Silver Gems & Perils

A Gamemaster's Ultimate Toolkit I feel like it's hard not to convince a new or experienced Dungeon Master to solve constraints of life. Especially for the drawer that gets exhausted to draw a dungeon or wilderness map. So the solution? A Deck of Many Dungeons The great benefit having these cards are to create plenty of dungeons that are suitable for one-shots to campaigns. Additionally the solo player benefits to reduce game prep. This review of the product is short to encourage folks to buy this if this interests you. My First Dungeon Laid Out   Rules And Tables for Quest Items and NPCs The dungeon starts with a Ace card that gives you a quest table to get an idea of running the game. The rest follows by pulling cards from the deck and rolling tables for sounds, contents, monsters and treasure found throughout. Of course, you can fill the dungeon as you wish and use your fantasy rpg of choice.  Once you fill in the unconnected dungeon with no corridor with an empty space. th...

Wizardry & Progression I watched an old video long ago from Dorks of Yore regarding why Gary Gygax didn't like Magic-Users with Tim Kask answering that question. While Gary is somewhat wrong on why anybody would play a spell-caster while the campaign is focused around heroes and warriors. I think most people would understand that playing a Magic-User is boring at 1st Level because you simply harness 1 first level spell at the start and a dagger.  Vancian Magic or "Fire & Forget Magic" was introduced in Original Dungeons & Dragons and eventually stayed throughout most editions including retroclones. though cantrips are introduced as more accessible/simpler magic that any spellcaster can use at any moment. I don't have knowledge of D&D 5E's magic system so beyond this point I will suggest looking into it further on how magic works in later games.  Basically a Magic-User (or Elf) selects a spell that they already have studied and prepares it for the n...

A fragment campaign stuck in limbo When it came to investing into a campaign idea I've had for the longest time it never was written on paper nor recorded. It was stuck in my mind sort of on a loop that reminded me this was something I've wanted to play out. There was a first attempt. In fact it was using Whitebox Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game! Well... it was a short-lived attempt because like most Old-School D&D games out there. Lethality was frequent and often an aspect to avoid in combat. So Master Otis and Jason Covenrock were "dead" during their first expedition into the catacombs locating clues leading to the big bad one. I dropped it instantly yet I should've known better to look for a less lethal system for this kind of campaign to emerge in the future.  Now fast-forwarding to 2025 I've been using Pits & Perils to play out my solo campaigns since it was my go-to system to running medieval fantasy games. Most importantly it was also due to t...