Vox Arcana - Blog

  I’ve mentioned this before on the show, but wasn’t able to extrapolate on what I believe to be one of my greatest innovations.

This is a great, weird book, if you're willing to do some work.

  If you saw Neverland and decided to keep on scrolling, you'd be making the same mistake I made. This game came out of nowhere. I first learned of it from a Questing Beast review, and I was hesitant to click because my interest in Peter Pan (and Neverland in general) is nonexistent. I saw the number of views on the video and thought it must be worth watching.

Our wonderful (and tragically lost episode of) Vox Arcana, detailed the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure for 5e. We discussed how to really utilize all of our best 5e tricks to make the adventure great. While recording, I realized the entire thing could easily be cut-and-pasted into my personal D&D world. It’s an easy, fairly low-stakes adventure that involves some exploration, and it would require minimal modification to work in my game.  Spoilers for the adventure from the D&D Beginner Box, originally released in 2014. Here is what I would change: The name Phandalin is silly, and worst still, very recognizable. Let’s call the little mining town Dalin, which has an Irish feel. Let’s make all of its woodsy citizens speak with an Irish brogue. The adventure itself is already set up as a series of situations, so let’s lean into that. A local wizard is on the hunt for a lost spell forge, and will pay any price to find it (it functions as a 20,000gp library) . He’s hired hobg...

A small section of my world map. It's based on a published product, but took on a life of its own over the 11 months we played.   I know I massively fell behind on these session reports. Although COVID-19 ruined a lot of things, it didn't stop my group from meeting. It's hard to piece together the exact things that happened simply by my notes, but I'll share some of the more notable events. This was the first time any of us played an OSR-style game, and we all learned a lot. I can say with much authority, even while editing this is halfway through 2025, that this was the greatest campaign I've ever had the pleasure to GM.

If you've been listening to our episodes from November and December, you might be aware that I (William) have shifted away from a heroic fantasy-style of game.