Find Familiar

Hello again, friends! Today I'm back with another small-creator product review! It's a short-ish adventure module called The Lamp  published by Halfling Caravan Games. It's compatible with both 5th Edition D&D  and 1st Edition Pathfinder . You can buy it on DriveThruRPG HERE for only a couple of bucks. The author gave me a free copy for the purposes of this review. What's the product? The Lamp  is a 35-page adventure module, including a front cover and other necessary non-content pages (as is normal). Toward the back are several pages of stat blocks for monsters, featuring game statistics for both D&D  and Pathfinder . There are also several full-color maps illustrating the adventure location and the interior of the titular "Lamp," which is a dungeon tower vaguely resembling a lamp or candle, earning its nickname from local tourists. The basic idea of the adventure is that a small hot spring resort draws in tourists (and your adventuring party

Hello again, friends! I'm a day late due to all the complications wrought by a week of car trouble, but I'm back with another session summary of the "Welcome to Newbieville" D&D  campaign! Not sure what I'm talking about? Check out the beginning HERE . Here's a reminder of the player character roster: Belwarum  — dragonborn sorcerer, hermit background Tika  — elf rogue, outlander background (absent due to illness this week) Lady Elka  — human monk, noble background Sir Thorin  — dwarf paladin, noble background We left off last time with the party having cleared the dungeon that they found beneath the old shrine in the woods. This week, they returned to town to rest and sort through some of their loot from the dungeon. They also decided they'd like to finally meet the mayor in person (the knowledge of her recent meeting with Lord Davian had left them wary and suspicious), so they stopped in and were allowed a brief audience with her: an orc name

Hello again, friends! I'm back again with the latest installment of Welcome to Newbieville , by all-newbie D&D  campaign specifically designed for teaching the game to first-time players. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read about the concept a bit HERE and check out the first session summary HERE . Here's a reminder of the current PC roster: Belwarum  — dragonborn sorcerer, hermit background Tika  — elf rogue, outlander background Lady Elka  — human monk, noble background Sir Thorin  — dwarf paladin, noble background Last time, Bel and Tika were absent, so Elka and Thorin did some scouting of a recently-discovered dungeon and nearly got themselves killed. This week, we started with a fresh new morning and the party getting up to speed with each other over breakfast. While absent and off-camera, Belwarum had spent the previous session's two days making healing potions out of the remainder of the herbs they'd gathered, and now they w

Hello friends! Today I've got my second-ever product review, though this time it's not from the DMs Guild. I'll be reviewing The Demonplague , a level 1–20(!) adventure module published by Roleplaying Tips . They were looking for reviewers and I happened to see their call, so I thought I'd give it a shot! Now, I know I just laid out a reviewing structure the other day when I did my first review , but now I'm going to completely abandon it, at least for today. After working on today's review, I realized that what I laid out before might not work so well for an adventure module, so I'll reserve it for non-adventure DMs Guild content and do something else for adventures. Here's how this will go: I'll describe what sort of product it is (like being a 20-level adventure, etc), then I'll talk about some of its contents and what I liked or didn't like, and finish with an overall opinion of the work as a whole. Ready? Let's go! What is Th

Hello, everyone! Recently I promised more content besides just Newbieville session summaries, and today I deliver on that promise! I'm going to be (regularly, I hope) reviewing products on the DMs Guild created by small, independent creators. Today I just scanned the "most recent products" listing for something interesting. In the future, I might dig deeper for undiscovered gems, but more than that I'd like to review things by request. So if you know of an RPG product (DMs Guild or not) that you'd like to see reviewed, let me know in the comments or on social media! Since this is my first review, I'd like to lay out my plan for how I'll do my reviews. This may change over time, but I wanted some sort of framework in place before beginning. I'll be rating each product according to the following categories: Concept — What does this product promise to be, and is that promise exciting? Is it something that fills a needed gap or does something cool

Hello again, friends! I've got some other content coming soon, but in the meantime it's time for the latest Welcome to Newbieville  session summary! This one got dicey, but nobody died and I'm proud of my blossoming players. At the end I'll be asking for advice, but first, the summary. Let's get into it! As you may recall from the previous session , our heroes had (mostly) cleared out an abandoned shrine in the woods that they found while gathering herbs for producing healing potions. This included discovering a stairway down into a dungeon, but they retreated to the village before exploring it. Between then and now, there were some hiccups: most significantly, two players had to bail because of bad weather, leaving us with only two. Additionally, our newest recruit decided that the barbarian he tried out was too boring and wanted to change it up. With only a single session of history for Grog the orc barbarian, we decided to just ret-con that it had been Thorin

Hello again, readers! Yesterday was the third gameplay session of my Welcome to Newbieville  campaign, and I think we're starting to get into a groove! (If you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out this post . For a recap of the prior session, check out this post .) Let's dive in. There's been a little bit more participant shake-up since last time. Another player dropped out (the one playing Zaaz the gnomish bard) and a fresh newbie joined in. So here's the party roster at this point, in order of appearance: Belwarum — Blue dragonborn, former hermit, and brass-dragon-blooded sorcerer. He/him. Tika — Elf, formerly a wilderness-wandering outlander, now a rogue. She/her. Lady Elka — Human noble, now a sword-and-fist monk, likes the local cinnamon rolls. She/her. Grog — Orc (remember, my setting doesn't have "half-orcs" and the orcs are just another type of normal person) , ex-soldier, now a barbarian. He/him. Our story picks up t