What Do I Know About First Impressions? Shadow of the Dragon Queen (D&D 5e); Part One

What Do I Know?

We’re going to do something a little different this time around. If you’ve been following me on social media, you may have seen some of this, but I’ve been looking at Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen a chapter at a time, and I’m pulling all of my social media thoughts together in one place, here on the blog.

sotdq-cover-art


Looking Through Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

I am slowly reading a chapter at a time in Shadow of the Dark Queen, so I don’t go totally off the rails on other projects that I’m working on. It’s interesting to me that while the One D&D rules-language is getting less “natural,” the language in this adventure is less formal.

Even compared to earlier D&D 5e adventures, it feels like some of the language in this adventure is a little more careful not to assume that people reading the book have…

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Plumbing the RPG Blog Depths

Cannibal Halfling Gaming

The tabletop role-playing game has been around for nearly fifty years, and role-playing discourse arguably longer than that. While in recent years we’ve been blessed to see books recording RPG history from the likes of Jon Peterson, Shannon Appelcline, and Ben Riggs, histories of how the RPG player base has evolved are thinner on the ground and indeed more difficult to capture than those chronicling the evolution of game designers.

To give credit where credit is due, Jon Peterson’s books do focus on the player evolution that happened early in the hobby’s history; Playing at the World spends a lot of time discussing how the wargaming hobby birthed RPGs through Braunsteins and Chainmail, while The Elusive Shift examines the first decade or so of RPG evolution through APAs and other fan correspondence. Where things start to get really tricky is in the 1990s, thanks in large part to the stratification…

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Syp’s gaming goals for December 2022

Bio Break

Syp’s November 2022 in review

  • ‘Twas quite the month of gaming, in ways both expected and not. For starters, I spent the first week not gaming at all but on vacation. However, the rest of November made up for that gap.
  • New World’s fresh start servers flickered on, and I created a new character to go through Windward. I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed my time with this revamped lowbie experience, but even so, I wasn’t fully sucked in and pouring hours upon hours. As a result, I merely crept forward in progression rather than sprinted.
  • Lord of the Rings Online’s mini-expansion was delayed until the middle of the month, but when that happened, I took my fledgling Hobbit Lore-master down to Swanfleet and started to explore the new zone and quest lines. Had a good time, knocked up in levels, and didn’t stress about the speed of it…

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Palladium Complete

Roleplay Rescue’s Blog

The Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game fascinated me as a teen gamer, and I have avidly collected the entire range of sourcebooks over recent years. Today, the last two tomes arrived all the way from the USA and my collection is complete!

This is a classic-style fantasy world which offers some interesting twists on common themes. In truth, the game rules for Palladium flavour the game world and these old mechanisms are pretty archaic. But there are great ideas in these sourcebooks and I would love to run a game set in the Known World of Palladium.

As a teenager, there were many ideas that I first encountered in these pages: the Summoner, the idea of magical Circles of Power, my first encounter with Hermetic magic (even if it is just a taste), and the use of prophecy to drive mystery in a fantasy world. I also love the many…

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Wonderful Sights in Gaming – Part 1

Retro Arcadia

This is now part three (or, more accurately, attempt number three) at this thing that started out as somewhat of a bonus post on a few favourite sights in gaming which, the more I thought about it, quickly then evolved into a top ten and more. That was around two years ago as I write, but after that initial flurry it’s been something that’s captured my imagination quite a lot and as a result has been given a great deal more thought ever since, and while I can’t promise it’s now a final and comprehensive list, it is now an awful lot bigger than ten and more, so I thought it was a good time to share it again! No more countdowns though, even though at least nine of my last top ten probably still stand; no, this time I just want to take you on a tour of some…

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In Need Of Process

Roleplay Rescue’s Blog

As the world’s most flaky GM, I have a reputation for starting games and bailing out on them. This is partly a feature of my neurology but mostly due to my total lack of process. As a GM, you need to develop a methodology not only for the table, but also for preparation.

The best way to become consistent with any behaviour is to develop habits that support it. What most people don’t tell you is that habits form as part of the larger context of your life. Your life, of course, is probably built around processes. Routines are strongest when they are part of wider process-driven sequences of action.

As an example, I have a process at work for creating and delivering lessons to students. It has been developed over time and honed to fit the specific context in which I work. As I change roles and schools, so…

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Caltrops #DnD #ADnD #RPG #TTRPG #SatanicPanic

Play What You Want

If you enjoy this post, please retweet it, and please visit my 1st Edition D&D resources page.

Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, it’s a bit of history. Not a lot of people know this about 1st Edition D&D.

Who knew playing D&D required a concealed carry permit?

Follow me on Twitter @gsllc

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DungeonMorphs – Sewers Set 6

Dyson's Dodecahedron

One of the final stretch goals of the recent DungeonMorphs IV Kickstarter was to include an alternate version of the DungeonMorph cards (2.5″ x 2.5″ cards of the geomorphs) in the style of one of the artists involved in the design. That artist was ME! So I spent a month and change redrawing all the geomorphs from their original artists’ styles to my own.

DungeonMorphs – Sewers 6
DungeonMorphs – Sewers 6

I’m doing these redraws one “die” at a time. The geomorphs have been assigned faces on the DungeonMorph Dice, and I’m translating them not by artist, but by die. So this is the sixth (and fina) die of the sewers set. (There are a total of 24 dice in total – sewers, lairs, and crypts.)

Like my classic geomorphs, these are a 10 square x 10 square unit with entries at squares 3 & 8 on each side. Unlike my usual ones…

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Old School Dungeons & Dragons: Part 28

Skulls in the Stars

It’s been a while since I did some Old School Dungeons & Dragons on Twitter, but I’ve finally gotten myself back into the rhythm! (I am now also posting the threads on Mastodon, given the instability of Twitter.) Hopefully I’ll keep up the routine. So let’s get started…

X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield (1985), by Michael S. Dobson. This is one I wanted to get my hands on some time ago!

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