“Can I buy a magic sword?” This is a question that seems straightforward, but is actually fraught with follow-on implications that are not obvious. It is also one that’s asked at some point in any D&D campaign. You might be thinking, as GM, that you’re making a choice about the setting of your campaign (is this a high-magic or low-magic world, a desert island, a major trade city, etc). While you are making this decision, you’re also deciding (perhaps without knowing) what money is i...| Sir Poley
In the first article in this series, I set out to prove Vaarsuvius wrong and to salvage Random Encounters in overland travel. In the second article in this series, I proposed some additional requirements for having a Long Rest that would allow Random Encounters to have real stakes. Now, I’m going to tackle the Random Encounters themselves. Foreshadowed Encounters Let’s start with the Into the Living Library Wandering Monster table, as seen in the On Wandering Monsters series—the one tha...| Sir Poley
In the first article in this series, I set out to prove Vaarsuvius wrong, to salvage random encounters in overland travel. I found that the problem lies in the interaction of travel, Random Encounters, and resting, which is what I’ll tackle in this article. Part 4 of On Wandering Monsters lays out a couple of ways in which the use of Wandering Monsters in dungeons can smooth out some of the roughness between classes, and part 2 discussed how they can be used to further, rather than distract...| Sir Poley
Rich Burlew’s Order of the Stick #145 rather accurately expresses the nature of the problem with Random Encounters when travelling overland. Go read the strip before continuing; it only takes a second and it’s worth it. You don’t have to know anything else about the series to understand the point made in this particular page. In the strip, Vaarsuvius convincingly demonstrates (far better than I ever could) exactly why Random Encounters are a waste of time—but do they have to be that w...| Sir Poley
I’ve always hated traps. There, I said it. Aside from the occasional booby traps placed by the kobolds and the Ettercap in Into the Living Library, in my entire GMing career, I’ve only ever used a single trap—also in Into the Living Library—and it was really more of a plot device than anything else. It was a clearly marked death trap to encourage the party to turn around and do some exploring and roleplaying to find a bypass. The trap was a lock; Leonard’s Lightning Redirector was t...| Sir Poley