This week I’d like to take a look at one of the most-used wizard spells in any edition of the game – fireball. Along with lightning bolt and teleport it is one of the icons of D&D magic.

Fire Ball (original D&D 1974) A missile which springs from the finger of the Magic-User. It explodes with a [...]

Pardon the grandiose title for this week’s post. Actually, this is about my favorite casual gaming application, a little thingy on Yahoo called “JT’s Blocks”. Just who is this JT guy, anyway?

I haven’t played a board game in a very long time: it seems like at least a month or more.

This past weekend’s D&D session was cancelled due to a scheduling conflict.

It’s Cyber Monday and I really ought to have an online shopping tie-in article to help y’all approach the upcoming holidays with zesty materialistic abandon. This [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about Motivation. Character Motivation. Not why we do it, but why they do it. I realized recently that one of the most important things for a successful campaign is to have characters with compatible motivations.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! This week I switch gears to look at one of the most-used druid spells in the game – Heat Metal (as requested by MetalJim). In order to see how this spell evolved, we may also have to look at the reverse spell – Chill Metal.

Heat Metal (D&D Supplement III - Eldritch Wizardry) A spell [...]

This week MetalJim continues to discuss ways to inject a little “cinematic flair” into your roleplaying games…

Rhelik tackles the daddy of all evil… CHAOTIC-EVIL.

Here’s the schizophrenic normality of D&D that too many of us have come to know and love, or at least grudgingly accept: first you set up the pins, and then you knock them down. “Setting up” the pins is the plot, narrative, and role-play aspect of the game – the story by which your heroes [...]

(Random’s Note: I’ll be stepping aside this week to allow my old friend itsman to expound on a radical take on the traditional roleplaying game. )

The Mechanics-Opaque Gamemastering Technique by itsman

This week I’ve decided to continue with the arcane spell most familiar to those who have ever played Dungeons & Dragons (in any of its incarnations). Yep, you guessed it — Magic Missile! This mainstay of wizards everywhere has undergone some interesting changes over the years. I’m also including the Moldvay Basic D&D interpretations as [...]

No, not your political campaign theme music. As in, music to set the mood for an evening of sweet role-playing goodness…

Rhelik takes a look at LAwful-Evil in the third of his four part review of the latest expansion to the Dungeons & Dragons Miniature game.

Rhelik takes a look at Chaotic-Good in the second of his four part review of the latest expansion to the Dungeons & Dragons Miniature game.

In last week’s article, we looked at the use of atypical story arcs in D&D campaign settings, using the works of author Neil Gaiman as an inspirational case in point. This got us going in the direction of “atypical” being something both more creative and abnormal, and something with a more pure storybook sentiment even if it [...]

Once upon a time the base classes of Dungeons and Dragons were a necessary evil. I spent a great amount of time trying hard to make one character different from another of the same class. Now at long last I’ve found a way to make it a bearable system.

Following up on my recent articles involving the development of spells in D&D over time, I offer the following classic clerical spell, Hold Person, which has undergone some radical changes over the years. See how it evolved from humble beginnings to the present version.

The hold person spell has been both an arcane and a divine [...]

I warned you guys this was coming when I made my first set of NFL predictions at the start of the season.

Role-Playing Games feature player characters inhabiting protagonist roles in epic adventure stories. In an RPG, you don’t play the Everyman. You are special, more powerful than the average Joe, and that gap only widens over time. But one of the interesting conceits about your typical D&D fantasy setting is that it’s all in the open – [...]

Rhelik takes a look at Lawful-Good in the first of his four part review of the latest expansion to the Dungeons & Dragons Miniature game.

While KarasDjun is exploring the evolution of spells through D&D’s history, I look to the future of spell design. There is a new type of spell out there. I take a look at the Lorecall spells; an innovative collection of spells which blend magic with skills.