Rob Wieland

Recent & Upcoming Releases

September 17 2024

D&D Player’s Handbook (2024)

(Dungeons & Dragons)
Revised 2024 Player's Handbook.
Replies (156)
September 26 2024

Dungeon Master's Screen (2024)

(Dungeons & Dragons)
4-panel screen revised for the 2024 rules.
Replies (59)
October 1 2024

Monstrous Menagerie II

(Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition)
The sequel to the acclaimed monster book!
Replies (58)
November 12 2024

D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide (2024)

(Dungeons & Dragons)
Revised 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.
Replies (171)
February 18 2025

D&D Monster Manual (2025)

(Dungeons & Dragons)
Revised 2025 Monster Manual.
Replies (91)
July 1 2025

D&D Dragon Anthology

(Dungeons & Dragons)
A book of 10 dragon-themed adventures.
Replies (40)
October 1 2025

Heroes of the Borderlands

(Dungeons & Dragons)
New D&D starter set.
Replies (609)
November 1 2025

Forgotten Realms Player Guide

(Dungeons & Dragons)
First 5E player's guide for the setting.
Replies (294)
November 1 2025

Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide

(Dungeons & Dragons)
DM’s book digs into different parts of the Realms.
Replies (11)

I am a game designer with over 15 years worth of game credits and industry experience. My work includes licensed games based on worlds like Star Wars, Star Trek and Firefly, classic game worlds like Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowrun and my own creations like Camelot Trigger and Save Game. I play a wide variety of games as part of Theatre of the Mind Players and have been the guest of honor at several conventions. I live with my family in Wisconsin, born near the heart of RPGs (and just a few short years younger than they are).

Other Games Reviews

The Original Star Frontiers Retro Review

By the time I got into role playing games in the late 80s, I already had found my sci-fi space opera game. I only had eyes for WEG’s seminal Star Wars D6 ruleset. Other gamers spoke fondly of the games that had come before like Traveller and TSR’s entry into the market, Star Frontiers. I never really gave it a second glance until I remembered I had acquired a copy a few years ago in a trade. I...

Oct 21, 2022 32

Dungeons & Dragons Reviews

A Tome of Heroes Review

It must be a perilous time to be a third party Dungeons & Dragons company. The One D&D discussion quickly sucked all the air out of the room. Even though the next iteration of D&D is two years away, I’ve seen a few people declare they aren't buying any more D&D books of any kind until they see how the new version turns out. That’s unfortunate, because Kobold Press continues to turn out some...

Oct 7, 2022 15

Use Your Old CCGs To Power Your RPGs

Chances are if you’re like me, you’ve got a few cardboard skeletons in your closet. Magic: The Gathering has been around since 1993 and in the intervening years hundreds of games have tried to capture the imaginations and the wallets of gamers by getting them to buy lots and lots of cards. These games might have been played for a while. They might have been tried once or twice but never caught...

Sep 30, 2022 14

Doctor Who Reviews

A Review of Doctors And Daleks

When Cubicle 7 announced a Doctor Who RPG book that used Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition as its basis, there was a great hue and cry on social media. Eventually two basic camps emerged; one that thought that 5e was a terrible fit for Doctor Who stories and one that thought if anyone could make it work it would be the folks behind Adventures In Middle Earth. I have looked over the review copy...

Sep 23, 2022 25

Other Games Reviews

A Mechwarrior: Destiny Review

I convinced my mom to drive me and a few of my friends down to Chicago to experience a Battletech Center when I was thirteen years old. For those unaware, these were an early format of multiplayer gaming that featured multiple computers running a Mechwarrior-style 1st person perspective giant stompy robot game set in the Battletech universe. They went beyond a simple LAN party, though. They...

Sep 16, 2022 20

OSR Reviews

A Tournament of Pigs Review

One of the most fascinating things to come out of the OSR for me is the concept of “the funnel”. These adventures encourage players to make multiple low-level characters that are meant to be folded, stapled and generally maligned by the adventure. It’s a tribute to the lethality of older materials that keeps the player in the game without having to wait around for them to make a new character...

Sep 9, 2022 10

Call of Cthulhu Reviews

A Review of the 40th Anniversary Call of Cthulhu Starter Set

In case you haven’t noticed we are in something of a boxed set Renaissance. Sure, they call them Starter Sets these days, but a lot of companies are reviving the tradition of peeling off the plastics and cracking open a few evenings worth of roleplaying. One of the first boxed sets that really caught my eye was the one for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. Chaosium recently released a new edition...

Aug 29, 2022 10

My Five Favorite Things From Spelljammer: Adventures In Space

The latest Dungeons & Dragons setting is upon us. Review copies of Spelljammer: Adventures In Space hit my front door, giving me something to page through during the dog days of August. I wanted to discuss some of the things I really enjoyed in the book(s) while trying to stay spoiler free as possible. If you want to see some things before the general release on August 16th, here are five...

Aug 23, 2022 20

Reviews World of Darkness

A Review of The Black Hand: Playing The Sabbat

In my Vampire: The Masquerade games, The Sabbat always functioned best as antagonists. Even as they grew from the whispered boogeymen of the first edition to the dark mirror image of the Camarilla as presented in Vampire Revised, I didn’t have much interest in ever running a full Sabbat game. There were plenty of opportunities for double agents and turncoats in my games, but a full-on centered...

Aug 7, 2022 3

Dungeons & Dragons

My San Diego Comic Con "D&D Tavern Experience" Experience

Dungeons & Dragons is having another banner year as part of pop culture. The Internet has been abuzz arguing about the trailer for the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves trailer. The relationship with Stranger Things made Vecna a household name. I was at San Diego Comic Con last weekend and noticed a lot of “Hellfire Club” shirts and merch adorning the attendees. I also got a chance to...

Jul 27, 2022 5

Other Games Reviews

A Review of Swords of the Serpentine

Fantasy gaming tends to bounce between two poles: fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter and gritty sword and sorcery stories like the Conan stories and The Grey Mouser series. Swords of the Serpentine, from designers Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner, is on the sword and sorcery side of the river. It’s chosen an interesting system to use to tell its tales of rogues, sellswords and...

Jul 22, 2022 28

Reviews World of Darkness

A Review of The New Hunter The Reckoning

The modern World of Darkness is not very concerned with tradition. It blew up much of the setting of Vampire: The Masquerade to redefine it for a modern age. It remixed the Clans to better fit some of these newer ideas, such as the death-obsessed Hecata. It also surprised many fans when it announced that the second game in the reborn setting would be Hunter: The Reckoning. When the original...

Jul 9, 2022 36

OSR Reviews

A Review Of Academies Of The Arcane

It’s hard to believe the Harry Potter series is 25 years old. It’s harder to believe that there hasn't been an official RPG in that time, though various industry stories have noted that plenty of companies have tried. A few games have tried to corner the magic school RPG market recently. Kids on Brooms let players build their own magic school in the same style of the books with less of the...

Jul 2, 2022 7

Other Games Reviews

A Review of Ironsworn: Starforged

If there’s one campaign setup as classic as wandering fantasy heroes looting dungeons, it's space scoundrels flying from planet to planet getting into trouble. From Traveller to Star Wars to Firefly and beyond, there’s just something alluring about standing on the deck of a beat up spaceship trying to keep the lights on for one more big score. Designer Shawn Tomkin scored an indie hit with...

Jun 24, 2022 9

Call of Cthulhu Reviews

A Review of Cults of Cthulhu

The cult is an important part of the Cthulhu Mythos mystery ecology, Cultists leave the clues that the investigators find to figure out what’s going on. They provide the soft resistance that can be defeated. Cthulhu may be immortal and powerful but the cults can be stopped providing one more day of life for everyone on planet Earth. But by the time the investigators get on their trail, most...

Jun 17, 2022

Reviews World of Darkness

A Review of Vampire The Masquerade: Winter’s Teeth

I have a hit or miss relationship with tie-in materials. On the one hand, Dragonlance was my first fantasy series before Lord of the Rings and because of that I am unbelievably excited for the new books coming out this year. On the other hand, as much as I love Vampire The Masquerade, I found the Clan Novel saga left me very cold. My vision of Vampire is personal and focused. I didn’t care...