Recent content by zakael19

When I re-wrote Curse of Strahd in Legendkeeper, I did this with the keyed maps. Like many digital tools, it has the ability to link pages to pins so if you hovered/clicked it would pop up whatever you'd written in the other page inset. Made running a complex keyed dungeon right from the map...

Weird, literally everything I buy that's not a WOTC product is offered in PDF. This has nothing to do with dominance and everything with WOTC wanting to do electronic moats around their products. I love PDFs. I can download them on my computer, open them wherever and whenever I want, print...

It's both an overall campaign book and a hex crawl, but I think Dolmenwood show that you can format to look amazing for printing and also be incredibly well organized digitally as well. The formatting and design is gorgeous, wonderful use of whitespace and colored callout boxes to enhance...

Is it substantial enough to run a campaign in? Like the segments in The new FR book, bigger, smaller? Is it D&D Beyond only?

I thought this was going to be a setting guide with a gazetteer and stuff. Is that no longer the case?

(To be fair to me, I was trimming the entire Symbaroum backlog down to something system agnostic to use as the basis of a PBTA hack, lol.)

Oh they're so bad. WOTC stuff is positively usable in comparison. Here's an example from the second episode in their grand campaign, entering a significant city: There's some really good art, but what the heck are you supposed to do with this during play. Note that there is also a location map...

I think this very much depends and you should have an editor who’s just as ready to underline and highlight and require better more grabby words. I think that a strong authorial vision should still be present. Otherwise we’re back to room: contain six skeletons and a chest.

A couple of the things you lined out are actually important in context, but this is why if you’re doing stuff for a publication, you have an editor who helps you work within a style!

I’m not, because there’s so many ways to give/take/avoid vuln (plus Zone of Protection will be even less use vs a Rock Ele critting). Like I’m not going to run the math on the chance of different T3 stat arrays failing a (19) Agil reaction roll XD. A generic T3’s 3d8+3 averages 24+16/17 (let’s...

I guess? But it just seems so much like a gamble: first you need to get a Spellcast roll off; if you do its 1/long rest; and then you need to assume no movement to the fight or put it where your backliners are, and then you need the adversaries to roll high for it to make a difference to...

How about a Symbaroum adventure? Alas, I lost all my WOTC rewrite stuff when I disable my Legendkeeper subscription.

Another little thing: if the author wants to convey their idea of a situation (a room, an environment, a moment), give us 3 senses of descriptions. Tell us an interesting sound, a compelling scent, maybe even a touch. “You see…blah blah blah” only goes so far. Plus the more sense cues you give...

Threats to the Nentir Vale did a great job of driving this bit home. So many factions in there that can be used to run an entire Heroic tier campaign.

Yeah, something simple and consistent is nice. For a more narrative side, I like how Carved from Brindlewood stuff tends to format the NPCs connected to various situations. One thing they do is a single "quote" that a) hits at what relevance the NPC has to the situation but also b) gives you a...