Recent content by vrykyl

When I was eighteen years old in 1993 I purchased a 2400 baud modem and dialed into the TSR Online Roundtable on the GEnie online service. I leaped into the community with such enthusiasm that I went from being a relatively new members of the Role Playing Game Association (RPGA) to being elected...

Just as every Dungeon Master has a personal style for running the game, so too do we often have a “signature”—a small element that runs common in many of our campaigns. Something that seems to crop up regardless of the other elements in the story. Me? I love dogs. Without me specifically...

I wrote up a piece going over the changes to the game defined in the Rules Glossary in the first playtest packet. You can read it here, but here are some bullet-point takeaways: Natural 1s and 20s now work with all types of rolls (as long as the difficulty wouldn't be easy or impossible) and...

I moved this article over to my new Substack and updated the monk character sheet. It's much more reader-friendly on its new home: https://backstab.substack.com/p/3characters

These are the custom character sheets I use for my personal 5e games and when I run convention events. We'll have to see what the "official" sheet of the new edition looks like.

I only changed the stuff directly affected by character creation in this first article, but I plan on doing exactly as you suggest by doing another revision by checking all the terms in the current Rules Glossary. I also need to update Monk's AC, as it's a point low. With all the shifting...

This is the standard format I've used in my game for years now and at convention events. As new features pile up I'll remove those generic descriptions, but as you said it can come in handy for less experienced players. The main point is breaking features down by the action economy instead of...

It's a public article, not behind a paywall so there's no barrier for anyone to read it and discuss here. As a published writer and game designer is it awful that I hope some people might like my content and choose to support it?

I took three 1st level characters for Fifth Edition and then reconstructed them using the "Character Origins" playtest rules to see how the changes affect things mechanically (so far). The example below is just the first page of one of them. I write out the whole breakdown plus let you see the...

I got these years ago from a 3D print shop and painted them by hand.

Well I have these ...

I love D&D and am a bit of a folklore junkie. So I made a video exploring the legend of the Banshee vs. her depiction in Dungeons & Dragons. (There is also a dose of Disney and something about owls for good measure.) Happy Halloween! Enjoy this content? Please consider supporting me on...

I do enjoy prepping some big setpiece stuff, especially things like dungeon crawls and boss battles. But I'm learning to go light on other stuff so I'm not having to shoehorn things in or waste time. I saw this meme early this morning, to my amusement.