Vox Arcana - Blog

These are my opinions and analysis of these spells. I'm not an expert, but I've played an awful lot of D&D over the years, so I think these points are worth considering. This post is meant to accompany the Dolmenwood Player's Book readthrough. Summary: The early Arcane spells are quite weak and/or situational. With the rules as described, in which a caster must prepare each specific spell he/she wants to use that day, I feel that casters are at a major disadvantage early on (even more so than in other AD&D retro clones). That being said, if a caster can survive long enough, the spells become extremely powerful (even more so than in other AD&D retro clones).  Rank 1 Arcane Spells I’m not usually one to do tier lists, but I think in this case, it’s warranted. CRYSTAL RESONANCE This spell allows the caster to imprint their surrounding energies onto a gem, then later release it. It cannot cause damage, blindness, deafness, or other special effects. There are four...

  “A piece of sharp, rusty metal dipped in ice cream.” That’s how I came to describe the setting of Dolmenwood after much reading and writing out these readthroughs. While the setting may at first appear to be a fantastical realm of fairies and cute talking animals, in truth, there’s a dark edge to this world that is not always apparent. It saddens me to recognize that many prospective referees and players will take their first impression at face value and miss out on experiencing perhaps the most detailed, elaborate, and exhaustive settings to date. Intro My original plan was to sit and read through these books, cover to cover. These read-throughs help keep me focused. Here we go. I’m going to go section by section and write my thoughts down as I go. Player’s Book Table of Contents Gavin does a terrific job organizing this. Even with the bookmarked PDFs, I still find myself clicking back to the table of contents in all of these books, due to their usefulness. I really must...

  From one of the greatest books of our generation, the Dolmenwood Player's Guide After talking with my players at length last night, I'm exploring old-school gaming again. Turns out, ACKS gets many, many things right, as far as it relates to my preferences for running these types of games. Upon further examination, we can integrate these types of things into a modern DND game (not necessarily 5e, but still). One of the reasons my players objected to Dolmenwood is a lack of an official skill system. Now, I've gone back and forth on skills in games, and recently landed on the side of liking them a lot. However, there's something to be said about games without them. I also noticed that a vast majority of the time, players tend to rely on a small set of moves during their turns in combat, and a small set of skills while exploring. That is, players always advocate for rolling the things that give them the highest bonus and/or damage output. My question is, "Is this r...

  My son is gonna LOVE Minecraft Dungeons In old school D&D, dungeon crawling is an exercise in resource management. Those resources are: Torches Time Time is really a measurement of risk. After a certain amount of time, there is a chance of a monster appearing, which then uses up other resources: Hit Points Spell Slots Some secondary things might be used up if the party is injured, such as Potions of Healing, which cost gold Hit Dice (if short rests in a dungeon are allowed) Rations (if they help heal), which are really just a gold tax Spell slots used for healing Scrolls  This means that, much like overland travel, players are always pushing their luck to gain treasure at the expense of the fundamental resources of HP and Spell slots. There is a secondary game of inventory management in the form of balancing torches with carried treasure, and possibly another with rations. D&D is ultimately and essentially gambling. The game utilizes resource management as its...

  Source: Zach Wolf's excellent Realms of Peril sandbox Travel rules in TTRPGs have been a constant thorn in my side. In theory, there should be some interesting gameplay and decisions that result from overland travel. In reality, it’s never led an interesting gameplay decisions for my players. Mayhap I’m simply running the rules incorrectly, or incompletely, but I still want to take some time to think about it, hence, this blog. In general, there are fundamentally just two components to (theoretically) make overland travel interesting. Those are resource attrition and time. Resources include things like player HP, stat penalties, rations, and torches. Time usually translates to how many random encounters you must make to get anywhere. This works as a sort of multiplier on resources: Yes, we have enough resources to travel to the dungeon that is one week away, but how will we plan for the one that is two weeks away? A party of players wants to move from one side of the map to ...