Tag: dungeons & dragons 5th edition (Page 7 of 9)

Curse of Strahd Review

This review originally appeared on neuronphaser.com, and has been moved here for archival purposes.

Curse of Strahd is one of the strongest of the official Dungeons & Dragons adventures. There may not be a better module for Wizards of the Coast to retell, since I6 Ravenloft ranked among the best modules of all time, and Curse truly takes the necessary steps to convert it and then improve on it, rather than simply repackaging old material. What you’re getting is the iconic Ravenloft adventure featuring Strahd von Zarovich’s Castle Ravenloft and the haunted village of Barovia, but with his tragic backstory spread over a bigger playing field that presents hundreds of new mysteries, encounters, and new characters. It sheds new light on the classic story and challenges players with new, engaging material. Best of all, the concept of “replayability” present in the original module through the tarot-style Fortunes of Ravenloft Tarokka card deck is back, and that means you never know who’s your greatest ally, where the secrets to defeating Strahd might lay, and ultimately, where Strahd will reveal himself for the inevitable epic battle at the adventure’s climax.

Rating: Content 4/5 and Form 4/5.

Buy the hardcover at Amazon or pick it up on D&D Beyond!

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Time Tracker and Exploration Manager for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

If you’ve cut your teeth on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, grew up with OD&D, are revisiting old school gaming styles via a retroclone on Fantasy Grounds, or as part of an experiment in playing through the origins of the hobby, one of the things you pick up on real fast is that time is a major component of the game’s tension: it takes time to search for secret doors, discover hidden treasure, disable traps, and map dungeons…and all that time taken means more wandering monster rolls! Light source durations, spell durations, and all sorts of other mechanics impact this aspect of the game, so it’s no surprise there are a lot of “time trackers” out there.

Now there’s one for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition! More info below.

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Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide Review

This review originally appeared on neuronphaser.com, and has been moved here for archival purposes.

Unsure of who the target audience is, Wizards of the Coast makes its first critical fumble with the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, a slim book featuring some real diamonds in terms of character creation (Backgrounds, Races, and Classes), but ultimately covering the Realms (not just the Sword Coast) in weak, vague terms. With over 100 pages geared mainly towards providing information useful strictly for filling out a Player Character’s backstory, this is the type of release that can easily be skipped unless you need the crunchy bits, in which case you’re better off finding it on a steep discount for the (at best) 50 pages you will end up using.

Rating: Content 2/5 and Form 3/5.

Buy the hardcover at Amazon or pick it up digitally at D&D Beyond.

Read on for the full review!

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Out of the Abyss Review

This review originally appeared on neuronphaser.com, and has been moved here for archival purposes.

If you’re looking for material to loot for your home game, this book is solid gold: evocative NPCs, a great variety of locations and plot threads, a superb mixture of railroady adventure path-style and wide-open exploration, and some incredibly iconic villains are the bread and butter of Out of the Abyss. But if you’re looking for a campaign to run from start to finish, the organization of topics and internal referencing is atrocious, and the adventure kicks in without preamble. DMs will be forced to put a lot of elbow grease into running this thing; expect a lot of note-taking, index-writing, and on-the-fly page-flipping. Luckily, it’s a great adventure, so it’s worth the work if you enjoy the prep phase of DMing. Even better, other folks have already put in the work for enterprising DMs, and that kicks this over the fence from Meh to Thumbs Up!

Rating: Content 3/5 and Form 4/5.

Buy the hardcover at Amazon or get it digitally at D&D Beyond.

Read on for the full review!

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Elemental Evil Player’s Companion Review

This review originally appeared on neuronphaser.com, and has been moved here for archival purposes.

It’s simple, it’s focused, and it packs a mean punch! The Elemental Evil Player’s Companion is a free PDF (and cheap print-on-demand product via Dungeon Masters Guild) that covers 4 vaguely elementally-inclined races and 43 new elementally-infused spells, providing players in just about any D&D campaign with some fun, well-balanced new options to play with.

Rating: Content 4/5 and Form 5/5.

Get the PDF for free or buy the Print-On-Demand versions at Dungeon Masters Guild.

Read on for the full review!

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