Reviews of movies, games, books, and other stuff.
I think this now makes 2 chapters so far that haven’t been in every version of D&D ever produced. The previous one was “Personality & Backgrounds,” which has traditionally just been a paragraph somewhere between Exception Strength and Alignment Languages. My guess is that “Customization Options” are optional rules that will introduce players to new…
I know that there are some people who look at an RPG character as nothing more than a transportation device for equipment, but I personally can’t make myself care very much about equipment that isn’t important to the plot or the character. My basic attitude towards character equipment is that if the character needs one,…
To view this content, you must be a member of Steve’s Patreon at $1 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Time to burn through the last of these character classes. I vaguely remember something about the next chapter seeming ineteresting. Rogues Thieves Cant now includes Hobo Signs. If a Locoviathan shows up in the 5E Monster Manual, we might have to sober up our lawyer. Rogues have three “Roguish Archetypes” (it’s like they just didn’t…
Ok, we’re jumping right into this one. There are a lot of classes left and we don’t have time for niceties. Druids This edition is considerably more specific about what the hell is meant by “preserving the balance.” It’s an improvement for the game, but it ruins my Thanos joke. Every time they refer to…
As an author, co-author, or contributor to twenty-something RPG books and publisher of something like 50, I’m very familiar with introductory filler. Sometimes you can just jump right into the actual content, but other times you have to put some words in between the chapter title and the first header even if there’s nothing to…
Before we start this, I’d like to ask a question I’ve been wondering about for a while now: WHAT THE FUCK IS A TIEFLING? Apparently it and the Dragonborn showed up somewhere between 3rd Edition and now, and I don’t understand why. Admittedly, the fact that I’m an Old Fart is part of the problem…
Chapter 2 describes the PC races for the new version of Dungeons & Dragons and starts up with about half of page of fluff about character races wherein the writers adorably try to pretend that different races appear as PCs in roughly the same proportions that they appear in game fiction. The multiple mentions of…
Now that I’ve dumped on the cover of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, it’s time to actually open the book. The first page is a piece of art that’s similar (and similarly unappealing, in my opinion) to the 3E art: noncommittal water-colory backgrounds, indistinct linework, and just kind of bleh. Then there’s the usual front…
Before I start what may very well turn into a way-too-long review of 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, I’m honor-bound to mention that Hex Games released the third PDF in our American Artifacts series (cleverly titled American Artifacts 3) earlier this week. For those not familiar with the series, each American Artifacts PDF collects 20…
