The Beastmaster’s Manual

Fantasy tales are filled with stalwart animal friends that are a vital extension of the hero themselves. Such paragons of virtue as Argos and Odysseus, Naga and Korra, and even Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. These obviously exceptional animals have that extra something regular examples of their breed and experience lack. 

In the rigours of Classic D&D adventures our animal friends do not fair well, being used for little more than luggage carriers, mounts for fast travel, or in bleak times, as emergency rations. It’s time for that to change. As the AD&D system stretched into the 3.x to 5th editions some benefits were bestowed on animal companions, granting them supernatural powers, but do you have to be a druid or a ranger to have a really cool dog? How come a sylvan scout cannot have a bear for a loyal friend?

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Role Playing Evil

I’m not fond of GMing for an all evil party, and the reason stems from the fact that I find very few people actually know how to play an evil character. They play them as mentally deranged, and with a pathological need to harm those around them, especially the other player characters. I cannot blame them for the misunderstanding though, because we tend to think we have few reference points for what makes an evil person. Fact is, we have so many reference points that we have come to think evil acts are actually normal, so the only way to represent evil is to go to extremes.

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Classic D&D Module Reviews – Companion Levels

As I expected, Expert level caused a serious slowing of XP gain, so even though the party entered the expert levels well over levelled, they are entering into the Campaign levels well under levelled for the content. Most of the modules are for level 15+ characters but the party varies from level 9 to 13. Still, they are a good group that works well together so we are pressing on as is.

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The Failure of Choice

With the Great D&D Module play through coming to an end before the end of the year, I talked to the group about what we should do next. When I put forward The World’s Largest Dungeon as an option, it was an instant winner. So, while the module playing runs down, players started talking about what they might like to play in the next campaign, and that’s where things started going sideways.

After debating on whether to use The World’s Largest Dungeon in it’s native D&D 3.5e or converting to Classic D&D, I recommended we go with 3.5e so the module can be enjoyed as intended. However, 3.5e isn’t a few books, but an entire library of books, and the options for characters started to really get out of hand. What follows is a severely truncated version of events and a few warnings about how too much choice can be crippling to the art of Role Play.

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Classic D&D Module Review – Expert Part 1

The party has finally completed the Basic modules, and have overlevelled to an average of level 6. I’m not concerned much by that going into the Expert modules as things will begin to equalize soon. These adventures will have to be played out of numbered order so that the level cap for the modules can be adhered to.

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