D&D General This week on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com: Salvaging "Salvage Operation" from GoS

[toucanbuzz]

I read em, keep it coming!

And man, now that I'm running a Dragonlance campaign and looking back at original Krynn gnomes, Elmore made them look like a misdirected bunch of Santa's elves in their workshop.

 

[el-remmen]

Today is Troglodyte Tuesday on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com!

Stone Blights are evil little stone elementals I came up with for my revision of a brief adventure I ran for the start of "Primordial Evil" my Temple of Elemental Evil themed 5E campaign.

Troglodyte Tuesday: Stone Blights

A little low-level evil earth elemental.

how-i-run-it.com

Below is an except:

I don’t know what a twig blight is.

I imagine they are some kind of evil wood elemental made of twigs. It doesn’t matter what they look like though. I took that image, right or wrong, and when I needed some kind of low CR elemental earth creature for the first adventure on my Temple of Elemental Evil themed game, I slapped it onto a bunch of stones and invented “Stone Blights.” I ended up using them in my revision of “Before We’re Bled Dry” by Lena Meier, which appears in Eat the Rich vol. 1, which presents 17 brief “anti-tyranny adventures,” and is available on the DM’s Guild.

 

[el-remmen]

It's #DragonMagMonday, and over on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com I am reviwing another issue of Dragon Magazine from my personal collection (and another copy with a detached cover ), #104. It includes discussion of its spotlight on thief characters, an examination of a letter in the FORUM, "advertorials" for Oriental Adventures and Battlesystem, and a look at Snarfquest.

Dragon Mag Monday: #104

Spotlighting Dragon Magazine #104 (December 1985)

how-i-run-it.com

An excerpt:

Bunnell’s other thieving article is titled, “Race is Ahead of Class.” No, he’s not arguing with a Bernie Bro about American politics and economics, but rather he is laying out what motivates different “demi-human” thieves and how they operate. As usual and as the subtitle explains, “Demi-human thieves act according to heritage” because there isn’t a degree of racial essentialism this game will not explore. Let me give you the short version: elves steal knowledge, dwarves are locksmiths, gnomes steal for fun, half-orcs are armed robber thugs (sigh), and halflings are just, you know, curious. As I said about Bunnell’s first article, there is useful stuff in here for thinking through different possible approaches to playing a roguish character, I just wish it did more to develop and complicate its ideas and divorce them from monolithic notions of race.

 

[el-remmen]

Today on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com I posted the first in a series examining changes/additions I made/make to running the classic U1-2-3 modules or their 5E versions in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, along with the adventure additions made in the latter. I am calling the series, "Revenants of Saltmarsh."

The first post begins with a examination at the motivations of Ned Shakeshaft, who the PCs have a chance to encounter when going through The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. There is also a PDF version for printing at the bottom of the post.

Warning, however, this post (and future ones) will include spoilers for these adventures, so if you are currently playing through or plan to play through these adventures you probably want to avoid this series.

Revenants of Saltmarsh: A Man on the Inside

The sinister secret of Ned Shakeshaft

how-i-run-it.com

 

[el-remmen]

I had to take a few weeks off to deal with life stuff, but look for a new Dragon Mag Monday (covering issue #106 and the classic "A Plethora of Paladins" article) next week, and hope to have a post giving suggestions on how to run U2 - Danger at Dunwater soon after.

 

[el-remmen]

Today on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com:

Covering my coverless copy of Dragon Magazine #106 for #DragonMagMonday, including a deep dive into the now classic article "A Plethora of Paladins" that present NPC 1E paladin variants for all the alignments between LG and CE.

Dragon Mag Monday: #106

A Plethora of Paladins and other D&D stuff!

how-i-run-it.com

 

[el-remmen]

Just a heads up that after too long a break, I will have new content on the site tomorrow and have another post on running an adventure from Ghosts of Saltmarsh in the works currently.

 

[el-remmen]

It's DWEOMER DAY! and over on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com we're looking at my homebrewed Potion of Extra-Healing for 5E

Dweomer Day: Dunwater Potion of Extra-Healing

Drink a little or a lot. . .

how-i-run-it.com

Today's post is a bit of a warm up for a longer piece about running Danger at Dunwater out of Ghosts of Saltmarsh that I hopefully will have ready to go by next week.

 

[el-remmen]

Today on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com, after too long a wait, you can read the second installment of my Revenants of Saltmarsh series in which I detail how I ran adventures found in Ghosts of Saltmarsh! This time we look at one of my all-time favorites, Danger at Dunwater.

Click here or on the image below to be taken directly to the post.


The art above is by Jim Holloway from the original U2 – Danger at Dunwater module, 1982.

The post includes details on running the factions of the lizardfolk lair, running the Thousand Teeth encounter, and stat blocks for the Lizardfolk High Priest, a new version of the giant god-touched crocodile, and a sahuagin spy! In addition to the web version, there is a full PDF of the post available for download, as is a high-res version of my hand-drawn map of Thousand Teeth's hunting grounds.

 

[Riley]

Today on HOW-I-RUN-IT.com, after too long a wait, you can read the second installment of my Revenants of Saltmarsh series in which I detail how I ran adventures found in Ghosts of Saltmarsh! This time we look at one of my all-time favorites, Danger at Dunwater...

The post includes details on running the factions of the lizardfolk lair, running the Thousand Teeth encounter, and stat blocks for the Lizardfolk High Priest, a new version of the giant god-touched crocodile, and a sahuagin spy! In addition to the web version, there is a full PDF of the post available for download, as is a high-res version of my hand-drawn map of Thousand Teeth's hunting grounds.

Thank you!

I’ve forever loved U1, but I’ve avoided running U1-U3 because my one playing experience with U2 was an absolute mess, and I couldn’t figure out how I could do it any better.

You have excellent suggestions there for making the Lizardfolk interactions more directed and comprehensible.