Blog Posts

Homebrew 5E Wizard subclass: Restoration

Jan 24, 2020 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: homebrew 5e dnd ogl wizard school-of-restoration

I was tinkering around with a wizard subclass that combines a little bit of cleric healing with some health drain. The idea here is to let a party without a cleric have a more utilitarian wizard while leaving the “blasty” bits of the wizard bone stock. Or this subclass could work well in an “all wizards/all casters” party as something a little bit different.

Thoughts? Hit me up on twitter or shoot me an email.

OGL Text

Jan 24, 2020 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: dnd 5e ogl

This post is a link to the Open Game License Version 1.0a (“OGL”) that can be linked to from other posts when certain content is licensed under the OGL. Those other posts will contain any additional section 15 additional Copyright Information as well as to what content the license pertains to. This post does not mean that the entire blog is OGL licensed.

Let's write a module part 8: Review our summary page

Dec 26, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

This blog post will look at revising our summary page We will take our summary page from the previous post and see if there are any issues we need to tweak at this point. A main idea, however, is that you’ve let a substantial amount of time pass between your initial draft of your summary page and then doing your review. Summary page so far Vyncis returns from his long campaign and travels and walks into the watering hole, where the PCs are present.

After the 2019 TCU game

Oct 27, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: football Tags: football longhorns

I’m writing this the Sunday after our 2019 TCU loss. Since 2010, there always seems to be a point in Longhorn football where that spark, that little piece of hope all fans have, goes dark. Yesterday was that for me. After the LSU loss, I thought, “well, at least we can still beat OU”. After the OU loss, I thought, “well, we could at least get a rematch in December”. And now, after the TCU loss, I’ll still watch the rest of the season, but now the hope is gone.

Let's write a module part 7: Summary page

Oct 26, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

This blog post will look at increasing a summary paragraph to a “summary page” We will take our summary paragraph from part 4 and take each sentence and expand that sentence into its own paragraph, with the end goal to have a 5 paragraph summary page. Here’s the paragraph we’re working with: A soldier returns to his childhood home from a long campaign waging guerilla warfare to find his beloved fiancee married to the town mayor.

Let's write a module part 6: Minor NPCs

Oct 25, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

This blog post will look at fleshing out our minor NPCs.

Let's write a module part 5: Major NPCs

Oct 24, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

This blog post will look at identifying some of our major and minor NPCs, and writing a 1-2 sentence description on our major NPCs. We’ll do our minor NPCs in the next post.

Let's write a module part 4: Summary paragraph

Oct 23, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

This blog post will look at expanding our single-sentence summary into a summary paragraph.

Let's write a module part 3: One-sentence summary

Oct 22, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

This blog post will look at distilling our adventure brainstorming down to a single sentence. This is often the hardest part for me; getting a single sentence that covers the entire adventure is difficult. Because of this difficulty, I often find it useful to find some inspiration from other adventures, namely the back covers of published products. Tomb of Annihilation’s back exterior cover has a great example: A death curse has befallen everyone who’s been raised from the dead.

Let's write a module part 2: Design goals and snowflake-method overview

Oct 21, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

This blog post will look at our basic design goals of the module in a bit more depth than the introductory post as well as a cursory introduction to the snowflake method. Design goals I find it helpful to make a list of my design goals early on as it helps me stay focused on what I’m attempting to do. My design goals for this adventure are as follows: Begins in a town (1,000 or fewer residents) but within a day or two ride of a village (6,000 or fewer residents) All encounters within a radius of a few days of in-game travel from the town Levels 1-5 for 4 5E PCs Experience will be by milestone instead of grinding XP Setting agnostic; the village and town can be plopped down into an existing setting such as the Forgotten Realms or Golarion without too much modification Fun for both GM and players Once I have my basic design goals, I like to move on to a top-down approach.

announcements (4) football (16) reviews (2) rpgs (51) trading (1) 5e (38) ability-scores (1) barbarian (1) book-review (2) cantrips (12) character-creation (1) chris-lindsay (1) chris-perkins (1) concentration (1) cutscenes (1) dnd (37) football (14) for-new-players (2) free-actions (1) futures (1) game-design (1) gamehole-con (1) golarion (1) homebrew (9) how-i_run (1) hugo (1) injuries (1) learn-to-play (2) lets-write-a_module (8) longhorns (16) lost-omens (1) mike-mearls (2) mnq (1) ogl (5) paladin (1) pf2 (5) press-conference (2) presser (1) primer (1) recruiting (1) remix (2) rules (5) school-of-restoration (1) session-report (1) spells (12) srd (1) stealth (1) stk-remix (2) storm-kings-thunder (2) sub-classes (1) surprise (2) systemagnostic (1) texas-gameday-final (1) tiamat (1) tim-beck (1) tokentool (1) tom-herman (4) tools (4) tulsa (2) tyranny-of-dragons (1) wescot-eberts (1) wiki (1) wizard (1) worldbuilding (1) xanathars-guide-to-everything (1) yurcich (1)