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OK, folks, Sparky has RETURNED!!! It was a long and unpleasant battle against the forces of Lawn Dree, but with might and perseverance, I conquered it! Running This Adventure in 5e So, when you port over Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, how do you do it? I'd probably start with a quick flowchart...

Alright, folks, time to map those expectations! So let's touch on a few that might be problematic: Characters Die Easily. This is not a problem in B/X and its derivatives because character creation is fast (like, 5 minutes and you're done). However, in 5E character creation can take hours, and...

The Scenario: The sleepy river town of Brandonsford is in a bit of a pickle. See, a while back, a family of dwarves moved in nearby and started mining, only to find a massive treasure pile. One of the brothers went mad with greed, killed his relations, and for this abominable act, was turned...

Libertad inspired me to start doing this, too. I owe a lot to his style of reviewing and his encouragement!

Howdy y'all! Sparky McDibben here coming at you with a new (small) series on adventures we can use in our 5E games. I tend to prefer player-driven campaigns, where the world is reacting to the PCs choices, over adventure-path style modules*. One thing I tend to use is OSR products, simply...

One thing I haven't seen is whether the new Planescape boxed set gives any ability for DMs to build their own adventures in the multiverse. I'm talking random tables, dense adventure seeds with defined actors (not, "This weird thing is going on!"), interesting game structures, etc. Does it let...

This is really awesome; glad to see a genderswap that doesn't feel like reskinning!

Oh, I see the misunderstanding. I wasn't asking WotC to rewrite the lore. I was asking them to come up with more interesting monster abilities for their casters. I offered one example that apparently didn't fit the lore, despite the fact that both the lore and the ability support summoning a...

I have only limited familiarity with lore after reading this, so I'll take your word that doing so runs contrary to the established lore. Can someone explain to me what the scroll-greatclub is doing and how that fits into the lore?

That would be a delightful encounter!

Yes, and it doesn't serve me well at all. Hence the callout for anyone who likes those statblocks (the inimitable Teemu, for example), so they can appropriately weight the advice. No, I haven't, but I'd love to hear about your experiences! You said you ran the dragons (which do look...

The daemogoths are excellent villains to use, but I was actually struck by the Oriq. The adventure does a terrible job of telling you what their whole deal is, but once I went on a wiki-dive, I realized that the Oriq are just everyone that Strixhaven admissions turned down. They've also got some...

That sounds awesome! Not sure if Saltmarsh is a great fit, but the others are pretty good. Radiant Citadel is probably my favorite adventure anthology this edition. I don't know that you'd want to, either, since that basically removes the opportunity for PCs to "discover" them in play, either...

Thanks! I appreciate folks engaging with the material, so I'm glad it's of use! Sounds like it was pretty awesome! Alright, folks, on to Chapter 5: The Magister's Masquerade! This chapter is all about the character's junior year. They've leveled up to level six at the end of last year, so now...

This is accurate - I botched that. The actual order of events is that the PCs complete the owlbear exam, then do the heist, and then advance to third level. I also left out that at the end of the year, they advance to 4th level. That's on me, and I'm sorry. Alright folks, I'm feeling froggy...

That is an outstanding comparison. You, sir, get a like! As I've said, the parallels to Harry Potter are overwrought. Elements lacking in Strixhaven that are present in Potter include (but are not limited to): actual danger, ties into a larger world of which the school is only part, a...

I don't actually think they were drawing on Potter, for reasons I explain below. This is probably the best counterargument to my critique, but I think it fails for one key reason. The relationships can't be stakes because they both 1) never change as a result of the adventure events, and 2) are...

These look awesome! "Oliver Darkshire," however, sounds like the hero AND the villain from an old bodice-ripper.

Not a problem, friend! Glad you're interested.

Very much agreed. Yeah, but it shouldn't be. Hell, Drakkenheim told them how to do it with their own system! Why are these later adventures so bad? It was the last book I bought from WotC, and will probably be the last book I buy from them for the foreseeable future (due to both quality issues...