Greywulf Explains what WotC Stands to Learn from Games Workshop

November 3rd, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

At his blog of general geekery, Greywulf’s Lair, Greywulf himself lays out some of the missteps Wizards has made in the creation and promotion of the D&D brand, comparing them to the things Games Workshop does right in promoting Warhammer 40K.

Blackbyrne Does the Timewarp Again with Sands of Despair

November 1st, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

Blackbyrne Publishing’s Dark Veil Campaign continues with the fourth adventure in the series, Sands of Despair. The heroes have drawn deific attention, and even time itself becomes unstable as they traverse a desert that is not a desert in search of a magical artifact.

WotC Invites You To Return To Neverwinter

August 7th, 2011 by Tim Barribeau

WoTC’s big push at this years Gen Con was a return to Neverwinter, the venerable northern city that’s been a major crossover location for decades. Most of our readers probably remember Neverwinter Nights, the Bioware game from 2002 — but there was an even older title with the same name that AOL ran as one [...]

The 3rd Installment of the Dark Veil Takes You from the High Seas to the Deep Jungle

July 29th, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

The long-awaited third volume in Blackbyrne Publishing’s 4E Dark Veil adventure series has arrived. The Prophecy Revealed lets the PCs explore a jungle island infested by spiders and learn a strange secret that will shape their destinies.

Recurring RPG Villains Come Back Like a Bad Penny

July 28th, 2011 by Ryk Perry

So there I was spending all sorts of time, crafting monster stat blocks for a chief-lieutenant type of recurring foe for my players and what did they do? They beat the holy living bejeezus out of him before he could even fire off his heaviest powers. Now my recurring foe was recumbent in death. So [...]

Musings on Wizards of the Coast, D&D and Failure, Part 1

July 21st, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

It’s a been a tumultuous year for D&D. Last year’s Gen Con presentations were full of big ideas and a release schedule packed with ambition, including the beginner-friendly Essentials line. Eleven months later the release schedule has been trimmed, long-time Wizards’ employees have been laid off, and Essentials appears to have crashed and burned in [...]

Make a 4E D&D Zombie Horror Movie with Zombie Throngs

June 10th, 2011 by Ryk Perry

I have been continuing to experiment with large groups of relatively weak creatures to threaten my epic level party. As the party has also been marching into a dying Nentir Vale, where the dark power of the rift under the Keep on the Shadowfell has been allowed to grow unchecked, zombies seemed the way to [...]

Printable 4E Status Markers Solve Many Problems

May 26th, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

RPG players are always looking for better ways to mark the status of miniatures. Each method seems to have its own pros and cons, but these printable status markers seem like one of the most efficient methods I’ve seen yet.

Shadowfell Set is a Dark World in a Box

May 4th, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

The Shadowfell boxed set is wrought with gloom, wracked with despair, fraught with a poster map and laden with creature tokens. All that makes for an excellent way to lead your PCs onto a path of horror and tribulation.

Exceptional Items: Keeping the Party Geared Up in a Low-Magic Campaign

April 22nd, 2011 by Ryk Perry

A while back Ed posted an article about “gritty” campaigns and referenced one that I was running for our group. Addressing all the mechanics for such a campaign will take several articles, so I decided to start with equipment, both because I think it’s very important to a gritty campaign and because it’s on my [...]

Brazer Bulletin — Two Years Going, What Have I Learned?

April 13th, 2011 by Dale McCoy

This Friday is Jon Brazer Enterprises’ second anniversary. Two years ago we released our first product (a 16-page character sheet for the Traveller RPG). Now here we are, two years later and going strong. It’s times like this that I like to reflect and see where we’ve been and where we are going.

Heroes of Shadow Predictably Dark

April 12th, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

Yeah, I just rolled up a new character. He’s a paladin, but, like, a dark paladin. He’s really dark. And tormented, with, like, scars and he’s sort of angry and mysterious and brooding and dark. No, he’s still a good guy, just really dark. Even his sword is dark, man. I thought of making a [...]

Soldiers of Fortune a Military Buff’s Dream for 4E

April 8th, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

Many an RPG splat book has been written about military campaigns, but not very many were written by an author with both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Filled with interesting historical notes, campaign flavor and plenty of new 4E rules and options, Soldiers of Fortune presents an in-depth look at how and why [...]

Son of the Return of Miniature of the Week

March 21st, 2011 by Ed Grabianowski

In the amateur division, we have a gallery of minis painted by Michael Mallen to represent the PCs in his 4E D&D campaign. These minis not only look great, they show how you can improve the look of your paint jobs by learning a few simple techniques.