• Are You A Dungeon Master With A Player Mindset?

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    If you’re currently running Lost Mine of Phandelver or that…other adventure that contains LMOP within its pages, I have a question for you: Are you in a Dungeon Master mindset, or a player mindset? If you’re a new Dungeon Master running an adventure that was initially designed for new DM’s and players, it’s totally understandable…

  • Better Than A Pole Of Collapsing

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    If you want to bum a player out, by all means, give them a pole of collapsing as treasure. If you really want to bum them out, get all clutchy about whether they can use a pole of collapsing as a quarterstaff, or if it can only be used as an improvised weapon. I have…

  • The People You Meet In Phandalin: Lanar The Miner

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    Spend enough evenings at The Stonehill Inn or The Sleeping Giant, and no doubt you will hear the fanciful tall tales of Lanar, Phandalin’s resident lush. The oft sozzled miner spins his drunken, rambling yarns with such conviction that one might almost believe his outlandish claims. Like that time he once saw a bear with…

  • Altering Axeholm’s Adventure Hook

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    This week, I shared my experience altering Axeholm to be run as a three hour one-shot adventure. Today, I’ll conclude those thoughts by sharing the custom adventure hook I crafted for the Axeholm adventure, as well as an adventure summary. Adventure Hook The characters find themselves at The Dogwater, a roadside inn at the intersection…

  • What Really Happened At Axeholm

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    There sure are a lot of banshees around the Triboar Trail. Let’s see, there’s Agatha out by Conyberry. There’s Vyldara haunting the halls of Axeholm. And there’s Miraal at the Tower of Storms. Seems like you can throw a stone in any direction from Phandalin and hit a banshee. What if one of those banshees…

  • Are The Sword Mountains Along A Fault Line?

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    I recently ran a couple of one-shot adventures for Dungeons & Drafts using the Axeholm side quest from Dragon of Icespire Peak. Since each session was confined to three hours, I found it necessary to pick and choose which of the 30 keyed areas of Axeholm’s map I’d keep in my game. In the end,…

  • Where Next? Now Boarding: PHAN >>> GNOM >>> GNST

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    Earlier this month, I shared my thoughts on how to get the characters from Dragon of Icespire Peak to other adventures listed at the end of the module. I gave an example of how Dungeon Masters might use the Altar of Fate located at the Shrine of Savras to show visions of what awaited them…

  • Venomfang Needs Kobolds

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    So there are ash zombies in Thundertree as remnants of Mount Hotenow’s eruption. There are dragon cultists in Thundertree because the Cult of the Dragon sent envoys to curry favor with the young green dragon residing there. And there are twig blights in Thundertree because, uh. Hmmm… I needed an explanation for this phenomenon, so…

  • Cryovain The Spellcaster

    A couple months back, I had some fun playing with the variant rule for dragons as innate spellcasters by applying it to Venomfang. Today, let’s travel south to the Sword Mountains and do the same for Cryovain. The Monster Manual’s variant rule for dragons as innate spellcasters: Dragons are innately magical creatures that can master…

  • Where Next? Consult The Altar of Fate

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    So your group is nearly finished with their adventures in and around Phandalin, and it begs the question: what’s the next adventure? On the final page of Dragon of Icespire Peak under the heading “Where Next,” the module provides suggestions for other published WoTC adventures the characters might move on to. They are: Curse of…