Roadhouse Reached

We got back to our family Tyranny of Dragons campaign today for the first time in several months. At last the heroes have reached Carnath Roadhouse ("Roadhouse!"), and now they're hot on the trail of the lizardmen who will lead them to the headquarters of the Cult of the Dragon. It's awesome to get back into this campaign, and I hope after this one we can give the new Ravenloft module (Curse of Strahd) a try.

Getting It to the Table

Every Monday evening, Matthew (and, starting in two days, Nathaniel as well) has hockey practice at the outdoor roller hockey facility up in Carson City. Yeah, outdoor...in January. It's cold. Fortunately, I can share my shivering with another hockey dad who's also a big board game fan. We chitchat through the practice, discussing our favorite games and whatnot. He's always looking for the opportunity to try out a new game with his family and/or his game group, but often laments that he has a hard time "getting it to the table."

I know how he feels. Our Tyranny of Dragons D&D campaign hasn't seen any movement since around Thanksgiving, or perhaps even earlier. We try to find time every week for some family game action, but with a growing library of games, and strongly different preferences among the four of us, I'm finding that it's hard to get any particular game to the table. I'm glad to live in a house full of game enthusiasts, but, damn, when are we going to get back to D&D?

Kickstarter Delivered

I've now supported four Kickstarter projects -- three of them funded and the fourth has more than met its goal with a few days left in the campaign -- and the first to deliver a product is a family-friendly RPG called The Cloud Dungeon, which arrived this weekend. With Zombicide occupying much of our gaming time and our long-languishing Tyranny of Dragons D&D campaign in serious need of some attention, I don't know when we'll get to Cloud, but I hope we can give it a whirl over the holidays.

Roadhouse!

In our Tyranny of Dragons D&D campaign, the heroes are inching closer to discovering the headquarters of the Cult of the Dragon. In the next session, they'll reach a remote inn known as Carnath Roadhouse. The challenge for me will be getting through this episode without breaking into the "Roadhouse" bit from Family Guy...

Roadhouse!

Farewell, Stumpley!

We made a bit more progress on our Tyranny of Dragons campaign tonight, and it was a memorable session indeed. The heroes continued to follow the Cult of the Dragon in the hope of finding their lair, but a wizard affiliated with the cult summoned a troll that killed off our wacky halfling NPC, Stumpley. It was a sudden and sad end for an NPC the boys loved (Amy, not so much), but I was kind of sick of the monk class and wanted to switch the main NPC to a fighter. So, alas, the Stump-meister had to go! Now the players have even more reason to despise the Cult of the Dragon, and I can introduce a new NPC ally the next time we reach a town...and Waterdeep is only a few miles away...

Lex...in Limbo!

I had planned on making my final push in Injustice this weekend. Lex, Hawkgirl, and Catwoman are just one level away from winning! However, Mansions of Madness has arrived at our house a few days ahead of schedule (you rock, Amazon!), so I anticipate spending much of the weekend going through all the Lovecraftian awesomeness. I think it's going to take a while to get up to speed with this game, and in the meantime we also need to continue our Tyranny of Dragons campaign. Perhaps we'll do Tyranny this weekend and then dive into a full game of Mansions the following weekend, after I've had enough time to get familiar with the rules. From what I've seen, though, it looks like it's going to be an amazing game experience!

Escape!

After our weekly D&D session in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign -- Nathaniel's rogue purchased a wagon and learned some information about his missing father, and Matthew's warlock purchased a magical rod thanks to a loan (at an outrageous interest rate!) from Amy's paladin -- we decided to give Forbidden Desert another try, but this time as a two-player experience. While the boys busied themselves elsewhere, Amy and I entered the desert once again, and this time we were victorious! Here's a pic of the final game map...

Amy, as usual, was the water carrier (blue) and I was the navigator (yellow). We managed to locate all the components of the steampunk airship and get to the launch pad before we ran out of water. It was our first-ever victory at this game!

Dylan's Dad

We continued our Fifth Edition Tyranny of Dragons campaign today, and the player characters met with representatives of some of the key heroic factions in the Forgotten Realms world -- the Order of the Gauntlet, the Lords' Alliance, and the Harpers. As they discussed the growing problem of the Cult of the Dragon, the assassin Dylan (played by Nathaniel) spoke up and asked that these powerful organizations help him find his missing father. It was an unexpected request in a scene that was largely about setting up the plot for the next stage of the campaign. It was also rather poignant. Nathaniel wasn't trying to "act", as an adult gamer might; he was just saying what his character would say, and from the beginning Dylan's quest has been to find his long-lost father. I love how he works that background -- simple enough for a youngster to grasp, but still emotionally powerful -- into the adventures. I plan on rewarding him with a nice resolution that inserts Dylan's father directly into the Tyranny storyline. Dear old dad, I fear, has run afoul of the cultists...

Forbidden Desert

Our family D&D night -- featuring the Tyranny of Dragons adventure path -- was on hold for the past couple of weeks while we were vacationing in New York. It's Friday again, but it looks like Tyranny will have to wait yet another week -- we've got Forbidden Desert on tap for tonight, and everybody is pretty stoked to try it out.

I knew we had a winner as soon as I opened the metal box that contained the game's many goodies. There's a cool little plastic airship (the objective of the game is to find the ship's missing components and repair it so that you can escape from the desert before you die from dehydration or get buried by the raging sandstorm), cards for the various adventurers (each with their own special abilities, as in Pandemic), equipment cards featuring a nifty steampunk design (sorry, Amy!), variable tiles to ensure that no two game maps are ever the same (like Settlers of Catan or the various D&D cooperative board games that have been released over the last five years), and more.

But is it a good game? We won't know until we try it, but the rules are simple and elegant, and I think we'll be up and playing in a matter of moments. I anticipate it will be loads of fun, but also very challenging -- our adventuring party may well die many horrific deaths in the scorching desert before we at last escape on that airship!

Level Up...Again!

After missing two weeks due to our trip to SoCal, we sat down again last night and tonight for more of our family's Tyranny of Dragons campaign. The heroes completed the second chapter of the story, bringing them up to third level. Everyone is excited about how their characters are progressing -- perhaps none more so than Matthew, whose warlock -- Edgeren Strongstaff, a name that Matthew is quite proud of -- just acquired an imp familiar. I have a feeling that Edgeren and his imp sidekick are going to get themselves into a lot of trouble!

Level Up!

Our weekly family D&D campaign hit a milestone on Saturday when our fledgling heroes from the Tyranny of Dragons storyline reached second level. Amy was pleased to have the opportunity to start shifting her paladin into more of a striker (apologies for the Fourth Edition terminology!) role, while Matthew loved getting a boost to his warlock's Eldritch Blast spell ("I can do 19 damage if I roll the maximum!"). Nathaniel didn't quite understand all the options now available to his rogue as part of the Cunning Action feature, but he really latched on to the idea of avoiding opportunity attacks. In his brief D&D career, he's been kind of paranoid about opportunity attacks, so gaining the ability to move around without incurring them was pretty exciting to him.

Stumpley

It's hard to believe that Fifth Edition has been out for about a year now. I had promised Matthew that I would run a family campaign once Nathaniel was old enough to contribute, and now that time seems to have come. We're doing the Tyranny of Dragons adventure, with Amy as a half-elf paladin, Matthew as a tiefling warlock, and Nathaniel as a human rogue. For a little added levity, I've incorporated a churlish halfling monk NPC named Stumpley, or "Stump" for short. Only too late did I realize that his voice -- I still try to do unique voices for all the major NPCs -- sounds rather too much like MODOK from The Super Hero Squad Show. So I've adjusted it a bit and now he sounds like the unholy offspring of MODOK and Fozzie Bear. Oy. Well, at least the campaign is off to a good start!

Princes of the Apocalypse Review

"Apocalypse" may be spelled incorrectly (as of this writing) in the title of the review, but hey, it's still an early review of the second Fifth Edition adventure path. Click here to read the brief but interesting notes on Princes of the Apocalypse. I hope it's at least the equal of Tyranny of Dragons, the first 5e adventure path and a story that started out well but then kind of petered out.

More Tyranny, Please!

Click here for another excerpt from the upcoming Tyranny of Dragons comic book series.

Tyranny Preview

Click here for a preview of the upcoming Tyranny of Dragons comic book series, based on the Fifth Edition campaign of the same name.

A Hoard of Free D&D

Want more free D&D? Click here to be taken to the Hoard of the Dragon Queen page on the Wizards site. This adventure is part of the "Tyranny of Dragons" storyline and will set you back 30 bucks, but the online supplement is free. The supplement is a PDF containing all the magic items, monsters, and spells from the adventure. It makes a nice little addition to the Basic rules that were released last month.

Tyranny of Dragons

Click here for an article discussing "Tyranny of Dragons," the first storyline for the upcoming D&D Next. Interesting stuff!