Tag: Dungeons & Dragons

Troubled Times, Troubled Adventures: Shadowdale, part one

On By Charlie BrooksIn Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

The year was 1989, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was hitting its second edition. The game was being sanitized–no more demons or devils, no more half-orcs and assassins. And the focus of the game was shifting from exploration-based adventures to epic stories about heroic adventure. To make these changes work in the popular Forgotten Realms setting, TSR launched the Avatar Trilogy. The series of novels would cause the gods to fall and forever change the face of the Realms. But why stop there? As a tie-in, TSR decided to create a parallel set of adventures that allowed the PCs to play a role in the cataclysmic Time of Troubles. What could be more fun?

Considering the final product, anything.

For reasons I will harp upon over and over again, the Avatar Trilogy was a huge bust as an adventure. It took everything away from the PCs, reducing them to tourists on a grand tour of the Realms. It also highlighted everything that sucked about the setting and went out of its way to screw certain player types. And, because I have too much free time, I’m going to go over all three modules, chapter by chapter. So let’s jump right into the first module, Shadowdale, and witness the trainwreck!

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AD&D’s Planescape: The Good, the Bad, and the Mixed Bags

On By Charlie BrooksIn Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

My interest in Dungeons & Dragons history recently led me to the Advanced D&D product Well of Worlds, released in 1994 as part of the Planescape line. That setting was beloved by fans for its weirdness and the way it turned abstract philosophy into adventuring material. Since D&D recently went back to the Planescape well with a boxed set, now seems like a good time to delve into the classic setting as it appeared in the 90s. As I tour the Well of Worlds, here’s my thoughts on what I like, dislike, and have mixed feelings about in this beloved setting.

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The Most Game-Tastic Moments in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

On By Charlie BrooksIn Film, Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

After so many years where mention of a Dungeons & Dragons movie meant some of the cringiest moments in film history, it is an absolute joy to have a good D&D movie with 2023’s Honor Among Thieves. That film managed to provide a solid, fun story spurred on by a likeable cast, and it caught a good among of accurate game lore in it as well.

Most remarkably, I found that Honor Among Thieves managed to feel like an authentic D&D session captured on the big screen. Just about everything that happened in the movie could occur in a D&D session, including stuff that isn’t in the rules but which every gamer has experienced. Here are the moments in Honor Among Thieves that really sold this film to me as a game come to life.

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Three Editions Later: Baldur’s Gate and the Development of D&D

On By Charlie BrooksIn Role-Playing Games, Video GamesLeave a comment

With its incredibly deep game play and commitment for Forgotten Realms lore (even when I wish they would ignore said lore), Baldur’s Gate 3 is a triumph for the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. More than any other computer game I’ve ever played, it feels like I’m playing a tabletop game with the production values of a Hollywood blockbuster.

But the game’s predecessors are no slouches, either. In fact, for the past 25 years, Baldur’s Gate 1 and Baldur’s Gate 2 have been unicorns that other RPGs chased. While other D&D games have strengths of their own, none quite replicated the deep and massive story of those old games while also maintaining a distinctly D&D feel.

Yet those older games, despite making Baldur’s Gate 3 possible, feel very different from the newest iteration of the franchise. Some of that is merely a matter of scope and funding; Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 came out in older days with less technological power and far less money behind them. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that Dungeons & Dragons has changed dramatically over the years. The original used the 2nd edition rules, while Baldur’s Gate 3 uses 5th edition as its base. The rules have changed, but so have the types of stories fans want to see.

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Baldur’s Gate and the Happy Ending Override

On By Charlie BrooksIn Role-Playing Games, Video GamesLeave a comment

Baldur’s Gate 3 is taking the video game world by storm. It takes the unenviable task of following up on a beloved franchise that has lain dormant for years and not only proves itself worthy but may be the best entry in the series. But while there is no curbing my excitement to return to old stomping grounds, there are some sharp pangs of regret as I see the fate of certain individuals who deserved better.

Any follow-up to the epic conclusion of Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal was going to have to make some decisions in how things ended canonically, since the game offers many different possible fates for Gorion’s ward and their companions. Unfortunately, that canon proves to be quite unkind to some returning faces. Some of that could have been avoided through different storytelling approaches, but much of it unfortunately comes down to how the Dungeons & Dragons has been mismanaged since the 2001 finale of Throne of Bhaal.

Naturally, spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3 (and its much older predecessors) follow.

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On Character Death

On By Charlie BrooksIn Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

Character death is a touchy subject in RPGs. Some people think the PCs should always be at risk, and that an adventure is an outright failure if at least one character doesn’t get killed off during the action. Others never have PCs bite the dust, using house rules that cause a hero to go unconscious but not die when the rules as written would have them pushing up daisies. And, as with any divisive topic with extreme opposite stances, the majority of players fall somewhere in the middle of that scale.

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Where Memory Lane and Rejection Road Meet

On By Charlie BrooksIn Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

My house has too much stuff in it, so I went through my possessions to decide what needs to go. Finally, I came across my Big Box o’ Rejections.

When I first started writing, I decided to save all my rejection letters as a way to keep myself motivated. But now that rejections come electronically and are almost exclusively form letters – and now that I have a lengthy publications list – I don’t feel that I need it anymore. So this box has got to go.

The box itself contains rejections, old drafts of stories from writing workshops, and a few magazines and newspapers where I got my first publishing credits. As I sorted through old letters, I got the most enjoyment out of reading some old rejection letters from my high school days, when I wrote articles for Dragon Magazine.

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Gaming Stories: Curse Your Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal!

On By Charlie BrooksIn Gaming Stories, Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

Night Below: An Underdark Campaign is a classic AD&D adventure that I purchased when it came out in the 1990s but which I never got to run all the way through until the 2010s. Beginning with D&D 3rd edition and eventually converting to Pathfinder, my final version of the campaign saw some changes, including revising the Rockseer elves and adding a secret villain behind the aboleth conspiracy: the Red Mage.

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Gaming Stories: Pirates of the Astral Sea

On By Charlie BrooksIn Gaming Stories, Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

Well, that was certainly unexpected.

Last fall, my players greased up a rowboat and sent it hurtling down a waterslide of doom. They wound up in an entirely different world that used a version of the classic AD&D module Dungeonland, tweaked to fit with Pathfinder 2nd edition. And, well…they found a way out of Dungeonland. And now they have a bigger boat.

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Gaming Stories: A Contract with Mind Flayers

On By Charlie BrooksIn Gaming Stories, Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

Over the course of several years, I ran Night Below: An Underdark Campaign in a multi-year game that spanned the gap between Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition and Pathfinder 1st edition. As we entered the endgame, the PCs learned that a group of aboleths had been kidnapping spellcasters in a bid to power a mighty structure that will extend their natural psychic domination abilities across the globe, effectively taking over the world.

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