Recent content by kronovan

I've read the Abysal Plague Trilogy and I'd recommend it to anyone who looking for a story that delves into and develops some of the lore of the Nentir Vale. The 1st (The Temple of Yellow Skulls) and 3rd (The Eye of the Chained God) novels are written by Don Bassingthwaite who's my favorite D&D...

I homebrewed my own setting that's set in the Italian Republics of the Renaissance, for which aspects and institutions of Christianity are in play. IMO it's best to treat this idea via Historical Fantasy set in an era and location where Christianity was the primary religion. And most...

Since I'm a big fan of the Midgard World setting, I've used many of Kobold Presses' 3rd party publications. I've used there Midgard content for Pathfinder 1e, Dragon/Fantasy AGE, D&D 5e and 13th Age. I began with a print copy of their Northlands settings (a realm in Midgard) and many of the...

I for one are not sad Willams is gone. Instead of speculating on why she left with such short notice? Why there's no successor in sight? Is this normal CEO departure practice? Is the sky about to fall in on WotC? Etc. I prefer to instead ponder this "Williams worked for Microsoft on the Gaming...

Dishonored does not have challenge dice, but it's an odd ball/hybrid of a 2d20 game that attempts to mix in some features of narrative TTRPGs like FATE. Anyhow, my players and I were not impressed with it - would gladly take a CD-like system in it, in place of some of the querky play mechanics...

This may be a moot point since you're expressing an interest in moving to 2e anyways, but I just wanted to point out that you can already buy a better organized version of the rules with black text on white pages. In print, I only own the Rules Digest (same rule book that was included in the...

Sorry to hear about this, but glad it won't force you out of business. I have 3 friends who've owned game stores in my city, but only 1 remains in business. None were/have been broken into and the 2 closed for reasons other than theft - rents are ridiculously inflated in my city. All 3...

I only have experience running 4e with the Fantasy Ground Unity VTT. A 4e ruleset is available for free with that VTT, but the owners SmiteWorks have never gotten permission from WotC to adapt 4e content for it - called a module in FGU jargon. That said, there's a fan community that's built...

I've found Cepheus Modern, which is based on the Cepheus Engine SRD, to be a good set of rules for modern era RPing. It's not something to consider though if presentation and artwork are a concern, as there's barely any art to speak of and it's a very nuts & bolts, one column layout. It's a...

I started using digital mapping tools more than 30 years ago via work in the Geographic Information Systems biz - worked with both GIS and Computer Aided Design software. And although I long ago left that profession, mapping has been a hobby since. I used to hand draw maps in the 80s for our...

Honestly, were I to replace standard miniatures with anything digital, it'd have to feature a holographic image that's viewable from all angles - all sides and top. Only viewable from 2 faces that're roughly right angles to the tabletop wouldn't work for me, mostly because I'm over 6 ft and when...

I'm big on solo play for boardgames and own many that are either soley solitaire, have a solo mode via a BOT, or are solo friendly for playing both sides - play 1 a week at a minimum. The biggest barrier for me for solo playing TTRPGs, is that I'm really only interested in soloing those I...

I've read and been told many times, that Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye is much more popular than D&D in Germany and the Benelux countries and D&D 5E sales of the German version consequently suffer as a result. DSA is supposed to be popular in France, but it gets more competition from other...

Not really a good example. Gandalf is 1 of only 5 Istari (Maiar/primordial spirits sent as wizards in the form of men) in all of Middle Earth. For sure you can't easily interrupt his casting -if at all- but there's a lot of other thing you can't do to him too, that you can easily do to a mortal...

I featured golems in my Dragon Age campaign, which is probably the closest thing in that setting to a creature like a warforged or android. I dipped into the Clockwork magic in the AGE appendix of the Midgard Campaign Setting book, which includes spells for creating constructs. That worked well...