendance

Last week we had a couple less players show up. This week, we lost even more. The other two tables had 3 players each. I think, at least around here, 5e has peaked. The owner told me we might go with two tables from here on out.

I don't think this should be cause for alarm for the world at large. That's how it goes in this game store. The drop in attendance doesn't have much to do with 5e, but rather the way things are done in our store. We have some issues with noise, problem players and... well.. just think of some unpleasant gaming experiences you've had at a convention or public game and you get the picture.

The Dragon Eggs

The adventurers only had a few rooms left to explore. When preparing, I was worried we'd get through this really fast. Looking at Episode 4, I saw it needed some fleshing out. It is fairly involved. It turns out just a couple rooms filled an entire 2 hour session.

In room 10, the heroes had killed the drakes and the kobolds. I decided to use the roper, but since I was worried that it was too deadly (it's bite does 22 points of damage!) I set it up so the roper wants food. If the PCs attack it, then we'll have a fight. If they do something clever, like toss it a drake carcass, no fight necessary.

The adventurers ended up fighting it, but they backed out and fed it a drake.

There's dragon eggs in here. They are 3 feet tall and weigh 150 pounds! Our 4th grader plays Dark the Dragon Sorceress (who has the blood of black dragons coursing through her veins!) was very excited about this.

I should note that one of the three eggs is hidden in a dark corner. It just so happened that during the battle with a roper, a rogue hid right next to it and thus spotted it.
 

Yes, "squirms like a human baby"...

I was a little concerned with the possibility of the PCs cracking open these eggs and killing the babies inside. The adventure has a fairly gruesome description of the consequences of this, seemingly designed to make the heroes feel conflicted about what they'd done.

Killing a baby dragon might not be something appropriate for a 9 year old. I assumed her dad would know the best way to handle this and I'd play off of him.

Welp. Her dad wanted them dead. And this poor little kid yelled "No! They're innocent!" as our heroes took a crowbar to the eggs. I was definitely a little uncomfortable. She wasn't super-upset, but it didn't feel good.

They killed two and kept one. Dark, with her mighty 15 strength, hauled that egg around and guarded it carefully. I am determined to have this thing hatch and be her little buddy. I even have a wyrmling mini all ready.

After that, we had a cool fight in a tunnel. Long story. Basically, the leader Frulam Mondath was shooting spells down a shaft at the PCs while her guards assaulted them in a hallway. It was awesome. Frulam ended up getting away, which I did not expect.

Our heroes looted the place, found a map showing the bad guys plans, and rescued the monk. I don't really get what the point was of having the monk want to stay captured in Episode 2, it kind of throws a wrench into Episode 4. Nothing major, it's just a bit awkward.

We basically stopped there. Somehow all that took a full two hours.

Fleshing Out Episode 4

Episode 4 has this big dead spot in the beginning involving a lot of travel and no encounters. Seems like a good time to put my monster manual to use! The heroes have a 6 day trip on horseback to Elturel. I decided that a Manticore would harass them through the whole trip.

I wanted to show them that D&D is more than just fight-kill-loot. I wanted this monster to hit and run. I wanted them watching the skies, fearful as their horses reared up - smelling the creature on the wind.

I want the manticore to hunt their horses. This makes things more fun, as the PCs don't need to fear for their own lives. I want them to see that the creatures in the game have their own motivations - they are not just numbers on a piece of paper or monsters standing in a room waiting to be killed.

I wrote down the range of every ranged weapon in the game on a sheet. The manticore could fire spikes from 100 feet away without penalty. The heroes can fire back, but they'll likely have disadvantage and their ammunition will dwindle quickly. We'll get to it next week. I hope it works out. I'm pretty sure it will. Ultimately on day 5, they'll spot it chasing a griffon and they'll have the chance to take it down for good, and maybe even befriend a griffon.

Overall this was a good session. I wish I had done something else with the dragon eggs, though.

This is the second part of my look through the 5e Monster Manual. You can check out Part One here.

This will be more of me rambling about monsters and nitpicking art. Fairly warned be thee says I!

Invisible Stalker: Even when you can see invisible, you can only make out their vague outline.

Blibdoolpoolp

Kuo-Toa: I didn't know  that they had been enslaved by mind flayers at one point. It makes sense why they are so spaced-out. They even mention their god Blibdoolpoolp and their weapon-snatching sticky shields! I've mentioned it before, but one of my favorite dungeons of all time is Bhal-Hamatugn, the kuo-tuo temple from the "Zenith Trajectory" adventure in the Dungeon Magazine Shackled City adventure path.

Lich: The art appears to be of a red wizard of thay turned into a lich. I'm just not comfortable with the Forgotten Realms being the base setting, it feels wrong to me.

There's a note about how liches must periodically feed souls to its' phylactery. The lich can trap one person's body and soul in their phylactery. After 24 hours, the person is destroyed utterly. Nothing can bring them back save divine intervention. Kind of cool, I've never heard of this kind of thing before. Definitely a useful adventure hook!

Lycanthrope: There's a big sidebar on what changes there are to a PC infected with lycanthropy.  If you become a werewolf, your strength immediately shoots up to a 15 if it's not there already. I like this.

Mind Flayer: They actually mention Qualith, the illithid braille-like language from the Illithiad! One mindflayer is a challenge for a 7th level party. Sounds about right! I really think they've done a great job with this monster manual. Each entry is full of information presented in as few words as possible.

A Modron

Modrons: I am so happy these are in here. I know they might be too goofy for some, but I always really like the Planescape adventure The Great Modron March by the great Monte Cook. I really feel like Lawful creatures are under-explored in D&D, and these guys are extremely different and interesting.

Orc: They get the deluxe treatment, with a couple of pages of lore. One quote: "When an orc produces young with an ogre, the child is a half-ogre of intimidating strength and brutish features known as an ogrillon." Produces young with an ogre... good gawd.

Pixies: They use their pixie dust as a spell component. Makes sense.

Rust Monster: Each time a weapon hits them, it has a cumulative -1 penalty. Once the penalty reaches -5, it is destroyed. It can also create this effect with its' antennae. Players really hate these guys, so use them sparingly!

Satyr: They are defined as "stout male human with the furry bellies and cloven hooves of goats". And then later it says that they might "...sneak into a well-defined garden to gaze upon a beautiful lad or lass...". I think we are at a point where this kind of thing isn't a big deal to people. I guess we'll see.

Scarecrow: These were always too goofy for me. I mean, come on, now. A Scarecrow?! It feels like a waste of an entry.

Slaadi: I always liked these guys. In this, they are described as the enemies of modrons. Basically, Primus (lawful god of modrons) sent a law-infused stone into Limbo, thinking he could create order out of chaos. It allowed him to create pockets where his modrons could exist safely. But the chaos energy reacted to the stone, spawning the race of the Slaads. They attack modrons on sight. Primus doesn't see them as a threat. I don't know if this lore existed prior to 5e, but I really like it. It kind of sets up a Law vs Chaos thing in a DCC RPG kind of way.

Incubus is male, Succubus is female

Succubus/Incubus: (An Incubus is a male Succubus... though there is a vague mention that they can switch genders) Their kiss drains 32 hit points which reduce your hit point maximum until you take a full rest! Ouch. And they're a CR4 monster.

In previous editions, these creatures have been either demons or devils. In this, they are both and neither. This is probably for the best!

I like the lore on these guys. They seduce mortals and try to turn them evil. Once a mortal has committed betrayals of thought, word and deed, they have been corrupted. The succubus then kills the mortal and their soul appears in the Lower planes. I guess if the person is lawful they appear in hell, and if they are chaotic they appear in The Abyss.

I wrote a big article about the Pathfinder and D&D Succubus Lore here.

Troglodyte: They have never been able to settle on a depiction of these guys. This new one looks like a Slaad. While I wasn't blown away by the grey 4e version of them, that was better than this.
 
Unicorn: Wow, their golden hair is goofy. These creatures actually have lair actions..! Open flames are extinguished in their lair. Healing spells are MAXED OUT. Curses are suppressed. Wow, this is really fun stuff.

Wight: This is one of my favorite pieces of art in the book. Those killed by a wight rise as a zombie under their control.

Yuan-Ti: I like the lore here. They were once humans who worshiped Snake Gods and used magic to become more snake-like. They no longer feel many strong emotions.

There is an appendix for monster that are animals or animal-variants, like axe-beaks and giant frogs.

There is a second appendix for NPCs like archmages, gladiators and priests.

Overall:

All in all it is a great book. They fit in piles of monsters and did a fantastic job of telling the reader all sorts of fun details without burying it in walls of text.

It is interesting that they tried to put every single iconic monster in this one book. It appears that they are not trying to spread material out in a series of sourcebooks. I mean, I'm sure there will be a Monster Manual 2 of some sort some day, but this thing will definitely be enough for you to run as many campaigns as you'd like with.
  

Yuan-Ti Pureblood

The art is serviceable, most of it pretty good. There's few pieces that really stand out, either good or bad. Aesthetically it doesn't even touch the old Planescape Monstrous Compendium, which to me is the pinnacle of D&D art integrated into a monster stat book.

If you're in the mood for more monsters, please check out my other articles that go in depth on all sorts of D&D creatures:

Hook Horror: The Average D&D Monster

Mind Flayers: Everything You Need To Know

Rainbow Dragons!

Spellweavers: The Coolest Monster Nobody Uses

The Tarrasque: The Most Powerful Monster in the Game

The Best Spelljammer Monsters Part 1

The Best Spelljammer Monsters Part 2

The Best Spelljammer Monsters Part 3

The Most Awesome D&D Monsters By Edition

I've been eyeballing this thing for a long time. Fresh off my devouring of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Monster Manual, I am still in the mood for more monsters. Particularly monsters that I can use in the weird 70's version of D&D, Dungeon Crawl Classics.

The Teratic Tome is a "pay what you want" pdf. That's always a conundrum. I could pay one cent, right? But then I think about this poor person who slaved over this thing. The suggested price is $6.66. Is even that enough? Should I pay more? After much struggling, I just paid $6.66 and downloaded the thing.

You can look at it and buy it right here.

I am going to go through this book and pick out the stuff that I find the most interesting. I won't discuss every monster, just the highlights.

The first thing to notice is that this book is made in the style of the old AD&D Monster Manuals, right down to the font. It is very cool. The cover is fantastic, too, and I'd say it is as-good if not better than most of the 5e covers so far. My only complaint is that I think the tiny heroes on the cover should be a bit bigger so they are more easily noticed.

Tome/MM comparison

Nudity and Gore: This book has lots of naked people. I will put dice on the naughty bits of the images that I use in this article.

A lot of the monsters in here are butt-naked and/or very violent and gory. There's a lot of "cut you up while your cousin watches" type stuff.

When I was younger, I was a bit more tolerant of over-the-top violent stuff. As I got older, I met more people who have been affected by real-life tragedy and now things like this aren't "fun". I play games to get away from depressing things like that.

This book uses the OSRIC rules, which I believe is very similar to the old AD&D rules. The book even talks about "Target Armor Zero" aka "TAZ", which seems to be exactly like AD&D 2nd edition's THAC0.

Acronical: We start off with an insect-type creature... that kills adulterers. They can smell a cheater from miles away! It nabs both of the adulterers and makes them fight to the death. The survivor has their limbs cut off. The Acronical sings love songs as the person bleeds to death.

Agonist

Uhhh. Well we are starting off with a bang here, aren't we? Pretty awesome. In case you are wondering, this monster leaves behind a watery orange stool.

Agonist: This is a sexy demon lady who does whatever she can to humble those too full of pride. She's OK. Cool art!

Baskra: This fellow is a nine foot tall fetus that feeds on the elderly. It "...feeds on their regrets and memories of missed opportunities". I believe the art of this guy is one of the only times I have seen a monster's scrotum. This can go in the hall of fame next to my "balrog with a wang" mini.

Chimaera Queen: She is a unique entity who creates manticore and chimera children that worship her. She lives on a range of snow-capped mountains where her children can roam free. She kind of looks cooler than she is. She brings victims to her dungeon, where she hunts them. I'd have liked a little more backstory. Who is she? Where did she come from? How does she make her kids?
 

Chimaera Queen

This book has new demon lords! That is always fun. Let's see what we've got...

Abyzou: She's another Succubus Queen like Malcanthet (D&D) and Nocticula (Pathfinder). She is a dark-haired 12 foot tall giant with claws and hooves. She has these undying victims, "the lustful damned" who are subjected to "acts of depravity and sadism". This book is so dark, I can barely see it.

Beleth: A giant bee-devil that loves to gamble. Sounds goofy but it is actually pretty awesome.

Gusion: She is a starved lady with an "Anguish Engine". So bleak...

Phenex: This guy likes to eat young clerics and virginal humans. He sends his ghouls to get him food all the time. He wields an intelligent cudgel that hates dwarves. You could do a lot with this guy.

Phenex

In the Devil section, there's some Lords and Ladies of Hell. Apparently in this cosmology, devils are trapped in a plane called Mictlan and are at war with a death-god named Mictlantecuhlti. Here's two of the main devils...

Ahriman: The ruler of devils. He lives in this floating crystal palace. Check out this flavor:

"The structure, devised by the legendary architect Mulciber, is particularly striking at dawn, when an enslaved phoenix is lashed to a great disc of copper and hauled into the sky. Agony fuels Cardiodynia, which sprays blood on the imps and lemures below as it floats above the feces-caked steppes of Mictlan."

Well damn, I can't even wrap my head around this. Feces-caked steppes?! An enslaved phoenix?! Crazy.

Verrine: He is a spider-guy who "stinks of urine". He leads the armies against the death god.

Dragon: The book details 10 Venerable Dragons who "regard themselves as a weary decadarchy". There's all sorts of cool ones, like a vermilion dragon and a porphyrous dragon. I guess my favorite is...

Uchorah-Thanaphor: A huge black dragon whose arrival is receded by weird weather. Random bolts of lightning strike buildings and structures. The earth rumbles. Classic! You could apply some 5e lair actions outwardly to help make this work.

Gelatinous Pyramid: Yup! It has several translucent eyes and it "maintains a latrine where it ejects any inorganic materials that it has absorbed."

Goblin Princess: This is a very cool idea. She has maroon skin and yellow eyes and she can cast spells. Goblin Princesses always try to expand goblin territory through spies and subterfuge.

I am only up to letter G. I'll wrap this up in part 2. This book has a ton of good ideas in it, and is definitely worth checking out, if just for the demon lords alone.

Another session of Hoard of the Dragon Queen is in the books. We are deep into episode 4 now. There is quite a bit to say on a variety of topics...

We Are Going Too Fast....?

So get a load of this. There are three tables going in this store. My group is in Episode 4. The other two are in Episode 1. The store owner had someone inform me that he wants to meet with me and the other DM next week to discuss "getting on the same page".

Basically, he wants us all to keep the same pace. This way, players can jump between groups.

I don't really understand that. This isn't like the 4e Encounters sessions where it was just one encounter. In those, it was easy to start and stop in the same place as the other groups. In 5e, it is wild and loose.
 
Aside from that, these things are built so that a 1st level PC can jump in on the later chapters. They'll level pretty quick. Heck, the hobgoblins the PCs fought tonight only had 11 hit points!

So what I am guessing is going to happen is that I am going to have to stop running Hoard of the Dragon Queen until the other two groups catch up. This seems insane to me, but that looks like where we're headed. This is in spite of the fact that none of the players jump between groups.

Here is another amusing point. These other tables might take so long to catch up to episode 4 that our table will run through all of the Expeditions adventures. Then what do we do?!

If this is the way things work out, then I guess I will have my players make level one PCs and I will run them through the Expeditions adventures.

One cool thing here is that the 4th grader who plays Dark the Dragon Sorceress made Dark's sister and now she has a chance to play her. That should be fun. I am kind of wondering how my players will take this. I guess we'll see what happens next week.

All of this smacks of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but I'll wait and see how this meeting goes.

Rumors of 5th Edition's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Last week we had low attendance - a total of 11 players. I took this to mean that our store's boom had subsided and was on the decline. I was wrong! We had 16 people this week, some of which were brand new. It is nice to see.

The Manticore
 
As I mentioned last week, I added in my own encounter to kind of spice up the dry opening of Episode 4. In the book, the PCs travel for 6 days to Elturel, meet with this quest-giving guy, take a boat for 3 days, and then begin the meat of the episode. That's quite a bit of time wih very little in the way of encounters.

So I decided that a manticore would harry our heroes during their 6 day journey to Elturel. It wants to eat their horses! Each day, it would fly overhead, fire spikes at the horses, then fly off when one died. Once the PCs left the horse behind, it would fly down and eat it.

This went pretty well. Our heroes were on their toes. In one instance where the Manticore was flying above them, Rules Guy used a Command spell on the Manticore, ordering it "Down". I had it come down, but at an angle away from the party. This ruffled his feathers a bit, but the spell description clearly states it is open to DM interpretation.

It all built up to a scene where the manticore was chasing a griffon that it had wounded. Rules Guy used Command to make the manticore "grovel", and then the adventurers pounced on the manticore and killed it.

The griffon landed and looked at our heroes, wounded. I wanted them to see that it appreciated what they had done. One of the party thieves approached it. He was wearing a griffon talon on a necklace - he'd taken it off a griffon that the manticore had killed the day prior.

The griffon was furious, screeched and flew off. The players didn't understand why the griffon was angry. Then they decided that it was because the thief didn't bow. Apparently this is something from Harry Potter (I've only seen the first two movies). I didn't tip my hand. Maybe this will come up in the future.

We Have a Dragon Baby
 

Sparky!

I may have broken more rules as I let the heroes keet one of the dragon eggs from the hatchery. According to the text on page 26, the egg hatches in a week if it's in a "suitable incubator". Dark as been all over this egg with blankets, sleeping on it, hiding it... sounds suitable to me! And thus it hatched!

This dragon will be useless for a long time as I don't want to unbalance the adventure. But I am thinking at some pivotal moment when the heroes need it, the dragon will breathe it's first acid breath.

Dark named it... Sparky.

Factions and Stuff

Ontharr Frume

Our heroes go to Elturel and meet this burly character named Ontharr Frume. Ontharr drinks with the PCs and then arm wrestles. Ontharr has the GALL to defeat Dark in arm wrestling. Then, to Dark's horror, her dad beats Ontharr.

There's only one thing to do here. Dark has to arm wrestle her dad. And of course she rolls a NATURAL 20! Dark breaks the table with the back of her dad's hand as her allies laugh and cheer.

Leosin the monk is a Harper and Ontharr is a member of the Order of the Gauntlet. Wizards of the Coast made a big deal about factions when this season started. Each player got a "faction folder". But factions seem to mean almost nothing at all in this adventure. I played it up as best I could. I had Leosin tell a PC Harper to keep their eyes peeled for another agent named Carlon to foreshadow an encounter later on in this episode.

The Caravan
 
This episode is about the heroes going on a 60 day wagon train. There's a bunch of encounters along the way. The adventure encourages us DMs to roll on a chart each day to see which encounter happens. That is crazy talk (particularly because there are some errors on the chart, including a reference to an encounter that is not in the book at all). I mapped it out in advance.

Most of the PCs are hired by a wagon master as guards. I ran a couple of the encounters. One is with a nosy halfling. Rules Guy shooed him away. I had Dark describe how she was hiding her baby dragon in the cart owned by the moon elf shipping wood from the Jungle of Chult.

Dark calmly explained to the moon elf that the thing wrapped in the blanket was a "shiny dazzling diamond". This amused me to no end. The moon elf loves animals, so I figure she'll assume it's some special pet and leave it be.

I wrapped up the session with a battle with hobgoblins near the Fields of the Dead. Make sure to use that one within the first 9 days of the journey, though I guess it doesn't matter all that much. The fight was a piece of cake.

A player's mom brought brownies, which was awesome. She watched us play and seemed quite amused by the game. She tried to give her kid some good advice (which he ignored). I may try to lure her into playing.

All in all, it was a very good session. I guess we will see next week as to whether we will "pause" the campaign for a while.

I went into the session of D&D Encounters tonight in a lousy mood. But once I entered the store, I was bombarded with positivity. It was really crazy and reminded me of how lucky I am.

As soon as I entered, I was greeted by about a dozen people - men and women, children and adults, players from my youth and people I've just met. They all were genuinely happy to see me and they wanted to talk to me. I had one player come up to me and hand me these awesome printouts he got off of reddit of rules charts for 5th edition.
 
A player who had played in my game store Scales of War campaign showed up tonight. He had moved down south in around 2010 and is in town visiting. He jumped in on my table tonight. His at-the-time girlfriend had played in one session of Scales with us, and in that session her warforged ended up buried in rubble for all eternity. They got married, and on the back of their wedding invitations was her warforged's hand exploding from the rubble. Pretty awesome!

Attendance Up Again

We had a total of 18 people, which is more than last week. The other tables are really rocking and rolling... everyone seemed to have a great game going tonight. It was quite something to see.

The Meeting

Last week I went on at length about how the store owner wanted to talk to me about "getting on the same page". I was worried that he was going to want me to stop my game until the other groups caught up. It turns out my concerns were completely unfounded. He just wants to make sure there's always a low level game going. So basically, if more newbs show up, I will run a session for them either after my normal group is done or I'll run a newb game on a different day in the store.

Episode 4 Continues

NPCs: I had the PCs meet Green Imsa (the woman who is green from head to toe) but they didn't bite on her mystery. A noble was going to kill his horse, but our 4th grader playing Dark the Dragon Sorceress pushed him over and traded horses with him.


Perytons: One of the weirder D&D monsters. I wasn't going to use this encounter, but I like every session to have a combat pretty early on to get the players in gear and on the same page. These monsters have the nasty ability to dive bomb and pull out without provoking attacks of opportunity. I played up the weirdness of these creatures as best I could.

Days 6-12: Sparky the baby dragon barfed up some acid. It was the first time it ever "breathed" acid. It rained for a few days in a row to set up...

The Mushrooms: What a cool encounter. The PCs awake to find that the rain has somehow spawned the growth of little mushrooms everywhere. The mushrooms are growing fast, and when one is cut open, it releases spores that cause a sort of depression and nightmares for a few days (as well as a lifelong aversion to eating mushrooms). The PCs were able to hack through the shrooms (takes 6 hours of work!) and moved on. Very cool.

Days 14-18: The caravan swung back into Elturel (this adventure is odd in that the caravan takes such a long route to get to its' destination). They bought piles of stuff from the list in the PH. Then the nosy NPC Losvius Longnose tried to steal a PC's bagpipes. The PCs ultimately recruited him to be their eyes and ears, to scope out the cult.

Frulam Mondath: Since Frulam had gotten away in Episode 3, I thought it would be cool to have her on the caravan. I decided that she had been punished for her failures. Rezmir the half-dragon had breathed acid on her and burned her badly. She was part of the caravan, but hidden in a cart, all bandaged up and semi-comatose. Our heroes' spy caught on to this. It lead to a whole thing where the PCs snuck into the cart, questioned her, and ultimately tried to recruit her. Dark got to use her favorite spell: Friends.

The Rematch: Because of the ways the rolls worked out, Dark was working for the same wagon boss as her dad. Worse, her dad was technically in charge of her! Dark decided to prove to the wagon boss that she should be in charge by arm wrestling her dad! Her dad cast a spell on himself to get 
advantage on the roll. SHE STILL WON. I mean, of course she did, right? She's Dark the Dragon Sorceress! Her first act as boss of her dad was to declare that she would give him one gold every Friday "...for the rest of your life".

Day 23: Ettercaps and Giant Spiders tried to snatch some horses, but they were no match for our heroes. These ettercaps with their 44 hit points are pretty scary, but the paladin ability to give enemies disadvantage helped in a major way.

Overall

I don't know how or why all of these elements converged on the store to make it so pleasant, but I insist on appreciating it. This was just a perfect night of D&D all around. An easy 10 out of 10.

Last Monday, I was frantically putting together a scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics and I needed stuff - magic items, NPC names, that kind of thing. I knew exactly where to go - Knights of the Dinner Table.

KODT is a long-running comic/magazine that contains piles of gaming material and what I think would have to be the greatest RPG-related comic of all time. It also gave me the best NPC name I have ever used: Barlton Stimble.

As I pilfered material in mere minutes (which was all well-received later that night) I got to thinking about how Knights of the Dinner Table isn't really as well-known or acclaimed as it should be. So I decided to let you know why it is good and make a case for it being part of your life. Here is the main reason:

It makes you want to play RPGs
 
In 2003, I thought I had put tabletop role playing games behind me. I had gotten burned out and the dynamics with my old group had changed. Then I sat down and read a bunch of issues of KODT that my brother had (he is a comic fanatic). Before I knew it, I was working on a new campaign and assembling a new group.

Knights of the Dinner Table is about a group who plays a D&D-type game called Hackmaster (which is a real game with really nice production values). It is about their campaign and kind of pokes fun at and celebrates gamer stereotypes. The DM, BA Felton, is always trying to keep his players from abusing the rules while the players just kind of run roughshod over the whole thing.

BA's campaign is so awesome that it really draws you in. It reminds you of all the cool and unpredictable stuff that can happen in a campaign: A hireling who decides not to put up with abuse any longer, what happens when you dump a whole lot of stuff in a bag of holding, and the long-reaching effects of wielding an evil, intelligent sword.

KODT single-handedly drew me back into D&D. Every time I read it, it makes me want to play. It is the perfect cure for when you are feeling down about your campaign.

Awesome Characters

There are a bunch of different RPG groups in KODT. Pretty much all of them are as strong and interesting as the knights. There's a group of.. well.. jerks called the Black Hands. There's a group run by a school teacher who treats her players like students (which is amusing because lately that is what my public play sessions feel like - an after-school club activity). The comic doesn't sugarcoat player stereotypes but it also doesn't denigrate them. Each character is fleshed out enough with good and bad qualities. Some of them might feel very recognizable to you.


Min/maxing
Powergaming is a big part of KODT. One of the main conflicts in the book is between the DM and this guy, Brian. I hate Brian. The guy cons his friends out of money constantly. He exploits any rules loophole he can find. He whines like a baby when things don't go his way.

In the earlier issues, Brian's negative traits were made more tolerable by the fact that he was shown as having a truly pathetic life. He lives alone, he would lie about having a girlfriend (who he claimed was a model/spy), and he even went through this phase where he began roleplaying a sidekick with a hand puppet that kind of took on a life of its' own.

In recent years, Brian has been portrayed more of someone worthy of "respect". I recall a fairly nauseating soliloquy where Brian declared that he exploited rules loopholes only so he could then report them to the people who made Hackmaster and blah blah blah. It's all a bunch of crap that these kind of people spout to justify what is, in my opinion, really just them missing the point of the game.

That's my take. I know some of you may disagree. But I'd kick a guy like him out of my group in no time just for scamming friends out of money. This leads me to...

Player vs. GM

Jolly Blackburn, the creator of Knights of the Dinner Table, has stated a few times in the book that the way his real life games go are similar to how the game is portrayed in the book.

The players are constantly trying to put one over on BA. And BA is constantly scrambling to stay one step ahead. The players are frequently accusing the DM of screwing them over, and most of the time BA has done no such thing. It comes off as a pretty nasty, competitive exercise sometimes.

But what drives the game more is that everyone is really into it. While Brian might be annoying, he keeps meticulous logs of the story and pores over them for clues. The players get together during the week to plan out what they'll be doing for the next session.

The Quality of Writing

The stunning thing about this comic is that it has maintained an incredible standard of quality over more than 200 issues. The storylines are incredibly intricate. Plots are built on top of seemingly trivial events that happened 50 issues ago. Everything matters.

I would suggest if you want to try the comic, pick up the Bag Wars Saga. I don't want to spoil it for you, but it is fantastic. Just the stuff BA did with Rotgut the dragon changed my idea of how monster encounters should be run.

Spoony Started Here

Some of you may be familiar with Noah "Spoony" Antwiler. He got his start writing movie reviews for KODT. They are hilarious, and his geeky wordplay leaves me humbled.

It was also amusing because some readers could not handle it when Spoony would destroy a movie they liked (and I mean... destroy). Hate mail was printed regularly. It got to the point where each article was printed with a dotted line and instructions for those who hated his reviews to cut them out of the magazine.    

Here's Spoony's take on Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest:

"Once again, the script is strangely unfocused and fully a half-hour too long, following Orlando Bloom whose character, along with Keira Knightley's, have absolutely no reason to appear in this movie whatsoever. Bloom, who is again more wooden than the mizzenmast, is perhaps the most blatant third-wheel in movie history, something which would be funny if the director had intended his character to be that way. But Johnny Depp, even when he's half-assing it, steals scenes he's not even in because of Bloom's incredible screen absence."

In addition to all this, the comic is loaded with Hackmaster material that can easily be used with any system. Magic items, NPCs, maps, even adventures. I plunder this thing all the time. KODT is a legendary publication that DMs can use to fuel their creativity. It is inexpensive, it is fun, and it is worth it. Check it out here.

We have just finished our tenth session of Shadowrun 5th edition. I ran my own home-brewed scenarios for a while, focusing on the stuff that I thought was fun in the game: Motorcycles, gangs and of course shootouts.

Once I got that out of my system, I scoured the internet to find out what the best published adventures for the game were. I ultimately decided to run these four: Queen Euphoria, Dreamchipper, Mercurial and Elven Fire. All of them are for earlier editions of the game. But I have never been shy about converting stuff for my own use. The conversion proved to be a bit harder in Shadowrun than I expected. We are heading into spoiler territory, here, people...

Queen Euphoria

We finished Queen Euphoria last night. From what I could tell, it is regarded as one of the very best Shadowrun adventures ever made. Now that I have run it, I will say that it is indeed very fun. You can buy the pdf here for $4.

The Plot

It's broken up into two parts. In the first, our heroes the shadowrunners are hired to abduct/kidnap a movie star named Euphoria for 3 days. She's supposed to be promoting a new snack food, and a rival company doesn't want it to happen. The runners presumably succeed and let her go at the end of part one.

In part two, someone else abducts Euphoria, and this time our heroes are hired to track her down. It turns out she's been taken by a shaman who is obsessed with her. The shaman has all of these insect monsters at his beck and call. He has put Euphoria in a cocoon to transform her into his ant queen.

The pdf
This adventure is available for $4! Four bucks! That is an awesome deal. The downside here is that the art didn't scan well.. it's sort of greyed-out in spots. Also, whoever did the pdf chapters went a little overboard, basically listing anything that was bold in the text as a clickable option. If you look at the image I have here, you will see that "debugging" appears over and over. Kind of useless.

At four bucks, though, who cares? It is a great deal.

90's Charm

One thing I love about this adventure is that it is an early 90's vision of the future. People in this adventure don't read the newspaper when they wake up - they read the morning fax. When it's time to make a phone call, you activate your wristphone.

Another thing that cracks me up is the flavor text. It tells the 
players what they feel and say. Boy does that not go over well, and it didn't back then, either. I read it to the players but I made sure that they understood I was reading it just to amuse them, and allowed them to veto any actions the flavor text had them taking.

I mean, there's a part where the flavor text has them get so drunk that they pass out in a bar and wake up the next day in the bar's stockroom!

The Structure

This is what I love the most about this adventure. It's not like a D&D adventure. It's more of an investigation. The characters find clues, and then decide which clue to follow up on. I flip to that section, and go from there.

There's a big section in the back on NPCs and places the heroes might try to find information on. I am glad I remembered to read up on social skills in 5th edition, as the "etiquette" skill is used a lot in this.

Converting the stats

Boy was this hard. In retrospect, I should have just re-skinned a ganger npc stat block. One thing that was confusing was that the true form ant spirits have immunity to normal weapons. At first glance this is quite alarming. My players are street samurai, they don't have magic! How can they kill this thing if it is immune to normal weapons?
 
It turns out that immunity to normal weapons applies only to ranged weapons (why, I don't know). And even then, if the player rolls high enough, they can penetrate it. For some reason, from what I understand, a katana can hurt them as normal.

One thing I love is how the ant spirits are vulnerable to insecticide. My players actually figured this out on their own! It was great - they ended up firing gas grenades full of insecticide from grenade launchers at the bad guys.

They Paid Attention The Whole Time

I knew this was a good adventure because the players were focused the whole time. A lot of times when you run a D&D adventure, the players are "on the rails" and don't really engage with the scenario too much. But because this adventure plops clues in your lap and makes you do the rest, the wheels were turning the whole time.

My Players Still Don't Know the Rules

My group is like me - they aren't too worried about rules. But wow, 10 sessions in and they literally don't know how many dice they roll to attack or defend! Their character sheets are like hieroglyphics to them. Thankfully I did a lot of studying before I started this campaign and I have handy sheets of rules notes so I can guide them through each session.

The Best Part of This Adventure

The whole scenario builds up to where the heroes need to go raid this warehouse where the crazy shaman has Euphoria trapped in a cocoon. The corporation that hired them decides to give the heroes any equipment they want, including:

- Grenade launchers

- Security Armor and Helmets

- Thermographics and electronic tracking devices

- Motorcycles

The lower level of the warehouse is basically like the movie Aliens with Ant-monsters in their place. My players fired off insecticide grenades all over the place and thoroughly enjoyed the slaughter.

There Was a Wrinkle

Before they went on the raid, my players decided to take care of some other business. They have this friend who does computer work for them. He is 40 years old and lives with his mom (she looks like Barbara Bush). In previous sessions, the heroes had promised to give the guy a truck worth 50,000 nuyen (dollars) as payment for all the times he'd helped them, but they just forgot all about it.
 

Delicious Shadowrun flavor text

The mom didn't forget. The next time the runners came over to have the guy do some hacking for them, the mom pulled a gun on them and demanded the money. There was an intense exchange, where my player Jessie was ready to blow the old lady away. She was talked out of it, and basically was dragged out of the house. The old lady got her money, but Jessie swore revenge.
 
So there Jessie is gearing up for this raid on the ant spirits grabbing any kind of weapon she wants. She asks the equipment guy (an elf armorer named Warden) for a Panther XXL missile launcher. He gives her one. Then she laughs, tosses it in a duffle bag and.. well... she drove to the old lady's house, blew it up, and drove away laughing.

I know next session we'll have to deal with the fallout of this. Her character is addicted to novacoke (basically future-cocaine) and becoming more of a loose cannon. I have cooked up a little scenario involving a dead man's switch (when the 40 year old guy dies, an automatic message is sent to his imprisoned girlfriend offering her all his money in exchange for revenge).

Upbeat Ending

Now that I am in my late 30's, I just don't like downers in my entertainment any more. This adventure says that Euphoria cannot be saved - the cocoon has altered her irrevocably. I decided I didn't like that. In my game, Euphoria hadn't changed yet. She was comatose, but would recover. So our heroes were in fact able to save her.

Cool twist

One other great thing is that the corporation hid recording gear in the heroes' security armor. 6 weeks after this mission, a simsense movie is released called "Against the Hive Masters" starring our heroes. They loved that so much.

Overall

This is a great adventure. It really "feels" like Shadowrun. Not only that, but it is a very easy read. If you ever run a Shadowrun game, this is definitely one to run. It might even make a great introductory adventure. Part one is very simple and straightforward. Part two is a bit more complex and really shines all the way through.

My DCC RPG Monday Night game has been rolling along. I am part of the DCC World Tour program and have received the penultimate prize - the golden belt buckle!

I like to think that we are the leading World Tour group on the planet, with about 30 sessions under our belt so far in 2014. I detail these sessions each week on the DCC forum. There are major spoilers for this adventure in this post.

You can get this adventure pdf for $7 here.

The Croaking Fane

The author of this module, Michael Curtis, wrote one of my favorite adventures of all time - Intrigue at the Court of Chaos. The Croaking Fane is different from that one. The Fane is all about a temple in the shape of a toad full of 

Behold the glory!

denizens who worship a toad-god. There's not some big over arching story. It's just a location - a temple in the shape of a toad.

The Toad-God
 
This adventure details the followers of an entity known as Schaphigroadaz. Schaphigroadaz has three "aspects". My favorite is the hideous female toad covered in suckling tadpoles. We also get a new spell in this adventure (which is a feature I think every DCC adventure should have). The spell is awesome. Here's the description:

"The cleric calls upon the power of Schaphigroadaz to infest his enemies’ bodies with small carnivorous toads that eat their way out of the targets’ mortal forms."

The Toad Monsters

The best part of this adventure is all of the different, vastly amusing toad monsters. There are giant mummy toads. There are vampire toad-bats. And then there are my favorites: The Toadgoyles!

I feel like despite all of these fun creations, we were missing one true nasty toad. There is a huge, hideous toad-thing, a giant toad idol and toad-men, but I think I would have liked one mighty, awesome, over-the-top toad monster to cap off the adventure. The toad-thing was cool, but I think it could have been better - maybe when it swallows you, you go to another dimension or something.

The Church

There's two levels. There's the upper "church" and the lower dungeons. The church has a lot of cool encounter areas, including a pool of flesh-eating tadpoles (complete with a chart to roll on to determine what they devour on a PC's body!).

There's also a suit of toad plate with a cool toad helmet. My party thief took that helmet and she wears it to this day. Near this area is a dude who, when approached, screams as a swarm of tadpoles explodes out of his torso and attacks! Lots of really fun creative stuff.

That's what I like about Michael Curtis. His encounters are creative and described very succinctly. When I ran White Plume Mountain earlier this year, I was stunned at how short it was - 14 pages. And yet it filled four absolutely awesome D&D sessions.

This is similar. Including the maps, this adventure is about 15 pages long! And it filled 3 sessions.

The Dungeon
 
This area is split into two parts. To get into the "final" areas, the heroes must pass through a room full of 30 giant toads croaking "murder" over and over. Some groups will, I suppose, just run in and attack all 30 toads (which is an insane fight), but mine did not.

My heroes explored around and came upon my favorite room in the whole dungeon. It's a room full of pillows and a statue of a man and a female toad in an "unwholesome embrace". There is a secret compartment in the back of the statue that contains a vial - an aphrodisiac.

Up until we got to this room, the adventure was going OK. The upper level was not a challenge for my players, and I was feeling a little uneasy. This group has had it's ups and downs, and of all of my campaigns this is the one I've struggled the most with in getting into a rhythm. Despite all the cool material, it has been difficult to achieve the "D&D feeling" (which I define as the feeling you get when you can't put a good book down).

Then our cleric, who is part-cat (thanks to a weird potion in the Emerald Enchanter adventure) sampled the aphrodisiac. He was overwhelmed with feelings of being "amorous" and ran off to a small monk cell to be alone for awhile.

The group found this to be utterly hilarious. Worse - they needed some keys that he had on his person. So the party thief had to creep into the cell, snatch the keys off of our cat-man during his "alone time" and get out. She bravely dropped her toad visor, took a breath, and made her thief rolls.

It was awesome. This event lit up the whole session and was one of the highlights of the whole campaign. Best of all, the players were clever. They used the rest of the aphrodisiac on the 30 toads (which is kind of the intended use of the item in the context of the adventure). This distracted the toads and allowed the heroes to bypass them to get to the main rooms in the dungeon.

They made their way down to one of the 'final' rooms, where toad-followers were dreaming in a pool. A big fight broke out, and the party almost died! DCC RPG encounters are very tricky. One spell from a wizard can end a whole fight. But if you have a whole bunch of enemies with a decent bonus to hit, the party can drop very quickly. Our heroes barely survived.

Then they took out the Toad-Thing (with shocking ease). On the way out, there's a final encounter that is easy for DMs to forget about. The toad idol comes to life and attacks, and even collapses part of the ceiling on the PCs. This is actually a bit similar to White Plume Mountain as well, with the fire genies coming after the PCs.

Overall

This is a very good adventure with tons of cool, creative encounters. The art inside is really good, too. And of course the maps are exceptional as always. Doug Kovacs is so under-appreciated in general. The guy is like the backbone of the whole line. One other complaint I have is that there is very little treasure in this adventure (no magic items at all, I believe). The PCs should get something for all of this hardship!

I would definitely recommend that you check this adventure out. It is a fantastic deal for seven bucks.

I am writing this about an hour before I leave for the store. I just finished preparing for tonight's session of episode four of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I decided to toss in an owlbear attack in place of a weird doppelganger encounter involving "buxom" ladies which I don't think is appropriate for my group of young players.

I have amused myself greatly with this owlbear encounter. I am going to foreshadow it the previous day by having the caravan come upon a bear eating honey contentedly. I will have a member of the caravan comment that this forest is known for its' abundance of bears and nocturnal fowl. That night, an owl's hooting will bother the horses.

Then, on the next evening, the horses are bothered once more by hooting. But this time, whatever PC goes to calm them will run into an owlbear. I don't know why this tickles me so much, but it does. Hopefully I don't screw it up by forgetting a detail in the heat of the moment.

The Folio

There is a kickstarter that some of you might want to check out. I've never signed up for one before, but I might try this. It's a D&D 5th edition adventure series known as The Folio. It looks pretty high quality... the thing that has me most interested is that they are using some good, overlooked artists like Daniel Horne (who did one of my favorite D&D paintings of all time) and Jeff Laubenstein (who did the original Shadowrun character archetype depictions).

The idea here is to publish short, awesome adventures, which is exactly what I like. White Plume Mountain and Intrigue in the Court of Chaos are two of my favorite adventures that I ran this year, and each of them are about 15 pages long.

If I sign up for this, I'll let you know how it goes. If this sounds like your thing, check it out here.

Loud Kids and Vague Encounters
 
OK, I am back from the store. I had two main issues tonight. One was that my kids were getting a little too excited and loud. The other issue was that this chapter is a bit of a mess. The events are so vague that I almost didn't have enough to go on.

There's one encounter where the PCs come upon a roadside inn. What struck me was... the authors of this adventure didn't bother to name it. I mean, come on now. I guess they're cramped for space in this book, but the name of the inn is like two extra words.

But the really egregious ones are these encounters where the cultists start to suspect what our heroes are up to. What do the cultists do? Here's a quote right out of the book: "...the cultists strike first by trying to assassinate the characters in their bedrolls or perhaps by arranging an accident - a loose wheel, broken axle, or spooked lead horse may be an effective way to solve the problem."

This is where I totally agree with Bryce Lynch. I am paying for this module for a complete scenario, not random suggestions! This is the climax of the whole episode? "A broken axle or something" does not cut it! Give me an encounter, not homework!

My little buddy, the 4th grade girl who plays Dark the Dragon Sorceress, insists on sitting next to me every week. Almost every session she has a cool drawing of her character to show me. This week was a picture of Dark fighting a peryton (from last week) in the sky. It was awesome!

The Owlbear

I kicked this session off with the owlbear. Like I said, I always try to get a combat in early to get everybody focused. This went very well. The party gnome has a pet bird that he talks to. He sent it to scout out what the problem with the horses was. Smart! These kids loved the owlbear and the mini.

The Golden Stag

This is a weird encounter where the caravan spots a golden stag and goes off to hunt it. The adventure gives the DM a number of ways to play it. I had the heroes track it, then the stag gives a cryptic speech and hands out a +1 longbow. I was happy to see that the longbow +1 has a certificate! I can't believe this is the only magic item in four chapters. Seems kind of paltry.

The Rainy Inn

This is a weird encounter where these assassins posing as a legal team have bought up the whole inn. The caravan can't use the inn, and the assassins mock them. Our heroes ended up attacking them (After DARK THE DRAGON SORCERESS beat the leader in an arm wrestling contest, of course!). And wow these assassins are insanely powerful! I am talking an easy TPK here if I didn't adjust accordingly. I got around it by turning it into a bar fight. I busted out all the classic tropes: Slide a dude down the bar, chuck a PC through a window, and whack a thief with a bar stool. They loved this and were trying all sorts of crazy maneuvers. It was great. A paladin roundhouse kicked an assassin through a table.

This battle was in the aforementioned Inn-With-No-Name. I called it "The Hooting Owl" in honor of the owlbears that roamed the forest.

Pile of Awkward Encounters

There were a whole bunch of encounters that were situational. They didn't feel right. My players had a hard time with them. There's a sort of pointless encounter where the cult drops a crate and their stolen stuff spills out. There's another where the caravan comes upon a guy buried up to his neck in the road. He has the word "oathbreaker" written on his forehead. My party came very, very close to killing him and argued endlessly about it. He's actually a Harper. Luckily, they decided to spare him.

Then we get to the weird anti-climax of this episode where a gnome joins the caravan and sort of befriends the heroes and kills a cultist. And the PCs are just kind of... there.

By this point it was late so we kind of blew right through this final section of stuff. We will start episode 5 next week!

I used this Hoard of the Dragon Queen Cultist Generator which helped me flesh out the cultists. You should definitely use it - this adventure is too vague in certain points.

It is time to check out the rest of the Teratic Tome, a gory and explicit monster RPG book. Check out part one of this review here. This is a pay-what-you-want pdf available here.

When I was first checking out this book, I read up on the author, Rafael Chandler. He has done other stuff, including an adventure called Slaughtergrid. I am currently running my Dungeon Crawl Classics group through that adventure, and I should have a full report in a couple of weeks when we've finished. My favorite part so far is a red unicorn who likes to eat genitals. The party cleric will never be the same.

We left off in the tome with the goblin princess, which I think is an extremely cool idea. She's a maroon goblin lady who casts spells. Makes sense. I will definitely try to work that into something.

Let's dive in at the letter "I". I am going to talk about the stuff that sticks out the most for me, to give you an idea of what's in this book and whether I think it is worth getting.

Ingenue

Ingenue: A humanoid female with blue skin and white horns. They change their minds constantly and live for cruel pranks. Ingenues thirst for the blood of men, particularly nobles. She takes 1/3rd damage from spells cast by men, and double damage from spells cast by women. That is an extremely cool idea.

Lamia Bonegrinder: There are a whole lot of "woman with a monster lower half" creatures in this book. This one is a lady with a serpent lower half with a stinger. She's got 4 arms and some lobster claws. She tries to trick people into eating healing bread that is made from the bones of clerics and druids.

Leyak: Flying demon head with entrails dangling The art for this monster is awesome. It builds dungeons and eats babies. Eats babies... not kewl.

Magistrate: This thing is crazy looking. It's, yes, a lady with monster parts. She's got flashing lights all over her torso (she was made by

Leyak

gnomes). Here's some flavor for you: "From the waist down, the entity's body is mostly a large fleshy pod of blue and purple tissue that squirts greenish urine and solid waste from several vents and exhausts." She hunts down and kills thieves. I think I will have the solid waste have glowing lights in it, too. A nice clue for the heroes prior to encountering a magistrate, methinks.

Moppet: A weird demonic newborn in a translucent red egg. When it hatches, it links to a PC and gives them stat bonuses. It regularly has to eat flesh of magic beings like unicorns or a "plus" from a magic weapon or drink a potion, etc. Killing this little baby will earn the heroes the enmity of Phenex, our evil buddy from part one with the feces-soaked plains. This is a neat little creature but I think many players would resent it. You'd have to place this one carefully. One other cool option is to escort it to this Abyssal lair where it will spend 666 years growing into a demon lord. That is fantastic.

Nethasq: Welp. I am going to not show you the art to this one. She's a naked lady with a monster face. Where her genitals should be are "a glistening mass of foot long tentacles." Egad.

Here, have some more: A Nethasq hangs out in places where women have been defiled. "When a man enters a place that the monster has claimed for its own, he begins to seep blood from his mouth, anus and urethra." The Nethasq can smell blood and.. well, yeah, I think we've said enough. This one pretty much sums up the tome. Even if it's not your style, you can appreciate the creativity.

Kodiak Hooter

Owlbear - Kodiak Hooter: The name alone makes me want to use it! When it hoots, you temporarily lose strength points. It lines its' lair with... fabrics? And it collects soft garments? What a charming variant.

I just used an owlbear in yesterday's D&D Encounters adventure. There's something very fun about them. They are not a first-tier d&d monster, but I think every long d&d campaign should have one (as well as an ettin, one of my favorite d&d monsters).

Pantagruel: He's 200 feet tall and he was once a nice guy, but then he saw something in a far away land that turned him evil. He rampages about, killing the living to "protect them from the horrors yet to come." Pantagruel's blade can destroy items , drain enchantments and even absorb levels from a victim.

Querist

Querist: This thing was once a pit fiend who is now a decaying, deathless thing,"...dropping bits of putrescent viscera as he stumbles from one room to the next, muttering to himself." Lots of good flavor in here! Querist is an insane villain who runs a network of orcs and goblins. He is unpredictable and will do anything from trying to topple a king to throwing gold coins at lepers. Maybe a coin gets stuck in the leper. Yargh...

Crimson Slime: A red, sentient slime that can break off into separate pieces (splitting its' hit points among them). When it is hit by a weapon, it takes only one point of damage and the item has a chance of dissolving. Whispering faces can be seen forming in the slime. This is a very good slime/ooxe type creature. I'd like to see a slime that is even more David Lynch-y than this. I just watched the movie Videodrome yesterday... it had a pulsing meat-VHS tape. Pretty gross.

Tuataran: These are humanoids with three eyes. Each eye has a different power:

Right Eye: Cause Serious Wounds
Left Eye: Swaps the souls of two people for d6 rounds (your players swap character sheets and have -2 to all rolls).
Central Eye: Sends anyone within 20 feet to a random outer plane... no saving throw!

Moppet

They break into people's houses and eat flesh. Seems like, with these powers, they should do more than that. They feel like they could be the githyanki-type creatures of the Teratic Tome, or mind-flayer types. With these powers, they will be greatly feared by all in the campaign world.

Vomitorian: What a great name. These 15 foot tall monsters puke up yellow monsters that hunt prey. It has all of these powers to torment a village with hallucinations.

Overall

This book isn't going to be everyone's speed. The Teratic Tome has its' own gory style and it pushes the envelope. I think it is worth getting because the most important thing in any RPG work to me is fresh ideas - and this has plenty.

One thing I would note is that this book has too many monsters. Some of them feel like... enough already. Too much of the same thing. Too many monster ladies, too much "I hate adulterers/abusers". I would have liked to see another trope or two added into the mix. But that's a minor criticism, especially when you consider the price.

This would make a great foundation for a gory-style adventure path. I'd probably start the party off with a moppet and go from there. The climax of the whole thing would likely involve the demon lords, which are very cool. In fact, I'd be interested to see a bunch of gory magic items in the same style as this book.

The Teratic Tome is an inspired piece of work and definitely worth checking out. It is nice to see that there are people working in tabletop RPGs that have a unique vision of what games can be.

This adventure is the sequel to Hoard of the Dragon Queen as well as the second and final part of the Tyranny of Dragons "storyline"/adventure path. It takes Dungeons & Dragons characters from level 8 to level 15.

You know, when you compare this to Pathfinder adventure paths, this is a very good deal. A Pathfinder path is $100 total for 6 books. This is just 2 books for a total of $60, and it should carry your group through 6 months of gaming (depending on how fast/slow your style is... I run fast - probably too fast).

I am interested to see if this one improves on Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I assume it will also have "condensed" encounters that will need some significant prep work prior to running.

Spoiler Warning 

I am going to go over this book in great detail. There are spoilers galore. I even have some images of actual text in here. Please don't ruin this for yourself. If you are a player, look away.  You may want to just scroll all the way down to the bottom to catch my overall thoughts on this adventure.

Whine-o-meter

Also I want to point out that I am about to unleash a torrent of nitpicks and complaints. I like this adventure. I mean.. it's got dungeons and dragons. It's the perfect way to kick off the new edition! But there are some serious issues and I don't want to sugarcoat them. Just know that I don't mean any of this in a cruel way. Wolfgang Baur has written some of my favorite adventures I've ever run. He was also an integral part of Dungeon Magazine when I first got into D&D. The guy is awesome and none of this is meant to disparage him or his efforts.

The Advantage of the Adventurer's League 

Here is another benefit of running these things in a game store. The store gets these books weeks before they are released on amazon or anywhere else! It's pretty sweet. I am not one to get excited about stuff in life, but I swear I was actually feeling a feeling when I picked this book up today. I am actually looking forward to reading through this!

Hoard of the Dragon Queen was written by Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter, both former D&D employees who did significant work (including one of my favorite Al Qadim supplements, Secrets of the Lamp). This book is written by Wolfgang and Alexander Baur.

The Art

I am pretty picky about D&D art. Hoard's art was hit and miss - mostly miss. I particularly hated the art of the gnome Jamna Gleamsilver. The art in here is much better, tons of bright colors and cool dragons. It's all at least above-average. No masterpieces, but stuff ranging from "pretty cool" to "inspired". I could have used a nice big Tiamat piece aside from the cover. Throughout this article I will be using photos of the art from my book, photoshopped to the best of my ability.

The Plot

The Cult of the Dragon is going to use these five dragon masks which merge into one uber-mask. With the aid of a ritual cast by a splinter faction of Red Wizards, the mask can be used to bring Tiamat out of Hell and into the Forgotten Realms.

There's a handy, detailed synopsis of the events of this adventure on page 5. Basically, it goes like this:

• There's a big council meeting of factions (hooray, the factions are used). 
• Our heroes go on some missions while the cult tries to assassinate them. 
• The factions try to enlist the aid of metallic dragons! 
• The heroes have a chance to get the blue mask thanks to a cultist defector... 
• And they will travel to Thay to try to enlist the evil red wizards in the fight against the cult. 
• It all culminates in a massive battle at the Well of Dragons, where the cult tries to enact the ritual to summon Tiamat.

A "toolkit"?!

After the summary, we are given a bunch of encounters to fit in to the adventure if we so desire. Handy. They range from dealing with a succubus spy to capturing and interrogating a high-ranking cultist with the aid of some dwarves. This book basically gives us a bunch of parts to wedge into the adventure however we like. We also are left to create most of the details, which is not so cool in my opinion.

Factions
 
There's a bunch of pages devoted to detailing each of the factions involved in this scenario:

Bad Guys: The Cult of the Dragon, The Red Wizards of Thay, Devils (!), Chromatic Dragons and Giants (?).

The Devils are interesting. As I noted in my rundown of the Monster Manual, the first level of Hell is now run by Zariel. The former ruler, the pit fiend Bel, was demoted. Zariel wants Tiamat out of Hell and thus she is supporting the Cult. The devils don't really come into play much in this adventure (same goes for the giants).

The Cult has this item called the Draakhorn that can compel the chromatic dragons to come to the Well of Dragons. Those cultists with the 5 dragon masks can somewhat control the dragons. As the adventure progresses, more and more chromatic dragons head to the Well. Awesome.

Good Guys: The Harpers, Order of the Gauntlet, Emerald Enclave, Lord's Alliance and the Zhentarim. Also, Metallic Dragons and... Giants (?).

Anyone given a faction folder at a game store will be happy to know that the factions play a huge part in this adventure.

Major NPCs from some factions are detailed, including some people from Forgotten Realms lore like Lord Neverember and even Sir Isteval from the D&D Next series (Scourge of the Sword Coast, Dead in Thay, etc)! I would highly suggest that you immediately read up on the faction NPCs and begin to foreshadow them in your Hoard of the Dragon Queen game. For example, have Leosin (the monk trapped in the camp in HotDQ episode 2) mention Ramallia Haventree, or even have the Harper PCs meet her.

Episode 1: Council of Waterdeep

Uh oh. This book is organized differently. You newer DMs may have your hands full. This chapter details 4 council meetings that happen at separate times over the course of the adventure. This means page-flipping during play and a lot of extra prep-work. This is going to be a considerable investment of time.

I'm not clear on if this adventure will be used for the in-store Adventurer's League Encounters program. If so, I'd imagine that they'd re-format it for the free pdf release..?

None of these council meetings have any flavor text. This scenario kind of screams out for it, especially the first meeting. I think this is the first casualty of the adventure's page count. Cramming 7 episodes into about 85 pages did not do this adventure any favors.

Basically our heroes are "deputized" and given a writ that makes them official investigators. Each council session is a launching point for different quests.
 
This chapter is basically an outline of the whole adventure. It's kind of like how in 4e there were two booklets. One had the adventure story, and the other had all of the encounters.

As the heroes progress through the quests, we DMs are meant to track how they are doing on a "faction Scorecard" in Appendix C. Making a faction happy means you get access to certain resources.

Apparently this tracker will be available as a free download on the D&D site. It actually includes events that happen in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, so the faster you get this, the better. You can start using it right away.

The Dragon Eggs!

Wow... there is a paragraph here that I think should have been in book one. It is about the dragon eggs from episode 3 of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Different factions would want to do different things with the eggs, including ransoming them back to the dragons.

I am going to post the whole paragraph here. My group has a baby black dragon from the hatchery. Dark named him "Sparky". This should be interesting.

Episode 2: The Sea of Moving Ice

The adventurers travel to the sea to try to find a tiefling who knows stuff about the Draakhorn. There's a cool section where the heroes sail on a ship called Frostskimmer and have some boat encounters. Then they find a village and a dungeon. In the dungeon is the tiefling, who is a sort-of prisoner of a white dragon.

The dungeon has a lot of kobolds. Come on now, we are 8th level here. Kobolds? There's also some skrags, which I love. The dungeon is quite large.

The heroes will come into conflict with a white dragon that casts spells (!). The dragon's hoard is crap-tastic. NO MAGIC ITEMS. For the love of... how can a dragon hoard have no magic items?!

Episodes 3 & 4: Death to the Wyrmspeakers
 
These are merged into one chapter for some reason. I assume it is due to space issues.

Episode 3 is about how a Zhent agent has stolen the white dragon mask from the cult. The PCs and the cultists race through a dungeon to get it. Along the way, our heroes come upon a "treasure vault". Are they finally going to get some kewl loot? No. No they are not. Who wants a ring of poison resistance and a couple of scrolls? Anyone?

So far in our Hoard game, we are about to start Episode 5 and there has been one magic item: a longbow +1. Why are they skimping? Magic items are cool.

There's yuan-ti in this dungeon, too. They have beaten up the cult leader who owned the white dragon mask (what a wuss). Basically, the heroes can gain custody of this dude. The white dragon mask is long gone. The cult already has it back. Ahh the old bait and switch. Not a fan!

The green dragon's hoard

Episode 4 details a trip to look for one of the cult leaders. He has a green dragon attacking elf settlements in the Misty Forest. There's a neat little section where the heroes investigate the remains of a village. They end up in a dungeon where the dragon lives. There's an ettin in there! One of my favorite monsters.

Here's a quick list of monsters that should appear at least once in every D&D campaign: Owlbear, Succubus, Ettin, Beholder, Dragon.

Our heroes kill the dragon and loot it's hoard. Guess what? That's right! NO MAGIC ITEMS.

Episode 5: The Cult Strikes Back

They're doing it again. This chapter has a series of encounters that should be placed throughout the adventure. The prep time on this thing is unreal.

They've actually taken it a step further from Hoard of the Dragon Queen. In Hoard, things were pretty much linear. This book has us flipping all over the place. It's almost a toolkit. A Pathfinder path would do us DMs the favor of placing the assassination attempts throughout the book in logical chronological spots. I mean, we're buying the adventure so we don't need to do this kind of thing, right?

There's three encounters which contain a number of assassins and suggestions as to how the fight might go down. We don't even get a full encounter! Just stuff like "maybe they attack in an inn" or "maybe on the road?".

Episode 6: Metallic Dragons, Arise!
 
Our heroes fly on the back of a silver dragon (for two days) to attend a meeting of metallic dragons. The adventurers must convince the dragons to help.

We get details on each dragon representative and some things they might want, which includes wealth, land and the creation of a temple to Bahamut. I like this chapter but it's way too short. How can you not have an encounter on the back of the silver dragon? Why wouldn't they put that in the adventure?

These dragons seem like they could have been incorporated into PC backgrounds. If you haven't started running Hoard of the Dragon Queen yet, definitely look into doing so. Any foreshadowing you can pull off, you should do. It will make this path feel much more cohesive.

Episode 7: Xonthal's Tower

The heroes travel to this tower in an attempt to snatch the blue dragon mask (turns out it's a fake.. cue the fail horn). The tower is surrounded by an extra-dimensional hedge maze. How cool is that?

In the hedge maze is a bunch of encounters with weird monsters including chuuls, otyughs, a gorgon, a cyclops, and a dao. There's also a magic sundial puzzle which is pretty cool. This kind of thing is what I like most about the 5e adventures. The hedge maze is a classic trope delivered in a fresh manner.

The tower has a pile of encounters (some of which feel like a drag), culminating with a battle against Lennithon, the blue dragon from the first episode of Hoard. I was hoping he'd show up again. Awesome.

I also feel the need to mention how lame I think it is that this adventure twice dangles the possibility of getting a dragon mask when there is actually no chance of getting one. It makes these sections feel like a waste of time.

Episode 8: Mission to Thay
 
This is an extremely short chapter where the adventurers meet with the Red Wizards of Thay to try to get them to join the alliance. There's a scene at night where the wizards invade the PCs dreams to question them and "...subject the PC(s) to agonizing tortures" which causes actual psychic damage. I will have to change this to suit my group as I think some of them are too young for this kind of scene.

Episode 9: Tiamat's Return

Here we go, the final part of the entire Tyranny of Dragons story! The heroes go to the Well of Dragons, which is among the ruins of scorched towns that are patrolled by angry chromatic dragons.

It goes like this. Our heroes and their army of "factional assets" come to where the Cult is mustering for a final battle. There's chromatic dragons everywhere. An epic battle ensues... which is not really detailed much.

The idea here is that our heroes are leading the charge with their "factional assets" that they've accrued throughout the adventure. Depending on who they've helped and made happy (consult the aforementioned scorecard from Appendix C), they'll have different allies at their side.

For example, if the PCs have scored points with the Emerald Enclave, they will have treants and griffons to aid them. If things went well in chapter 6, the heroes will have the aid of METALLIC DRAGONS in the final assault. Now we're talking!

Our heroes make their way into the Well of Dragons, which is a pretty lame dungeon full of guards and guard drakes. There's about 20 rooms in this dungeon. It's split up weirdly. There's three entrances leading to three self-contained sections, only one of which needs to be passed through to get the the temple.

It seems like our heroes might need a short rest in here, but there is certainly no time for that. I don't know, maybe high level PCs can handle a lot of encounters in one day...? This dungeon leads our heroes to an area in a dormant volcano where Tiamat's temple from hell has been summoned to this plane.

That's a cool idea. I have actually gone over Tiamat's lair in hell a few months ago in this blog, which appeared in the 2nd edition Fires of Dis adventure. Another Tiamat lair was in the final adventure of Scales of War.

I would have liked to see more detail about the mass combat. This is the penultimate encounter! We should be riding griffons battling dragons in the sky, dodging fireballs cast by 4 red wizards up on a balcony, and having a climactic battle with the god of evil dragons. Not fighting guard drakes.

I can't help but compare this to the final adventure in the D&D 4th edition Scales of War adventure path wherein the heroes assault Tiamat's lair. In that one, the heroes have to hack their way through a dungeon designed for level 30 characters (!) and battle five different gigantic dragons (Tiamat's consorts) each in their own themed room before finally fighting Tiamat on a platform held aloft by a twisting column of lava.

In comparison, this does not measure up in any way whatsoever. It's not even close.

The other thing is that all of your "assets" (your faction allies) amount to background noise. All they do is have an off-screen NPC battle while your heroes take on Tiamat. I guess you can make some encounters involving them. Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? It is entirely plopped in your lap.

There is even a chance that our heroes can shut down the ritual before Tiamat emerges. Sheesh... what a letdown. Why even include that option?! Tiamat is TIAMAT. Obviously the players want to fight her, right?

The adventure points out that Tiamat will be weakened if the PCs can do things like stop some sacrifices, get a dragon mask, or damage the actual temple. If she is weakened, we are given a list of stat alterations to apply to her.

I know that mass combat in D&D has always been tricky business. This episode doesn't even give concrete numbers as to how many enemies there are here. It's kept vague to suit the needs of the DM. I would have liked it if the dungeon was eliminated and we had the encounters out on the battlefield - although that does make it difficult to explain why our heroes are dealing with all of the major plot points while their faction allies just kind of fight in the background.

Actually defeating Tiamat in battle discorporates her. When dropped to 0 hit points, she is banished back to hell. Her stat block is good - it's got a lot of epic details, though I wish she had a combined breath weapon.

Overall
 
I don't think I've ever seen a published adventure that didn't need some tweaking or work. The Rise of Tiamat is no exception. You, the DM, will have to put some work in to run this successfully. You can do it, but you have to be willing to make the effort. This can not be run right out of the book.

This is a fun adventure. I like it. It could have used some more epic scenes, and the detail is sorely lacking in certain places. For some reason, there are very few magic items in this thing.

I get the feeling there simply weren't enough pages for Wolfgang to execute this adventure properly. Maybe for the next path Wizards should add 40 pages and charge $40 per book instead..? That doesn't really bother me, though I like paying $30 for a hardcover. I guess we'll see what the general consensus from the player base is on this issue. I'd also really like a poster map or two. 

I do think this is worth running. There's a lot of cool moments and clever ideas. If you like making an adventure your own and truly putting your own spin on it, then this will work out well for you. If you are looking for something simple to run right out of the book, then this might not be for you. You will need to have stats handy and you'll need to be very familiar with the material, especially chapters one and five (though let's face it, you can just skip the assassination encounters entirely).

It is so odd to me that so much attention is put on the tomb with the yuan-ti and the tower in the hedge maze. That kind of focus needed to be on what I think are the far more interesting chapters (the metallic dragons and the final episode). The final fight with Tiamat comes off flat. Even the map is lame. It's just a bunch of brown star-shaped blotches.

To try to put this in perspective, though, I would say that Tyranny of Dragons is much, much better than previous edition's initial attempts at an adventure series.

When 3rd edition hit, I didn't care for The Sunless Citadel at all or the "path" that followed.

4th edition's Keep on the Shadowfell was pretty lame (I got the sense it drove many, many players screaming from 4e entirely). That HPE adventure path was excruciating (though I loved some of the epic tier stuff). I dare anyone alive to try to play through the duergar section of Thunderspire Labyrinth and not feel the urge to cause bodily harm. Who among you can play all the way through Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress without weeping openly at the table?

What I am trying to say is that as an initial offering for 5th edition, this has plenty of good stuff to use. I am sure the next path will be better, and the one after that will be exponentially greater as they learn from their mistakes. Even Rise of the Runelords comes off lame compared to later Pathfinder paths.

Look through this book before you buy it. Make sure you are up for this. If you have the time, you can make this great. But you will need to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

This is a blog that is about being a Dungeon Master, by a Dungeon Master. I know people use other names like "Game Master", "Referee" or "Judge", but "Dungeon Master" is just the phrase I use for any game I run. I guess I am too lazy to remember all the distinctions.

Today I want to talk about some things I have learned over the past few weeks with the idea that if it helped me, maybe it will help you. Running a game is extremely difficult and I think DMs should have all the help and insight that they need. I still maintain that most people try to run a campaign about 3-7 times before it fizzles out. I would like to see more people who are able to run a game every week regularly. It's not easy! And when you have a bad session, it can be very depressing.

The Certain Death Scenario
 
A player was telling me a D&D 5th edition Adventurers' League public play story last night. It was about a session of Hoard of the Dragon Queen (you have dragon hatchery spoilers incoming, people).

Basically what happened is that the party decided to rest in the dungeon. They had cleared half of it. There were still plenty of monsters left. The PCs rested in a room with only one exit.

The DM then proceeded to have a bad guy quietly spot them and then go get all of the monsters left in the dungeon! The heroes, mid-rest, had to fight around 5 encounters' worth of monsters in one shot (including Frulam Mondath and the half-dragon)! The whole thing resulted in a 3-hour long fight where the monsters were funneled in a hallway and chopped off one at a time.

Pulling Your Punches

Here's the thing with that scenario. What the DM did makes sense. The heroes rested in a dungeon where monsters are moving around. The monsters smartly gathered together for a mass assault. But what is the end result? A dull 3 hour fight. There is no way the PCs should have survived, but they did. I can only assume that the DM pulled his punches.

If he's pulling his punches, then why even go there? It's one thing if you decide to have the monsters attack to intend to kill the whole party to teach the players a lesson about D&D (?). The thing with that mindset is that, in my experience, it never works. They never learn. Some people simply think differently and will always assume a behavior pattern modeled after their own life experiences, not yours.

Here's the possible solutions for that scenario:

The monsters kill the whole party in a long, dull fight: I think what might have made it better is if the monsters had backed off and tried to set the room on fire with oil and fire spells. At least that's more engaging than a conga line of death.

The monsters negotiate: Although, what would they even want from the players? They have them over a barrel.

The monsters collapse the tunnel:  Trap the heroes in the room and leave them to suffocate. This is my favorite option. You can allow the PCs to try to dig out of the rubble as their air supply slowly runs out.

The monsters attack but take the heroes prisoner: This would have worked well. The bad guys could have tied them up and thrown them in the pit with the guard drakes!

Some of this comes down to style. Your players need to know your style up front so they can make informed decisions during the game. Some players might think that a DM will never present them with a "certain death" scenario. They assume the game is always "balanced". In this case, there's going to be a problem because the DM is basically throwing them into a murder machine. Make sure you let them know your thinking on these situations beforehand... even it is right before the PCs make their decision (in fact, that is the best time). You will save yourself a lot of grief.

My big issue with this scenario is that it is a big waste of time. Three hours on one fight? In 5th edition D&D?! If the DM is intending on taking down the PCs, just hand-wave it and be done. I know some players might balk at it, but you can then tell them that it is going to be a long and frustrating battle that is not worth doing. If the players want to play it out, you can, but you at least give them the opportunity to save time by just having them be taken prisoner in a cut-scene sort of scenario.

The Key to a Good Campaign: The Characters Actions Matter

On Sunday I ran some more Shadowrun. As I mentioned in my article on Queen Euphoria, one of my players decided to kill an NPC friend and the NPC's mother over a monetary dispute. One reader pointed out to me in the comment section that killing a contact in Shadowrun is really bad, and the other shadowrunners would not like it one bit.

So I sat down and thought this whole thing out logically. To me, this is the essence of DMing. What the players do matters. The things that they do have repercussions - sometimes small, sometimes big. The game comes alive when the world reacts to the characters. The campaign turns on their every whim. That's how it should feel to them, anyway. One big way to convey this to them is through NPCs.

The Other Key: A Kind World
 
In fact, most NPCs should treat them well, unless the characters are jerks. When you have a campaign world where everyone is trying to screw over the PCs (and for whatever reason, most of us DMs fall into this trap at one time or another) it creates an unpleasant experience. If the whole world hates them, why should our heroes want to save the world?

When NPCs treat our heroes with kindness, it makes the players happy and it also makes the bad guys seem badder. When an NPC does something for a PC, the PC becomes loyal to them. NPCs who go above and beyond are treasured by the players.

The NPCs can do things like: Hide the PCs from danger in their home, tend to them while they recover from an illness, bring them a much-needed item in their time of need, or stick up for them when they are accused of wrongdoing. This goes such a long way in creating a world that your players think about between sessions. And that is the kind of game you want!

The Shadowrun Repercussions

The dead guy left his money to his incarcerated girlfriend. This was all previously established in the campaign. The girlfriend exists because I heard a story about a real-life program where female inmates can videochat with people who pay $9 for a half hour. This amused me greatly, so I put it into the game. At first, the incarcerated woman just did it to have someone to talk to. But over time she came to have feelings for our poor, recently-deceased computer expert who lived with his mom.

The girlfriend hired shadowrunners to get revenge.

Word got out and the shadowrunning community was not happy. This was tricky. Jessie was rightly wondering how anyone knew what she had done. I had a logical, long-winded explanation. Really what she was worried about was that I was arbitrarily trying to screw over her character for the sake of the story. While my motivation was to display the logical fallout of what she'd done, I was not making stuff up for no reason.

RIP Sex Ferguson 

All of this resulted in a pretty awesome session which involved almost no dice rolls. I had no set plan, I just knew the NPCs' motivations and what resources they had at their disposal. These are usually the best kind of sessions, as long as you are on your game.

In the end, our runners paid off an inmate to strangle the girlfriend to death in a shower for a large sum of money. They killed off an NPC I was very fond of (Sex Ferguson) and framed his girlfriend for the murder. They got plastic surgery to completely alter their appearance. And now they plan on going after a police officer (Officer Dick Ripper of Lone Star). It should come to a head next week. I told them they are crazy to try to take on Lone Star, but they've recruited a high-ranking politician that owes them a favor for help.

I had hoped to start Dreamchipper this week but it looks like that will have to wait a week or two until the runners take care of this business.

Slaughtergrid

Last night I ran some more DCC RPG. I am putting the heroes through Slaughtergrid, an adventure written by Rafael Chandler (He created the Teratic Tome which I reviewed last week). We got into level two. On paper, it looked really boring. I decided that if it was sucking during play, I'd cross off the dull rooms and just make them empty areas and we could pass right through them.

It's funny how that works. What looked boring on paper was fantastic in practice. It all worked. Each little room had some gimmick - odorless flammable gas, a magic ring that made you super-muscly, and even a room where a troll lady was being oiled up by "three nude male goblinoids".

The dungeon has a gimmick where, when you die, you are reborn naked in this pink sphere with a mutation. You roll on a mutation chart. The party thief has this pet chicken that died twice. It now has a snake bottom half, spits acid and is a hemophiliac. So far the adventure is awesome. I'll have a full review once we finish it.

I just wanted to get all of that out of my system. I hope it is useful to somebody somewhere! Tomorrow I'll have a report on episode five of Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

Episode 5 in Hoard of the Dragon Queen is short. It's 4 pages long! I came into the store with the goal of getting through the whole thing in one night. We did, but I have found that we are falling behind in XP. Also, just a warning, this has major spoilers not just for Hoard of the Dragon Queen but also for Rise of Tiamat.

The heroes had just come off of a 60 day caravan trip where they are tracking the cult to see where they are bringing their ill-gotten gains to. In this chapter we follow the cult on another caravan trip for ten more days. Then we get to a roadhouse where the heroes are supposed to snoop around and eventually find a secret tunnel where lizardfolk are bringing the stolen goods to... somewhere else.

I fleshed this thing out quite a bit and still got it all done in 2 hours. Now that I have read Rise of Tiamat, I want to start start foreshadowing that stuff to try to make the whole thing feel more cohesive.

Foreshadowing the Council

This begins in Waterdeep. I decided to add in a scene in The Yawning Portal, the famous bar that has an entrance to Undermountain. I decided that some heroes who had gone into the entrance had gotten in a fight with a monster that caused a raging fire down there. This was to discourage the heroes from trying to go explore Undermountain and throw me for a loop.

I had Carlon Amoffel, the harper, introduce our heroes to Remallia Haventree (a harper who will be integral to the council in Rise of Tiamat) and the mysterious silver-haired "Elia" (a silver dragon in human form who will one day fly our heroes to meet with the metallic dragons).

I was also able to work in some material about the dragon eggs in Rise of Tiamat - namely, what the factions think should be done with the dragon eggs. Remallia suggested that the heroes use their baby black dragon as ransom. She assumed that the dragon was the child of a black dragon named Voaraghamanthar who lives in the Mere of the Dead Men to the north (he is detailed in an upcoming chapter in this book).

Our 4th grader who plays Dark the Dragon Sorceress was outraged! She declared that nothing will happen to Sparky, the baby dragon! Dark got into an argument with someone over this (I think it was her dad's rogue character). Dark tried to slap him, but suddenly the mysterious "Elia" grabbed Dark's hand to stop her. I explained to her that Elia had amazing strength. I told Dark that her blood felt charged up (she is a dragon blood sorceress. I do this thing where when she is around dragons, she can sort of sense them).

This lead to her dad tailing Elia. He followed her when she left the bar and saw Elia transform into a silver dragon and fly away. I was very satisifed as I think this goes a long way into making the world feel more magical and to give them the sense that they are in the middle of big things, and that all has yet to be revealed. Hopefully this will help excite them to see how things will play out.

Another Caravan?

This is an odd chapter. Our heroes did not exactly get along with the cultists on the last long trip. The adventure expects the heroes to sign on as guards with the cultists again... even though the cultists think one of the PCs murdered one of them on the previous trip.

This chapter also introduces a couple of cultist NPCs who I think should have been introduced in episode 4. One is a female who wants revenge for the murder. She is a veteran with 2 attacks per round and 59 hit points! It is expected that she will duel the PC to the death, and if the other adventurers jump in, 12 guards will attack them. Yikes.

I gave the heroes the option to follow the cult caravan at a distance rather than sign on with them.

XP Catch-Up
 
I had noticed that the PCs were way behind on xp, so I plopped down three encounters from the random encounter list:

• 8 giant frogs (who were chasing giant lightning bugs)
• 2 dumb ogres (who wanted a "snack" - a PC - and "stuff")
• 1 angry Troll (I just wanted to see how they'd react to the regeneration. They rolled with it nicely)

The Carnath Roadhouse

After 10 days, the caravan arrived at this roadhouse. One party thief crept up and snooped around, which was pretty cool.

Then the party came up with a somewhat ridiculous plan where they tied up the gnome who the cultists thought committed murder on the previous trip to deliver to them. This is a bit goofy because the cultists would recognize the PCs from the long trip, right?

They rolled well on their deception and it was pretty hilarious. The vengeful female cultist wanted to kill him immediately, but the heroes convinced her to wait until dawn the next day. That gave them a night to sneak around.

They found a very cool secret door. It was a floor hatch with a box bolted to it, so that you have to tip the whole box to reveal the opening beneath. That is the kind of cool, classic stuff that I love in these adventures. 

The heroes went down and found a long underground tunnel. They followed it, and ran into nine lizard folk coming for some crates!

One of the rogues had a fun idea. He'd been saving some flasks of oil. He dumped them on and around the bad guys. Then Dark cast a firebolt spell on the oil! I asked her to roll just to see how big the resultant fiery blast was.

You know what she rolled, right? A natural 20! The players cheered and high fived our legendary sorceress. I had a few lizardfolk stumble out of the blaze like stuntmen in a bad rubbery costumes. They swung their burning clubs and spiked shields but were cut down immediately.

It was an awesome way to end the session.

Overall

This was fine. I am not too enthusiastic about this chapter - it feels like it's not fleshed out enough. But whatever, we are rocketing toward Rise of Tiamat!

I am going to look through the book and see if I missed some XP rewards. The PCs are 4th level, and they should be hitting 6th level now for Episode 6. I may need to force-feed them a pile of XP somehow next session.

I also reminded them about Inspiration again tonight. That's the mechanic where if they roleplay their flaws and backgrounds, they get advantage on a future roll of their choosing. They are having a hard time with it. I think what I need to do is give inspiration when the PCs do something fun like use the oil on the lizardfolk. I'll try that next week and see how it goes.

This article contains notes and information for Dungeon Masters who are running the Tyranny of Dragons path for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. It contains links, errata and advice on how to run things most effectively and information to make it easier for you to foreshadow the story and make it feel more fleshed out.

This document will be updated as the season progresses. As I run more of this campaign I will add further notes. When this is article is updated I will post an alert via my twitter account. If you follow me I swear I will follow you back unless you spam my feed with pictures of dog butts or something.

Links:

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules -Everything Players and DMs need to run the game, free!

D&D Adventurer's League Player's Guide - All of the rules for running an official game at home or in a store.

Tyranny of Dragons Council Scorecard

Hoard of the Dragon Queen Online Supplement - Monster Stats, Magic Items and Spells

Rise of Tiamat Online Supplement - Monster Stats, Items and Spells

My rundown of the Adventurers' League rules and the faction packet

My article on downtime and the first three epsiodes of Hoard of the Dragon Queen

This page is meant to aid DMs running the Tyranny of Dragons storyline. It contains notes on information you should know as you prepare each episode. Being able to foreshadow certain things will make your game come together nicely, but I understand that not everyone has time to read two hardcover books and prepare notes accordingly.

Errata:
 
The most important thing to check out is this list of clarifications by the author of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. There are a number of typos and misprints that can confuse you, particularly the encounter table in episode 4, which contains events that aren't actually in the book.

Backgrounds:

The backgrounds in Hoard of the Dragon Queen are good, but they do not link to Rise of Tiamat much at all. You might want to consider adding to or altering some of them.

For example, option 10 is awesome. The PC is a former gold dragon of Bahamut in mortal form as a punishment. There is a good chance this PC would at least be aware of the metallic dragons in episode 6 of Rise of Tiamat. It might be interesting to say that the PC knows "Elia" the silver dragon. And you definitely should think about incorporating Protanther, the gold dragon (Rise of Tiamat page 59). Protanther is a former "King of Justice" - royalty among gold dragons.

Background 6 can easily be changed to include Rise of Tiamat Wyrmspeakers like Neronvain for an elf PC, or Varram for a dwarf PC.

Having a PC want revenge on a dragon works out well. Black dragons feature prominently in HotDQ, so saying that Voaraghamanthar, the black dragon from Mere of the dead men (HotDQ page 48) would be a good fit. Lennithon the blue dragon is also a good choice, as he appears in the very beginning of the campaign and then shows up near the very end in Xonthal's tower in Episode 7 of Rise of Tiamat.


Episode 1:

In the battle with Lennithon the blue dragon, many DMs placed a ballista on the wall for the PCs to use to fire on Lennithon. This helps give the PCs incentive to actually engage the dragon. Otherwise they may feel (rightly) that they have no chance against it and will not even try to engage it.

Lennithon appears again in Xonthal's tower in Rise of Tiamat, so note any special scars or moments that occur. The dragon can seek revenge later if a PC shoots it in the eye.

In the duel with the half-dragon Langdedrosa, it is not important if the PC wins and kills him. The half-dragon appears again in Episode 3 simply as a monster in a room.

Episode 2:

You may want to have Asbara Jos, the Red Wizard, be in the camp. It is mentioned later that he is here. He is a red wizard and a liason to the red wizards. He will later join the caravan in episode 4. It is noted in the author errata that Asbara hands out in Rezmir's command tent.

The adventure wants you to make it impossible to affect the tent of the leaders which is here Rezmir, Frulam, Langdedrosa and Asbara Jos are. You may just want to not even call attention to it to avoid an awkward situation, if that matters to you.

The caves lead to the Hatchery, which is detailed in episode 3. You may want to make sure you are familiar with episodes 3 before running this episode, as there is a fair chance your PCs will try to sneak in there. Episode 2 is extremely short, depending on how your players handle it.

The text notes that Leosin will want to stay a prisoner in the camp. You may want to ignore this. The adventure assumes that he is rescued, and it might be a bit difficult or awkward to work around his absence.

Episode 3:

The PCs may want to keep a dragon egg (there's 3 total, each containing a black dragon). You should decide whether you want to allow that. The adventure states that if the PCs can keep the egg in warm conditions, it will hatch in a week. In my game, the PCs kept one. I ruled that for now the baby dragon can't fly, breathe acid, or do much of anything. The way they treat it will determine whether it grows up to become evil. Remember that if you are running an Adventurers' League game, this may not be legal. You may want to be clear up front that while you are allowing the dragon at your table, other tables probably won't.

In Rise of Tiamat, there is a paragraph describing how the factions feel about the dragon eggs. I posted an image of it here.

Where the eggs came from is never answered. There is a black dragon in the Mere of Dead Men named Voaraghamanthar who is discussed in episode 6. Perhaps he is the father.

If there are any Harpers in the party, you may want to have Leosin mention to them to keep an eye out for a fellow Harper named Carlon Amofel. He has a tattoo with the Harper symbol hidden in it. In episode 4, the heroes will encounter him buried up to his neck in the road.

Episode 4:
 
Don't forget to have the PCs roll charisma checks at the start of the trip as detailed on page 37 in the "Recognized!" section. The person who rolls the lowest will eventually be recognized by a cultist.

Speaking of cultists, you might want to use this cultist generator here.

Also, for some reason a few cultists that are on this trip aren't detailed until episode five. This may be to ensure that they survive the journey. You might want to include them now, as it doesn't really make sense otherwise. One is female, and is somehow related or involved with the cultist murdered by Jamna late in this episode. She is a veteran, and she will want revenge on the PC who was blamed for the murder.

Another cultist NPC who is briefly mentioned in episode 5 is a thief named Larion Keenblade. By episode 5, he wants out of the cult altogether. Maybe he befriends your PCs during the trip in episode 4.

Speaking of the trip, the caravan stops off in many iconic locations along the way. What follows is my outline on what happens when. It's just how I ran it, feel free to take it or leave it. I had to eyeball the distance between locations in some cases. I have included links to information on each of the settlements in case you want to flesh them out.

The trip is 750 miles long, 15 miles per day. 60 days total. 8 hours a day. The wagons stop every 6 days to let the animals rest.

Baldur's Gate
Day 1: Everything Has a Price (I used Losvius Longnose for this)
Day 3: The caravan begins passing through the Fields of the Dead
Day 5: Animal Abuse
Day 6: Bane of the Mountains
Day 8: Stranded
Days 9-12: Lots of rain and thunder to set up the fungus...
Day 13: Fungus Humongous
Day 14: Elturel
Day 18: Roadside Hospitality
Day 20: Scornubel
Day 23: No Room at the Inn
Day 25: Triel
Day 28: The Golden Stag
Day 30: Soubar
Day 33: Rainy Inn (watch out, the assassins are extremely powerful)
Day 38: Contraband
Day 40: Dragonspear (check out Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle)
Day 43: Payback
Day 45: Adventuring Life
Day 47: Spider Woods
Day 51: Recognized! (refer to the lowest PC Charisma check rolled at the beginning of the trip)
Day 52: Daggerford (detailed in Scourge of the Sword Coast. This adventure takes place 5 to 10 years after that one.) You may want to mention Duke Maldwyn Daggerford and his magic blade Lawflame, just to refer to Scourge a bit. You could also have the heroes meet Sir Isteval, who is part of the Council in Rise of Tiamat. Asbara Jos and Jamna Gleamsilver sign on to the caravan.
Day 53: Unwanted Attention
Day 56: Who's Your Friend?
Day 58: Murder Most Foul
Day 60: Waterdeep

You'll want to place the hobgoblin encounter from "Stranded" within the first 20 days or so, as that is when the caravan will pass through the Fields of the Dead.

Episode 5:

When the heroes arrived in Waterdeep, I added in a meeting to introduce NPCs that become important in Rise of Tiamat. I had Carlon Amofel bring the heroes to The Yawning Portal (a famous bar in Waterdeep that has an entrance to the legendary dungeon Undermountain int it). Carlon introduced the heroes to:

Remallia Haventree: A moon elf harper who will represent the Harpers in the council at the start of Rise of Tiamat.

"Elia": A mysterious silver-haired woman, friend of Remallia. She is a silver dragon assuming human form. This is a good chance for her to take stock of the heroes. She will end up taking the heroes to meet with the metallic dragons in Rise of Tiamat.

I will update this page as my game progresses and as things are discovered online. I am sure there are mistakes in here. If you catch any feel free to let me know.

I am kicking myself for not looking up more on the Mere of Dead Men before running this session. Just now I found this article by Ed Greenwood which reveals a lot more about the mere and the black dragon that lives in it. You should definitely check this out before you run Episode 6.

Our store has actually expanded to 4 tables of D&D Encounters games. I am pleasantly surprised that we have retained the vast majority of players. Usually when we run encounters seasons in the store, we start out with a pile of people and then it dwindles down to a single table.

We Need XP
 
Last week I had become concerned that my group was somehow too low-level for where we're at in the adventure. I saw that the group is expected to hit level 6 by the end of episode 6. At the start of yesterday, the PCs were level 4. I decided that this session was going to be designed to rocket them deep into level 5 before they even got to the main part of the episode.

This means I had to expand on some stuff. I took a bunch of random encounters in the adventure and fleshed them out. I'm not sure what is "legal" in Adventurer's League and what is not anymore.

Episode 6 Overview

This episode goes like this:

• The heroes follow the trail of the cultists through a swamp - The Mere of Dead Men.
• The trail leads to Castle Naerytar, a place that the cultists share with their allies, which are tribes of bullywugs and lizardfolk.
• The PCs are free to navigate the castle however they like - through stealth, through hacking, or through deception. The adventure seems to favor the idea of the PCs pretending to be cultists.
• In the end, it is discovered that in the basement dungeon there is a magic portal to another Cult lair. To pass through it, the PCs will need a magic passphrase, which is in a room at the top of the castle.

Got all that? This thing was a real pain to prepare. The last episode was about 4 pages long. This one is around 20 pages. A lot of it is dull room descriptions.

In tonight's session, all we did was the journey to the castle. I took a bunch of random encounters and fleshed them out. I tried to make half the encounters non-combat situations where XP could still be heaped upon our heroes.

Shambler, The Weed That Walks

I kicked this off with an encounter with a shambling mound. The idea here was for the PCs to befriend him. He could give the PCs information and help them if things got too tough. I did this thing where he could grow healing tubers on his body. If the PCs ate them, they healed d8+2 and could speak with him telepathically for a bit.

The heroes rescued him as I'd hoped. He was impaled on a tree by bullywugs and left to rot. He would check in on them throughout their journey as I deemed it necessary.

Giant Spiders

This is how I picture Shambler

I threw six giant spiders at them. These creatures are 200 XP each. They very nearly killed the whole party. Their bite does 7 damage plus 9 poison (4 if the PC makes a CON save).

Two heroes dropped from the poison. According to the Monster Manual page 328:  "...the target is stable but poisoned for one hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed if poisoned by this way."

My group had three rogues, one sorceress and one paladin. They did not focus fire and I am pretty sure they are not using many of their abilities. I think I am going to read up and make sure they are up to speed on what they can do, because this was alarming.

I had Shambler, The Weed That Walks show up at the end of the battle. They had some healing tubers, waited for their poisoned pals to recover, and then continued on.

Lizardfolk

My group has a baby black dragon. In this swamp, the Mere of Dead Men, there is a black dragon that the lizardfolk worship. I decided that a lizardfolk shaman had a dream that a new dragon to worship would arrive in the swamp. That dragon is of course Sparky the baby black dragon.

The lizardfolk approached the group peacefully and luckily many of the PCs speak Draconic. The shaman explained his vision, and saw that the heroes had a cart with a crate that had holes in it. He eventually convinced them to let him open it. The lizardfolk gathered around and were in awe of Sparky. They wanted to take him.

Dark the dragon sorceress would have none of this. She yelled at them and made an intimidation check. And, of course, she rolled a natural 20. The lizardfolk apologized to her and fled into the swamp.

How funny is it that she chose the black dragon bloodline and this whole adventure revolves around black dragons? The main villain is a half-black dragon who has a magic black dragon mask.

Will o Wisp

A Will o Wisp is something every D&D group should run into once. This glowing ball of light was able to get the PCs to follow it. It led them into quicksand! One of the rogues almost died, but a clever combination of spells, rope, and a paladin power saved him.

I was going to run a yuan-ti encounter, but after the spider fight proved so deadly I skipped it. I didn't want a TPK.

The Black Dragon

The adventure discusses the black dragon of the swamp, Voaraghamanthar. The bad guy of the adventure, Rezmir, used the black dragon mask to recruit Voaraghamanthar to the cult's cause. The adventure makes a vague statement that the PCs might fight this dragon in Rise of Tiamat (though I don't recall seeing Voaraghamanthar in that adventure - maybe I missed it).

Voaraghamanthar has a secret. He has a twin. The dragons keep this a secret, preferring to let the world believe there is only one black dragon in the swamp.

I wanted to give the PCs a chance to find this out, or at least see clues. So I had another will o wisp lead them to his lair!

The lair is marked by acid-burned skulls hanging on trees. Outside the dragon's cave was a hut with lizardfolk who worshiped him.

A lone, brave rogue decided to sneak in to the dragon's cave. He rolled high and got a good look around. Now that I have read that article about Ed Greenwood.. I really blew this lair. I also didn't take into account lair actions in the Monster Manual.

Inside the cave were kobolds cleaning the dragon's hoard. Voaraghamanthar sat on top the hoard. A second chamber had a second treasure pile with kobolds cleaning each of the coins and stacking them in a neat pile. Two treasure piles - that was my clue to them that this was actually the lair of two dragons.

When the rogue stealthed his way back to the party and told them, they erupted. The players (mostly kids/teenagers) were loudly shouting about what they wanted to do. With three rogues in the group, they desperately wanted to creep in there and steal some treasure.

When I was planning this, I knew there was a chance they'd get their hands on this treasure. You never know what's going to happen in D&D. Players often come up with some clever, outside the box idea that achieves goals that I would have thought impossible. That's part of the fun of the game.

So I had decided that if they did somehow get treasure, I'd stock it with +1 items. I don't think that's Adventurer's League legal, but again I can just tell the players that if they take these characters to another table, they might not be allowed to use the items (though I don't think it matters much).

To me, +1 items in a dragon hoard is extremely chintzy. But in this entire adventure, our 4th level heroes have found a +1 bow.. and that's it! In older editions, it is utter madness for them to not have +1 items by now. I guess in this edition, magic items are not part of the core math and are given out more rarely to make them feel special.

I got it 50% off..

Well, anyway, it doesn't matter. The group had a freakout right in front of the cave entrance. For some reason, a rogue took Sparky out of his crate and rolled him around in a stream (the players were spazzing out.. I'd brought a bag full of gummy halloween candy and I think the sugar put them into a kind of candy hyper-madness). Sparky let out a happy squeal... which echoed throughout the camp.

Voaraghamanthar the black dragon sensed something was up. The dragon sniffed the air, roared, and slowly approached the cave mouth (I gave them ample time to hide, run, do whatever... this dragon is probably way too powerful for them to fight).

All of the group ran and hid except for DARK THE DRAGON SORCERESS. She was scared, but stood her ground. With her was the cart and the crate, which Sparky had been hidden in real quick.

The dragon sniffed the crate and questioned Dark in Draconic. He assumed she was with the Cult of the Dragon. We had a long conversation, where Dark learned that Voaraghamanthar was being controlled by the black dragon mask. Voaraghamanthar didn't like it. Dark agreed to kill Rezmir and to bring the mask to the dragon.

We were out of time. Next week we will get into Castle Naerytar and who knows, maybe they'll try to sneak into the dragon's lair. Honestly that would be pretty awesome.

I was thinking about the cover art for D&D 5th edition. I'm not a big fan. The best cover, in my opinion, is the one for The Rise of Tiamat. The more I look at it, the more I like it. I decided to fill this column with images by the artist who did The Rise of Tiamat cover, Michael Komarck. My slight beef with his stuff is that it looks either too "real", like a photo, or it somehow has a CGI look, like he made it with a computer program like poser.

I will say that I love his Rise of Tiamat cover and I've always really liked his depiction of the 4th edition githyanki.

The Campaign Killer

I think most campaigns are killed by a bad session, or a string of bad sessions. As a DM, you put a pile of work into this, you got everybody together, and what you thought was going to be Empire Strikes Back turned out to be The Phantom Menace. It is painful, it is awkward. You're not sure if your players even want to come back. You might just want to give up.

Don't! Every DM has bad sessions. Sometimes it just happens. When you have a bad one, go do something else and don't think about it for a few days. Watch cool movies, enjoy some other hobby. I recharge my battery by reading some Knights of the Dinner Table, a comic that really captures what is great about RPGs and really makes you want to play.

Let's go over the causes of a bad session and then we will see what can be done about it.

The Causes:

• The group abandons your adventure
• Your encounters are too difficult
• Your encounters are too easy
• Your game is boring
• Interpersonal conflicts

The Group Abandons Your Adventure:

You come into the session with a plan, right? You have an adventure for them all cooked up, and it's awesome. But sometimes the group gets a wild hair up their butt and they want to ditch your adventure. Heck, they might even want to leave the city, continent or plane!

Always have a back-up scenario in your pocket. This is an emergency plan that you can draw on if your PCs take off completely. It doesn't have to be too detailed, just an outline of another scenario that you can drop in. Adapt it to what your PCs are doing and go. When the PCs do this, it is a wild ride. You just grab whatever ideas you have at your disposal and make it work.

When you roll with your players when they have an exciting, crazy idea, they love you for it. It becomes a legendary session that they talk about forever.

Yeah, it's a bummer when you prepared a whole bunch of material that won't get used. But you can cannibalize it later. You can repurpose a dungeon, re-skin an NPC and use it the next session.

You can also do what Chris Perkins does - have that scenario that the PCs abandoned play out without the PCs involvement. The PCs may have to deal with the repercussions of this down the road, and it will make the world feel real.

Your Encounters Are Too Difficult

This is a trap I fall into sometimes. I lose perspective. Sometimes you should play in someone else's game just to remember what it is like to be a player. This will help you empathize with your players.

Sometimes a fight should be hard. "Boss" fights. Battles with iconic monsters like dragons or beholders. But not every fight should be hard. In fact, some should be easy. It's fun for the PCs to have a stress-free encounter where they can do backflips and trade quips. Let them have it! The point of the game is to have fun, after all.

One thing I see over and over again is DMs who put their players through the ringer, but then won't let them die. It feels so cheap when your character gets mauled, but then the DM softens up and lets you live through some ham-handed distraction or whatever. That is a very unpleasant way to spend three hours, and not too many people will stick around for it.

Your Encounters Are Too Easy

I am more guilty of this one. If everything is easy, it's pretty dull. Why the need to get XP and gain levels if you can maul everything already?

Handing out magic items like candy is a bad idea, too. They lose their value. And once PCs have certain abilities, namely flight and teleportation, your adventures are about to become very limited.

Worse, when you try to correct this situation, the players will be most unhappy. But if you stay the course, they feel like they've already "won" D&D and get bored.

Boredom

Speaking of getting bored, good gawd. Watch someone else's D&D game. It's boring! People flipping through books, stacking dice, quietly listening to the DM talk to another player.

You have to keep the game moving! Do not stop to look up every little rule. Here are some ways to speed things up:

The Gary Gygax Rule: If someone asks a question you don't have an answer to, roll a d6. 1-3 = No, 4-6 = Yes. Boom. Roasted. Move on!

Roll a d20 and see if it matters: If you're not sure of a modifier or bonus, just have the player roll a d20 and see what they get. If they roll high, obviously they succeed. If low, they fail. Use your judgment on the middle ground.

In general, if it's a crucial moment and the rules question will have major impact, go ahead and look it up. Otherwise, make a note to look it up after the game.

I always tell my players it is their job to know what their characters can do. If they forget or miss it, it's their problem. Be better prepared next time! We have stuff to do! Spellcasters in particular should write down their spells, to-hit bonuses, save DCs, durations, etc on a "cheat sheet". This will save so much time.

Heck, a player can just look anything they need to know up when someone else is taking a combat turn.Now, all that said...

Don't be a slave to skill checks: Let the players describe how they search a room. If what they do logically leads to them finding a secret door, they find it. It is a much cooler game when a PC finds a secret door by discovering that a torch sconce is a lever that activates a swiveling wall that reveals a secret passage rather than rolling a 14 on a d20. Just don't let all the searching take too long. Tell them what's in the room, and let them decide if they want to mess with the objects and poke around or not.

Personally, I think that missed treasure sucks. I don't want them to miss it just because they rolled an 8 rather than a 12.

Interpersonal Conflicts

This is a big one. This is a social game, so when you get people together, things happen. The most common conflicts usually involve clashing play styles or personalities. You have to know who you are playing with if you are going to run a long campaign. When you bring someone into your game, talk to them beforehand to let them know how you run your game, and ask them what they want to get out of the game. Make sure you are compatible before you even start.

There's a million different things that can go wrong:

• A player has a problem with their temper
• The DM plays favorites
• Someone gets a crush on someone else and it leaks into the game
• A player is being inappropriate/rude
• Someone is cheating
• The DM has a super-awesome NPC that does everything while the party stands there
• A player won't stop making side-conversations

Here's the bottom line on all of this stuff. You talk about the problem, give it a few weeks and see if the behavior changes, and if not then somebody gets the boot. That's all there is to it.

A lot of people say "..but these are the only people that I know who will play". Do you really want to play a bad game every week? It's a colossal waste of your own time. You won't be able to sustain it, anyway. The crappy game will weigh you down and break you.

What you need is to get yourself a pool of players. The two ways I do this:

Recruit real-life friends: Seriously. Most people will try D&D if they have the opportunity.  Buddy up with people at work/school/whatever and feel them out. This may take time. But before you know it, you've brought them into the fold. The key here is that once you get them to try it, your game must be good! Otherwise they will go away.

Run a game at a game store: You will meet a billion players and you will be able to cherry pick your favorites for your home game.

Recruiting players is fun. It's kind of like forming your own justice league or an all star team. Do it! Do not waste time trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Just because someone doesn't fit in your game doesn't make them bad people... you can still be friends with them. Chemistry is a very important thing.

The Bottom Line

Some people want to kill stuff. Some want roleplaying and creative solutions. I have found that if you run your game like it is a movie or TV show, it generally makes everyone happy. They all want to feel like they're the main characters in a story, and that they can do whatever they like. If you can give them that feeling, you have a good game going.

SlaughterGrid is an adventure made for D&D-type game systems. I ran it using the Dungeon Crawl Classics rules as part of my Monday Night game store World Tour game. Now that I've run it, I'm going to tell you what I think about it!

This fantasy RPG adventure is written by Rafael Chandler, the guy who did the Teratic Tome monster book. He definitely has a unique style. He specializes in adventures with lots of gore and explicit stuff. A lot of the art is also explicit. I'll only be showing "safe portions" of select images.

The Giant Stone Woman

I bought this partly because I like that Chandler has a vision. So few D&D writers have a style that stands out. Most of the time, adventures all have the same sort of creative voice. To me, Raymond Chandler is inspired and he has an actual take on what D&D can be that isn't like everybody else's. I appreciate that.

But it's the concept of the dungeon that sold me. This dungeon is built inside a giant stone woman that was constructed by genocidal halflings. It once rampaged across the land. It is now inert and lying in the earth. All sorts of weird creatures have flocked to live inside it.

Your Character Will Have Mutations
 
This dungeon has a gimmick: When you die in the SlaughterGrid, you are immediately reborn in "The Ovum", a pink sphere. Your character is resurrected with a mutation, which is rolled on a chart. A lot of the mutations are awesome. The party fighter now has a lightning-hand. The rogue had worse luck - she permanently attracts flies.

This proved to work out extremely well. The dungeon wore the party down over the course of four sessions. By the end, they were killing each other or committing suicide just to get out of an inconvenient situation.

This also puts a whole new spin on monsters that force PCs to attack each other. In 4th edition D&D, dominate was best used sparingly (if at all) as it had massive ramifications - mainly what it meant was that the player had to sit at the table for up to half an hour doing absolutely nothing.

But in here, PCs having an excuse to kill each other was fun! They were reborn with weird new powers. A nice touch was that their old body remained. I had one PC reborn with the urge to eat meat every hour. He feasted on his own corpse. Very odd!

The Treasure is Awesome

The treasure is fantastic. There are lots of creative items (the party rogue loves her ring which gives her super-muscles). It's a very interesting idea to place so many items in the dungeon that only have 3 or 4 charges. And I love the idea of an item exploding when the last charge is used.

I should also note that this adventure has a lot of extras. The book includes thirty two new monsters, as well as a page of NPC names (which always comes in handy).

The Exterior HexCrawl
 
Getting to the dungeon involves a hexcrawl. I read it over and I didn't really like it. In general, I don't like long lead-ups to the dungeon. They're usually boring. There's enough material in the dungeon, no need to drag it out!

So I grabbed the one encounter from the hexcrawl that excited me and threw that at them on their way to the Slaughtergrid. It involved a genital-eating red-skinned unicorn who hated virgins. It went off extremely well!

Our heroes battled the red unicorn and found the SlaughterGrid. I'll give you three guesses as to where the dungeon entrance is located on the giant stone woman's body.

The Gold Whores

The dungeon has a gimmick that didn't come in to play much. There's these monsters called "Gold-whores". When gold is left out in the open, they come out of the walls and go into a frenzy. The denizens keep any gold sealed up tight to prevent attracting them. In fact, there's so little gold in here that this almost never came up at all.

At the very end of the dungeon is a statue that turns metal to gold 3 times. I think that should have been placed on the first level so the PCs could mess with it and learn about the gold whores early on.

Level One

In retrospect, the first level of the dungeon is probably the worst of the three. There are a few save-or-die traps, but not enough. My group rolled very well, and didn't die at all in that first session.

One thing I don't like about big dungeons is when there's an entrance to the second level early on. I sat there at home and spent hours preparing this first level of the dungeon. I hate the idea that the party might bypass the whole level and just skip down to level two. I don't blame the PCs for doing it, but I am not interested in wasting my time. I moved the entrance to two to ensure that my party got to go through most of the rooms in level one.

Level Two
Level 2 was much better. It's full of goblinoids who serve this pit troll and/or a crazy corrupted wizard lady. The gnolls, orcs and goblins are each a variant. The orcs breathe frost, for example. Very cool!

The Pit Troll is hilarious. She has her alpha male with her and some cool treasure.

One of my favorite rooms here is a lake of acid with an island full of treasure. Crossing it is deadly - there's fumes and acid geysers. It's very fun and memorable. One of the PCs got paralyzed by something in here, and the party decided the best way to deal with this was to kill him. He was reborn in the ovum with bat wings. He made his way back to the lake, naked, and rejoined the party.

Level Three

Level 3 is full of otyughs. They're classic d&d monsters with tentacles, and they love garbage. I never much cared for them, but I love the variants Chandler cooked up here. I especially like the shape-shifting pseudo-otyugh. It is quite amusing to me to imagine a weird lady walking up to the PCs who smells like trash dumbly trying to lure them into an obvious trap.

My favorite area of the whole dungeon is a hallway where two polyps lurk. As the PCs approach, the adventure says "...Polyps chirp and mutter to one another as party approaches, then fall silent". Check the image to the left for details. I find this vastly amusing. It is a fantastic encounter!

There's also a shrunken village of 23 farmers. The cannibal PC ate one little villager, to the horror of the rest of the group. The party wizard successfully enlarged a farmer, and the thief decided to keep a tiny dwarf (who was later squooshed to death).

The final encounter of the dungeon involves a hideous genital-monster called The Progenitor, which I probably shouldn't describe or even show you the full-page art of. It's got five "openings", right? And it has tentacles that end in "the dagger of the male physique", as Ed Greenwood might put it.

The party nearly died fighting the mighty Progenitor. One PC swore a "Bowel Oath" to it. But in the end, the heroes prevailed and escaped the dungeon.

Overall

This is a really good, creative dungeon. I think that you could make it two levels instead of three and not miss anything. On paper, as you read through this adventure, some of it looks dull, but it went fantastic in actual play. The group really enjoyed it and were actually a little bummed when it was over. They liked everything - the feces, the gore, and especially the mutation gimmick.

If you are thinking about running this, I'd suggest checking with your players as to their feelings about some of the more explicit stuff in here and make sure they won't be offended before you spring it on them. But I highly recommend that you buy this adventure, even if just to steal some of the concepts and items.

Pick up SlaughterGrid here. It's a very good deal at $6.66.