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...

The Unga Bunga Build Fighters have been around throughout history, wargaming and most of fantasy literature. We popularly see with Tolkien's Lord of Rings, Robert E Howard's Conan The Barbarian and Kentaro Miura's Berserk with Guts 'The Black Swordsman'. Fantasy Tabletop RPGs allow us to portray these characters into our referee's campaigns.  While the Fighter became a class known amongst the community as a simple class to play. It leaves us to question the enjoyment of playing a Fighting-Man with a battle axe. In medieval wargaming, the common footsoldier, knight and archers make up the majority of an army, but once the fantasy supplement had orcs, elves and dwarves it changed the battles forever. Now I don't have experience/knowledge with OD&D and Chainmail, but regardless of what system you use. It can be achieved to make the most interesting Fighter in your group or solo campaign. Without further ado let's further discuss the class! Building a Fi...

The 50 Faith Build Class I wanted to start a 'How To' series focused on the classic D&D classes that have a long history from OD&D to the present day. I have no experience with modern editions of D&D so I can't share my input of the classes we still have today. So I'll be providing examples and discussions with this series. so without further ado let's start with the Cleric! When it comes to classic RPGs and today's video games. The White Mage, Healer, Paladins and eventually any character that performs healing and buffs can act as a support character. In OD&D and later on AD&D the cleric was born to fulfill the role of a healer, undead hunter and additional utility spells. The Cleric was the very first healer before OD&D's Greyhawk supplement introduced the Paladin. Which allowed a Fighter to essentially perform healing while having military proficiency. However, the cleric still provides most of the divine magic which doesn't ge...

The Greater Risks Comes Greater Rewards One of the things I've heard over on YouTube was Daniel Norton of Bandits Keep is introducing a way to reward players and by guiding them to the next adventure. After watching the video it made sense and it would make exploring the referee's campaign in search of the magic item that one player seeks. Lately, I've built this rut during solo play new ways of motivating myself to create an exciting adventure without wasting time. So I have a few tools to do so and at some point in time they never lived up to their use long-term.   So rather than spending money on things I didn't need. I needed that inspiration to come up with an adventure to later build a campaign from that initial dungeon. The solution is treasure maps. Exploring Is How We Find it the main reason exploration in D&D and RPGs that handle rules for traveling in the wilderness is the treasure that is left behind in the world the referee makes. Obviously if you play ...

Touching Grass For Once I think looking at my current Pits & Perils solo campaign leaving the low-level, dungeon skirmish tier of play always feels satisfying. Though if it wasn't for reading Muster It would destroy my investment into the hobby because I haven't been using the system suitable for a narrative experience. There also was a costly investment of Outdoor Survival by Avalon Hill that was worth it long term to establish a campaign setting using the same map. Though drawing your own hex map, printing out premade hex maps with terrain laid out are more practical in this day in age. Establishing Extended D&D The driving force someone must have to build a campaign beyond the scope of the dungeon is this: consistency & growth . Because motivation can only get you so far to creating a campaign only for it to crash. Believe me when I say the amount of wilderness maps were bound to become my dedicated only end up in the bin and being counter-productive to somethi...