Last week, in my blog post called "Lessons Learned: Four Years Designing 5e," I talked about writing Defiance in Phlan, one of the first 5e adventures available to the public, and the first for the D&D Adventurers League. The design restrictions and mandates for that adventure made it one of the most challenging I have every written. It had to introduce a new edition of D&D, a new organized play campaign, be comprised on five...
Hello and happy Spring to you all, or for those on the East Coast, second winter. Despite the cold, snow, and overcast skies, there is much to be happy about here at the Encoded offices. We had our second anniversary in February. This quarter was a busy one for us, with some unplanned work coming up that we will talk about below. That unplanned work knocked some of our Q1 and Q2 plans aside, and...
Before 2000, I DMed almost exclusively for the same group of people using AD&D and 2nd Edition D&D rules. I knew their play styles by heart, and I could create and run with almost no effort the kinds of sessions and adventures they wanted to play. Since 2000, I have DMed mostly in the Organized Play programs of Wizards of the Coast -- most recently the D&D Adventurers League. That means most of my DMing has...
In the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the two main characters are in a car going the wrong way on a highway. The driver of another car, traveling parallel to them in the other lane, yells to them, “You’re going the wrong way!” John Candy’s character says with derision, “How would he know where we’re going?” Sometimes, when I am giving DMing (or other GMing) advice, I feel like that guy in the other car. I...