Keith Ammann is the author of the ENnie Award–winning blog and book The Monsters Know What They’re Doing. He’s been a role-playing gamer for more than thirty years.
I drifted away from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1989, just before TSR released D&D’s second edition. I was lured away by Shadowrun, FASA’s “punk elves” science fiction–fantasy mashup. Part of the appeal lay in certain aspects of D&D that I was starting
(Read part 1 here.) In my post “Fitting Through the Door,” I posited that porting a player character from one system to another requires being able to answer “yes” to three questions: * Does the character’s “one main thing” make sense within this system and setting? * Does the system faithfully
It’s an opinion so widely shared that the degree of consensus practically elevates it to the status of fact: Curse of Strahd is the best campaign-length adventure for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast. And out of all the games I’ve run since
You’ve seen Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, right? So you remember Xenk. How could you not remember Xenk? Xenk is there to make an impression, a very particular impression. Xenk is pure. Xenk is powerful. Xenk is beloved. Xenk is beautiful. Xenk is a paladin in the tradition
(Read part 1 here. Read part 2 here.) So far, I’ve looked at Garregwen, my wood elf Battle Master, strictly as a high fantasy character. What if we jump genres? Let’s start with a smaller jump, to Court of Blades, a low fantasy, Renaissance-intrigue hack of Blades in
(Read part 1 here.) Before I dig into the hearty stew of Pathfinder, I’m going to enjoy an amuse-bouche of Shadowdark. Let’s say Garregwen, my wood elf Battle Master, is a level 4 crawler, just out of the novice stage. I’ll assign her stats in proportion to
I’ve been contemplating starting a new blog or newsletter for a while now, and recently I got the impetus I needed when Diana “of the Rose” Fay, a popular TikToker who once said something nice about my book The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, posted the following on