Wandering DMs: Recent Episodes

Wandering DMs

Dan "Delta" Collins and Paul Siegel host weekly discussions on topics relating to old school D&D, tabletop RPGs, DM advice, and D&D history.

With Dan away traveling for the next two weeks, Paul is going solo… so what better time to play one of his favorite solo fantasy games ever? It's Barbarian Prince!

Barbarian Prince is a sprawling fantasy hexcrawl game published by Dwarfstar Games in 1981 and designed by Arnold Hendrick. This game has been a personal favorite of Paul's for decades. It directly inspired his mobile game Road of Kings and continues to influence his current AI-powered RPG project, Hexcrawl. If you've ever wondered where his fascination with sandbox adventures, procedural encounters, and open-world fantasy comes from, this is the game that started it all.

Longtime viewers may also recognize some similarities to Dan's classic Outdoor Spoliation D&D adventure, which adapts the original Outdoor Survival board game into a tabletop hexcrawl. While the approach is different, both capture the spirit of exploring an unpredictable wilderness one hex at a time.

Join Paul live as he explores the wilderness! He'll be keeping an eye on chat throughout the adventure, taking your suggestions, answering questions about Barbarian Prince, solo gaming, and hexcrawl design, and talking about the ways this classic game has influenced his own projects over the years.

Check out Paul's earlier video, "Can I Play Dungeons & Dragons Alone?"
Watch Dan and Paul play Solo D&D

Dan and Paul discuss one of D&D's most iconic and surprisingly complicated—spells: Invisibility.

On the surface it seems straightforward, but once players start dropping items, picking up treasure, attacking, casting spells, or sneaking around a dungeon, the questions begin. What can it be cast on? What breaks the spell? How should a DM rule on all the gray areas that the rules leave open?

We'll also explore classic magic items like Rings of Invisibility and Elven Cloaks, discuss how different editions have approached invisibility, and share practical tips for tracking invisible creatures at the table without ruining the mystery.

Whether you're a player looking to pull off the perfect infiltration or a DM trying to adjudicate invisible shenanigans fairly, join us as we make the unseen a little easier to see.

Paul and Dan look back to our marathon holiday weekend playthrough of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, the classic D&D tournament adventure that first appeared 50 years ago! Does the module still stand up today for modern players? What lessons or surprises would we take from our actual-play experience? What's the grade on how well Dan ran this elder adventure from the canon of Gygax?

Watch our holiday actual play of Tsojcanth
Read the (forgotten!) review of Tsojcanth on Paul's Game Blog
Check out the survey of 1E modules at Musings from the Moathouse, which picked Tsojcanth as the very best!

Dan and Paul, the Wandering DMs, are joined by Kelsey Dionne, creator of the award-winning Shadowdark RPG.

Shadowdark has become one of the most talked-about fantasy RPGs in recent years, winning over both old-school gamers and players coming from modern editions of D&D. How did the game come to be? What were the guiding design principles behind it? And how does Shadowdark blend the fast-paced, high-stakes feel of the OSR with the accessibility and familiarity that modern D&D players expect?

Join us as we talk with Kelsey about the origins of Shadowdark, its design philosophy, and why the game has resonated with so many tables.

Find out more official Shadowdark info at Kelsey's site, The Arcane Library

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Dan and Paul discuss the many ways they've brought tactical combat to life at the tabletop over decades of running Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. From classic wet-erase mats and gaming paper to elaborate 3D terrain, projector systems, and modern digital battle mats, every solution comes with its own strengths, weaknesses, and surprises.

What makes a battle mat worth using? When is detailed terrain worth the setup time? Are digital displays finally practical for in-person games? How much tactical detail do you really need to run exciting encounters? We'll compare the tools we've used over the years, share lessons learned, and talk about what works best for different styles of play.

Dan and Paul discuss diseases in D&D and other fantasy roleplaying games. From the surprisingly extensive disease rules found in the earliest editions of D&D to the colorful afflictions found in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, how have RPGs handled sickness over the years?

Does disease create interesting gameplay, meaningful worldbuilding, or just another hazard for adventurers to avoid? Join us live as we explore diseases, plagues, contagions, and other afflictions in tabletop roleplaying games.

Read Dan's blog on the history of disease in D&D

Paul & Dan are joined by Matt Finch of Mythmere Games to chat about the competing motivations when using legendary references from the real world in your fantasy campaign world. How much do we want players to feel a deep-seated sense of recognition from our shared languages and legends? But, how much can we disentangle those mythological elements from the real-world people and places that spawned them? Plus, a peek at Matt's new upcoming releases for his World of Jordoba fantasy setting!

Get the free comic player's guidebook to Jordoba at DriveThruRPG
And join the Backerkit for the new edition of Jordoba here

Dan and Paul discuss the role of physical size in D&D. From adventures set in giant-sized environments to scenarios where player characters are magically shrunk, changing scale can completely alter how players experience the game world.

How have classic D&D adventures used size as a central theme? What happens when spells and magic items like Enlarge or Potions of Diminution change a character's physical presence? How do small ancestries such as halflings and dwarves affect our perception of the fantasy world? And what makes creatures like pixies, giants, and other extreme-sized monsters so memorable at the table?

We'll also tackle one of the trickiest challenges for Dungeon Masters: communicating size and scale in a shared imaginary space. How can DMs help players truly appreciate the difference between tiny and colossal creatures, vast environments, and impossible proportions? What techniques make scale feel meaningful instead of just another number on a character sheet?

Paul and Dan review the 3rd supplement to Original D&D from May 1976: Eldritch Wizardry! An exotic mix of new and challenging ideas for Dungeons & Dragons from a variety of creators, shaped by editor Tim Kask. Introducing options for Psionics, Demons, Artifacts, and Druids as a playable class. Plus a super-detailed segment-breakdown approach to movement and combat. How much of it stood the test of time, how much do we use, and what approaches would we take to the same problems at the time?

Dan and Paul dive into the D&D adventures they would happily run again and again. From classic tournament modules to sprawling campaign epics, what adventures stand the test of time? Which modules keep surprising players, reveal new depths on repeat play, and remain endlessly rewarding for Dungeon Masters?

Join us as we discuss the adventures we'd revisit forever, what makes a module replayable, and the design qualities that turn a good scenario into a timeless classic.

Paul and Dan review all the different editions of the D&D XP advancement tables for player characters, and assess which was best. Is it better to have tables customized for each class, or one universal table for all? Should there be an easy-to-recall formula behind them, or careful customization at each level step? Which classes outstrip the others? And were XP points ever really a good idea in the first place?

Watch our prior episode on XP awards from Season 2

Dan and Paul dig into the many ways the humble d6 powers classic Dungeons & Dragons. From opening doors and hearing noises to wandering monsters, surprise, morale, and reaction rolls, early D&D is full of small bespoke mechanics built around simple dice checks. Why are some rolls 1d6 while others are 2d6? When do ability modifiers apply - and when don't they? Are these disconnected systems part of old-school D&D's charm, or would the game benefit from a more unified mechanic?

Along the way, we'll explore how these rules evolved across OD&D and early editions, how house rules try to smooth the edges, and whether modern ability check systems lose something by standardizing everything. Join Dan and Paul live as they wander through one of the strangest and most foundational design spaces in classic RPGs.

Dan and Paul review how their live dungeon design dash turned out at Rising Phoenix Game Con, and how the resulting adventures played at the table. Both ran Pleasure Palace of the Pirate Prince, created live during a Friday night panel and inspired by RPGCon's dress-like-a-pirate day. What worked, what surprised us, and what we'd change next time?

Dan and Paul dive into one of the trickiest questions in D&D adventure design: how many magic items should player characters actually have? Looking at classic tournament modules, treasure tables, and real-world convention play, we break down expectations across different level ranges.

Whether you are building pre-generated characters for a con game or trying to balance rewards in your home campaign, we explore how magic item distribution affects challenge, player agency, and overall fun. Are most characters over-equipped? Underpowered? What does the math say - and when should you ignore it?

Join us live as we compare old-school assumptions with modern design and take your questions from chat.

Dan and Paul review the Scarlet Stockade of the Bear Druid, the dungeon they designed live with fans at GaryCon during Dungeon Design Dash #7!

After building the adventure in front of a live audience, both Dan and Paul ran the dungeon for different groups at the convention - with very different results. What worked at the table? What broke? And what final changes are needed before publication?

Join us as we compare playtest experiences, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the design, and talk through how we refine a crowd-created dungeon into a polished module.

The finished adventure will be released on DriveThruRPG and shared free with our patrons alongside all our Dungeon Design Dashes.

DriveThruRPG (Wandering DMs publisher page)

Paul & Dan chat about their amazing experiences at Gary Con XVIII! From playing games with some of their personal heroes, to running a bunch of tournaments, designs sessions, and playtests, to fascinating seminars with the elite of D&D gaming history, we'll share of our favorite moments from this year's premiere convention for classic D&D gaming.

Paul & Dan grapple with the biggest of all monsters in original D&D: Purple Worms and Sea Monsters! Why were these beefy guys picked as the apex predators of D&D? What are some alternative ways they could be represented or used in your Dungeons & Dragons games? And what's the best response when you find yourself swallowed up Noah-style?

Dan and Paul discuss techniques for running tabletop RPG adventures that span large outdoor regions and long journeys. From classic hex crawls and wilderness exploration to point crawls and node-based travel, outdoor campaigns present unique challenges for pacing, mapping, and meaningful player choice across wide geographic areas.

How do different RPG traditions handle wilderness adventure? Why did early D&D split dungeon and wilderness play between the Basic and Expert sets? Join us as we explore frameworks for large-scale adventure design, including hex-based exploration, point-crawl structures, and hybrids that combine open wilderness with structured travel routes, plus practical techniques for keeping long overland journeys engaging at the table.

Paul and Dan pull out and analyze Dave Megarry's famous Dungeon! boardgame, developed at the same time as D&D, published in 1975. How much were the games similar, and were do the differ? What changed in the half-dozen iterations over the years? And does the stripped-down dungeon-crawling game still stand up today?

Dan and Paul tackle a deceptively common table problem: the potato player - someone who shows up, sits quietly, and never quite engages. Coined as shorthand for disengaged play, “potatoing” can look the same from the outside but come from very different places on the inside.

In this episode, we break down the difference between intentional potatoes and accidental ones, passive watchers vs bored or overwhelmed players, and why silence at the table is not always disinterest. We offer practical advice for players who want to participate more confidently, as well as concrete tools for DMs to invite engagement without putting anyone on the spot. Whether you fear becoming a potato yourself or want to help your players stay involved, this episode is about agency, table expectations, and how to help everyone show up to the game.

Paul and Dan chat about the history of Rangers in D&D. Inspired directly by Tolkien, they're one of D&D's earliest and most appealing sub-classes! With abilities to surprise, track, cut down giants, and even cast spells, they're not your normal fighter. How has their appearance evolved over the years? Does their presentation really fit the intended purpose? And how do presentations in other game systems fare?

Dan and Paul revisit one of Wandering DMs’ earliest topics - puzzles in tabletop RPGs - this time with special guest Chris M, aka Directsun. Back in Season 1, we wrestled with why puzzles so often fall flat at the table, becoming roadblocks, immersion breakers, or exercises in frustration. In this episode, we return to that question with Chris, the designer behind The Seer’s Sanctum and Aberrant Reflections, two widely praised puzzle dungeons that treat puzzles not as isolated tricks, but as interconnected systems that teach players how the dungeon works.

We discuss how puzzle design differs from riddles, why failure states matter, how to avoid "guess the GM" moments, and what tabletop designers can learn from escape rooms and video games without losing the soul of TTRPG play. We also look ahead to Chris’s upcoming project, A Familiar Tower, an escape-room-style puzzle dungeon crowdfunding during Zine Month 2026.

Dan & Paul chat about the classic 1980's sci-fi RPG, Star Frontiers, from the makers of D&D. We're still running it today for younger players and having a great time. What are the great things about it that still work, and what places have we found for improvements to change with the times? It's a high-frontier, shoot-em-up, percentile-rolling blast from the past!

Dan and Paul kick off Season 8 by diving into one of the most debated ideas in tabletop RPGs: The Rule of Cool. When should a GM stick to the written rules, and when is it better to bend or ignore them because the table is fired up about a particular moment?

We talk about why this principle feels so powerful at the table, how it can elevate dramatic scenes and player creativity, and where it can quietly undermine consistency, fairness, or long-term play if it becomes a crutch. From heroic stunts to narrative twists, we explore how to use the Rule of Cool as a tool rather than an excuse.

Dan and Paul close out Season 7 of Wandering DMs with their annual Year in Review, looking back at what defined the season.

They revisit standout episodes, recurring topics, and memorable conversations, along with the moments where the show broke from its usual patterns. From deep dives into core play procedures and campaign structure, to episodes shaped by history, live events, conventions, and special guests, this episode reflects on the full range of what Season 7 covered.

It’s a chance to highlight what the season lingered on, where it experimented, and how those threads came together before turning the page to what’s next.

Thank you to everyone who joined us throughout Season 7.

Paul & Dan reflect on the state of illusions in D&D, across the many editions of the game. Can a basic illusion deal actual damage to your character, or not? Can they trap your character in hallucinatory pit? How robust is an illusory monster, and what can your character do to counter the peril? The answers may surprise you!

Read Dan's blog on "Phantasmal Force Through the Ages"

Dan and Paul discuss the often-overlooked idea that players can (and perhaps should) prepare for a D&D session. Using Gary Gygax’s “Successful Adventures” section from the back of the AD&D 1E Player’s Handbook, they explore how early D&D expected parties to organize missions, plan loadouts, coordinate spells, establish marching formations, avoid unnecessary encounters, and operate like a disciplined expedition.

How do these expectations compare to modern table norms? What echoes of this philosophy appear in West Marches play? And what lessons can today’s players still take from Gygax’s advice?

We’ll dig into the text, test its ideas against practical experience, and look at how player preparation changes the feel of a campaign.

Dan and Paul discuss the art of pacing a tabletop RPG session without taking away player agency. How can a GM speed up play when the group burrows into side plots, or slow things down when players sprint straight toward the finale? When should you intervene to shape the tempo, and when should you simply let the party set the pace themselves?

They also compare how pacing concerns differ between one-shot adventures and long-term campaigns, and explore ways to maintain momentum while still allowing players the freedom to explore, wander, and surprise the GM.

Listen to Jason and Tom's take on Fear of a Black Dragon here
Check out The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford here

Dan and Paul dive into the world of West Marches campaigns - a style of play built around open exploration, rotating players, and player-driven adventure. With Critical Role's new campaign borrowing some West Marches ideas, it’s the perfect time to ask: what problems does this format solve, what new ones does it create, and when does it really shine?

We'll share our own experiences running West Marches-inspired games, where they succeeded, where they fell apart, and what lessons we’ve learned along the way.

Read Ben Robbins's original post about West Marches here
Read more about Critical Role Campaign 4's use of West Marches here

Dan & Paul get to chat with Keith Ammann -- renowned author of The Monsters Know What They're Doing -- about his newest book on D&D monsters, Making Enemies. This time Keith explores everything that goes into creating monsters from the ground up: size, number, and level of challenge; monster habitats; monster motivations; monsters as metaphors; monsters and magic; the monstrous anatomy possessed by real-world organisms; and how to customize monsters for your own tabletop roleplaying game adventuring party to confront. Not just for 5E, but any edition of D&D, and other TTRPGs as well! Get ready to surprise and delight your players—and terrify their characters—again and again.

Paul & Dan unwrap the state of Mummies in Dungeons & Dragons. What makes them unique compared to other undead monsters? How have they changed over the editions? What's the best way to use these ancient horrors in your games?

Read Dan's blog on Mummies Through the Ages here

Dan & Paul chat with D&D historian Shannon Appelcline -- who's back with his most ambitious work to date. A sprawling 4-volume Origins set, providing a detailed look at every single product created in the early days of official Dungeons & Dragons publications. Including all of Original D&D, Basic D&D, and Advanced D&D 1st Edition, everything is here! We'll join forces with Shannon to see what was good, bad, and ugly in those most adventurous days.

Check out Shannon's visual timelines here
And join the Backerkit for Origins here

It’s been 50 years since Dungeons & Dragons first appeared — and today’s players are discovering it through Critical Role, Dimension 20, and a sea of streaming shows. But what happens when you introduce them to the classic game? Dan and Paul talk about why old-school play still shines in 2025: simple rules, fast turns, meaningful choices, and a unique sense of discovery. How do you pitch Classic D&D to a modern audience with no nostalgia — and maybe win them over for life?

Paul & Dan get to chat with NY Times bestselling author R.A. Salvatore -- and his about-to-drop newest Dungeons & Dragons novel, THE FINEST EDGE OF TWILIGHT. You better not call Catti-brie Do'Urden "Drizzt's daughter", because she's a deadly monk, warrior, and shadow-walker with an attitude and determined to make her own way in the world. Can she fight her way to become a Master of Dragons at the Monastery of the Yellow Rose? And can she contend with the horrific Dahlia Sin'felle as she incubates her vampiric powers to become invincible? Plus, we'll get Salvatore's thoughts on the current state of D&D, dark elves, and a whole lot more.

Dan and Paul catch up with Luke Gygax -- and he's got big news on the horizon! We'll get updates on Gary Con in 2026 (will Wizards make a connection?), new Greyhawk publications, and the big Tomb of Gyzaengaxx adventure. Plus developments in Castle Zagyg and the World of Okkorim. And what about a giant weekend-long tournament through all the editions of D&D? Count us in!

Dan & Paul chat about the role of Pirates, freebooters, privateers, sailing ships, and naval action that have been in D&D since the earliest days. What's the best way to use pirates as a foil for your PCs? Can PCs sail their own privateer vessel as a good mid-level command opportunity? What's the best way to design a seedy pirate town for your campaign? Arrgh, it's just in time for Talk Like a Pirate Day 2025!

Paul and Dan explore the rise of LitRPG, the literary genre where role-playing mechanics drive the narrative. Where did the term come from, and what early works fit the mold before it even had a name? We’ll follow the ouroboros from the pulp fantasy that inspired D&D to novels that track stats, levels, and hit points — and ask how game mechanics have become part of our shared cultural language.

Wandering DMs broadcasts live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern. Join the live chat and bring your questions!

Paul and Dan discuss the many faces of undead in Dungeons & Dragons. From shambling zombies to cunning liches, they embody both mindless horror and villainous intellect. How do different editions treat them? What’s the deal with cleric turning, level drain, and the evolving rules around undeath?

We'll dig into the design and the drama of undead in D&D, and share how we like to use them in our own games. Join us live for thoughtful discussion and your questions in chat — because when it comes to undead, nothing stays buried for long!

Paul and Dan untangle the strange history of multi-classing in D&D. Was the elf in OD&D really allowed to swap between fighter and wizard whenever they liked? Why did B/X boil it all down to "race as class"? How did AD&D try to square the circle with dual-class humans and hard racial limits? We’ll trace how each edition wrestled with the problem, and compare it to the house rules we use today in our own games.

Paul & Dan take a close look at Blackmoor, Dave Arneson's rules supplement for D&D 50 years on. What was exciting and new in this set of optional rules? What stood the test of time, and what was forgotten along the way?

Dan & Paul wrestle with the issue of what to do when a player at your table already knows the adventure you're about to play. Maybe it's a product they've read, played through, or watched on a stream in the past? Is it accidental, or possibly a devious plan to cheat the game? We've confronted this many times and we'll share all of our tricks and traps to keep things lively (and deadly)!

Paul and Dan hash out the best ways to roll for Perception and Stealth in D&D. Should you always ask everyone at the table to make a check on their own? Is it better to have one player roll with cooperation bonuses? Did you know that Original D&D didn't have any skills like these at all -- so how was it handled then? We'll find you the best path forward.

Dan and Paul debrief the highs and lows of their latest birthday D&D actual play. Last weekend, Paul celebrated his birthday the best way he knows how: by dragging his friends into the depths of Skull Mountain! Dan, Max, and Lauren joined him for a live-streamed old-school dungeon crawl in over 12 hours of play, with special guests Mike and Tonya dropping in for the chaos. Now, the Wandering DMs are back to unpack the entire experience — what worked, what didn’t, and what surprised them along the way. From player dynamics to dungeon design, streaming challenges to memorable moments, tune in as we reflect on this marathon delve into classic adventure!

Paul and Dan pull back the veil on GM screens — what they're good for, when they're essential, and when to ditch them entirely. They compare the old-school cardboard panels, DIY screens with swappable inserts, GMing from behind a laptop, and more.

What belongs on the GM side? What’s worth showing to players? From reference tables and monster art to clipped-on initiative trackers and Paranoia’s player-facing gadgets, there’s more than one way to use that cardboard shield.

And what about the game itself - can you even run Paranoia without a screen? Do GM-less games use screens at all? Tune in live to join the discussion and share your own screen stories.

Paul & Dan wade deep into the swamp to uncover the shifting role of lizardfolk across Dungeons & Dragons editions. From their earliest days as faceless wilderness threats to complex cultures with alien worldviews, how has D&D's portrayal of these scaled humanoids evolved?

We’ll dive into classic modules like Danger at Dunwater and Tomb of the Lizard King, trace their pulp fantasy roots, and even compare how video games like Pool of Radiance handled their moral ambiguity. Were they ever really "monsters", or were we just too quick to draw our swords?

Join us as we explore what makes lizardfolk one of D&D's most misunderstood creatures - and maybe one of its most revealing.

Dan and Paul coach you in how to disrupt an enemy wizard's spells in D&D. And it varies a lot by what edition you play! From classic editions where casting in combat is strictly prohibited, to those where initiative tells the tale, to later editions where skills and counter-skills try to one-up each other. For house-ruling DMs, what's the fairest mechanic to use?

Paul and Dan tackle the age-old question of initiative in tabletop RPGs. From the simplicity of group initiative to the complexity of individual modifiers and segment counting, initiative rules can shape the entire feel of combat.

We'll explore how different editions and indie games handle turn order, what those choices say about their design philosophies, and how your own table might benefit from mixing it up. Is rolling every round more dynamic or just more bookkeeping? Should initiative reflect a character's reflexes, or just be a way to get the action moving?

Along the way, we'll share our own stories of initiative chaos, house rules that worked (or didn't), and some truly oddball systems that tried to rethink the whole idea.

Dan and Paul do a deep dive on the "Magic Jar" spell that's been in every edition of D&D to date. First edition said, "Magic jar is a very unusual spell" and gave it a completely unique school of magic. Put your soul in an object and you can possess any other creature's body you desire. Total safety from destruction, right? But detail vary wildly by edition: Should it be eternal duration, or more limited? Infinite range, or something less? And how will it reshape the tone of your whole campaign?

Read Dan's blog on Spells Through the Ages: Magic Jar

Paul and Dan get to chat with father of the OSR Matt Finch, about the 20th anniversary of OSRIC, his ground-breaking retroclone of 1st Edition Advanced D&D. Plus: the new 3.0 version of OSRIC, currently crowdfunding on Backerkit. What's prompted a new version? What's new and good for new players? How can GMs write official adventures for OSRIC? Plus a whole lot more!

Back Matt's OSRIC 3.0 on Backerkit

Dan and Paul return from the Rising Phoenix Game Con with tales from the front lines of fast-paced dungeon creation! In this episode, they break down their latest Dungeon Design Dash, crafted live in front of a seminar audience and then playtested at the convention just two days later. What worked? What didn’t? And what did the players do that nobody expected?

Whether you’re a dungeon designer looking to sharpen your tools or just love a behind-the-scenes look at live convention play, you won’t want to miss this one!

Want to join us next year? Check out the convention here!

Dan & Paul get to chat with R. Alex Murray, one of the cast members of Twenty-Sided Tavern, a live theatrical D&D stage production! TST has had a smash year off-Broadway in New York City, and now they're about to take the show across the country. What's the difference between playing D&D at home with friends, versus entertaining hundreds of audience members every night? What elements of D&D cut across those lines and what needs to be cut or changed?

Check out D&D Twenty-Sided Tavern on your favorite social media

https://thetwentysidedtavern.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@twentysidedtavern
https://www.tiktok.com/@twentysidedtavern
https://www.instagram.com/twentysidedtavern/

Paul & Dan chat with the legendary Bill Webb, founder of Necromancer Games and Frog God Games. Bill's back with a new, even-more-old-school TTRPG ruleset -- the Necromancer's Game, naturally! We find out how "wild man" Bill Webb runs his own regular home games, and what "First Edition Feel" means in 2025. Plus more surprises!

Join the Kickstarter for Bill's Necromancer's Game here

Should the DM keep their D&D adventure map hidden, or reveal it to the players at the outset? Dan & Paul discuss the sometimes-surprising benefits of giving your players more information instead of less. From partial dungeon maps as treasure, to visualizing the layout of the wilderness, to games where the map's the thing, we'll share everything we know.

After a packed weekend at their annual house convention, Dan and Paul return with fresh insights into the mechanics behind the games they played. From the moves-based mechanics of Powered by the Apocalypse titles, to Quest's streamlined abilities, D&D's shifting focus across editions (from old-school attribute checks to modern skill lists), and the freeform chaos of Fiasco, they examine how different systems shape the player experience.

Do tightly defined moves encourage bold choices—or just narrow options? When does a skill list feel empowering, and when does it just get in the way? And what happens when you throw out mechanics entirely, like in Fiasco? Join the Wandering DMs for a lively discussion on how systems guide creativity at the table—or sometimes, hold it back.

Dan & Paul chat about Elementals in D&D. Where do they come from, and how often do they get used? Are they really a good option for high-level wizards to conjure? And how have they evolved into the newest Monster Manual for D&D 5E 2024?

Read Dan's blog on Conjure Elemental Through the Ages
And more on the problem of the Air Elemental Whirlwind

Hasbro/WOTC announced this week that their long-anticipated virtual tabletop tool (VTT), Sigil, is suddenly end-of-life. How did they come to spend so many resources into a project like this, only to cancel it? Does it disrupt their overall strategy for the brand-new 2024 edition of Dungeons & Dragons? What's the landscape of VTT's for D&D look like today. And… is anyone really surprised?

Dan and Paul are joined by Tom McGrenery, game designer and co-host of the podcast Fear of a Black Dragon, to discuss the surprising common ground between OSR and story games. Do they have more in common with each other than either has with modern traditional RPGs? Find out what they discover in this thought-provoking episode of Wandering DMs!

Can an AI truly run a game of Dungeons & Dragons? In this episode, Paul & Dan review Paul’s recent live-streamed experiment, Martha the AI DM, where he played a session of Basic B/X D&D with an AI as his Dungeon Master. How well did Martha craft adventures, roleplay NPCs, and adapt to unexpected player choices? Did she bring the magic of tabletop storytelling — or did she fall into mechanical pitfalls? Join us as we break down the session, discuss the strengths and limitations of AI-driven RPGs, and explore what this means for the future of roleplaying games.

Here's some links to the articles mentioned in this show:

Creating dungeon maps using D2 (Declarative Diagraming)
Academic paper on running The Sunless Citadel

As a DM, should you offer different subject matter to your players when the real world looks grim?

Paul & Dan dive into the art of running a game with absolutely no materials on hand. Whether it’s an impromptu one-shot, a lost character sheet crisis, or a full-on “I forgot my dice bag at home” scenario, we’ll explore how to keep the adventure rolling with just your wits and a table full of eager players.

Paul & Dan review the first add-on to Original D&D in 1975: Supplement I, Greyhawk! Presenting content and rules changes stemming from Gygax's home campaign, we get new classes (the Thief and Paladin), spells, monsters, and magic items. But how much of it was a boon to D&D in general, and how many were mistakes?

Dan & Paul follow up on our chat about mysteries in D&D: Turning things around, how is the average Thieves' Guild member meant to ply their trade in the world? Given all the magic detection, location, ESP, and other powers, what steps will the average assassin-for-hire take to complete their mission and not get caught?

In this episode of Wandering DMs, Dan and Paul explore the art of running mysteries in Dungeons & Dragons and other TTRPGs. From crafting compelling clues and red herrings to balancing player agency with narrative tension, they share tips and tricks to keep your players engaged and invested in unraveling the plot. Whether you’re running a murder investigation, solving ancient riddles, or diving into a missing persons case, this episode has everything you need to craft a memorable mystery adventure.

Dan & Paul chat about the role of critical failure and fumble systems in TTRPG systems. Do they add appropriate surprise, unpredictability, realism, and danger to the adventure? Are they more punishing to the players or their opponents? Or are they just more trouble than they're worth?

Paul & Dan are back for Season 7, this time diving into the age-old debate: splitting the party. When is it a clever strategy? When is it a recipe for disaster? And what can DMs do to keep the game running smoothly when the group goes their separate ways?

Paul & Dan look back on the year 2024 for the Wandering DMs. It's been a momentous year: The 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, a new version of the D&D game, the Chinese Year of the Dragon, in-depth looks at Original vs. Basic D&D, and special guests like Michael Moorcock, Luke Gygax, Jon Peterson, an Matt Finch. Share your high and low points, and we'll share ours!

A year-in-review is any sort of publication which is traditionally released on an annual basis to cover the events of the past year from the perspective of the contributors to the publication. Years-in-review are often intended to highlight the highs and lows of the events which occurred throughout the year, and often include select works published during the year which are considered by the editors of the year-in-review to be the most memorable works of the year. Years-in-review are often used to list "Top Ten" lists voted upon by hired critics and reviewers of other media. So let's commemorate the last time we'll do this added bit of text!

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Year-in-review", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul discuss ways to create satisfying recurring villains in your D&D campaign. How do you balance the desire for epic, climactic showdowns with the unpredictable, open-ended nature of a TTRPG campaign? Should your villain be the untouchable mastermind pulling strings from the shadows, or someone your players can engage with directly throughout the story? Join us as we share tips, pitfalls, and our favorite examples of how to keep your players on the edge of their seats with antagonists they’ll love to hate.

Dan & Paul revisit the Original vs. Basic Dungeon & Dragons collision. This time: As similar as the early editions are, a fundamental place where they differ is the combat turn sequence. Moldvay's B/X rules have a unique turn sequence not seen in other versions of D&D. And for Original D&D (1974), can you even find the turn sequence, anyway? Plus other acts of critical violence.

The original Dungeons & Dragons (commonly abbreviated D&D) boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set was the first published role-playing game, a fantasy game system modeled on medieval Europe. This set introduced elements which would become standard in later editions, including abilities (such as strength, intelligence, and dexterity); character classes (fighting-man, magic-user, cleric) and character levels; races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling); armor class; monsters and treasure; underground dungeons consisting of halls, rooms, and doors protected by tricks and traps; and magic items, such as intelligent swords.

After the release of the AD&D game, the Basic Set saw a major revision in 1981 by editor Tom Moldvay. The game was not brought in line with AD&D but instead further away from that ruleset, and thus the basic D&D game became a separate and distinct product line from AD&D. The former was promoted as a continuation of the tone of original D&D, while AD&D was an advancement of the mechanics. The revised version of the set included a larger, sixty-four page rule book with a red border and a color cover by Erol Otus, the module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, six polyhedral dice, and a marking crayon. The book came drilled with holes so that it could be used in a three-ringed binder, and the full set of off-white polyhedral dice came in a heat-sealed bag with a small wax crayon for coloring the numbers on the dice.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Dungeons & Dragons (1974)" and "Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul return to complete the dungeon design dash for the "Infested Perch of the Mammoth Egg". Unfortunately one hour was just not enough this time around, so they're coming back to complete the adventure, and reveal some of the extra editing passes that go into publishing these adventures. Once complete, this adventure will be posted for sale on DriveThruRPG, and a free copy sent to every active patron. Now is a great time to become a patron - get all the benefits PLUS a free adventure!

Dan and Paul are back at it again, creating an entire D&D adventure in just one hour! Armed with only their D&D source books, Matt Finch's excellent Tome of Adventure Design, and the input from live viewers, they'll create a fully stocked and playable D&D dungeon adventure right in front of your eyes. Once it's complete, adventure WDM05 will be posted on DriveThruRPG and free copies distributed to all our faithful patrons!

Dan and Paul reflect on the many changing faces of ghouls in D&D and fantasy literature. How did they become one of the most feared monster types? What flavor is best: the one from Lovecraft, Howard, Leiber, Gygax, or Romero? Should they be unthinking undead, or a sentient organized race? What's the best way to skin (or unskin) them in your D&D game?

In Arabic folklore, the ghul is said to dwell in cemeteries and other uninhabited places. A male ghoul is referred to as ghul while the female is called ghulah. A source identified the Arabic ghoul as a female creature who is sometimes called Mother Ghoul (ʾUmm Ghulah) or a relational term such as Aunt Ghoul. She is portrayed in many tales luring hapless characters, who are usually men, into her home where she can eat them.

Some state[who?] that a ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead, then taking the form of the person most recently eaten. One of the narratives identified a ghoul named Ghul-e Biyaban, a particularly monstrous character believed to be inhabiting the wilderness of Afghanistan and Iran.

In "Pickman's Model", a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, ghouls are members of a subterranean race. Their diet of dead human flesh mutated them into bestial humanoids able to carry on intelligent conversations with the living. The story has ghouls set underground with ghoul tunnels that connect ancient human ruins with deep underworlds. Lovecraft hints that the ghouls emerge in subway tunnels to feed on train wreck victims.

Lovecraft's vision of the ghoul, shared by associated authors Clark Ashton-Smith and Robert E. Howard, has heavily influenced the collective idea of the ghoul in American culture. Ghouls as described by Lovecraft are dog-faced and hideous creatures but not necessarily malicious. Though their primary (perhaps only) food source is human flesh, they do not seek out or hunt living people. They are able to travel back and forth through the wall of sleep. This is demonstrated in Lovecraft's "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" in which Randolph Carter encounters Pickman in the dream world after his complete transition into a mature ghoul.

Read Dan's blog on Ghouls Through the Ages of D&D
And then read up on the Literature of Ghouls

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ghoul", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

This week on Wandering DMs, Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins dive into one of the most common challenges DMs face: scaling D&D adventures when the number of players doesn’t match what the adventure was designed for. Whether you're running a session for fewer players than expected or you suddenly have a larger group to accommodate, adjusting on the fly can be tricky. Paul and Dan will break down strategies for tweaking encounters, managing balance, and ensuring every player stays engaged, even when the group size shifts unexpectedly.

Without time to prepare in advance, making adjustments on the fly requires quick thinking and flexibility. How do you rebalance combat encounters without losing the tension or excitement of the adventure? What do you do when a critical puzzle or social encounter suddenly becomes too easy or too hard because of the group size? Paul and Dan will explore these challenges and offer real-world examples from their years of experience running games, helping DMs make smart adjustments in the heat of the moment.

They’ll also discuss how to write adventures that are easier to adjust to variable group sizes and what kind of guidance adventure authors can include to help DMs handle these situations. Whether you're a seasoned Dungeon Master or new to running games, join the conversation and get tips you can apply right away! As always, they’ll be live and taking your questions and comments in real time. Don’t miss it — Sunday at 1 PM Eastern on YouTube and Twitch!

Dan and Paul chat with Matt Finch, the ENNIE-award winning designer of the Swords & Wizardry game, and who also created OSRIC, and the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming. Plus he made our favorite Tome of Adventure Design, as seen in use in the Wandering DMs Dungeon Design Dashes. Next up on Kickstarter is Matt's Tome of Wordbuilding Design. Is this just in time for all our fantasy worldbuilding needs?

The Tome of World Building is written by ENNIE-award winning author Matt Finch, author of the critically-acclaimed Tome of Adventure Design. Using the Tome of World Building, you can create fantasy worlds quickly and fill them out with a wealth of detail from the random-generation tables in this book.

This Kickstarter offers two high quality hardcover books to create a trilogy of creative power with the Tome of Adventure Design. The first is the Tome of World Building, allowing you to create maps, cultures, countries, wilderness regions, and all the history and backstabbing politics of a fantasy world. The second is the Nomicon, with tables to invent fantasy names for everything you'll generate using the Tome of World Building.

Back Matt Finch's Tome of Worldbuilding on Kickstarter here

Paul and Dan chat with Luke Gygax on the 50th anniversary of D&D and his new old-school mega-adventure, Wrath of the Sea Lich! Wrath of the Sea Lich is a reimagining of his hit series, "Oculus of Senrahbah" originally created for 5e. Luke and Matt enlisted the help of notable designer Sersa Victory to reengineer the scenario for the critically acclaimed Shadowdark system. Together, they have remastered the entire series, the encounters are rebalanced, and the entire work is reformatted to fit the Old School aesthetic of Shadowdark.

n "Wrath of the Sea Lich", the party sets out to recover the Eye of Chentoufi, an ancient artifact sought by a local treasure hunter. Unknown to all, the artifact is sought by the ancient Ydrissid lich, Ireshkigal, who has been dormant for thousands of years in her watery fortress. As the characters venture across the city, they eventually find their way to a submerged ruins and encounter remnants of a forgotten age. As they begin to understand the implications of Ireshkigal’s return, the sense of urgency to find the artifact mounts. The lich’s revival could bring serious consequences to the world, and the party must decide whether to use the power of the Oculus or find a way to destroy it.

Shadowdark RPG is a modern fantasy role-playing game that seamlessly blends classic tabletop RPG elements with innovative mechanics, creating a new experience for players who have grown up with modern role-playing games. Designed to evoke the nostalgia of early dungeon crawlers while introducing streamlined gameplay, Shadowdark encourages exploration, tactical combat, and rich storytelling. Its flexible system accommodates various play styles, making it accessible for both newcomers and experienced adventurers. The game emphasizes fast-paced action, player agency, and a dark atmosphere that challenges players throughout each game session. It won the 2024 Three Castles Award for best game design, as well as four gold ENNIEs: Product of the Year, Best Game, Best Rules, and Best Layout & Design.

Back Luke Gygax's Wrath of the Sea Lich on Kickstarter here
Get the Shadowdark RPG system here

Dan and Paul, the Wandering DMs, discuss the right number of players for D&D and other TTRPGs. How many is too many? How few is too few? What factors play into choosing the right range of party size for your adventure design?

Team size and team composition affect team processes and team outcomes. The optimal size (and composition) of teams is debated and will vary depending on the task at hand. At least one study of problem-solving in groups showed an optimal size of groups at four members. Other works estimate the optimal size between 5–12 members or a number of members that can consume two pizzas.

Writers such as Belbin (1981, 1993), Woodcock (1989), Margerison and McCann (1990), Davis et al. (1992), Parker (1990), and Spencer and Pruss (1992) focused on team roles and how these affected team performance. These studies suggested that team performance was a function of the number and type of roles team members played. The number of roles for optimal performance varied from 15 (Davis et al., 1992) to four (Parker, 1990). This variation has been attributed to how roles were defined.

Regarding composition, all teams will have an element of homogeneity and heterogeneity. The more homogeneous the group, the more cohesive it will be. The more heterogeneous the group, the greater the differences in perspective and increased potential for creativity, but also the greater potential for conflict.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Team", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul and Dan do a deep dive on the state of travel encounters in classic D&D and other games. Should they be based on random wandering tables, or fine-tuned by the DM for the given adventure session? Is the goal to simulate a living world, or to challenge the PCs at the table? Should the DM know in advance what will happen, or share in the surprise?

Travel in the Middle Ages offered hardships and challenges, though it was important to the economy and to society. The wholesale sector depended (for example) on merchants dealing with/through caravans or sea-voyagers, end-user retailing often demanded the services of many itinerant peddlers wandering from village to hamlet, gyrovagues (wandering monks) and wandering friars brought theology and pastoral support to neglected areas, traveling minstrels toured, and armies ranged far and wide in various crusades and in sundry other wars. Pilgrimages were common in both the European and Islamic world and involved streams of travelers both locally and internationally.

In the late 16th century, it became fashionable for young European aristocrats and wealthy upper-class men to travel to significant European cities as part of their education in the arts and literature. This was known as the Grand Tour, and included cities such as London, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome. However, the French Revolution brought with it the end of the Grand Tour.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Travel", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul are joined by special guest Adam "Rutskarn" DeCamp, author of the blog Chocolate Hammer. Rutskarn will share his experience running a highly political campaign using the original TSR Western RPG Boot Hill, first published in 1975. How can a game with zero rules for social interactions and a highly deadly combat system actually encourage play focused on politics, deception, and intrigue?

Boot Hill is a western-themed role-playing game designed by Brian Blume, Gary Gygax, and Don Kaye (although Kaye unexpectedly died before the game was published), and first published in 1975. Boot Hill was TSR's third role-playing game, appearing not long after Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and Empire of the Petal Throne. Boot Hill focused on gunfighting rather than role-playing. The first edition and second editions were specifically marketed as a miniatures combat game, but even in the third edition, most of the rules concerned combat resolution, with relatively little information about settings and few rules for social interaction.

Combat could be short and deadly, with death often coming from the first gunshot. This lethality did not change over time since, unlike D&D characters, Boot Hill characters did not advance in levels to develop better defenses or advantages over non-player characters; they remained just as likely to die in their hundredth combat as they had been in their first. As a result, most characters had a very short life span, and players generally had little chance to identify with their player character over the long term, as they could with a player character in D&D.

Read Rutskarn's "Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice" on his Blog Chocoloate Hammer
Check Out Rutskarn's Patreon
Follow Rutskarn on Twitter

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Boot Hill (role-playing game)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul wrap up the most recent Wizards D&D Beyond fumble -- a decision to retract all the items, magic, and spells from the 2014 version of D&D 5th Edition, and replace all content globally with the 2024 revised D&D content (whether players wanted it or not!). After public outcry, WOTC flip-flopped on their decision, but was it a preventable mistake? How hard is it for a game company to make old & new customers both equally happy?

There are several incentives for a company to implement backward compatibility. Backward compatibility can be used to preserve older software that would have otherwise been lost when a manufacturer decides to stop supporting older hardware. Classic video games are a common example used when discussing the value of supporting older software. The cultural impact of video games is a large part of their continued success, and some believe ignoring backward compatibility would cause these titles to disappear. Backward compatibility also acts as a selling point for new hardware, as an existing player base can more affordably upgrade to subsequent generations of a console. This also helps to make up for lack of content at the launch of new systems, as users can pull from the previous console's library of games while developers transition to the new hardware. Moreover, studies in the mid-1990s found that even consumers who never play older games after purchasing a new system consider backward compatibility a highly desirable feature, valuing the mere ability to continue to play an existing collection of games even if they choose never to do so. Backward compatibility with the original PlayStation (PS) software discs and peripherals is considered to have been a key selling point for the PlayStation 2 (PS2) during its early months on the market.

The monetary costs of supporting old software is considered a large drawback to the usage of backward compatibility. The associated costs of backward compatibility are a larger bill of materials if hardware is required to support the legacy systems; increased complexity of the product that may lead to longer time to market, technological hindrances, and slowing innovation; and increased expectations from users in terms of compatibility. Because of this, several console manufacturers phased out backward compatibility toward the end of the console generation in order to reduce cost and briefly reinvigorate sales before the arrival of newer hardware.

Backward compatibility introduces the risk that developers will favor developing games that are compatible with both the old and new systems, since this gives them a larger base of potential buyers, resulting in a dearth of software which uses the advanced features of the new system.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Backward compatibility", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul and Dan discuss creation of pre-generated characters for one-shot roleplaying games. From the fastest and easiest ways to quickly generate stats, to crafting unique back-stories that fit (or fight) with the plot. How does it differ between styles of game, and when, if ever, to let the players create their own characters for one-off and convention style games.

In both tabletop role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing video games such as Final Fantasy, a player typically creates or takes on the identity of a character that may have nothing in common with the player. The character is often of a certain (usually fictional) race and class (such as zombie, berserker, rifleman, elf, or cleric), each with strengths and weaknesses. The attributes of the characters (such as magic and fighting ability) are given as numerical values which can be increased as the gamer progresses and gains rank and experience points through accomplishing goals or fighting enemies.

Character creation (also character generation / character design) is the process of defining a player character in a role-playing game. The result of character creation is a direct characterization that is recorded on a character sheet. This may include a representation of the character's physical, mental, psychological, and social attributes and skills in terms of the specific game's mechanics. It may also include informal descriptions of the character's physical appearance, personality, personal back-story ("background"), and possessions. Games with a fantasy setting may include traits such as race, class, or species. Character creation is the first step typically taken by the players (as opposed to the gamemaster) in preparation for a game.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Player Character" and "Character Creation", which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul scope out principles for statting out real people in D&D and other role-playing games. What do the standard ability scores really mean, anyway? How have they varied over editions of D&D across the years? And how can we compare and model real people in other games like Call of Cthulhu, Star Frontiers, and Fearful Ends?

Kinanthropometry is defined as the study of human size, shape, proportion, composition, maturation, and gross function, in order to understand growth, exercise, performance, and nutrition.

It is a scientific discipline that is concerned with the measurement of individuals in a variety of morphological perspectives, its application to movement and those factors which influence movement, including: components of body build, body measurements, proportions, composition, shape and maturation; motor abilities and cardiorespiratory capacities; physical activity including recreational activity as well as highly specialized sports performance. The predominant focus is upon obtaining detailed measurements upon the body composition of a given person.

Kinanthropometry is the interface between human anatomy and movement. It is the application of a series of measurements made on the body and from these we can use the data that we gather directly or perform calculations using the data to produce various indices and body composition predictions and to measure and describe physique.

Read Dan's article on D&D Intelligence and IQ

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kinanthropometry", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul give a postmortem on running their fourth Dungeon Design Dash product, Creeping Doom of the Pumpkin King, in a co-DM fashion. It's their first DDD wilderness adventure, and surprises abound! What happens when the party pursues mostly social encounters with a dedicated Adversary DM? Can two DMs swap out musical-chairs NPCs without going crazy? Does D&D always revert back to its horror roots?

A playtest is the process by which a game designer tests a new game for bugs and design flaws before releasing it to market. Playtests can be run "open", "closed", "beta", or otherwise, and are very common with board games, collectible card games, puzzle hunts, role-playing games, and video games, for which they have become an established part of the quality control process. An individual involved in testing a game is referred to as a playtester.

An open playtest could be considered open to anyone who wishes to join, or it may refer to game designers recruiting testers from outside the design group. Prospective testers usually must complete a survey or provide their contact information in order to be considered for participation. A closed playtest is an internal testing process not available to the public. Beta testing normally refers to the final stages of testing just before going to market with a product, and is often run semi-open with a limited form of the game in order to find any last-minute problems. With all forms of playtesting it is not unusual for participants to be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, in order to protect the game designer's copyrights.

Watch the livestream creation of Creeping Doom of the Pumpkin King here

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Playtest", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

In Part 1 Dan and Paul barely scratched the surface on the differences between Original D&D (1974) and Basic D&D (1981)! Due to popular demand they're back for more. Hopefully this time they'll escape the character creation section and get into combat, monsters, and spells, but who knows? There's the whole sweep attack issue to hammer out first.

The original Dungeons & Dragons (commonly abbreviated D&D) boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set was the first published role-playing game, a fantasy game system modeled on medieval Europe. This set introduced elements which would become standard in later editions, including abilities (such as strength, intelligence, and dexterity); character classes (fighting-man, magic-user, cleric) and character levels; races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling); armor class; monsters and treasure; underground dungeons consisting of halls, rooms, and doors protected by tricks and traps; and magic items, such as intelligent swords.

After the release of the AD&D game, the Basic Set saw a major revision in 1981 by editor Tom Moldvay. The game was not brought in line with AD&D but instead further away from that ruleset, and thus the basic D&D game became a separate and distinct product line from AD&D. The former was promoted as a continuation of the tone of original D&D, while AD&D was an advancement of the mechanics. The revised version of the set included a larger, sixty-four page rule book with a red border and a color cover by Erol Otus, the module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, six polyhedral dice, and a marking crayon. The book came drilled with holes so that it could be used in a three-ringed binder, and the full set of off-white polyhedral dice came in a heat-sealed bag with a small wax crayon for coloring the numbers on the dice.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Dungeons & Dragons (1974)" and "Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Let's chat about two of our favorite editions of early D&D -- Original D&D (1974) and Basic D&D (1981)! Dan & Paul run most of D&D in similar ways, but their instincts sometimes differ in which of these traditions they're coming from. What changes were made by the brilliant Tom Moldvay in Basic D&D? Were they for the better, or worse? What should new players start with today for that classic D&D experience?

The original Dungeons & Dragons (commonly abbreviated D&D) boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set was the first published role-playing game, a fantasy game system modeled on medieval Europe. This set introduced elements which would become standard in later editions, including abilities (such as strength, intelligence, and dexterity); character classes (fighting-man, magic-user, cleric) and character levels; races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling); armor class; monsters and treasure; underground dungeons consisting of halls, rooms, and doors protected by tricks and traps; and magic items, such as intelligent swords.

After the release of the AD&D game, the Basic Set saw a major revision in 1981 by editor Tom Moldvay. The game was not brought in line with AD&D but instead further away from that ruleset, and thus the basic D&D game became a separate and distinct product line from AD&D. The former was promoted as a continuation of the tone of original D&D, while AD&D was an advancement of the mechanics. The revised version of the set included a larger, sixty-four page rule book with a red border and a color cover by Erol Otus, the module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, six polyhedral dice, and a marking crayon. The book came drilled with holes so that it could be used in a three-ringed binder, and the full set of off-white polyhedral dice came in a heat-sealed bag with a small wax crayon for coloring the numbers on the dice.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Dungeons & Dragons (1974)" and "Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

In this last-minute, condensed episdoe of Wandering DMs, Dan and Paul discuss using real world time elements in games. From timers in D&D adventures to board games that include a ticking clock, they'll cover everything in under 45 minutes. They even manage to fit in an actual play of 5 Minute Dungeon!

One of our all-time favorite guests, Jon Peterson, D&D historian extraordinaire, returns to talk all things about the 50th anniversary of D&D. From his official "Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977", participation in Gen Con 50th anniversary celebrations, inclusion in the MIT Press "Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons" book, and the hotly-anticipated re-release of his seminal "Playing at the World", he's been super busy this year! Dan & Paul will catch up with him and find out what the highlights and new discoveries have been.

The original Dungeons & Dragons (commonly abbreviated D&D) boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.

The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set was the first published role-playing game, a fantasy game system modeled on medieval Europe. This set introduced elements which would become standard in later editions, including abilities (such as strength, intelligence, and dexterity); character classes (fighting-man, magic-user, cleric) and character levels; races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling); armor class; monsters and treasure; underground dungeons consisting of halls, rooms, and doors protected by tricks and traps; and magic items, such as intelligent swords. The set also presents rules for travelling through the wilderness by land and sea, hiring specialists as well as men-at-arms, constructing fortifications and establishing baronies. The set defines movement rates and areas are using inches, like that of the miniatures rules from which the system descended.

Check out The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977
Find the Second Edition of Playing at the World Here

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dungeons & Dragons (1974)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul discuss the presence of drugs and alcohol in D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games. They'll touch on how state alterning substandces are represented in the fiction, rules for handling characters under the influence, and even what happens when the players themselves partake!

According to addiction researcher Martin A. Plant, some people go through a period of self-redefinition before initiating recreational drug use. They tend to view using drugs as part of a general lifestyle that involves belonging to a subculture that they associate with heightened status and the challenging of social norms. Plant states: "From the user's point of view there are many positive reasons to become part of the milieu of drug taking. The reasons for drug use appear to have as much to do with needs for friendship, pleasure and status as they do with unhappiness or poverty. Becoming a drug taker, to many people, is a positive affirmation rather than a negative experience".

The prevalence of recreational drugs in human societies is widely reflected in fiction, entertainment, and the arts, subject to prevailing laws and social conventions. In video games, for example, drugs are portrayed in a variety of ways: including power-ups (cocaine gum replenishes stamina in Red Dead Redemption 2), obstacles to be avoided (such as the Fuzzies in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island that distort the player's view when accidentally consumed), items to be bought and sold for in-game currency (coke dealing is a big part of Scarface: The World Is Yours). In the Fallout video game franchise, drugs ("chems" in the game) can fill the role of any above mentioned. Drug trafficking, gang rivalries, and their related criminal underworld also play a big part in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Recreational drug use", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul discuss experiences in TRPGs when players don't know the rules. Is it fundamentally fair or unfair? Does it add to the immersion of the roleplay? What added flexibility dos it give to the GM? Is exploring the rules of a new world an essential part of roleplaying games, that we've lost along the way?

Games with concealed rules are games where the rules are intentionally concealed from new players, either because their discovery is part of the game itself, or because the game is a hoax and the rules do not exist. In fiction, the counterpart of the first category are games that supposedly do have a rule set, but that rule set is not disclosed.

For example: Paranoia is a tabletop role-playing game in which the rules are considered "classified". Only the Gamemaster has full knowledge of the rules, while other players must deduce them by trial and error as they proceed through the game. The game acknowledges that players may read the gamemaster section, but demonstrating knowledge of the rules is considered treasonous, and the gamemaster may also make arbitrary changes.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "List of games with concealed rules", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

The Wandering DMs tackle employment in D&D. Do adventurers need day jobs? Does starting a business or pursuing a craft undermine the motiviation to go out treasure hunting? What of systems that define prior careers as part of characgter creation? It's time for Dan and Paul to get to work!

Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any other entity, pays the other, the employee, in return for carrying out assigned work. Employees work in return for wages, which can be paid on the basis of an hourly rate, by piecework or an annual salary, depending on the type of work an employee does, the prevailing conditions of the sector and the bargaining power between the parties.

Researchers have also explored the relationship between employment and illicit activities. Using evidence from Africa, a research team found that a program for Liberian ex-fighters reduced work hours on illicit activities. The employment program also reduced interest in mercenary work in nearby wars. The study concludes that while the use of capital inputs or cash payments for peaceful work created a reduction in illicit activities, the impact of training alone is rather low.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Employment", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul discuss the role of skill systems in D&D and other tabletop RPGs. Not part of the initial Original D&D ruleset, they give PCs an opportunity to master individual skills in a fine-grained manner. Have they been beneficial to D&D, or a distraction? Do they work better in other games, like sci-fi or horror?

A skill represents the learned knowledge and abilities of a character. Skills are known by various names, including proficiencies, abilities, powers, talents and knacks.

During character creation, a player character's skills are generally chosen from a long list. A character may have a fixed number of starting skills, or they may be paid for using character points. In contrast to attributes, very few games fix a player's skills at the start of the game, instead allowing players to increase them by spending experience points or during "levelling up". Since some skills are likely to be more useful than others, different skills often have different costs.

Skills usually influence a character's chance to succeed by adding to the relevant attribute. In some games (such as GURPS), each skill has a specific base attribute to which it is always added; in others (such as Ars Magica), a skill can be added to different attributes depending on how the skill is being used. Some games (such as Feng Shui) add the base attribute to the skill at character creation time; after that, it is independent of the attribute and is used instead of the attribute rather than adding to it. Most games have a fixed penalty for attempting a task without a relevant skill; older editions of Shadowrun gave a complex network of penalties for using similar skills (such as attempting to pick an electronic lock by using the Computer skill instead of the Electronics skill). The text-based roleplaying game Avalon: The Legend Lives is noted for being the first text based multi user role-playing game to offer a developed profession and skills system.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Statistic (role-playing games)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

The Wandering DMs take on rats and other vermin in D&D. From swarm enemies to wizard's familiars, Dan and Paul will explore every way to delight and torment your players with everyday pests.

The term "vermin" is used to refer to a wide scope of organisms, including rodents (such as rats), cockroaches, termites, bed bugs, ferrets, stoats, sables. Disease-carrying rodents and insects are the usual case, but the term is also applied to larger animals—especially small predators—typically because they consume resources which humans consider theirs, such as livestock and crops.

Any species can develop into vermin if introduced into a region where there are favorable living conditions and few natural predators. In such cases, they are seen as an invasive species and humans often choose to fill the role of the predator to limit the danger to the environment.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Vermin", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

This Mother's Day, Paul and Dan discuss the role of mothers in D&D and mythology. From troll wives to Grendel's mother to the spawn of all monsters, Tiamat herself, moms make an impact in our lives!

Throughout history, mothers have been depicted in a variety of art works, including paintings, sculptures and written texts, that have helped define the cultural meaning of 'mother', as well as ideals and taboos of motherhood.

The institution of motherhood in western art is often depicted through "the myth of the all-loving, all-forgiving and all-sacrificing mother" and related ideals. Examples include works featuring the Virgin Mary, an archetypal mother and a key historical basis for depictions of mothers in western art from the European Renaissance onwards. Mothers depicted in dominant art works are also primarily white, heterosexual, middle class and young or attractive.

These ideals of motherhood have been challenged by artists with lived experience as mothers. An example in western contemporary art is Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document. Bypassing typical themes of tenderness or nostalgia, this work documents in extensive detail the challenges, complexities and day-to-day realities of the mother-child relationship. Other artists have addressed similar aspects of motherhood that fall outside dominant ideals, including maternal ambivalence, desire, and the pursuit of self-fulfillment.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mother", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul discuss how to play a character in an RPG with a dramatic secret. How can we include the rest of the players in the fun without giving away too much? When do we reveal the secret to create the most satisfying dramatic moment?

Humans attempt to consciously conceal aspects of themselves from others due to shame, or from fear of violence, rejection, harassment, loss of acceptance, or loss of employment. Humans may also attempt to conceal aspects of their own self which they are not capable of incorporating psychologically into their conscious being. Excessive secrecy is often cited as a source of much human conflict. One may have to lie in order to hold a secret, which might lead to psychological repercussions. The alternative, declining to answer when asked something, may suggest the answer and may therefore not always be suitable for keeping a secret.

Anagnorisis is a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery. Aristotle was the first writer to discuss the uses of anagnorisis, with peripeteia caused by it. He considered it the mark of a superior tragedy, as when Oedipus killed his father and married his mother in ignorance, and later learned the truth, or when Iphigeneia in Tauris realizes in time that the strangers she is to sacrifice are her brother and his friend, and refrains from sacrificing them. Aristotle considered these complex plots superior to simple plots without anagnorisis or peripeteia, such as when Medea resolves to kill her children, knowing they are her children, and does so.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Secrecy" and "Anagnorisis", which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul and Dan get to bring back OSR guru Matt Finch to talk about his new Swords & Wizardry: Expansions, Monsters, and More!, currently on Kickstarter. What new things has Matt cooked up? And what updates has he finally made to the revered Quick Primer for Old School Gaming?

Swords & Wizardry is the longest-standing retro-clone of Original D&D, first published in 2008, and now there's a whole set of expansions to make your game wilder, weirder, and more flexible!

The Book of Options gives you 11 new optional character classes, new spells, new magic items, and much more. Now you can play a wily demon-hunter, a bard, a troubadour, an illusionist, and many others. Gnomes and Stygians are now playable ancestries in Swords & Wizardry for the first time in a 16 years!

Fiends and Foes offers more than 300 monsters (and doesn't repeat the ones from the Complete Revised Rulebook). Encounter the bizarre plant-animal Ultharians on their plane-shifting flamingoes, the giant, foul-mouthed fey cats known as Bulgrimalkins, along with many old favorites from Monstrosities such as the Artificers of Yothri. All are updated with morale numbers and revisions to the Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised rules.

Back the Swords & Wizardry Expanded Kickstarter

Dan and Paul are thrilled to chat live with the master of fantasy, Michael Moorcock. What are his current thoughts on the legacy of his writing Elric, the Eternal Champion, critiques of Tolkien, and so much more?

Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939) is an English–American writer, particularly of science fiction and fantasy, who has published a number of well-received literary novels as well as comic thrillers, graphic novels and non-fiction. He has worked as an editor and is also a successful musician. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, which were a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s.

As editor of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States, leading to the advent of cyberpunk. His publication of Bug Jack Barron (1969) by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament, some British MPs condemned the Arts Council of Great Britain for funding the magazine. He is also a recording musician; he has contributed to the music acts Hawkwind, Blue Öyster Cult, Robert Calvert and Spirits Burning, and to his own project, Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix.

In 2008, The Times named Moorcock in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Michael Moorcock", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul reflect on what we think are the biggest mistakes and errors in the first publication of original D&D in 1974. What are the biggest blemishes that troubled the game for decades afterward? What are some of our top house rules to correct the largest problems?

The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set was the first published role-playing game, a fantasy game system modeled on medieval Europe. This set introduced elements which would become standard in later editions, including abilities (such as strength, intelligence, and dexterity); character classes (fighting-man, magic-user, cleric) and character levels; races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling); armor class; monsters and treasure; underground dungeons consisting of halls, rooms, and doors protected by tricks and traps; and magic items, such as intelligent swords. The set also presents rules for travelling through the wilderness by land and sea, hiring specialists as well as men-at-arms, constructing fortifications and establishing baronies. The set defines movement rates and areas are using inches, like that of the miniatures rules from which the system descended.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dungeons & Dragons (1974)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul and Dan check in on their annual D&D mini-convention with friends in a house on the Massachusetts shore, now in its 15th year. What went well, what could go better, what lessons will feed into our future gaming?

Find WDM 01 - Asymmetric Monastery of the Deranged Berserkers on DriveThru RPG here!

This St. Patrick's Day, Paul and Dan discuss the rich history of Irish myths, legends, and stories in the D&D game. From Druids and Bards to the Banshees and Firbolg, what are some of the best ways to spice up your game with inspirations from the Emerald Isle?

Irish mythology is the body of myths indigenous to the island of Ireland. It was originally passed down orally in the prehistoric era. In the early medieval era, some myths were transcribed by Christian monks, who heavily altered and Christianised the myths. Irish mythology is the best-preserved branch of Celtic mythology.

The main supernatural beings in Irish mythology are the Túatha Dé Danann ("the folk of the goddess Danu"), also known by the earlier name Túath Dé ("god folk" or "tribe of the gods"). Early medieval Irish writers also called them the fir dé (god-men) and cenéla dé (god-kindreds), possibly to avoid calling them simply 'gods'. They are often depicted as kings, queens, bards, warriors, heroes, healers and craftsmen who have supernatural powers and are immortal. Prominent members include The Dagda ("the great god"); The Morrígan ("the great queen" or "phantom queen"); Lugh; Nuada; Aengus; Brigid; Manannán; Dian Cécht the healer; and Goibniu the smith. They are also said to control the fertility of the land; the tale De Gabáil in t-Sída says the first Gaels had to establish friendship with the Túath Dé before they could raise crops and herds.

They dwell in the Otherworld but interact with humans and the human world. Many are associated with specific places in the landscape, especially the sídhe: prominent ancient burial mounds such as Brú na Bóinne, which are entrances to Otherworld realms. The Túath Dé can hide themselves with a féth fíada ('magic mist'). They are said to have travelled from the north of the world, but then were forced to live underground in the sídhe after the coming of the Irish.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Irish mythology", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

How does one run a successful dungeons and dragons one shot game? Dan and Paul discuss how to condense the D&D experience to a single night of fun. They'll share techniques they've developed over the years behind the DM screen, discuss which scenarios fit the one-shot format best, and advise would-be DMs on the best road to one-shot success.

Dan & Paul discuss tips for embodying a character in body and voice when playing D&D at the table. When we compare ourselves to well-known D&D performers, what are simple simple tricks anyone can use, even if we aren't trained actors?

Acting involves a broad range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, and the ability to interpret drama. Acting also demands an ability to employ dialects, accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and stage combat. Many actors train at length in specialist programs or colleges to develop these skills. The vast majority of professional actors have undergone extensive training. Actors and actresses will often have many instructors and teachers for a full range of training involving singing, scene-work, audition techniques, and acting for camera.

One of the first known actors was an ancient Greek called Thespis of Icaria in Athens. Writing two centuries after the event, Aristotle in his Poetics (c. 335 BCE) suggests that Thespis stepped out of the dithyrambic chorus and addressed it as a separate character. Before Thespis, the chorus narrated (for example, "Dionysus did this, Dionysus said"). When Thespis stepped out from the chorus, he spoke as if he were the character (for example, "I am Dionysus, I did this"). To distinguish between these different modes of storytelling—enactment and narration—Aristotle uses the terms "mimesis" (via enactment) and "diegesis" (via narration). From Thespis' name derives the word "thespian".

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Acting", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

For Valentine's Day, Dan and Paul take a look at how romantic love is portrayed in Dungeons and Dragons. From NPCs with love-based plot lines to the infamous philter of love, we'll cover ever instance we can think of in D&D in which love plays a part.

Love is considered to be both positive and negative, with its virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—"the unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another"—and its vice representing a human moral flaw akin to vanity, selfishness, amour-propre, and egotism, potentially leading people into a type of mania, obsessiveness, or codependency. It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, oneself, or animals. In its various forms, love acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.

In the Middle Ages, extracts from nightshades were used as hallucinogens, and to make supposed love potions and flying ointments. Such plants may have included belladonna, angel's trumpets, jimsonweed, black henbane, European scopolia or autumn mandrake, which contain alkaloids (atropine and scopolamine, which are hallucinogenic in higher doses) characterized by a narrow therapeutic index. Some attempts to create love potions have led to overdose or death where the preparations were not standardized for the content of potent compounds.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Love" and "Love potion", which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan celebrate the Year of the Dragon in New Year's 2024! In this 50th anniversary year for original D&D, we'll look back to our best uses for dragons, new discoveries we've made, and how best to use unusual dragon types in your fantasy RPG.

The Dragon, also known as Loong, (simplified Chinese: 龙; traditional Chinese: 龍; pinyin: lóng; Jyutping: lung4; Cantonese Yale: lùhng) is the fifth of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Dragon is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 辰, pronounced chen.

It has been proposed by one academic researcher that the Earthly Branch character may have been associated with scorpions; it may have symbolized the star Antares. In the Buddhist calendar used in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, the Dragon is replaced by the nāga. In the Gurung zodiac, the Dragon is replaced by the eagle. In Old Turkic calendar it is replaced by the fish or crocodile. Early Persian translations of the medieval period change the dragon to a sea serpent although in current times it is generally referred to as whale.

There are typically marked spikes in the birth rates of countries that use the Chinese zodiac or places with substantial Overseas Chinese populations during the year of the Dragon, because such "Dragon babies" are considered to be lucky and have desirable characteristics that supposedly lead to better life outcomes.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dragon (zodiac)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul analyze the -- sometimes surprising! -- list of recommended equipment in Original D&D. Sure, you should have dice, paper, and pencils. But is the 3-ring notebook and drafting equipment really needed for the referee and each player? How about the multiple other games you need, Chainmail and Outdoor Survival? And what does say about using miniature figures?

The original Dungeons & Dragons set, subtitled Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures, was written by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and was published by TSR in 1974 as a digest-sized boxed set in a brown wood-grain box. The set included three digest-sized books: the 36-page "Volume 1: Men & Magic", the 40-page "Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure", and the 36-page "Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures". The set also included six reference sheets of tables and charts. Advertisements for the game first started appearing in Spring 1974.

This set features only a handful of the elements for which the game is known today: just three character classes (fighting-man, magic-user, and cleric); four races (human, dwarf, elf, hobbit); and only three alignments (lawful, neutral, and chaotic). The rules assume that players have owned and have played the miniatures wargame Chainmail and that they have used its measurement and combat systems. An optional combat system is included within the rules that later developed into the sole combat system of later versions of the game. In addition, the rules presumed ownership of Outdoor Survival, an Avalon Hill board game for outdoor exploration and adventure.

Check out Dan's upcoming miniatures-casting stream

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dungeons & Dragons (1974)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

The Wandering DMs dig into the concept of anachronisms in D&D settings. They will explore the historic roots of D&D campaign settings, and where modern objects, events, or ideas have leaked in. Does the existence of anachronism break immersion, or is the very nature of the fantasy genre open to all forms of content? Where and how do we draw the line?

An anachronism is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type of anachronism is an object misplaced in time, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a plant or animal, a custom, or anything else associated with a particular period that is placed outside its proper temporal domain.

Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. The fantasy genre predominantly features settings that emulate Earth, but with a sense of otherness. Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction by the plausibility of the narrative elements. A science fiction narrative is unlikely, though seemingly possible through logical scientific or technological extrapolation, where fantasy narratives do not need to be scientifically possible. Authors have to rely on the readers' suspension of disbelief, an acceptance of the unbelievable or impossible for the sake of enjoyment, in order to write effective fantasies.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Fantasy literature" and "Anachronism", which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan dig into the buried fossils of original D&D -- like the hidden encounter table for Ice Age adventures in the original boxed set. Where else can you get to use Cave Bears, Woolly Mammoths, and Saber-Toothed Tigers in your fantasy RPG? Pour a cup of hot cocoa and bundle up for this one.

In the Late Pleistocene, both marine and continental faunas were essentially modern but with many more large land mammals such as Mammoths, Mastodons, Diprotodons, Smilodons, tigers, lions, Aurochs, short-faced bears, giant sloths, species within Gigantopithecus and others. Isolated landmasses such as Australia, Madagascar, New Zealand and islands in the Pacific saw the evolution of large birds and even reptiles such as the Elephant bird, moa, Haast's eagle, Quinkana, Megalania and Meiolania.

The severe climatic changes during the Ice Age had major impacts on the fauna and flora. With each advance of the ice, large areas of the continents became depopulated, and plants and animals retreating southwards in front of the advancing glacier faced tremendous stress. The most severe stress resulted from drastic climatic changes, reduced living space, and curtailed food supply. A major extinction event of large mammals (megafauna), which included mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, glyptodons, the woolly rhinoceros, various giraffids, such as the Sivatherium; ground sloths, Irish elk, cave lions, cave bears, Gomphotheres, American lions, dire wolves, and short-faced bears, began late in the Pleistocene and continued into the Holocene. Neanderthals also became extinct during this period. At the end of the last ice age, cold-blooded animals, smaller mammals like wood mice, migratory birds, and swifter animals like whitetail deer had replaced the megafauna and migrated north. Late Pleistocene bighorn sheep were more slender and had longer legs than their descendants today. Scientists believe that the change in predator fauna after the late Pleistocene extinctions resulted in a change of body shape as the species adapted for increased power rather than speed.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pleistocene", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Cover image by Mauricio Antón from an article by Caitlin Sedwick (1 April 2008): "What Killed the Woolly Mammoth?". PLoS Biology 6 (4): e99. DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060099 2008 Public Library of Science. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Dan & Paul take a look back at published adventures for D&D in the 70's -- at the time, a revolutionary and controversial idea! And also take a look back at the pioneering contributions of Jennell Jaquays (creator of Dark Tower, Caverns of Thracia, and many more), and our other favorite early adventures.

The first published Dungeons & Dragons scenario was "Temple of the Frog", included in 1975's Blackmoor Dungeons & Dragons rules supplement. This scenario was later developed into the stand-alone module DA2 – Temple of the Frog for the D&D Expert set rules (TSR, 1986).

The first stand-alone Dungeons & Dragons adventure module, Palace of the Vampire Queen, was published in 1976 by Wee Warriors. Although TSR did not produce this module, the company did distribute the first three printings on behalf of Wee Warriors. The adventure was described as a "Dungeon Masters Kit" rather than a "module" or an "adventure".

Also in 1976, the adventure Lost Caverns of Tsojconth was distributed by Metro Detroit Gamers as the tournament module for the gaming convention Wintercon V, but was not published for general distribution at the time. The adventure was later re-written for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules and published as module S4 – The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (TSR, 1982).

Additional unpublished adventures were distributed at gaming conventions during this period, including Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, used as a tournament module for Origins '78. Later in 1978, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief became the first stand-alone Dungeons & Dragons module actually produced and published by TSR. TSR Hobbies published a series of six adventures in 1978 that had been used previously only in tournaments. The company initiated its practice of assigning a code to each module published at the time, assigning the "G1" code to Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. TSR's practice of coding modules into various series would continue into the 1990s.

Watch our interview with Jennell Jaquays from 2021
Help Jennell Jaquays spouse pay down medical bills here

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Adventure (Dungeons & Dragons)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan kick of season 6 with an examination of the physical shape of RPG books. How does the choice of number of books, size, binding, and layout impact the overall design of the game? How did the three book format of D&D come to be, and why is it the one design aspect that has persisted throughout every edition?

The layout and binding of a role-playing game are integral aspects that significantly influence its overall design and user experience. A well-thought-out layout enhances readability, guiding players through rules, character creation, and gameplay mechanics seamlessly. Consistent and intuitive page organization can reduce the learning curve for players and game masters alike, fostering a more enjoyable and accessible experience. Additionally, the visual presentation in the layout plays a vital role in setting the tone and atmosphere of the game, contributing to the immersion of players in the fantasy world.

The choice of binding determines how well the book holds up to frequent use and reference. Regardless of whether a book is bound with a hardcover or bound with a paperback cover, the binding of the signatures determines the durability of the book-as-artefact. The binding affects how the book lays open on the table, impacting the practicality of referencing rules while playing. The spine of the book is an important aspect in book design, especially in cover design. When the books are stacked up or stored in a shelf, what is on the spine is the only visible information about the book. In a bookstore, the details on the spine are what initially attract attention.

The combination of thoughtful layout and appropriate binding in an RPG not only enhances the visual appeal but also contributes significantly to the overall functionality and usability of the game system.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bookbinding", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan look back at the year in old-school D&D for 2023. And moreover, the first 5 years on Wandering DMs! What were your favorite encounters of the year? And what can we expect in the future?

The Wandering DMs YouTube channel has been a hub for tabletop gaming enthusiasts, offering a diverse range of content related to dungeon mastering, role-playing games (RPGs), and tabletop gaming culture. Over the past few years, the channel has gained recognition for its unique approach and commitment to fostering a supportive community.

One of the standout features of the Wandering DMs channel is its rich variety of content. From in-depth discussions on Dungeon Mastering techniques to insightful analyses of popular RPGs, the channel caters to both seasoned dungeon masters and newcomers to the world of tabletop gaming. Special series, such as The Big Bad, have become staples for fans seeking engaging content.

One of the channel's strengths lies in its ability to foster a sense of community among its viewers. Regular live streams, Q&A sessions, and active participation in online forums allow fans to engage directly with the hosts and fellow viewers. The Wandering DMs community has become a valuable resource for exchanging ideas, tips, and experiences in the world of tabletop gaming.

Donate to Jennell Jaquays' medical GoFundMe here

In this episode of Wandering DMs, Dan and Paul discuss the role of mentorship in teaching D&D. How did the role of mentors help the spread of D&D in the early days? How has that changed over the years? And how does the game present itself to new players who aren't furtunate enough to have this kind of personal introduction?

The word mentor was inspired by the character Mentor in Homer's Odyssey. Although the Mentor in the story is portrayed as a somewhat ineffective old man, the goddess Athena assumes his appearance to guide young Telemachus in his time of difficulty.

A meta-analysis of 112 individual research studies found mentoring has significant behavioral, attitudinal, health-related, relational, motivational, and career benefits. For a learner, these benefits depend on the different functions being performed by the mentor. Originally, the concept of mentoring functions developed from qualitative research in an organizational context with functions that belong under two major factors: psychosocial support (e.g. role modeling, friendship, emotional support, encouragement) and career-related support (e.g. providing advice, discussing goals). An early quantitative approach found role modeling to be a distinct third factor. In mentoring for college success, a fourth function concerning knowledge transfer was additionally identified, which was also discovered in the context of mentoring creativity.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mentorship", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul reflect on the history of rules for flying in D&D. How easy and powerful should it be to achieve? Does it make castles and climbing skills useless? Is the standard spell sufficient, or should your PCs seek out flying mounts -- and what rules provide a market for that?

From the earliest days, humans have dreamed of flying and have attempted to achieve it. Greek and Roman mythology have examples of gods who were gifted with flight. Daedalus and Icarus flew through the air, and Icarus died when he flew too close to the sun. Religions relate stories of chariots that fly through the air and winged angels that join humans in the heavens. Flying creatures that were half human and half beast appear in legends. Birds and fantastic winged creatures pulled boats and other vehicles through the air. The ancient Chinese invented spinning toys that were the earliest helicopters and their designs may have influenced Leonardo da Vinci, one of the world's greatest inventors, artists, and visionaries.

Chinese records describe human attempts to sail through the air by attaching themselves to kites-one of the most significant inventions leading to flight which, with its inclined wing, evolved into the airfoil. Da Vinci discovered and analyzed several of the basic principles of aerodynamics and physics and designed machines (but, in most cases, did not fly them) that applied these principles. He wrote prolifically, and it was only because his written works were lost for centuries that his influence on other inventors was not greater than it was. His writings included hundred of sketches that illustrated his observations of flight in nature and the inventions he designed. He wrote and drew on key problems of aeronautics, including action and reaction; the structure of wings, carrying surfaces, and landing gear; and even devices for directional control.

This description uses material from the U.S. National Park Service article "Idea of Flight".

Paul and Dan reflect on Dan's epic saga playing through the AD&D Pool of Radiance Gold Box game live in 2022-2023, and dig into the 1988 print publication of the same adventure, Ruins of Adventure. How similar are they? Does this one adventure work better as a computer game, as a tabletop game, or something else? What lessons can we take for converting scenarios between different systems and media?

Ruins of Adventure is a Dungeons & Dragons module that was based on the "Gold Box" role-playing video game Pool of Radiance, published in 1988 by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI). Mike Breault stated that TSR chose him, Winter, Cook, and Ward to work on the design and writing for Pool of Radiance, indicating that the material was originally created for the game. However, according to the editors of Dragon magazine, Pool of Radiance was based on Ruins of Adventure, and not vice versa. The plot loosely tracks that of the computer game.

Ruins of Adventure contains four short Forgotten Realms adventure scenarios which are connected and adapted from the Pool of Radiance computer game, and take place in the devastated town of Phlan. The adventurers are hired to remove evil forces from Phlan, presumably by killing them. They hear rumor of a Boss controlling them and seek him out. This Boss proves to be a worthy adversary, but in the end the adventurers defeat him.

Ruins of Adventure was written by James Ward, David "Zeb" Cook, Steve Winter, and Mike Breault, with a cover by Clyde Caldwell, and was published by TSR in 1988 as a 96-page book.

Watch Dan's livestream play of Pool of Radiance here

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ruins of Adventure", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul discuss money in D&D, and how they've both independently arrived at the need for a silver standard. From measuring encumbrance in coins to stocking dungeons with treasure, to how to drain the players of their inflated wealth, the Wandering DMs will cover everything numismatic in your D&D game.

Many cultures around the world eventually developed the use of commodity money. The Mesopotamian shekel was a unit of weight, and relied on the mass of something like 160 grains of barley. The first usage of the term came from Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. Societies in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia used shell money—often, the shells of the cowry (Cypraea moneta L. or C. annulus L.). According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coins. It is thought by modern scholars that these first stamped coins were minted around 650 to 600 BC.

In most major economies using coinage, copper, silver, and gold formed three tiers of coins. Gold coins were used for large purchases, payment of the military, and backing of state activities. Silver coins were used for midsized transactions, and as a unit of account for taxes, dues, contracts, and fealty, while copper coins represented the coinage of common transaction. This system had been used in ancient India since the time of the Mahajanapadas. In Europe, this system worked through the medieval period because there was virtually no new gold, silver, or copper introduced through mining or conquest. Thus the overall ratios of the three coinages remained roughly equivalent.

Read Dan's blog comparing original D&D to historical prices

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Money", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan discuss Werewolf and Mafia-style games -- party-style games with secret roles assigned, including a hidden evil faction, and a group of mostly-innocent civilians trying to survive and uncover the adversaries. What different variants of this game work the best? What psychological lessons can we take away? And what elements can be worked into your D&D and other role-playing games?

Mafia, also known as Werewolf, is a Russian social deduction game created by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986. The game models a conflict between two groups: an informed minority (the mafiosi or the werewolves) and an uninformed majority (the villagers). At the start of the game, each player is secretly assigned a role affiliated with one of these teams. The game has two alternating phases: first, a night-phase, during which those with night-killing-powers may covertly kill other players, and second, a day-phase, in which all surviving players debate and vote to eliminate a suspect. The game continues until a faction achieves its win-condition; for the village, this usually means eliminating the evil minority, while for the minority, this usually means reaching numerical parity with the village and eliminating any rival evil groups.

Andrew Plotkin gave the rules a werewolf theme in 1997, arguing that the mafia had less cultural resonance, and that the werewolf concept fit the idea of a hidden enemy who looked normal during the daytime. Mafia and a variant called Thing have been played at science fiction writers' workshops since 1998, and have become an integral part of the annual Clarion and Viable Paradise workshops. The Werewolf variant of Mafia became widespread at major tech events, including the Game Developers Conference, ETech, Foo Camps, and South By Southwest. In 1998 the Kaliningrad Higher school of the Internal Affairs Ministry published the methodical textbook Nonverbal communications. Developing role-playing games 'Mafia' and 'Murderer' for a course on Visual psychodiagnostics, to teach reading body language and nonverbal signals. In September 1998 Mafia was introduced to the Graduate College at Princeton University, where a number of variants were developed. The werewolf theme was also incorporated in the French adaption of Mafia, The Werewolves of Millers Hollow.

Mafia is one of the 50 most historically and culturally significant tabletop games since 1800 according to about.com.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mafia (party game)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan hosts a watch party for the Fearful Ends actual play, as we roll into Halloween and the last few days of the Fearful Ends Kickstarter. Join us and watch along with Dan for the first time!

Fearful Ends is a rules-light, story-centric roleplaying system for horror themed games. It features nihilistic stories about characters discovering impossible horrors. It aims to allow players to roleplay characters that experience mental or emotional collapse in a safe play environment that neither stigmatizes nor sensationalizes mental illness.

Giving each player at a full table a satisfying story arc for their character can be a difficult task for the GM to monitor, especially with a full table of players. Putting this power into the player's hand distributes the load and ensures each individual character will meet a satisfying, though likely unpleasant end. One player may even find a way to maintain their grip on reality and make it through the game unscathed, though it will

Back the Fearful Ends Kickstarter
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Check out the Fearful Ends website

Dan & Paul are joined by Matt Finch, to talk about ways it can be more efficient in your D&D game setup to get random results with dice. Consider cards, chits, spinners, toppling block towers, or Matt's new app for the Fantasy Adventure Builder, now on Kickstarter? Dice were just the start!

Physical devices were used to generate random numbers for thousands of years, primarily for gambling. Dice in particular are known for more than 5000 years (found on locations in modern Iraq and Iran), flipping coin (thus producing a random bit) dates at least to the times of ancient Rome.

First documented use of physical random number generator for a scientific purpose was by Francis Galton (1890). He devised a way to sample a probability distribution using a common gambling dice. In addition to the top digit, Galton also looked at the face of a dice closest to him, thus creating 6 * 4 = 24 outcomes (about 4.6 bits of randomness).

Kendall and Babington-Smith (1938) used a fast-rotating 10-sector disk that was illuminated by the periodic bursts of light. The sampling was done by a human who wrote the number under the light beam onto a pad. The device was utilized to produce a 100,000-digit random number table (at the time such tables were used for statistical experiments, like PRNG nowadays).

Back Matt's Kickstarter for the Fantasy Adventure Builder app here
And join Paul's Kickstarter for Fearful Ends here

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hardware random number generator", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul host Justin Alexander, creator of the Alexandrian and the new book So You Want to be a Game Master, for an in-depth chat on the best ways to adapt content to and from D&D and other RPGs. What tricks work well? What things should you avoid? And what content is simply incompatible with other systems?

Have you ever wanted to step into your favorite movie or book or television series? Do you want to take your friends on impossible adventures? Do you want to play a cunning elf, a daring spy, a brilliant detective, or a dastardly villain? Do you want to create new worlds?

Millions of people have discovered the amazing opportunities for creativity, problem-solving, and — most importantly! — fun offered by tabletop roleplaying games. Do you have what it takes to join them? Whether you’re thinking about playing Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Vampire: The Masquerade, Cyberpunk RED, Star Wars, The Witcher, or any one of the countless other roleplaying games that let you go on adventures with your friends while playing characters of your own creation, this book is the key to unlocking the limitless vistas of your imagination.

So You Want to Be a Game Master? will level your game up with never-before-revealed secret techniques and a huge selection of extra credit lessons that will blow your players away. Coming to a bookstore near you November 2023!

Preorder Justin's So You Want to be a Game Master here
And join Paul's Kickstarter for Fearful Ends here

How do we play characters reacting naturally to highly stressful situations without completely stressing ourselves out? Paul and Dan discuss the variety of safety tools in use in modern roleplaying systems, and how those impacted the development of Paul's upcoming horror RPG Fearful Ends.

John Stavropoulos, creator of X-Card, said on why to use this safety tool:

"The X-card creates a specific mood at the table. It says "We're here together. If you need to stop, we'll stop. The people playing are more important than the game we are playing." … Just having the X-Card present can increase the group's heightened awareness of everyone's risks and responsibilities. Even if the X-Card is never used, it still is a potent tool for getting everyone to think about each other first, and the game second."

William J. White, a professor at Penn State Altoona, in a historical retrospect examined the early online discourse in The Forge diaspora on the X-Card including a discussion prompted by game designer Vincent Baker in 2013. White highlighted that Stavropoulos was an event organizer who developed the tool to help ensure a "positive experience in convention-based play" with strangers, however, many online commentators assumed "play takes place within stable, pre-existing groups" which is "an important distinction in understanding the issue". Some felt the X-Card "more or less obviously implies curtailing the range of normal activity at the table" and the tool was subject to ridicule while others "pointed to a legitimate need for safety mechanisms, challenging the critics on the jurisdictional grounds that they are misinterpreting the intent of the X-Card".

In 2013, Baker felt that X-card was an "unnecessary or harmful" game hack counter to the intentions of the game designer as "competent game designers" would be deliberate about including or excluding "emotional safety mechanisms". This position was challenged, including by Stavropoulos himself, and the ensuing online discussion outlined positive experiences using the X-Card. Baker has since "completely reversed" his position and stated "my take now is that stand-alone safety tools that players can bring with them from game to game are valuable and important".

Back Fearful Ends on Kickstarter
Read Fearful End's Safety Tools Recommendations

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "X-Card", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

With the launch of the Fearful Ends Kickstarter imminent, Dan and Paul discuss roleplaying impossible situations. How do we maintain player autonomy when the deck is clearly stacked against them? What does it mean to "play to fail", and how do we enjoy games when there is little to no hope of success?

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) defined autonomy by three themes regarding contemporary ethics. Firstly, autonomy as the right for one to make their own decisions excluding any interference from others. Secondly, autonomy as the capacity to make such decisions through one's own independence of mind and after personal reflection. Thirdly, as an ideal way of living life autonomously. In summary, autonomy is the moral right one possesses, or the capacity we have in order to think and make decisions for oneself providing some degree of control or power over the events that unfold within one's everyday life.

Fearful Ends is a horor roleplaying game about existential tragedy. Existentialist philosophy encompasses a range of perspectives, but it shares certain underlying concepts. Among these, a central tenet of existentialism is that personal freedom, individual responsibility, and deliberate choice are essential to the pursuit of self-discovery and the determination of life's meaning. However, because of the world's absurdity, anything can happen to anyone at any time and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the absurd. This is what gives meaning to people's lives. To live the life of the absurd means rejecting a life that finds or pursues specific meaning for man's existence since there is nothing to be discovered.

Back Fearful Ends on Kickstarter

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Autonomy" and "Existentialism", which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Without magic, how fast does a character heal in D&D? It may surprise you how much the answer has changed over the editions! Dan & Paul debate which rule is best. And what are hit points, anyway?

Wound healing refers to a living organism's replacement of destroyed or damaged tissue by newly produced tissue. In undamaged skin, the epidermis (surface, epithelial layer) and dermis (deeper, connective layer) form a protective barrier against the external environment. When the barrier is broken, a regulated sequence of biochemical events is set into motion to repair the damage. This process is divided into predictable phases: blood clotting (hemostasis), inflammation, tissue growth (cell proliferation), and tissue remodeling (maturation and cell differentiation). Blood clotting may be considered to be part of the inflammation stage instead of a separate stage.

The wound-healing process is not only complex but fragile, and it is susceptible to interruption or failure leading to the formation of non-healing chronic wounds. Factors that contribute to non-healing chronic wounds are diabetes, venous or arterial disease, infection, and metabolic deficiencies of old age.

Read Dan's blog article on healing through the ages of D&D
See last week's Order of the Stick comic on the meaning of hit points

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wound healing", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Assassins were prominently available for hire in the earliest edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and they became a core character class of their own in 1st Edition Advanced D&D. Where did they sneak off to since then? What's the best way to handle PC's wanting to run a solo assassination mission?

Some famous assassination victims are Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), the father of Alexander the Great, and Roman dictator Julius Caesar (44 BC). Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later. Three successive Rashidun caliphs (Umar, Uthman Ibn Affan, and Ali ibn Abi Talib) were assassinated in early civil conflicts between Muslims. The practice was also well known in ancient China, as in Jing Ke's failed assassination of Qin king Ying Zheng in 227 BC. Whilst many assassinations were performed by individuals or small groups, there were also specialized units who used a collective group of people to perform more than one assassination. The earliest were the sicarii in 6 AD, who predated the Middle Eastern Assassins and Japanese shinobis by centuries.

In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare in Western Europe, but it was a recurring theme in the Eastern Roman Empire. Strangling in the bathtub was the most commonly used method. With the Renaissance, tyrannicide—or assassination for personal or political reasons—became more common again in Western Europe.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Assassination", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan and Paul dive into character sheets! Between edition changes and advancing technology, how have they changed throughout the years? And what's the best way to keep tabs on your character's most important details now?

Original Edition Dungeons & Dragons (1974), did not include a character sheet. The first one ever published was in the Haven Herald fanzine of Stephen Tihor published on May 3, 1975. One month after, another character sheet was released in the APA magazine Alarums and Excursions. Since then, most tabletop role-playing games use a character sheet for information about the player characters.

What is considered relevant can vary by game and personal preference—one player may consider his character's eye colour or personal background relevant while another might not, but both may be required by the game rules to note down on their sheet if their character suffers an injury.

Character sheets for a game are usually found within the game's main rulebook, and permission is almost always given for players to photocopy this sheet. Some publishers sell preprinted sheets separately. Many offer PDF files with character sheets for the players to print out themselves. It is not uncommon for players to create custom character sheets, to their own design, rather than use the publisher's “official” offerings.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Character Sheet", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Join Dan and Paul as they discuss the use of mazes in D&D adventures! They will explore the twists and turns of these navigation puzzles, and try to discover the line between captivating challenges and maddening exercises in frustration.

The word maze is used to refer both to branching tour puzzles through which the solver must find a route, and to simpler non-branching ("unicursal") patterns that lead unambiguously through a convoluted layout to a goal. The pathways and walls in a maze are typically fixed, but puzzles in which the walls and paths can change during the game are also categorised as mazes or tour puzzles.

Some maze solving methods are designed to be used inside the maze by a traveler with no prior knowledge of the maze, whereas others are designed to be used by a person or computer program that can see the whole maze at once. Mazes containing no loops are known as "standard", or "perfect" mazes, and are equivalent to a tree in graph theory. Thus many maze solving algorithms are closely related to graph theory. Intuitively, if one pulled and stretched out the paths in the maze in the proper way, the result could be made to resemble a tree.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Maze", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan chat about the huge influence that tales set on Mars (Burroughs' John Carter Barsoom stories) had on the design of early Dungeons & Dragons. Did you know that original D&D had a built-in table for Martian encounters in the core books? That Gygax released a "Warriors of Mars" book almost simultaneously with D&D? We'll delve into the ancient sands to find lost treasures!

Warriors of Mars is a 1974 miniatures wargame rule book, written by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume and published by Tactical Studies Rules. It simulates combat in the fantasy world of Barsoom, originally imagined by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his series of novels about John Carter of Mars. It is a 56-page booklet in the same style as the original Dungeons & Dragons books, even sharing the same artist Greg Bell. Gygax and TSR published the rules without permission from Burroughs estate and soon after its release they issued a cease and desist order and the game was pulled from distribution. Because only a few copies were sold the book is now rare and sells for a high price.

The same year Warriors of Mars was published (and then un-published), Gygax published the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, where he paid homage to Burroughs in the last paragraph of the "Preface":

"Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits.. will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste."

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Warriors of Mars (game)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul chat about using the world around them to create D&D and other TTRPG scenarios. They share personal anecdotes of times they stumbled upon real places that sparked their creativity, reinforcing the notion that the real world is a goldmine of inspiration for game masters and storytellers.

Dan & Paul chat about different weather systems for D&D they've seen over the years. Do you prefer yours simple, or very detailed? Dice-based or DM narrative fiat? And why is it so important for wilderness adventures and wargaming?

Numerical weather prediction (NWP) uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of computer simulation in the 1950s that numerical weather predictions produced realistic results. A number of global and regional forecast models are run in different countries worldwide, using current weather observations relayed from radiosondes, weather satellites and other observing systems as inputs.

Mathematical models based on the same physical principles can be used to generate either short-term weather forecasts or longer-term climate predictions; the latter are widely applied for understanding and projecting climate change. The improvements made to regional models have allowed for significant improvements in tropical cyclone track and air quality forecasts; however, atmospheric models perform poorly at handling processes that occur in a relatively constricted area, such as wildfires.

Try a web version of the AD&D Greyhawk Weather system here
Watch Book of War Men vs. Monster Round 1 (cloudy weather) here
Watch Book of War Men vs. Monster Round 2 (rainy weather) here

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Numerical weather prediction", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Fresh from playing the Paranoia Mandatory Bonus Fun Card Game, Dan and Paul discuss their experience with various editions of the Paranoia RPG. Stay alert, trust no one, and keep your laser handy!

Paranoia is a humorous role-playing game set in a dystopian future along the lines of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Logan's Run, and THX 1138; however, the tone of the game is rife with black humor, frequently tongue-in-cheek rather than dark and heavy. Most of the game's humor is derived from the players' (usually futile) attempts to complete their assignment while simultaneously adhering to the Computer's arbitrary, contradictory and often nonsensical security directives.

Originally designed and written by Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg, and first published in 1984 by West End Games, since 2004 Paranoia has been published under license by Mongoose Publishing. The game won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1984 and was inducted into the Origins Awards Hall of Fame in 2007. Paranoia is notable among tabletop games for being more competitive than co-operative, with players encouraged to betray one another for their own interests, as well as for keeping a light-hearted, tongue in cheek tone despite its dystopian setting.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Paranoia (role-playing game)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul's acquired an ancient treasure: A copy of M.A.R. Barker's 1975 "War of Wizards" game, still in the shrink wrap, from Gary Gygax's personal collection no less! This is the first-ever publication set in Tékumel, the world of the Empire of the Petal Throne. Inspired by the D&D spellcasting system, it features two opposing wizards cast a barrage of spells at each other across an arena. What does these elder rules look like? Can Dan & Paul make sense of them within an hour?

War of Wizards is a board game published by TSR in 1975. It was TSR's first publication for M. A. R. Barker's world of Tékumel.

David M. Ewalt, in his book Of Dice and Men, described how University of Minnesota professor M. A. R. Barker "made his game-design debut at TSR. A scholar of ancient languages, Barker had spent decades crafting a fantasy world called Tékumel, writing thousands of pages of histories, describing its culture, and even constructing its languages. He served as adviser to the university's wargaming club, and after Michael Mornard showed him Dungeons & Dragons, Barker wrote two games based in Tékumel; a tabletop role-playing game, Empire of the Petal Throne; and a combat-oriented board game, War of Wizards."

Originally published by TSR in 1975, it was reprinted by Tita's House of Games in 1999. War of Wizards predates TSR releasing Empire of the Petal Throne by a few months, making it their first Tékumel publication.

See more about War of Wizards at BoardGameGeek

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "War of Wizards", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul chat about the complications of invisibility in D&D, how to handle it, and how easily opponents can counter it, through the ages. How often have you cursed because of it?

In fiction, people or objects can be rendered completely invisible by several means:

Magical objects such as rings, cloaks and amulets can be worn to grant the wearer permanent invisibility (or temporary invisibility until the object is taken off).
Magical potions can be consumed to grant temporary or permanent invisibility.
Magic spells can be cast on people or objects, usually giving temporary invisibility.
Some mythical creatures can make themselves invisible at will, such as in some tales in which leprechauns or Chinese dragons can shrink so much that humans cannot see them.
In science fiction, the idea of a "cloaking device".

In some works, the power of magic creates an effective means of invisibility by distracting anyone who might notice the character. But since the character is not truly invisible, the effect could be betrayed by mirrors or other reflective surfaces.

Where magical invisibility is concerned, the issue may arise of whether the clothing worn by and any items carried by the invisible being are also rendered invisible. In general they are also regarded as being invisible, but in some instances clothing remains visible and must be removed for the full invisibility effect.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Invisibility", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan share their thoughts on Unicorns, which have been part of the standard monster list since the earliest days. Are they meant to be magical, fey representations of ineffable mysteries? Or are they meant to be a high-level brute melee attacker? Do they really belong in the world of D&D at all?

In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years or so been depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long straight horn with spiralling grooves, cloven hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In encyclopedias, its horn was described as having the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as a unicorn horn. The unicorn continues to hold a place in popular culture. It is often used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity.

Watch our first Book of War game using Unicorns
And return appearance against Wizards

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Unicorn", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul give their thoughts on the 2023 movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. For old-school D&D players, is it worth the watch, or another one for the garderobe?

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a 2023 American fantasy heist comedy film directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Gilio from a story by Chris McKay and Gilio. Based on the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, it is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting and has no connections to the previous film trilogy released between 2000 and 2012. The film stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, and Hugh Grant.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 10, 2023, and was released in the United States on March 31, 2023, by Paramount Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics and audiences and grossed over $208 million worldwide, making it the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2023.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan reflect on lessons we've learned for our D&D games based on playing wargames in the recent past. Is there anything we can use to improve our fantasy RPG? Heck, yes!

The original Dungeons & Dragons set, subtitled Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures, was written by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and was published by TSR in 1974 as a digest-sized boxed set in a brown wood-grain box. The set included three digest-sized books: the 36-page "Volume 1: Men & Magic", the 40-page "Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure", and the 36-page "Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures". The set also included six reference sheets of tables and charts.

A wargame must simulate warfare to a reasonable degree of realism, though what counts as sufficient realism depends on the players. Military wargames need to be highly realistic because their purpose is to prepare officers for real warfare. Recreational wargames only need to be as realistic as it pleases the players, so in most recreational wargames the emphasis is on verisimilitude, i.e. the satisfactory appearance of realism. In any case, no wargame can be perfectly realistic. A wargame's design must make trade-offs between realism, playability, and fun, and function within the constraints of its medium.

Fantasy wargames arguably stretch the definition of wargaming by representing fictional or anachronistic armaments, but they may still be called wargames if they resemble real warfare to the satisfaction of the players. For example, Warhammer Fantasy Battle has wizards and dragons, but the bulk of the armaments are taken from medieval warfare (spearmen, knights, archers, etc.).

Validation is the process by which a given wargame is proven to be realistic. For historical wargames, this usually means being able to accurately recreate a certain historical battle. Validating military wargames is sometimes tricky as they are typically used to simulate hypothetical future scenarios.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Dungeons & Dragons (1974)" and "Wargame", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul discuss the large variety of different morale rules in classic D&D -- and its roots in related wargaming. Which method is best? What would be most believable? What makes the best gameplay? What's easiest for the DM to manage?

Clausewitz stresses the importance of morale and will for both the soldier and the commander. The soldier's first requirement is moral and physical courage, both the acceptance of responsibility and the suppression of fear. In order to survive the horror of combat, he must have an invincible martial spirit, which can be attained only through military victory and hardship. The soldier has but one purpose: "The end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and the right time.

Military morale is in a large sense inseparable from civilian morale because each reacts upon the other and both are in large measure based on fidelity to a cause. But there is a certain kind of morale that is distinctly military. It begins with the soldier's attitude toward duty. It develops with the soldier's command over himself. It is a spirit that becomes dominant in the individual and also in the group. Whether the soldier has physical comforts or suffers physical hardships may be a factor but is seldom the determining factor in making or unmaking his morale. A cause known and believed in; knowledge that substantial justice governs discipline; the individual's confidence and pride in himself, his comrades, his leaders; the unit's pride in its own will; these basic things, supplemented by intelligent welfare and recreation measures and brought to life by a spirit of mutual respect and co-operation, combine to weld a seasoned fighting force capable of defending the nation.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Morale", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan discuss the history of what counts as the "standard" die in D&D used for hit dice, damage, miscellaneous checks, and more. Was switching from the six-sided to the eight-sided die really such a great idea?

Various shapes like two-sided or four-sided dice are documented in archaeological findings; for example, from Ancient Egypt and the Middle East. While the cubical six-sided die became the most common type in many parts of the world, other shapes were always known, like 20-sided dice in Ptolemaic and Roman times.

The modern tradition of using sets of polyhedral dice started around the end of the 1960s when non-cubical dice became popular among players of wargames, and since have been employed extensively in role-playing games and trading card games.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dice", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul reconsider some of the most feared undead in D&D -- wights, wraiths, and spectres. You know: the types that are most likely to drain your character's XP. How do you like your level draining best?

The undead are beings in mythology, legend, or fiction that are deceased but behave as if alive. Most commonly the term refers to corporeal forms of formerly alive humans, such as mummies, vampires, and zombies, who have been reanimated by supernatural means, technology, or disease. In some cases (for example in Dungeons & Dragons) the term also includes incorporeal forms of the dead, such as ghosts.

The undead are featured in the belief systems of most cultures, and appear in many works of fantasy and horror fiction. The term is also occasionally used for real-life attempts to resurrect the dead with science and technology, from early experiments like Robert E. Cornish's to future sciences such as "chemical brain preservation" and "cryonics."

Rob Bricken of io9 identified some of these types as among "The 12 Most Obnoxious Dungeons & Dragons Monsters".

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Undead", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Midjourney.

Did you know that the Pinkerton National Detective Agency -- famed protector of Abraham Lincoln in the 1800's, and union-busting goon squad in the 1900's -- is still around? And they have time to chase down Magic: the Gathering fans for using prohibited card sets? It's true: Dan & Paul discuss the latest WOTC goony actions, other game-companies that lost their sanity checks, and more.

Pinkerton is a private security guard and detective agency established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born American cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton & Co, and finally the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It is currently a subsidiary of Swedish-based Securitas AB. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled the Baltimore Plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln later hired Pinkerton agents to conduct espionage against the Confederacy and act as his personal security during the American Civil War.

The Pinkerton National Detective Agency hired women and minorities from its founding because they were useful as spies, a practice uncommon at the time. At the height of their power, the Pinkerton Detective Agency was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world.

Following the Civil War, the Pinkertons began conducting operations against organized labor. During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businesses hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions, supply guards, keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, and recruit goon squads to intimidate workers. During the Homestead Strike of 1892, Pinkerton agents were called in to reinforce the strikebreaking measures of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, who was acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, the head of Carnegie Steel. Tensions between the workers and strikebreakers erupted into violence which led to the deaths of three Pinkerton agents and nine steelworkers. During the late nineteenth century, the Pinkertons were also hired as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Pinkertons were also involved in other strikes such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

During the 20th century, Pinkerton rebranded itself into a personal security and risk management firm. The company has continued to exist in various forms through to the present day, and is now a division of the Swedish security company Securitas AB, operating as "Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, Inc. d.b.a. Pinkerton Corporate Risk Management". The former Government Services division, PGS, now operates as "Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services, Inc.".

Read the Gizmodo news on the incident here
And see an update here

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pinkerton (detective agency)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan get to chat with Matt Finch about his new full-blown edition to the Swords & Wizardry D&D retroclone, now on Kickstarter!

Since 2008, Swords & Wizardry has been the hallmark game for tabletop fantasy roleplaying using the 1978 ruleset, with less focus on rules, more focus on your friends and the epic adventures you're embarking on together!

Swords & Wizardry is the ENNIE award-winning retro-clone of the original 1974-1978 rules for Dungeons & Dragons, an edition usually called Original D&D or "OD&D." (Note that Mythmere Games isn't affiliated with Wizards of the Coast, the publishers and trademark holders of D&D, and that Swords & Wizardry isn't compatible or designed for use with modern D&D -- it replicates a MUCH older version of the D&D game rules).

This is a complete game, with rules for character generation, monsters, magic items, encounter tables -- the whole works.

Join the Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised edition on Kickstarter
Follow Matt and Mythmere games on Twitter

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul recap our annual 25-person indie house convention we hold annually on the sparkling shores of Plymouth, MA. Check our review of hour our classic games went, new games we got to try for the first time, and more surprises. Also: how did the ongoing AD&D Slavers series wrap up In the Dungeon of the Slave Lords?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan chat with Scott Legault, chair of the new Rising Phoenix Game Con in Massachusetts this April! What's it like to start a new game con today? And can leveraging the better part of a decade's experience in professional DM'ing help out?

Visit the Rising Phoenix Game Con website here
Register at Tabletop Events here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This week, Paul & Dan get to host Luke Gygax and find out about all the happenings at the upcoming GaryCon XV convention!

Luke Gygax is the son of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax and Founder of Gary Con. He literally grew up at the gaming table with the designers that built the foundation of the RPG industry many of whom come to Gary Con. He played the iconic character Melf, aka Prince Brightflame, whose name has remained on spells from AD&D to today.

Luke has authored several role-playing game accessories over his lifetime including Legion of Gold, The Lost City of Gaxmoor, a Call of Cthulhu module set at Gary Con and recently The Oculus of Senrahbah series in The City of Chentoufi in The Blighted Lands of the World of Okkorim fantasy setting. Luke is working on new 5e scenarios for the World of Okkorim through his new company Gaxx Worx. Look for The Fate of Chentoufi Kickstarter campaign coming soon. Find out more at gaxxworx.com. He is active in the Los Angeles gaming community, participating in streaming D&D games, interviews, and is the producer for The Gaxx Pack, as well as host of Founders & Legends on Gary Con's Twitch (Twitch.tv/GaryConLive). Look for him as a Guest at fine TTRPG Game Conventions as he embraces being a civilian again after 33 years of service in the US Army.

See events & get your badge to GaryCon XV here
Check out Luke's new company here
And get notified on the upcoming Kickstarter!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul discuss our personal, customized version of D&D: Original Edition Delta!

Initially, Paul & Dan preferred different editions of Dungeons & Dragon, with some personalized house-rule modifications made for each. Over time, we realized that the house rules we made coincidentally met in the middle, and we were running pretty much the same game, after all. So we joined forces and put our rules out publicly as Original Edition Delta -- the best old-school retroclone set of house rules, in our humble opinion!

In this episode we talk about that history and our experiences developing and running the OED rules set. What's new recently? What upcoming games are we looking forward to running? And hat lessons can you take for your own customized D&D rules?

Get the Original Edition Delta house rules for Original D&D here
Follow Dan/Delta's blog on D&D rules here
Check out our Github page for coding developments

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Image courtesy Midjourney via CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

Dan interviews Paul on his weekend trip to the first convention of the season, Total Confusion, the largest gaming con in New England. How to prepare in short time if you're busy like we are? What's the best way to boost your save vs. con crud?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan reflect on the legacy of digital tools for D&D from Wizard of the Coast, and what the prospects are for what's next!

Read the analysis by Janelle Jaquays on Facebook

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.

Dan & Paul hash over the benefits & flaws of working with other people in your TTRPG design, DM'ing, nd play!

Collaboration (from Latin com- "with" + laborare "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most collaboration requires leadership,[vague] although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively often access greater resources, recognition and rewards when facing competition for finite resources.

Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication. Such methods aim to increase the success of teams as they engage in collaborative problem-solving. Collaboration is present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial collaboration, though this is not a common use of the term. In its applied sense, "(a) collaboration is a purposeful relationship in which all parties strategically choose to cooperate in order to accomplish a shared outcome."

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Collaboration", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Craiyon.

Dan & Paul sit down with Linda Codega, the exceptional journalist at io9/Gizmodo who broke the story of WOTC planning to de-authorize the Open Game License that's been used for D&D-compatible and other games for over 20 years -- and subsequently forced a total surrender by WOTC on their sinister plans! How did Linda catch and produce this game-changing story? How does one balance journalism and activism? Will the D&D and indie gaming industry ever be the same?

Linda Codega, for Io9 in January 2023, reported on the details from a leaked full copy of the OGL 1.1 including updated terms such as no longer authorizing use of the OGL1.0. Codega explained that while the original OGL granted a "perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license" it also included language around authorized versions of the license – "according to attorneys consulted for this article, the new language may indicate that Wizards of the Coast is rendering any future use of the original OGL void, and asserting that if anyone wants to continue to use Open Game Content of any kind, they will need to abide by the terms of the updated OGL, which is a far more restrictive agreement than the original OGL". The document also states that the intention of the OGL was not "to fund major competitors and it wasn't intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming". In a statement to EN World, Dancey – former VP of Wizards of the Coast and the architect of OGL1.0 – said, "my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked".

Following an apology issued by Wizards of the Coast, the company released a new draft (titled OGL 1.2) for public comment on January 19. It would put some of the Dungeon & Dragons mechanics under a Creative Commons license, while other material would be covered by OGL 1.2. Unlike the leaked OGL 1.1, the proposed OGL 1.2 contains "no royalty payment, no financial reporting, no license-back, no registration, no distinction between commercial and non-commercial". The proposed OGL 1.2 does de-authorize the OGL1.0a; it would also be "irrevocable, although there's still a severability clause should a part of the license is held to be unenforceable or invalid". Along with the proposed OGL 1.2, Wizards released a separate virtual tabletop (VTT) policy.

On January 27, 2023, Wizards of the Coast announced that following feedback during the open comment for OGL1.2 they had decided to release the System Reference Document 5.1 (SRD 5.1) under an irrevocable creative commons license (CC-BY-4.0) effect immediately and would no longer pursue deauthorizing the OGL1.0a.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Read Linda's initial story at io9
Read the new story on WOTC reversing course
Follow their Twitter feed for more news

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Open Game License", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Craiyon.

Are you currently looking for an alternative the the D&D roleplaying gaming? But still committed to medieval-style fantasy gaming? Dan & Paul review the current top retroclones on the market -- and what what the state of affairs going forward may be if the Open Game License is thrown into disarray!

Some D&D fans prefer earlier editions, and new games address the perceived inability of newer editions to preserve the tone of classic D&D while fixing some of the perceived rules issues of older versions. Castles & Crusades is one example, using the unified d20 mechanic from 3rd edition while dropping what the developers perceived as complications (including feats, skills, and prestige classes).

Role-playing game publisher Matthew Finch was involved in the development of Castles & Crusades, serving as editor of the Player's Handbook, and was the initial author of OSRIC, which was afterward taken up by Stuart Marshall and released to the public in 2006 as a retro-clone of the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977–1989). The release prompted another game designer, Daniel Proctor, to write and release Labyrinth Lord in 2007, a more complete retro-clone of the 1981 version of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set and its accompanying Expert Set. The following year, Finch announced the release of Swords & Wizardry, a retro-clone of the original Dungeons & Dragons game.

Many variants have appeared since the original release of OSRIC, as well as restatements of other editions of D&D and other adventure role-playing games. The games are fostered and supported online by various forums and blogs, sometimes collectively referred to as the Old School Renaissance (OSR), but are also increasingly finding their way into brick and mortar game stores.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dungeons & Dragons retro-clones", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Image by Diacritica, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Justin Alexander is one of the most prolific and insightful RPG writers around. Between his long-running blog at The Alexandrian, his work at Atlas Games, his hundreds of published books and articles, he has among the most in-depth knowledge of what makes for great gaming. And right now he's been following the drama with WOTC trying to break the OGL 1.0 as close as anyone. What's Justin's outlook for the future of Open Gaming and Atlas Games?

Read The Alexandrian blog
Follow Justin on YouTube
Visit Atlas Games

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Craiyon.

Word has leaked that WOTC aims to terminate the OGL license used for 3rd-party D&D-compatible products for the last 20+ over years. Can they do it? Are all existing 3rd-party products about to be made illegal? What can it mean for the hobby and industry going forward?

In August 2022, Wizards of the Coast launched a public playtest of the next version of Dungeons & Dragons under the One D&D initiative. In November 2022, there was reported speculation that the OGL would be discontinued for this new iteration of Dungeons & Dragons based on unconfirmed leaks. In response to the speculation, Wizards of the Coast stated in November 2022: "We will continue to support the thousands of creators making third-party D&D content with the release of One D&D in 2024. While it is certain our Open Game License (OGL) will continue to evolve, just as it has since its inception, we're too early in the development of One D&D to give more specifics on the OGL or System Reference Document (SRD) at this time".

Following concerns raised by third-party Dungeons & Dragons creators on the potential changes to the OGL, in December 2022, Wizards of the Coast released additional details on the upcoming OGL 1.1 which will go into effect in 2023. This new license will clarify that it only applies to "printed media or static electronic files (like epubs and PDFs)" and "only covers material created for use in or as TTRPGs"; OGL 1.1 will not cover other content such as video games or virtual tabletops (VTTs). Content creators using OGL 1.1 will be required "to put an official OGL badge on their products". Revenue related to OGL content must be reported to Wizards of the Coast if that revenue exceeds $50,000 annually; creators who make at least $750,000 in income annually will be required to pay a royalty starting in 2024.

Linda Codega, for Io9 in January 2023, reported on the details from a leaked full copy of the OGL 1.1 including updated terms such as no longer authorizing use of the OGL1.0. Codega explained that while the original OGL granted a "perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license" it also included language around authorized versions of the license – "according to attorneys consulted for this article, the new language may indicate that Wizards of the Coast is rendering any future use of the original OGL void, and asserting that if anyone wants to continue to use Open Game Content of any kind, they will need to abide by the terms of the updated OGL, which is a far more restrictive agreement than the original OGL". The document also states that the intention of the OGL was not "to fund major competitors and it wasn't intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming". In a statement to EN World, Dancey – former VP of Wizard of the Coast and the architect of OGL1.0 – said, "my public opinion is that Hasbro does not have the power to deauthorize a version of the OGL. If that had been a power that we wanted to reserve for Hasbro, we would have enumerated it in the license. I am on record numerous places in email and blogs and interviews saying that the license could never be revoked".

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Open Game License", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.Thumbnail image courtesy of Craiyon.

Dan & Paul look back at the state of D&D in this past year of 2022, and the 4th season of Wandering DMs. What were your favorites, what were the critical fumbles for the year? What themes were unfolding for the D&D community? We'll share our top memories, and some announcements for what we have in store next!

Watch the Wandering DMs Season 4 Playlist
Watch Games from the Elder Times Season 1
Watch Book of War Season 3

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan chat with D&D historian extraordinaire Jon Peterson about his latest book, Game Wizards, on the history of TSR, the makers of D&D, and the turbulent waters of changing creators and editions.

When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success—and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass-market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game's fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson—a noted authority on role-playing games—explains how D&D and its creators navigated their successes, setbacks, and controversies.

Peterson describes Gygax and Arneson's first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release of the game; the founding of TSR and its growth as a company; and Arneson's acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR. He recounts the “Satanic Panic” accusations that D&D was sacrilegious and dangerous, and how they made the game famous. And he chronicles TSR's reckless expansion and near-fatal corporate infighting, which culminated with the company in debt and overextended and the end of Gygax's losing battle to retain control over TSR and D&D.

With Game Wizards, Peterson restores historical particulars long obscured by competing narratives spun by the one-time partners. That record amply demonstrates how the turbulent experience of creating something as momentous as Dungeons & Dragons can make people remember things a bit differently from the way they actually happened.

Order the Game Wizards from MIT Press
Read Jon's Playing at the World blog

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul exchange thoughts on the use of prepared Boxed Text descriptions in D&D adventures. Are they hostile, or benign in your games?

DM Shawn Merwin wrote on D&D Beyond: "If you’ve DMed, read, written, or even played D&D adventures at any point in the game’s existence, you are familiar with boxed text, which is also sometimes referred to as read-aloud text. It got its name from the thin boxed-line that sometimes surrounds the text in an adventure, denoting that it should be read aloud to the players. It’s as much a part of D&D’s history and brand as saving throws, hit points, and armor class…"

"Every couple of years, the topic of boxed text sweeps through the game-design community, opinions are thrown about, battle lines and drawn, and then we all go back to writing our own adventures, usually including boxed text. I wrote about the topic 20 years ago on forums, and 10 years ago in blogs, and now I’ll write about it again. Not much has changed in the conversation, but it’s still one we need to have."

What are your thoughts on the use of boxed text?

Read Dan's blog on early encounter text
See Shawn Merwin's full comments at D&D Beyond
Read up on the "fierce debate" at ComicBook.com
Check out Dyson Logos thoughts on his blog
Read Jesse Decker's observations at Gen Con 2005 (via Wayback Machine)

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan chat with Keith Ammann ("The Monsters Know What They're Doing") on his newest book of dungeon design principles, "How to Defend Your Lair"!

In How to Defend Your Lair, gamemaster Keith Ammann pulls back the curtain on an underrated but crucial part of any tabletop roleplaying game: the theater of battle. Say goodbye to encounters in randomly generated dungeons and hello to a game in which where the fight takes place is just as important as who is doing the fighting.

This book teaches you how to use real-world principles of building security and area defense to create strongholds infused with flavor, informed by narrative, and complex enough to force your players to think strategically. You’ll look at the strengths and weaknesses of both defenders and potential attackers, creating spaces that are strong enough to keep out ordinary intruders…and to provide thrilling challenges to extraordinary ones.

Including more than a dozen fleshed-out sample strongholds, How to Defend Your Lair is a crucial resource for any RPG gamemaster who wants to push players to think about how to solve problems before running at them head-on.

Order Keith's "How to Defend Your Lair" here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul reflect on their long history of playing RPGs in a wide variety of sometimes unusual locations, and how that can affect the play of your D&D games for better & worse!

Feng shui has found many uses. Landscape ecologists often find traditional feng shui an interesting study. In many cases, the only remaining patches of Asian old forest are "feng shui woods", associated with cultural heritage, historical continuity, and the preservation of various flora and fauna species. Some researchers interpret the presence of these woods as indicators that the "healthy homes", sustainability and environmental components of traditional feng shui should not be easily dismissed. Environmental scientists and landscape architects have researched traditional feng shui and its methodologies. Architects study feng shui as an Asian architectural tradition. Geographers have analyzed the techniques and methods to help locate historical sites in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and archaeological sites in the American Southwest, concluding that Native Americans also considered astronomy and landscape features.

Believers use it for healing purposes though there is no empirical evidence that it is in any way effective, to guide their businesses, or create a peaceful atmosphere in their homes. In particular, they use feng shui in the bedroom, where a number of techniques involving colors and arrangement achieve comfort and peaceful sleep. Some users of feng shui may be trying to gain a sense of security or control, such as by choosing auspicious numbers for their phones or favorable house locations. Their motivation is similar to the reasons that some people consult fortune-tellers.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Feng shui", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan look back at their favorite "Haunted House" adventures for D&D games. From Tegel Manor to Saltmarsh to Castle Amber and Ravenloft, we'll assess what works best and what doesn't for a truly terrifying D&D game!

Legends about haunted houses have long appeared in literature. The earliest surviving report of a haunted house comes from a letter written by Pliny the Younger (61 – c. 112 CE) to his patron Lucias Sura, in which he describes a haunted villa in Athens.[50] Nobody would live in the house until the philosopher Athenodorus (c. 74 BCE – 7 CE) arrived in the city. He was tempted by the low rent and undeterred by the house's reputation so he moved in. The ghost, an old man bound with chains, appeared to Athenodorus during the first night and beckoned to him. The apparition vanished once it reached the courtyard, and Athenodorus carefully marked the spot. The following morning he requested the magistrate to have the spot dug up, where the skeleton of an old man bound with chains was discovered. The ghost never appeared again after the skeleton was given a proper burial.

According to Owen Davies, a paranormal historian, hauntings in the British Isles were usually attributed to fairies, but today hauntings are usually associated with ghostly or supernatural encounters. In other cultures around the world, various spirits are said to haunt vacant homes and locations. In Middle Eastern countries, for example, jinn are said to haunt such areas. Historically, since most people died in their homes, whether they were mansions or hovels, these homes became natural places for ghosts to haunt, with bedrooms being the most common rooms to be haunted. Many houses gained a reputation for being haunted after they were empty or derelict. Davies explains that "if people were to fail to occupy a human space, then external forces would move in."

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul chat with Jim Davis, the wizard of Web DM, and get his thoughts on the rules drops so far for One D&D, the playtest for the upcoming next-edition of Dungeons & Dragons!

Jim Davis, the Web DM, creates RPG advice and actual play content on YouTube, Patreon, and Twitch. Through professionally produced, carefully researched conversations about all aspects of tabletop gaming, deep topic podcast dives, and heartfelt actual play streaming, Web DM has become one of the most popular RPG internet content creation companies in the world. They're lifelong friends and D&D players who want to share what inspires us about 5e Dungeons & Dragons to help all gamers love their games as much as we do.

One D&D is the codename for the future of D&D and includes: D&D Rules -- They're updating and expanding the rules of the game, and we’re looking for your feedback to help shape them. D&D Beyond -- The digital toolset joined the Wizards of the Coast family in 2022, and we want to make it even better. Digital D&D Play Experience -- Announced during Wizards Presents, D&D Digital is an immersive tabletop space that is in early development.

What's Jim's take on One D&D? Will the Wandering DMs agree? Tune in and find out!

Preorder the Web DM Weird Wastelands sourcebook here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul chat with Matt Finch, creator of Swords & Wizardry, about his Revised Tome of Adventure Design!

Tome of Adventure Design is a comprehensive, start-to-finish resource for designing fantasy adventures for your favorite tabletop role-playing game. It is system neutral, and can be used with virtually any fantasy game. This book includes random generation tables for almost every step of the design process: locations, villainous plots, designing new monsters, and bizarre environments in strange, unknown planes of existence. Thousands of micro-prompts in the margins add additional brainstorming power to the process, and the book is filled with design advice from award-winning author Matt Finch.

"It’s over 300 pages of randomly selected jolts to the brain. In the introduction, Finch states that the point of incorporating randomness into your adventure writing is “to deliver cryptic results designed to shock the reader’s creativity into filling in the gaps” … Let me emphasize his use of the word “shock” in that passage. It’s perfect. The moment when two, three, or more nonsensical, fragmentary, contradictory notions gel into a coherent and fresh idea is shocking. It’s revelatory. It’s magical. And it’s inspiring…" Steve Winter, Designer & Contributor, Dungeons & Dragons for TSR and Wizards of the Coast

Get the Revised Tome of Adventure Design here
And see the completed Kickstarter page here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan chat about bases for player characters in D&D -- strongholds, ships, taverns, houses, and more!

European-style castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. These nobles built castles to control the area immediately surrounding them and the castles were both offensive and defensive structures; they provided a base from which raids could be launched as well as offered protection from enemies. Although their military origins are often emphasized in castle studies, the structures also served as centers of administration and symbols of power. Urban castles were used to control the local populace and important travel routes, and rural castles were often situated near features that were integral to life in the community, such as mills, fertile land, or a water source.

Due to the lord's presence in a castle, it was a center of administration from where he controlled his lands. He relied on the support of those below him, as without the support of his more powerful tenants a lord could expect his power to be undermined. Successful lords regularly held court with those immediately below them on the social scale, but absentees could expect to find their influence weakened. Larger lordships could be vast, and it would be impractical for a lord to visit all his properties regularly, so deputies were appointed. This especially applied to royalty, who sometimes owned land in different countries.

Watch Dan play the 1993 D&D Stronghold game
Read Dan's blog on late-era Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Castle", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul turn a critical eye to the new One D&D (6E) rules draft on the Expert Class group: Rogues, Rangers, and Bards!

In August 2022, Wizards announced that the next phase of major changes for Dungeons & Dragons would occur under the One D&D initiative which includes a public playtest of the next version of Dungeons & Dragons. Revised editions of the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide are scheduled to be released in 2024. The first public playtest, Unearthed Arcana: Character Origins, was released on D&D Beyond on August 18. Samantha Nelson, for Polygon, commented that public playtest material should not be "considered final". Nelson wrote that spells are now grouped by "arcane, divine, or primal" power sources – terms that were previously used in 4th edition's magic system. Xavier Johnson, for Dot eSports, and Christian Hoffer, for Comicbook.com, both highlighted that this playtest release updates the critical roll mechanic to an automatic success or failure if a roll is natural 20 or 1, respectively. Hoffer wrote that the "backwards compatible" One D&D release proposes "significant changes to backgrounds and races, two of the core building blocks when creating player characters. The rules also introduce several new backgrounds, new tiefling variants, and a brand new race […]. Most notably, the proposed rules shift Ability Score Increases from being a racial trait to a Background trait".

In the October 2022 Unearthed Arcana rules draft, the D&D designers unveil the idea of "Class Groups" -- familiar to 1E players as the Primary Classes -- and give details on the revised Rogue, Ranger, and Bard classes. Plus a new shuffle in the Rules Glossary for how the core mechanics work. Are these changes good or bad, from the perspective of veteran old-school players?

See the new website & video for One D&D here
Read Dan's blog on the classes in 1E Unearthed Arcana here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Editions of Dungeons & Dragons", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul chat with Griffith Morgan about the new upcoming Kickstarter for the Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg!

In 1971, Greg Svenson and his friends took part in the very first dungeon adventure game, Blackmoor, created by their friend, Dave Arneson. Then, in the summer of 1973, as Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax worked to complete the manuscript for Dungeons & Dragons, Greg was given a play-test copy of this novel new game. He used these rules to create his own adventure dungeon, The Dungeons of Tonisborg.

One day, Greg loaned his maps to a friend to make copies. An unexpected disaster struck: the maps, stowed in an old magazine, were thrown away. All ten original map levels of Greg's epic mega-dungeon were thought lost forever. This lost map set came to be known as The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg among the "Blackmoor Bunch."

Thirty-five years later, during the making of the documentary film, Secrets of Blackmoor, a mysterious set of photocopied dungeon maps was unearthed. D. H. Boggs emailed copies to Greg Svenson, who instantly recognized his own handwriting, declaring that these old photocopies were indeed copies of his original Tonisborg Dungeon. Now published with extensive background information, The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg is not like any RPG Game Module you've ever encountered before.

Read more on the Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Thumbnail images courtesy of Craiyon.

Dan chats with Alyssa Faden, mapmaker extraordinaire, about her projects mapping the worlds of Greyhawk and the rest of the D&D cosmos!

Alyssa has been a professional cartographer and GenCon panelist since 2012. Her clientele includes Monte Cook Games, Kobold Press, Profantasy Software, Gygax Magazine, Golden Goblin Press, and Frog God Games. Her style is unique and self-taught, with influences from the lovely ink work of such greats as Jeff Laubenstein and Jeff Easley. And she's a long time Blue/Red box gamer with a passion for tabletop gaming and game mastering, and these decades of imagination and storytelling come through in her artwork.

Her passion (and the thing she's best known for) is incredibly detailed, insane, hand-drawn maps. Be they cities and towns, nautical ship deck plans, or the sprawling Tegel Manor drawn at massive 14'x12' — her hallmark is and will always be incredible detail and personality.

Check out Alyssa's website here
And watch Alyssa mapping live on her YouTube channel

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan chat about slimes, molds, oozes, and deadly gelatinous horrors in D&D. Gross!

Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms with a life cycle that includes a free-living single-celled stage and the formation of spores. Spores are often produced in macroscopic multicellular or multinucleate fruiting bodies which may be formed through aggregation or fusion. Slime molds were formerly classified as fungi but are no longer considered part of that kingdom. Although not forming a single monophyletic clade, they are grouped within the paraphyletic group, Protista.

More than 900 species of slime mold occur globally. Their common name refers to part of some of these organisms' life cycles where they can appear as gelatinous "slime". This is mostly seen with the Myxogastria, which are the only macroscopic slime molds. Most slime molds are smaller than a few centimetres, but some species may reach sizes up to several square metres and masses up to 20 kilograms.

They feed on microorganisms that live in any type of dead plant material. They contribute to the decomposition of dead vegetation, and feed on bacteria and fungi. For this reason, slime molds are usually found in soil, lawns, and on the forest floor, commonly on deciduous logs. In tropical areas they are also common on inflorescences and fruits, and in aerial situations (e.g., in the canopy of trees). In urban areas, they are found on mulch or in the leaf mold in rain gutters, and also grow in air conditioners, especially when the drain is blocked.

The "clean-up crew" of slimes, oozes, molds, and deadly puddings appear at the end of the monster roster in Original D&D (1974), and arguably are the only new creation type not found in classic mythology of Tolkien. Why do they get so much mindshare? Why were they important to Gygax & company at the outset? And how can you best use them in your games today?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Slime mold", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul chat about the state of languages in D&D and other fantasy RPGs.

Tolkien was of the opinion that the invention of an artistic language in order to be convincing and pleasing must include not only the language's historical development, but also the history of its speakers, and especially the mythology associated with both the language and the speakers. It was this idea that an "Elvish language" must be associated with a complex history and mythology of the Elves that was at the core of the development of Tolkien's legendarium.

Tolkien wrote in one of his letters -- "what I think is a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. … It is not a 'hobby', in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. I should have preferred to write in 'Elvish'. But, of course, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and only as much 'language' has been left in as I thought would be stomached by readers. (I now find that many would have liked more.) … It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic aesthetic', as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what is it all about'."

While the Elvish languages remained at the center of Tolkien's attention, the requirements of the narratives associated with Middle-earth also necessitated the development at least superficially of the languages of other races, especially of Dwarves and Men, but also the Black Speech designed by Sauron, the main antagonist in The Lord of the Rings. This latter language was designed to be the ostensible antithesis of the ideal of an artistic language pursued with the development of Quenya, the Black Speech representing a dystopian parody of an international auxiliary language just as Sauron's rule over the Orcs is a dystopian parody of a totalitarian state.

Flowing from Tolkien's primary interest, the need to handle various languages has long been a key part of D&D and other fantasy games. Does D&D do a good job at it? How can it be improved?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan assess the information so far on the next edition of D&D after 5E.

In August 2022, Wizards announced that the next phase of major changes for Dungeons & Dragons would occur under the One D&D initiative which includes a public playtest of the next version of Dungeons & Dragons. Revised editions of the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide are scheduled to be released in 2024. The first public playtest, Unearthed Arcana: Character Origins, was released on D&D Beyond on August 18. Samantha Nelson, for Polygon, commented that public playtest material should not be "considered final". Nelson wrote that spells are now grouped by "arcane, divine, or primal" power sources – terms that were previously used in 4th edition's magic system. Xavier Johnson, for Dot eSports, and Christian Hoffer, for Comicbook.com, both highlighted that this playtest release updates the critical roll mechanic to an automatic success or failure if a roll is natural 20 or 1, respectively.Hoffer wrote that the "backwards compatible" One D&D release proposes "significant changes to backgrounds and races, two of the core building blocks when creating player characters. The rules also introduce several new backgrounds, new tiefling variants, and a brand new race […]. Most notably, the proposed rules shift Ability Score Increases from being a racial trait to a Background trait".

What do you think of these proposed ideas for the edition of D&D to come after 5E? Would you be more or less likely to play the game? And do they threaten to erase old-school play, or support it?

See the new website & video for One D&D here
Read Dan's comparison with the 5E announcement here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Editions of Dungeons & Dragons", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Dan & Paul survey the different options across the years for D&D PC ability score generation.

Which is best for your D&D game? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Dan & Paul get into the nitty-gritty in this episode.

In original D&D, ability scores were determined by "roll[ing] three six-sided dice in order to rate each [character] as to various abilities". This had a significant impact on later character creations as "certain classes could only be taken up by characters with the right combination of statistics. As a result, players often" re-rolled characters until they ended up with the combination of ability scores they desired. The point buy system was originally added as an optional ruleset in the second edition supplement Player's Option: Skills & Powers (1995) and while it is "largely incompatible with most of the other books released for AD&D second edition" it still "proved very popular among fans". "A point system to ensure total player control over the character's attributes while at the same time limiting just how powerful the character could become […] [was] formalized in the third edition".

There are now several methods of determining a character's initial ability scores during character creation:

Rolling dice (3d6): This is the standard method for the original edition. For each ability score, the player rolls 3d6, and adds the values, resulting in scores ranging from three to eighteen, averaging between 10 and 11.
Rolling dice (4d6, keep 3): This is the standard method since 1st edition AD&D. For each ability score, the player rolls 4d6, and adds the three highest values, resulting in scores ranging from three to eighteen, skewed towards higher numbers, averaging 12.2446, though the most probable result is 13.
Predetermined array of scores: Each player uses the same set of numbers, choosing which ability score to apply them to.
Point buy: In the point buy system, a player has a certain number of points to spend on ability scores, and each score has a certain point cost affixed to it, where higher scores cost more points than lower ones.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dungeons & Dragons gameplay", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Paul & Dan chat with Jason Morningstar, creator of Fiasco, Desperation, and other great RPGs.

Jason Morningstar is an American indie role-playing game designer, publishing mostly through Bully Pulpit Games. Morningstar's games often lack a Game Master and are often set in situations that quickly go unfortunately for the player characters. Grey Ranks (2007), for example, is about doomed child soldiers in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and Fiasco (2009) is about impulsive crooks pulling heists that are sure to go terribly wrong. With these two games, Morningstar became the only named person to have won the Diana Jones award twice as of 2013. Morningstar also works with academia and industry, consulting on using games for teaching and learning in education, with a focus on health sciences.

Now, Jason's newest production provides "games of survival horror, often without the survival". Desperation is the engine that powers two unique and chilling experiences, built on the same dark tone and mechanics, that are truly pick-up-and-play experiences for you and your friends. The Desperation Engine is different because you don’t decide what is said—you decide who says it. And in a small community, who says “I burned a house down with the family trapped inside” makes all the difference in the world. The cards for each game include an entire claustrophobic world of characters that form a web of relationships you will then apply agonizing pressure to and, in most cases, destroy.

Find out more about Jason Morningstar's Desperation game here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan chat about the history of attempts to remove the DM from D&D games.

The Dungeon Master (DM) assumes the role of the game master or referee and describes for other players what they perceive in this imaginary world, and what effects their actions have. That person is responsible for preparing each game session, and must have a thorough understanding of the game rules.

The DM is responsible for narrative flow, creating the scenario and setting in which the game takes place, maintaining the pace and providing dynamic feedback. In storyteller role, the DM is responsible for describing the events of the D&D game session and making rulings about game situations and effects based on the decisions made by the players. The DM can develop the adventure plot and setting in which these PCs participate or use a preexisting module. This is typically designed as a type of decision tree that is followed by the players, and a customized version can require several hours of preparation for each hour spent playing the game.

The DM serves as the arbiter of the rules, both in teaching the rules to the players and in enforcing them. The rules provide game mechanics for resolving the outcome of events, including how the player's characters interact with the game world. Although the rules exist to provide a balanced game environment, the DM is free to ignore the rules as needed. The DM can modify, remove, or create entirely new rules in order to fit the rules to the current campaign.

Given all that -- it can be hard work to be a DM, and sometimes harder still to find a good one! The history of Dungeons & Dragons is littered with attempts to find ways to play without DM. We'll discuss the Blackmoor group's Dungeon! game, game books, computer games, DM-less games, and more.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul chat with Zach Glazar of Necromancer Games on their new Kickstarter!

Whisper & Venom, the acclaimed adventure setting, is being resurrected and expanded for Fifth Edition and Old-School Essentials. Originally released in 2013 by Necromancer Games’ very own Zach Glazar under his publishing venture Lesser Gnome, Whisper & Venom’s success was a surprise to everybody, especially its author. After many years of disingenuous promises, Whisper & Venom is here, and it is bigger, better, and more beautiful than ever.

It will be a full-color, hardcover book written for Old-School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome or the ever-popular Fifth Edition system. In addition, many of the options from the 2013 project will be available as add-ons, including the 28mm miniatures featuring a selection of notorious adversaries and hapless NPCs that appear inside the adventure. This new batch of 28mm miniatures will be cast from the original masters by Valiant Enterprises.

Whisper & Venom was written by Zach Glazar and John Hammerle as a tribute to the fantasy adventures and roleplaying game accessories of the 1980s. Following its release, Whisper & Venom proved to be a well-received title that was played and discussed more often than anyone, especially its author, expected. And we'll dig into Zach's thought process on that!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan is challenged by viewer Stephen Wendell to an old-school D&D Jousting tourney!

How was Jousting in Original D&D performed? It referred back to the mini-game in the pre-D&D Chainmail ruleset by Gygax and Perren. Players took the role of armored knights, and on each pass picked a defensive posture and an aiming point, and consulted a matrix for the effect of the pass. No dice or random outcomes involved, it's purely a test of player skill! Some of us still use it in our D&D games today, and it's a featured event every spring at GaryCon. Now, Wandering DMs patron Stephen Wendell has authored a strategy he thinks can unseat WDM Dan at one of his favorite games. Can he win the banner? We'll find out live!

From Original D&D Volume 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures -- "Fighting-Men within castles will demand a jousting match with all passersby of like class. Otherwise they will demand a toll of from 100 to 600 Gold Pieces from the party. If a joust takes place (use rules from CHAINMAIL) the occupant of the castle will take the loser's armor if he wins, but if the character wins the castle owner will host all in the party for up to one month, supply them with two weeks of rations, and provide warhorses (Heavy) if the party so requires."

From the Chainmail Rules for Medieval Miniatures -- "Each player selects an aiming point (his attack) and a position in the saddle (his defense). Note that the aiming paint will preclude certain defensive positions in mast, but not all, cases. The aiming point of each player is matched against the position of their opponent and the result found. Results can vary from both opponents missing to both being unhorsed, as a study of the jousting Matrix will reveal. (See Appendix C.)"

Read Stephen's strategy analysis on his Donjon Lands blog
And read about Stephen's upcoming "Blue Flame, Tiny Stars"

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan discuss the presence of Dinosaurs in D&D!

Do you love D&D? Do you love Dinosaurs? Well, if you're like us, it's a lock you'll want to run your PCs up against these terrible lizards, and maybe part of your campaign is a "Lost World" where dinosaurs roam in great numbers. But is that a good idea, or does it break the idiom of the medieval fantasy world? Can dinosaurs be central to your campaign, or are they best left as rare side dressing? What's the best was to use them in your D&D games?

Gygax in the 1E Monster Manual: "Dinosaurs are reptiles, their name being derived from the Greek 'terrible lizard,' descended from a variety of the species called thecodonts. The two orders of dinosaurs are saurischians and ornisthischians. All carnivorous dinosaurs fall into the former order. All armored and/or horned dinosaurs fall into the latter order.

Because of the nature of time in planes where magic works, dinosaurs widely separote in time are discussed hereunder, for they can be found intermingled on some alternate world, strange plane, or isolated continent somewhere. Great detail will not be given to any one kind, but all major forms are depicted."

Watch paleontologist Mark Loewen as he reviews dinosaur movies for scientific accuracy in 2022

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul discuss Flanking and other combat options in D&D.

5th Edition D&D has several optional combat rules in the DMG: Flanking, Facing, and Diagonal movement. These echo rules laid down in earlier editions of D&D: all the way back to 1st Edition, and even before. And yet these rules remain highly contentious between different D&D play tables. Should you use them? Are they a net positive or negative to your game? What other ways are there to play around with these combat details, and others like backstabs, sneak attacks, withdrawals, and opportunity attacks?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan play a hot game of Fiasco with our best-ever gaming friends. This special episode recorded for Paul's birthday includes nearly two and a half hours of actual play with Dan, Paul, and friends!

The Hasty and the Hateful is a card playset for Fiasco 2nd Edition: "We race for the same reason we breathe—it is life, the connection to the pavement is like our connection to family. What we do isn't legal but we answer to the god of the stoplight and the nitrous injection. Some of us are dirtbags and some of us are millionaires, but on a quarter mile of two-lane the difference isn't relevant. We race. We go fast. We do crimes. We are family."

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul discuss the newest, diceless edition of the Fiasco RPG.

Fiasco is a role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, independently published by Bully Pulpit Games. It is marketed as a "GM-less game for 3–5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation". It is billed as "A game of powerful ambition and poor impulse control" and "inspired by cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong—films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan."

Fiasco was the winner of the eleventh Diana Jones Award and has been one of the featured games on Tabletop. In August 2019, Bully Pulpit Games introduced a card-based version of the game, which they launched on Kickstarter. Instead of dice and index cards, the boxed version uses decks of playing cards for playsets and an engine deck.

Watch the Wandering DMs prior live play of Fiasco here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

They've done a number of Dungeon Design Dashes before, but for the first time ever, Dan & Paul go to create a complete wilderness adventure in an hour live on camera. With no advance prep and no safety net, can they do it? Working from a map by Dyson Logos, and using Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design, plus other classic Dungeons & Dragons design tools & tricks, find out what Paul & Dan discover in this pumpkin-spice themed journey into the unexplored wild lands beyond the mountains.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan chat about the presence of giants in D&D from the elder times to now.

Giants are found in the legendary tales of all cultures around the world, and they're critical tentpoles in the D&D monster roster. In fact, arguably, they be the very first type of D&D monster -- when you're playing historical miniature wargames, just grab a miniature at a different scale and you have yourself a giant fantasy monster. The initial sequence of D&D monsters, which we now call "humanoids", were originally just called the "giant class".

In this episode Dan & Paul consider: How can you fold in classical creation myths, in which Giants are the progenitors of all later races, into your Dungeons & Dragons campaign? What are our favorite giant-based adventures and stories to mine for inspiration? Where did the menagerie of D&D giants come from? What's the best way to use them in your D&D game?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan reminisce on the Advanced D&D Gold Box computer game, Pool of Radiance.

Pool of Radiance was a role-playing video game developed and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc (SSI) in 1988. It was the first adaptation of TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) fantasy role-playing game for home computers, becoming the first episode in a four-part series of D&D computer adventure games. The other games in the "Gold Box" series used the game engine pioneered in Pool of Radiance, as did later D&D titles such as the Neverwinter Nights online game. Pool of Radiance takes place in the Forgotten Realms fantasy setting, with the action centered in and around the port city of Phlan.

As in traditional D&D games, the player starts by building a party of up to six characters, deciding the race, gender, class, and ability scores for each. The player's party is enlisted to help the settled part of the city by clearing out the marauding inhabitants that have taken over the surroundings. The characters move on from one area to another, battling bands of enemies as they go and ultimately confronting the powerful leader of the evil forces. During play, the player characters gain experience points, which allow them to increase their capabilities. The game primarily uses a first-person perspective, with the screen divided into sections to display pertinent textual information. During combat sequences, the display switches to a top-down "video game isometric" view.

Generally well received by the gaming press, Pool of Radiance won the Origins Award for "Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1988". Some reviewers criticized the game's similarities to other contemporary games and its slowness in places, but praised the game's graphics and its role-playing adventure and combat aspects. Also well-regarded was the ability to export player characters from Pool of Radiance to subsequent SSI games in the series.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul chat with award-winning comic creator Kieron Gillen on his new DIE RPG.

Kieron Gillen is one of our favorite comic authors working today -- he's written series for the X-Men, Avengers, Eternals, Star Wars, Warhammer, Starcraft, and many more. He's also worked as a game journalist and co-founded the site Rock Paper Shotgun. Now, on the tail of his recent 20-issue fantasy series, DIE, he breaks new ground with his own RPG set in that world, years in the making, and currently funding on Kickstarter.

DIE is a tabletop roleplaying game about fantasy versus reality, and poses the question of why we play games at all. The comic it’s based upon is occasionally jokingly described as “goth Jumanji”; DIE the RPG is designed from the ground up to let a group of players make their own personal version of the comic. In DIE you play a group of authentically flawed people from the real world who gather together to play an RPG and are dragged into a fantasy realm. They then have to find their way home… or not.

“A deliciously dark Phantom Tollbooth-like journey told through a lens of broken humanity and a deconstruction of the role-playing game’s roots. I am entranced."

Matthew Mercer, Critical Role

Back the DIE RPG on Kickstarter
Watch a DIE actual-play session
Buy the DIE comic series
Follow Kieron on Twitter

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul review our favorite Wild West RPGs.

Some gamers argue that any fantasy or sci-fi RPG, including Dungeons & Dragons, is mostly Wild West plot tropes covered over with fantasy dressing. How true is that? How much influence did the development of Western RPGs have on mainline D&D at the outset? How easy or successful have you been at crossing over from Western to full-blown Fantasy in the same game campaign?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul catch up with James Maliszewski of Grognardia on his "House of Worms" campaign!

Have you ever managed to run a D&D campaign for 7 years and counting? Well, James Maliszewski has in his long-running Empire of the Petal Throne campaign -- so we wanted to get his advice and hear about how to keep a campaign fresh, exciting, and players returning for more. Plus catch up on his prodigious ongoing output at the Grognardia blog, the Hall of Blue Illumination podcast, The Excellent Travelling Volume EPT zine, and his upcoming Secrets of sha-Arthan. How on Tékumel does he do it?

Read the Grognardia blog
Listen to the Hall of Blue Illumination podcast
Check out The Excellent Travelling Volume zine

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Paul & Dan interview Spencer Crittenden, the GM on HarmonQuest and other shows!

Spencer Crittenden is one of our favorite famous DMs. He ran the game on Dan Harmon's HarmonQuest as, of course, The Game Master. He's also been a regular on HarmonTown, Great Minds with Dan Harmon, and appeared on Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Now he hosts the That Happens podcast with Jeff Bryan Davis, and produces D&D content on his YouTube channel for Patreon subscribers. Lets find out his unique take on DM'ing in front of the hot lights!

Watch and listen to Spencer's That Happens podcast
Subscribe to his YouTube channel
Join his Patreon

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Christian & crew recap our Inner System Blues cyberpunk game in the 2400 system.

Let's chat about the 2400 game system we used for our Inner System Blues cyberpunk game. What worked well? What could possibly be improved?

Check out Inner System Blues here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Isabelle assess the D&D art of the 90's.

Brooklyn-based fine artist Isabelle Garbani joins us again for another installment of "Art of D&D": this time, in the 1990's, the era of 2nd Edition AD&D (leading to the last gasps of TSR, and its acquisition by Wizards of the Coast). It was a time of wild experimentation with many different campaign settings: Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and more. How well did the art follow that expedition, and what kinds of artistic discoveries were made possible? Featuring art by Brom, Fred Fields, Jeff Easley, Tony Diterlizzi, and more.

Watch Isabelle in the scary short The Perfect Daughter

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul interview Karen Twelves, author of "Improv for Gamers".

The Wandering DMs love improv and think using tools from that field are essential to a great D&D game. In this episode we get to interview Karen Twelves, the author of one of our favorite books, "Improv for Gamers", now being crowdfunded for a revised second edition. Based on hundreds of hours of professional workshops, Improv for Gamers provides fun and easy exercises designed to take your tabletop or live-action gaming group to the next level. Play one or two before your next session to get players warmed up and engaged, or take a deep dive into developing a particular skill!

Back the Improv for Gamers project at Gamefound
Watch Dan & Paul's prior chat about improv in WDMs Season 1, Episode 2

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Christian & crew conclude our Inner System Blues cyberpunk game in the 2400 system.

Amidst the burning wreckage of a carrier ship, a violent storm at sea, gunfire from guards and drones -- what else could go wrong? The TDR crew will explore all the possibilities extensively. See Thinkbot's true face revealed! Gasp at BECCA's fast and furious driving! Bemuse at Victor and KIT-95's co-parenting choices!

Check out Inner System Blues here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Paul review the history of Golems in D&D.

It's been said that the Golem is "a highly mutable metaphor with seemingly limitless symbolism". Springing from Jewish folklore, the Golem represents a powerful but dimly aware, perhaps overly-literal, servant. As such, it's the possibly original inspiration for stories about out-of-control scientific monsters, robots, and AI (as well summoned stalkers and wish spells in D&D). In original D&D, they are the mightiest of fighters, and share the trait of complete immunity to nearly all magic effects. Do they provide good thematic flavor in D&D? Are their mechanics solid, or too much of a player screw-job? How have they evolved over the ages?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Christian & crew continue our Inner System Blues cyberpunk game in the 2400 system.

In Inner System Blues part III, the NULL crew of KIT, BECCA, ThinkBot, and Victor finally get aboard the giant burning out-of-control car carrier ship they're tasked with burgling. As usual, their entry plan works perfectly, and then things start going elliptical. A tragic subplot of romantically entangled robots is revealed. What qualifies as the coolest car is extensively debated. And someone gets shot.

Check out Inner System Blues here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Paul reflect on their first "house con" in three years.

In normal times, Dan, Paul & their friends have a private "house convention" for a weekend each spring. That was put on hold the last few years due to COVID, but now we're back! After a long weekend of wall-to-wall gaming on the New England seacoast, Paul & Dan reflect on what it's like to be back gaming in person after a long hiatus. Plus special guest Rebecca Kinraide.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Dan & Paul discuss our most influential fantasy readings.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Can the gang break out of the trap at Arasaki Geo Tech industrial park?

Christian & company continue our Inner System Blues cyberpunk game series in the 2400 system. Having raised the alarm on the industrial park break-in last time, Victor, BECCA, and Thinkbot need to think fast and find a way out of cages, armed guards, and flying drones. Will a run of natural-1's seal their fate? Plus: existential cyber-dilemmas (to backup or not to backup), and folks who are possibly a bit too into robots.

Check out Inner System Blues here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Paul talk to legendary fantasy & horror writer Ramsey Campbell!

The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. He's been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. We get to speak with him live about his new book, "The Way of the Worm", the finale of The Three Births of Daoloth trilogy.

Review of The Way of the Worm in the Guardian:

"The concluding volume of the Three Births of Daoloth trilogy brings the story of Dominic Sheldrake’s lifelong struggle against a sinister cult into the present day. The cult has become a worldwide religion, the Church of the Eternal Three, and Dom’s own son is a member. The previous book held out the faint possibility that Dom had been driven mad by his own paranoid obsession, but this astonishing, apocalyptic conclusion does not. Although now better known for his subtler evocations of unease, Campbell’s early stories were heavily influenced by HP Lovecraft. Here he returns to his roots, even outdoing Lovecraft in his depictions of full-on cosmic terror."

Get The Way of the Worm from Flame Tree Publishing
And follow Ramsey on Twitter

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

New cyberpunk PCs get made live, and a very hot & wet mission is put forth.

We start a new cyberpunk series, with Christian running the Inner System Blues system for 2400. Special guest Dan Collins fills in as a player for Paul. We make new characters live: how many androids and how many humans? Their contact Metal Mouth puts forward a proposal to steal cars from a super cargo ship burning at sea, but where is it? They'll need to break into an Arasaki Geo Tech industrial park first to find out! Also: crocodiles.

Check out Inner System Blues here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Paul a high-level dungeon, live in one hour!

Hey, what's that flying rock overhead, and what are those dark winged shapes flying around it? Only the bravest of superheroes and wizards dare explore it. Let's find out what sinister traps the lich has laid for them…

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

The wrap & retrospective of our Kids on Bikes live play series. What did you think?

Check out Kids on Bikes here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Frog God Games tell us about their new adventure path & temples sourcebook.

We're joined by Jeff Harkness & Gary Schotter to tell us about Frog God Games' upcoming mega-campaign "Splinters of Faith". How easy is it to structure a level 1 to 15 adventure path? Why did they design temples of every type to fill a whole continent? What's it like to bring old-school hard difficulty to a modern audience?

See a preview of Splinters of Faith here
Visit Frog God Games here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe for new episodes

The big finale of our game of Kids on Bikes run by Colleen. What is this strange new dark video game in the arcade? Perhaps the closing of the arcade is not the scariest thing the kids must face.

Check out Kids on Bikes here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Paul are joined by special Guest Luke Gygax to talk about the upcoming GaryCon XIV, the return to live conventions, and navigating how to keep everyone safe & secure. Plus we'll talk about his own adventures in the World of Okkorim and other projects!

Register now for GaryCon XIV live and virtual events
Check out Luke's own adventures at DriveThruRPG

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

We continue our game of Kids on Bikes run by Colleen. What is this strange new dark video game in the arcade? Perhaps the closing of the arcade is not the scariest thing the kids must face.

Check out Kids on Bikes here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Paul & Dan have a spirited discussion on Challenge Ratings -- as well as Monster Levels from classic D&D, the Monster Mark system from White Dwarf, Equivalent Hit Dice, and other ways of measuring a monster's threat. Do they address any useful goal in D&D? How hard or easy is to compute them for a new monster? Can they ever be reliable, or are they just random noise?

Get Dan's Monster Database for OD&D and software tools for measuring risk level
Read Dan's thesis on simulation for game design balancing

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

We continue our game of Kids on Bikes run by Colleen. Can Stan and Stan save the Arcace / Tackle Shop? Will Walleye Vance win the Crocaqotaqua Fishing Festival again? And will we find out what exactly is at the bottom of the old gorge?

Check out Kids on Bikes here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan hosts special guests Greg Svenson (a.k.a "The Great Svenny" from Dave Arneson's Blackmoor) and D&D archaeologist D.H. Boggs to talk about their presentation of "The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg". How can there be a D&D dungeon that predates D&D ever being published? Because Greg was in on the ground floor and made his dungeon before the public knew D&D was coming to change the world. Let's dig into that early creation and the story of its rediscovery!

Order a copy of the Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

This week we kick off our game of Kids on Bikes run by Colleen! Radical!

Check out Kids on Bikes here

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Paul dive back into AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition for examples of adventures that played out edition-shifts in real-time in the campaign world of the time. In Greyhawk we had "Fate of Istus"; in Forgotten Realms we had the "Avatar Trilogy". How well did these adventures work? Was it really necessary to play out the rules-change events in-game? Should we do it again the future (like post-5E D&D)?

Watch our prior show on Changing Editions in D&D

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The Wandering DMs host the guys from Nerdarchy -- Ted, Dave, and Doug -- to tell us about their new product for D&D 5E: Mage Forge! Over 250 new magic items with full descriptions and art, in a handy tarot-card size format. We're big fans of card-style accessories to make passing info at the table easy, so want to hear their ideas and future plans.

Join the Mage Forge Kickstarter
Subscribe to Nerdarchy on YouTube

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

There's a new edition of D&D on the horizon. Dan & Paul discuss the issues & experiences of prior edition switches to the game. Should changes be widespread, or more restrained? Is back-compatibility possible, or a reasonable goal? Can PCs be converted between editions?

WOTC announces the next D&D
Quote by Ray Winninger
New back-compatible book

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

For the season opener of TDR we review the Ten Dead Rats campaign that spawned this show! And we'll announce the GM and system for our first game of the season!

The TDR crew play short series of unique roleplaying games, then analyze what worked and what needs work at the end of each game. The GM changes but the fun remains the same every week on TDR!

Dan & Paul are back with another design-dash challenge. Can they stock a whole dungeon in a single hour this time? Can they deal with the discovery of a beast that's not even in the Monster Manual?

Get Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul discuss our joy for the classic 80's digitally-assisted boardgame Dark Tower, and the new app-enabled Return to Dark Tower out this year. Does the sequel live up to our memories? Is the expansion worthwhile? Are there tradeoffs to having an electronic device at the heart of a boardgame?

And in case you have the classic boardgame but a no functioning tower, check out these handy apps to fill in the gaps:

For Android
For iOS

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

As 2021 comes to a close, Dan & Paul reflect on the year that's gone by and the 3rd Season of Wandering DMs. Some our favorites, some of our bombs, and some things we've rethought thanks to our top-shelf brilliant viewers and patrons. Thank you!

Watch the Wandering DMs Season 3 Playlist

Check some of our favorite clips of the season!

Tim Kask on pronouncing Bulette
Jennell Jaquays on almost having the first-ever published dungeon
Peter Adkison on why he didn't hire Paul & Dan

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul chat with special guest Keith Ammann, author of the acclaimed book & blog, The Monsters Know What They're doing, about his upcoming sequel MOAR! We'll get into how Keith has advanced the state of the art for 5E monster tactics, special environments to watch out for, and best to use some old-school monsters in your 5E D&D games.

Preorder Keith's book MOAR! now
Check out Keith's Monsters Know What They're Doing blog
And look for Stonesky Delve that Paul's recommended

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Paul & Dan discuss the role of Player Narrative Control, and whether it has any place in D&D or not. Does it increase engagement with players in the game, or does it break the sense of role-playing immersion? Does it create an unacceptable burden on players of the game? Is there a difference for new vs. experienced RPG players? And what about other types of player contributions to the campaign?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul discuss Selecting Magic Items in your D&D campaign: What's the right level? How much is too much? What can you do later if you give the players an overpowered magic item?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Paul & Dan discuss Cursed Magic Items in a D&D. How often should they appear? How difficult to get rid of them? How has the philosophy changed across the editions? And what benefit do they bring to the game, if any?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul discuss multi-party campaigns: How can a DM handle more than one play group marauding about a single world? How to handle interactions or conflict between the groups meeting in different places or days? How many is too many? Surely, strict time records must be kept.

Read the original West Marches blog posts by Ben Robbins

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul share ideas on how magic can be bought, sold, trading, exchanged, and maybe leased in your D&D games. Is it a good idea at all? Can PCs freely sell their hard-earned magic items? Is your DM more relaxed about potions & scrolls, vs. more durable magic goods? Do magic shops exist in your world?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Paul & Dan discussing playtesting your new game or adventure design. Is it worthwhile doing it? What amount is valuable? How do you do it? When do you know your game design is done and ready for the public?

Dan's Java testing tools for Original D&D
Random Wizard's web-based demo version of those tools
Dan's "Point-Buy Systems Considered Harmful/Acid Test is Gameplay" manifesto

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Paul & Dan take an old-school spin on Vampires in D&D games. Why were they considered "the most dreaded" of all the original D&D monsters? What pop traditions influence your vampires the most? How many unique subsystem spun off from their inclusion in the game -- clerics, undead turning, classed monsters, and more? With a lively chat and support from the Wandering DMs crack research squad!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul discuss how best to get your D&D sessions in jump-scare mode for a thrilling October!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul buckle in to complete their one-page live dungeon design with a hard limit in their 2nd hour! This time they're focused on laying a bunch of fiendish traps, tricks, and puzzles to confound the unwary adventurers. What will they come up with? And are the live viewers even more crafty than they are?

See Dan's OED Traps Digest that we use to generate ideas in a jiffy

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul get to speak with Michael Curtis -- creator of the acclaimed OSR Stonehell Dungeon, the Dungeon Alphabet, and contributor to over 60 titles in Dungeon Crawl Classics other Goodman Games products. And more: he's just been announced as the brand-new Director of Product Development for DCC. We'll take the opportunity to reflect with him on how Stonehell has passed the test of time, and what's next for the OSR and DCC!

Get Michael's Stonehell Dungeon on Lulu
See Michael's new position announcement at Goodman Games

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul set themselves a challenging design goal -- can they build an entire dungeon adventure, live on air, in a single hour? Will they collapse under the burden? Maybe with help from our live viewers they can fight through to final victory!

Get Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design (which we use for idea generation)
Read up on the Target 20 system (which we use for super-fast old-school combat resolution)
Get the free OED Traps Digest (which we'll use in our next design-dash episode!)

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan interviews Timm Woods -- pro DM, PhD in English literature, and now designer of The Green Knight RPG in association with the movie by A24 Films! We loved the film -- written & directed by David Lowery and starring Dev Patel, perfect for thoughtful fantasy gamers. So we wanted to hear all about what it was like for Timm to synch up with a movie production cycle, what his design motivations were for an RPG welcoming to people who've never played one before, and what experiences from his pro DM'ing were brought to bear. It's a unique interview and perspective!

See The Green Knight film, now in theaters and everywhere you rent movies
Read the director's note on the film
Get The Green Knight RPG
And visit Timm's DM'ing website!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul get to sit with legendary gaming mogul Peter Adkison -- game designer, founder of Wizards of the Coast, rescuer of TSR and Dungeons & Dragons, owner and co-chair of the Gen Con gaming convention, and so much more! We're eager to hear from him about the unique plans around this first-ever Gen Con in September of this year. Plus questions about what it was like to run WOTC, Magic the Gathering, acquire D&D, and design his own RPGs like Primal Order and the 40-year World of Chaldea campaign. This should be big!

Register and follow for Gen Con 2021:

Info & registration
Gen Con on Twitch
Gen Con on YouTube

Check out Peter's epic World of Chaldea campaign play:

Home website
Full episodes on YouTube

And watch our past interviews with other great guests mentioned today:

R.A. Salvatore
Sean K. Reynolds
James Mendes Hodes

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul are joined by Mark Greenberg from Necromancer Games to chat about the new revision to Necropolis. Based on the original work by the grandmaster himself, Gary Gygax, Necropolis is an epic desert adventure series for 5e D&D and Swords & Wizardry. Previously published by Necromancer Games as a d20 system adventure, it's been entirely updated and revised by Mark, co-author of The World of the Lost Lands by Frog God Games. We've been fans of Necropolis for a long time, and people are literally dying to find out more!

Join the Kickstarter for the new Necropolis
Watch Dan & Paul play the original Tomb of Ra-Hotep with Web DM last Halloween
Check out our Season 1 chat on the Tomb of Horrors
Watch our last interview with Jon Peterson
And our talk with Zach Howard on his Holmes' Tower of Zenopus 5E update
Finally, read Stephen Buckley's article this week on "Meet the Tomb of Horrors" at Cracked!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Polymorphing magic, druidic shapeshifting, and more -- shapechanging is one of the trickiest things in D&D to get right. How has it changed over the years? Is it overpowered, underpowered, or just right? And what's the best way to handle it in your games? Dan & Paul hash it out with help from our viewers.

See RPGBot's 5E Practical Guide to Polymorph
Check out the Andy Collins article that removed Polymorph from the entire D&D 3.5 system (via Wayback Machine)
Also read Dan's blog on Polymorph Through the Ages
Plus a handy chart of Polymorph spell features through early game editions

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul roll up their sleeves to debate the best use of unarmed combat in your D&D games. Pummeling, grappling, overbearing and more -- how often does this get used in your games? What's your favorite style? What's the best way of handling it from all the editions of D&D? Queensbury Rules and other variants welcome.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Paul & Dan are joined by Peter Bebergal, author of the amazing anthology Appendix N: the Eldritch Roots of Dungeons & Dragons! We loved this book, and we're looking forward to a deep dive into Peter's knowledge of the texts, why he picked the stories he did for inclusion, and why other ones got left out. Featuring short stories from fantasy writers like Lovecraft, Howard, Vance, Anderson, Carter, Smith, Moorcock, Campbell, and more. Discover some new stuff you didn't know you loved!

Get Peter's Appendix N Anthology

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons

Dan & Paul are joined by Goodman Games' Julian Bernick and Bob Brinkman -- to talk about their upcoming magnum opus for the DCC Dying Earth game! D&D wouldn't be a thing without Jack Vance's Dying Earth, and Dungeon Crawl Classics has long crushed it with old-school gaming, so we couldn't be more excited by their new Kickstarter. With joint work by Julian, Bob, Marc Bruner, Michael Curtis, Doug Kovacs, Erol Otus, and more… get your Overworld-Eyes on and check out the magnificence!

Join the DCC dying Earth Kickstarter here!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The exciting finale of our end of season 3 special - GoGoGolf GMed by Christian! Will our group of dungeon inspectors find where they put the golf in this dungeon? Or at least figure out where the pool is? And was that a duck?

Check out GoGoGolf! here: https://gumroad.com/l/gogogolf

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan, Paul, and our viewers hold a round-table to discuss our favorite procedural-content-generators to save time for the burdened DM. Books, tables, and programs that create characters, monsters, encounters, treasures, dungeons, caves, cities, countries, and whole worlds -- we've got it all!

Check out some of the products & web tools we highlighted:

Paul's OED Character Generator
Dan's OED Arena Tool Suite
Dyson Logos' Geomorphs
Paul's Geomorph Painter
Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design
Tony Dowler's How to Host a Dungeon
Stephen Wendell's Flying Dungeon Stocking Tables
Emily's Fantasy Name Generators
Gozzy's Dungeon & Cave Generators
Watabou's City & Village Generators
Alex Schroeder's Hex Describe
Inspiration Pad Pro

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul investigate the history of Bards throughout the editions of D&D. Did you know that in 1st Edition Bards were considered the apex predator, the peak of powergamers dreams? What level of strength is appropriate in the game? How did that idea inspire Prestige Classes in the 3E/d20 System/Pathfinder? And what bits from real history have yet to be delved into?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

At the end of season 3 we decided to play a quick special game of GoGoGolf GMed by Christian! Check out this silly romp with plenty of golf related puns, talking inanimate objects (and goo!), and our typical nonsensical shenanigans.

Check out GoGoGolf! here!

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul & Dan are excited to be joined by Jim Davis and Jonathan Pruitt, co-hosts and co-creators of Web DM! Where we'll get the chat all about their new book -- Worlds of Web DM: Weird Wastelands, a location-based toolkit that gives the DM a trove of ideas to play games in places adversely affected by magical forces. Their new Kickstarter has smashed its goal and beginning tiers on just the first day. Join us of we delve into more secrets of the wastelands!

Back the Weird Wastelands Kickstarter here
Follow Web DM on YouTube

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul are joined by famed OSR Grognardia blogger James Maliszewski, to talk about mixing Science Fiction in your Fantasy. An expert in both classic D&D and M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel (Empire of the Petal Throne), we can't wait to hear James' best-practice experience, advice, and what he has planned for upcoming campaign releases. Is it even true not long ago fantasy & science weren't considered separate genres?

Read James' blog at Grognardia
Get the latest issue of The Excellent Travelling Volume on Tekumel here
More classic TETV issues here
And read Dan's blog on Lovecraft as the Root of Appendix N

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan is joined once again by Brooklyn-based artist Isabelle Garbani for another chapter in their ongoing exploration of the history of art in Dungeons & Dragons. It's sure to be another discussion full of surprises: a study in contrasts between Dan, who's drenched in the works of his lifelong study, and Isabelle, who brings a top-trained artist's eye to the work for the very first time. Featuring the 1980's work of Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Keith Parkinson, and more.

View Larry Elmore's website
View Clyde Caldwell's website
View Keith Parkinson's website
View Käthe Kollwitz at MoMA
Visit Isabelle's art website here
Watch Art of D&D Vol. 1 (The 70's) here
Watch Eat, Plague, Love with Isabelle here
And watch Isabelle play in the Book of War series

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

In the season 3 finale the gang finds themselves fighting a large group of skaven and beastmen, with the help of a few of Middenheim's own military leaders, and bar-hopping across town in the company of the ever colorful Doctor Luigi Pavarotti. Will they take advantage of their newfound notoriety and well connected friends to untangle the mysteries plaguing Middenheim, or fall to squabbling and in-fighting?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul are joined by special guest Matt Finch: Creator of the award-winning Swords & Wizardry retroclone of OD&D, author of the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, designer of lots of adventures, founding partner and Creative Director for Frog God Games. What's Uncle Matt up to right now? We'll ask him about how his perspective towards old-school has evolved in a decade on from the OSR, and a year spent online.

Watch Matt's YouTube channel
Read the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming
Start playing Swords & Wizardry!
See Matt's most recent adventure, "Death Ship of the Roach Princess"
Read the Dicebreaker article on OD&D quoting Dan & Matt

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

From enjoying the Festival of Fine Ales to attending a fancy dinner party and an opera, the gang attempts to disentangle the mysterious network of influence around the Graf of Middenheim while enjoying the delights of the Carnival.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul & Dan have a thoughtful conversation on Thieves' Guilds in D&D and other RPGs: Does one prominently feature in your campaign? Does it exclude the non-thief players? Is it a better engine for group adventures, or solo play? And: was it ever a thing in the real world?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang meet with a vampire and some elves, and discusses the problem of the taxes. Indigo faces off against Dieter for the title of the Graf's Champion.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul & Dan are joined by special guests Satine Phoenix & Jamison Stone, co-creators of the upcoming product from Apotheosis Studios, Sirens: Battle of the Bards -- an epic 300-page campaign for 5E D&D, featuring a revolution in a fantasy city led by artists and bards! What led Satine & Jamison to that bold concept? What new rules expansions is she bringing to Bards in 5E? And how's that Kickstarter going?

Join the Sirens: Battle of the Bards Kickstarter! -- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stonejamison/sirens-battle-of-the-bards?ref=3joxsb Follow Satine on Twitter -- https://twitter.com/satinephoenix Follow Jamison on Twitter -- https://twitter.com/StoneJamison And watch Satine's Twitch channel -- https://www.twitch.tv/satinephoenix Check out the Apotheosis Studios website -- https://apotheosisstudios.com/

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

With Bruno off in search of high end snuff, the rest of the party infiltrates the den of narap dealers, but what they find there is far from what they expected. Will they earn the trust of a high official of Middenheim, and will Yeffe be able to contain her ever increasing thirst for blood?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul & Dan discuss the old rule in Original and 1st Edition D&D where Fighters get as many attacks per turn as their level vs. low-level opponents. What classic fiction inspired this rule? Is it a good idea, and should we bring it back today? And since the books never give it a name, what in tarnation should we all call it?!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Yeffi makes a date with an elf, Mina falls in love over tea, Bruno acquires a new mortal enemy, and Indigo buys some meat on a stick. Can they figure out how to mingle in polite society, win the position of Champion of the Graf, and track down the local drug ring?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul are joined by special guest Tim Kask (really!): Game designer, editor of the Original Dungeons & Dragons Supplements (including works by Gygax and Arneson), inaugural editor of Dragon Magazine, YouTuber, wargamer, and so much more! We'll bend his ear for insights into Original D&D, the challenges in polishing it for the market, and his thoughts on gaming today. Don't miss this one!

Subscribe to Tim's YouTube channel here -- https://www.youtube.com/user/kaskoid Watch Tim's explanation of the "Wheel of Blame" game format -- https://youtu.be/ecdeBrXYum8 Then watch Tim play a princess in the Excellents (with Peter Adkison, Stefan Pokorny, and Mike Pondsmith) -- https://youtu.be/GUvvSOPa2_M And see our prior interview with Adriel Wilson, designer of the Excellents -- https://youtu.be/Sy6gTKBGG_Q

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang approaches Middenheim and does their best to avoid the tax-man. Will they make it into town with their coin-purses in tact?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

What notes do you make when preparing to run a published module? Do you find it's necessary for every adventure you run, or do you manage to avoid it most of the time? What format of adventure publication works best to reduce advance note-taking? Do you like more text or less? Dan and Paul share and debate our differing opinions, with the help of our viewers.

Watch the Wandering DMs play Dyson's Delve (24 hours of live gaming) here!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang spends some time talking to ghosts, and ends up with more questions than answers. Should they trust the Grand Theogonist, or Al-Ulric, or any high priest for that matter?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

It's the 50th anniversary of the Chainmail game being published; miniature combat for medieval armies by Gary Gygax & Jeff Perren. With a little appendix known as the "Fantasy Supplement" including rules for elves, dwarves, wizards, and dragons that players went nuts for and spawned a little thing called Dungeon & Dragons. Does it stand the test of time? What bits do we still use to inform our D&D games today, and what parts are better left behind and replaced?

Get the original Chainmail miniature rules at DriveThruRPG!

Watch Paul Stormberg's video on the history of Chainmail -- https://youtu.be/82b059ydfko Get Dan's Book of War game -- http://www.oedgames.com/ Get Paul's ODD Encounters skirmish rules -- https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2020/03/book-of-war-skirmish-rules-odd.html

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul are joined by long-time RPG design star Jennell Jaquays for a special interview. We plan to get some inside information on her creation of the legendary Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia D&D adventures for Judges Guild (two of our favorite scenarios ever). Plus design, artwork, and illustrations over the years for TSR, Chaosium, West End Games, ICE, GDW. And video game work on titles like Donkey Kong, Age of Empires, Quake, and more. As well as a packed-full pipeline of upcoming new stuff for 5E D&D!

Check out some of Jennell's adventure products we discussed: The Dragon's Secret -- https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/247579/The-Dragons-Secret-Dungeons-of-Doom-edition Quack Keep -- https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/247210/Quack-Keep Talons of Night -- https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17138/M5-Talons-of-Night-Basic Judges' Guild Collector's Edition -- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/devillich/judges-guild-deluxe-collectors-edition

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes – https://wanderingdms.com/sub

Dan & Paul discuss the state of the Roads and Highways in our D&D campaign worlds. The original editions of D&D didn't give any specific rules for them, and all adventuring was presumed to be in untracked wilderness. But most of our PCs travel seem to be on the major thoroughfares between cities. What's the best way to fill in that gap?

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Inspired by our discussion last week with writer Ethan Gilsdorf, Dan and and Paul continue the thread: Are there benefits to playing D&D for other parts of your life, other than just a fun pastime? We have strong opinions on this one. But do they agree?

Be sure to watch our friend Ethen Gilsdorf's TEDx Talk on the same subject, too.

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang finds more ways to have fun with the invisibility spell, Yeffi drinks the stew, and Bruno helps the Grand Theogonist receive a vision from Sigmar. But are the Sigmarites really the saviors of the Empire, or is something else nefarious brewing?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Dan & Paul are visited by special guest Ethan Gilsdorf -- Journalist, memoirist, essayist, critic, poet, and teacher. Author of the seminal book, "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks", documenting a year of traveling and speaking with the people involved with D&D, TTRPGs, LARPs, comic conventions, Renaissance fairs, and more. Featured on NPR, The Discovery Channel, PBS, CBC, BBC, Mortified, and in the documentary Revenge of the Geeks. And much more!

We'll ask him: How has D&D and gaming culture exploded in the decade since "Freaks" was published, in ways that none of us could have imagined? Has the rise of online play and visibility changed everything forever? And more question from our viewers in live chat!

Visit Ethan's website -- http://www.ethangilsdorf.com
Follow Ethan on Twitter -- https://twitter.com/ethanfreak
Watch Ethan's documentary videos -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0IW6ldnGAgXgshIsB2c1sF2viMsYy5FD
View Ethan's TEDx talk, "Why Dungeons & Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life)" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PaHJqpQnyw&t=745s
Read a synopsis and first chapter of "Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks" -- http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/synopsis

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Yeffi finds more clues of larger goings on in the Empire at the Orlock estate, and the gang decides to hit the road to Middenheim. Rising tensions between the Cults of Sigmar and Ulric, however, threaten to impede their journey.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Luke Gygax joins Dan & Paul to talk about the upcoming Gary Con XIII in a few weeks, the rise and transition to online gaming in the last year, writing and running tournament adventures, gaming with his father, and a whole lot more. Plus a little friendly gloating gloating over the drubbing he gave Dan in The Big Bad Season 1. And more surprises!

Get involved with Gary Con XIII -- play.garycon.com Follow Luke's channel on Twitch -- https://www.twitch.tv/garycongaxmoor

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Indigo mobilizes a group of commandos, Yeffi contemplates the taste of blood, Bruno almost gets a pair of pants, and Mina breaks Bruno's heart and other things. All this and a great golden dwarf to boot in the latest episode of Ten Dead Rats.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Dan & Paul are joined by special guest Jonathan Tweet! The lead designer on D&D 3E and principal author of the 3E Player's Handbook. Lead designer of the early 2000's D&D Chainmail Miniatures wargame. Designer of EVERWAY and co-designer on the revolutionary RPGs Ars Magica and 13th Age. Author of books and games teaching the science of evolution to preschoolers. And he has a new Kickstarter for the Everway RPG Silver Anniversary Edition. We've got so much to ask him about!

Follow Jonathan on Twitter – https://twitter.com/JonathanMTweet Visit Jonathan’s science-for-kids website – http://www.grandmotherfish.com Support the Everway Anniversary Kickstarter – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jessemcgatha/everway-roleplaying-game

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Can you learn to play and run D&D by reading the Dungeon Masters' Guide? Should you? Is it a good read, or a bad one? Was it ever different in the past? What other resources are as good, or better? Dan & Paul have markedly different opinions on this one.

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The group goes out in search of their bald-headed halfling friend, and finds religion along the way. From fighting off skaven to investigating the dwarven engineering guild, they can't seem to avoid confronting the problem of how exactly to go about disposing of unwanted warpstone.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

A Valentine's Day special: Dan is joined by Brooklyn food artist Isabelle Garbani to talk about food and surviving a plague in the Middle Ages. Gather your loved ones close for this one. Where are those disease tables?

Thy Links, As Thou Wishest:

"Introduction to the Decameron" by Rivka Galchen -- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/07/magazine/what-is-the-decameron.html "What We Eat During a Plague" by Michael Snyder -- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/t-magazine/eating-food-during-plague.html Decameron on the Web at Brown University -- https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/the_project/

The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Compiled, about A.D. 1390 -- http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8102 Le viandier de Taillevent by Taillevent (in French) -- http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26567 Sur les routes du Pays Cathare (making bread with ancient grains, in French) -- https://youtu.be/ix21SPhGGl0?t=551

D&D Art (1974-1980) with Dan & Isabelle -- https://youtu.be/bFJOuDtvZnQ Food in D&D (WDMs' White Gold Cookie recipe) -- https://youtu.be/AmOyCwEwyG4 Isabelle's Cow and Covid19 channel (pandemic & puppets) -- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Wi6XhseT4RcxkeQoEBKGw

Thanks to viewer Jerry McDonnell for the title to this episode -- https://twitter.com/jdmcdonnell

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

As the gang debates whether or not to follow the skaven invaders, something unusual happens in the Chaos Terrarium. Will Bruno be able to keep control of Francis, or is this just Gutbag all over again?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Dan & Paul get to chat with Jon Peterson, eminent historian of D&D and other TTRPGs. We've loved his earlier work, Playing at the World, to death -- and now we get to chat up his newest book, The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity! We explore his key observation that RPGs combined threads from two sometimes-combative camps of wargames vs. fantasy storytelling. (A lot like we have on the Wandering DMs channel itself!) What was the first game to model story dynamics instead of real-world physics? (We were shocked at how early that was!) And how have shifts in the culture transformed our games, and vice-versa?

Visit dScryb, purveyors of finely crafted boxed text, and use code WANDERING at checkout to save 10%! – https://dscryb.com/wandering

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Further exploration of Castle Witgenstein reveal that the party may not be the only uninvited guests in the castle tonight. But can they stop bickering about ethics long enough to deal with this new threat?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul, Dan, and our live viewers discuss player-character expenses in D&D. A fool and his money are soon parted, but exactly how? What mixture of expenses is right for the DM to make the game balanced and rewarding? We discuss purchasing equipment, potions & scrolls, hiring specialists, big-ticket items like ships, general upkeep, major construction and carousing! Plus some other stuff from the first edition of the game you may have never heard about -- but should try!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul get to chat with Griffith M. Morgan III, Writer and Directors of the Secrets of Blackmoor film -- documenting Griff's 6-year epic series of investigations and interviews with all the personalities around the Twin Cities gaming scene, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, and the earliest inception of TTRPGs as we know it. We get to hear Griff's ultimate takeaways from how things were done in the earliest days, thoughts about how D&D changed as a commercial product, looseness and customization of the DM playstyle, and evolutions over the years. Celebrating the 50 anniversary of Arneson inventing Blackmoor and dungeon-crawling RPGs!

Visit the Secrets of Blackmoor website for blogs & updates on release of the film -- https://www.secretsofblackmoor.com/

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang continues to explore the interior of Castle Witgenstein, and declares "This Castle Sucks!" Will they finally locate Lady Margritte, and if so, will she deliver the answers they're after?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul discuss Critical Hits in D&D and other TTRPGs: Where did they come from, how many styles and experiments have we seen over the years, what are our current preferences? (We don't agree on everything!) Did the original creators see that as an essential part of the system or not? What about the wargame tradition? Should there be a distinction between hit-locations versus extra-damage? Are criticals against PCs worse than against NPCs? What kinds of mechanics remain to be explored?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

With Bruno fast asleep from eating some suspicious mushrooms, the rest of the gang must find a way to the inner bailey of Castle Witgenstein. Will they find a way of circumventing the guard without anyone losing their head?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul & Dan discuss the pros & cons of keeping your rosters, records, PC sheets, spells, and rules in a physical-vs-virtual format. In the online gaming era: do you still keep your physical books, or have you transitioned everything into a digital format? What about handouts, illustrations, and player maps? Are some thing better in the online format, other things better with physical copies? And what about paying for digital assets?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang is back, at last ready to try and infiltrate the spooky castle that nobody wants to go into. But first Indigo gets into an argument with some locals down at the pub, Mina experiments with smoking some rotten meat, Yeffi returns to her natural habitat (a backpack), and Bruno considers a new and unusual snack.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Barbarians in D&D: are they the new Fighter? Where pulp or literary traditions do they come from, and when did they first appear in the game? Have they always been the same as, or different from, Berserkers? Does it make sense that they were once restricted to Humans only?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul are joined by guests Max & Andy from Ten Dead Rats to close out our 2nd season with a special live play session: let's play Fiasco with the Touring Rock Band playset! Some of us are experts at Fiasco, and some have never played (guess who). Likewise, some of us have actually been in touring rock bands and others couldn't hold a note (guess who). A double-length episode is needed to fit all of hysterical laughter. Hope you come for the ride, too! See y'all next season.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes – https://wanderingdms.com/sub

The party heads into town and plans a visit to Dr. Rousseaux's. There they discover more about the goings on in Witgendorf than they ever imagined possible, leading Mina to conclude that it is truly, "the worst town ever".

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul discuss Dice Mechanics: How do you use them bones in your TTRPG games? Do you prefer the linear model of just a single d6 or d20? Or are multiple dice with bell-shaped results more interesting: summing dice, dice pools, Advantage and Disadvantage? What happens when you have opposing teams making opposed rolls against each other? And why do we use dice in the first place anyway?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The party journeys into the forrest outside of Witgendorf in search of their contact Bliktrund. While searching for the bandit camp, however, they find something far more nefarious lurking in the twisted wood.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

EDITOR'S NOTE - This episode is a bit shorter than usual due to unforeseen technical issues.

Paul & Dan discuss dice in D&D and other TTRPGS: Where did they come from, and what was the historical imperatives that dictated their current use? Would it be preferable to use all classic six-siders? How close was D&D to being a game of just d6's and d20's (and would that be more elegant)? What manufacturers have really made a unique stamp on the hobby? Are custom dice really useful at the table, or only an aesthetic choice?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Dan & Paul discuss Ability Scores for D&D player characters across the editions -- Options for how they're generated, what modifiers they produces, what in-game effects they have, and different ways to make an ability check. Considering all the different methods, do you prefer straight-roll, drop-lowest, point-buy, or standard array? Does the best choice differ if you have experienced players vs. newcomers? Bell-shaped or linear check systems? And when should raw ability outweigh experience level?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang returns to Kemperbad only to discover their pal Sergei doesn't have the quantities of product being demanded by Franc. A last minute plan is formulated to make a big score to get them out of their jam.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul discuss Grappling rules in D&D and other TTRPGs over the years and editions. Should it be simple or complex? How much detail do you want included? Does it warrant a unique subsystem, or should it connect to the core mechanic for other combat maneuvers, like swordplay? Where's the sweet spot? We dig deep into the texts for 5E, 3E, 1E, and Original D&D, as well as Boot Hill, Top Secret, Savage Worlds, d20 modern, and more.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Fearing the creepy castle that seems to inevitably call them towards it, the gang instead heads off to Altdorf to unload their cargo and try and learn a little more about the mysterious Von Wittgensteins. They also reconnect with their old pal Franc, share some laughs, and once again themselves in over their heads with notorious criminal elements.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul and Dan discuss running City Adventures in D&D and other RPGs. So many different mechanics have been tried over the years. What do the original texts say about cities -- or did they leave them entirely off-screen? What's the best way to map out a city: by individual buildings, streets, districts, or leave it theater-of-the mind? How can you run a chase scene in a city: use the street-level map, or keep it more abstract? Lessons from various books, modules, and other games: Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu, Top Secret, and more.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang returns to Kemperbad and plots their next step. There they meet up with an old friend, before setting off to the tower in hopes of finally putting use to Dagmar's balls.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul speak with special guest Shannon Applecline -- author of the 4-volume series (and counting!) Designers & Dragons, the most encyclopedic overview to date of RPG companies, products, and history across the decades. Plus he wrote all of the retrospective backgrounds for classic D&D products on the DM's Guild, DriveThruRPG, and D&D Classics websites. We caught up with him on the numerous books he's in the process of writing now: more updates and deep-dive to Designers & Dragons, the TSR Codex, a compendium on the works of Michael Moorcock (Elric and Stormbringer!), thoughts on publishing for TTRPGs today, and a whole lot more.

Designers & Dragons at DriveThruRPG

Advanced Designers & Dragons monthly column

Shannon's Lost Histories Patreon

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Special surprise for Halloween 2020 -- the Wandering DMs host our friends from Web DM for a horrifying delve into the Lost Tomb of Ra-Hotep. It's the adventure that predated and inspired Gary Gygax's infamous Tomb of Horrors. Is this older tomb even MORE dangerous than that legendary, dreaded place? Tune in and find out. IF YOU DARE!

DnD #WebDM #TombOfHorrors #Halloween

Visit Web DM here

Get Dan's house rules for OD&D here

We've all been slavering for a dive into old-school gaming with Original D&D, and DM Dan's custom Original Edition Delta house rules. How fast will the bodies pile up? It's live and an unscripted one-shot, so no one knows.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Announcing our new official full time fourth cast member: Andy Grimaldi! Andy joins us as Mina, the hapless apprentice of Etelka Herzen, just as the gang interrupts their strange ritual in a cave deep in the Barren Hills. Are they friends or foes? Who will find Dagmar's Third Ball? And who else will the have to contend with?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

How often does your D&D game contain other games? Dan & Paul discuss how very common this was in the early days of the hobby, and when it's still a good idea now. Can your game be built on an outside company's game, like Original D&D/Outdoor Survival, and Dread/Jenga? Is it more than a smart marketing ploy among your own products, like with D&D Expert/Swords & Spells, and Marvel Superheroes/Star Frontiers? Is it a good or bad idea to have unique mechanics for events like jousting, archery, gambling, chases, and battles in the sea and air? We debate the pros & cons with our experiences over the years.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang arrives at the surprisingly comfortable village of Unterbaum, and learns a little of the history of their goal, the mysterious "Devil's Bowl". Will the ancient druidic magic be enough to hold back the growing threat of Chaos? Are these three wanderers truly champions sent by Sigmar to save the village?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Paul and Dan get an in-depth interview with long-time game designer Jeff Grubb and get answer to some questions we've been dying to ask for years. What were the AD&D Open tournament events like, such as Jeff designed and ran, in the early 80's -- and how did they effect the design of the AD&D game itself? What's the inside scoop on his design for the original Marvel Super Heroes RPG (FASERIP), and how the "Universal Table" idea manage to take over all the other games by TSR for a decade? What was his experience in writing the Forgotten Realms comic book for several years at DC? All that and more great stories from Jeff's illustrious career.

Check out Jeff Grubb's personal blog here

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang returns to Kemperbad and meets up with some old friends. Orlock returns to complicate their motives around the fate of Etelka Herzen, before they set off to try and sail up the River Stir.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan and Paul reflect on the axes of visibility for an RPG in 2020: public vs. private, and also in-person vs. offline. Since we've done every combination of those measures, what are the take-aways we've learned? When you take a game with your friends into a public-streaming space, is it the same game, or something fundamentally different? What extra preparation is required? Are there both advantages and disadvantages? In what ways does being more open, close off certain possibilities in play? Lessons from our production of The Big Bad and Ten Dead Rats shows, now on YouTube.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

Bruno spends some quality time with a mob of dwarves, while Indigo and Yeffi have a heart to heart with a goblin in a dress. The party puts together some more pieces of the puzzle, and begins to plot their next move against the members of the Red Crown.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul speak with Epidiah Ravachol, the designer of the Dread RPG (winner of the Ennie for Innovation in gaming award), the game-as-prog-rock-album Wolfspell, and the Worlds Without Master e-zine. In one of our most intense interviews to date, we all talk about the roots of horror games, trauma as a generator of art, what signs to look for to know when we've done enough research and playtesting, and whether the whole wolf Alpha/Beta thing is real or BS.

Get Epidiah Ravachol's gorgeous Wolfspell game here!

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes

The gang investigates the mysterious tower previously owned by Etelka Herzen, and meets the new inhabitant Gutbag. Indigo is surprised to find himself outmatched by goblins, Bruno partakes in a wizard's duel, and Yeffi rediscovers her roots amid an angry, torch-bearing mob. There's even time for just a little awkward romance.

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Have you ever accidentally blown up your entire D&D campaign? Party ignores all warnings and marches into a TPK? Time-traveling mishaps throws them in far future? Give player a nuke and they use it? Players intentionally derail your well-laid adventure plot? Dan and Paul discuss how to handle and recover from the WORST. Or is it really the BEST?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes!

James Maliszewski is back, and so is Grognardia! As the creator of one of the OSR's most esteemed blogs from 2008-2012, he took a well-earned break which wound up lasting 8 years. But now it's 2020, and he's returned just when we need him the most. Now that the dam's been busted, he's been on a blogging blitzkrieg, writing almost 100 articles in just the last few weeks. Dan and Paul catch up with James and all of the gaming, thinking, reading, and zine-ing that he's been doing in the meantime. Join them in exploring James' rich experiences with blogging, Tekumel, Traveller, and D&D.

Grognardia on Blogger (as if you didn't know)
Grognardia Games on DriveThruRPG
The Excellent Travelling Volume Zine

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes!

Indigo, Bruno, and Yeffi spend an evening at The Happy Man Tavern with the rescued Elvyra, and learn quite a bit more than they expected. From the sinister plots of the Red Crown to much more personal matters of the heart, much is brought to light!

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan and Paul once again spar over how much stuff you can do in one round of D&D. Do you like your fighters with fractional attacks, double attacks, attacks by weapon type, or as many attacks as they have levels? Should wizards be limited to one spell or not? How many attacks are reasonable for which monsters, and when? Does your Big Bad always need an army of mooks to fend off the PCs?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Subscribe to Wandering DMs for new episodes!

In our latest installment of Ten Dead Rats we are joined by special guest Nat Silverman, playing the bounty hunter Freder. Joining forces with our gang in their hunt for the missing Elvyra, the group tries to locate the mysterious red barn. Will they rescue her from the clutches of the Red Crown? Will Max remember who the Red Crown are?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads.

Dan & Paul are joined with special guest Sean K. Reynolds, who has a long and storied career with D&D and fantasy RPGs: design & development for D&D 2E, 3E, Pathfinder, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, now working on Numenera and 5E D&D products for Monte Cook Games. He was the first-ever Online Coordinator for TSR/D&D, back when they didn't even have their own website or email! We get to talk the evolution of gaming communities online, old-school D&D, and shiny new products for 5E from himself and Monte Cook.

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

The action economy in D&D: what can you do in one round? How long is a round in D&D anyway -- does it depend on edition or DM choice? How have the terms changed? How have initiative and turn-sequence rules evolved from pre-D&D wargames to 5E D&D? Do like PCs to have independent turns, or simultaneous phased movement? When did action types become formalized with keywords. And critically: CAN YOU GRAB AND DRINK A POTION IN ONE ROUND!?

Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take viewer questions and comments on the topic of the day. Live every Sunday at 1 PM Eastern time.

Wrapping things up in Kemperbad the group returns to river travel once more, but will they travel up the Stir towards the Barren Hills, or up the Reik to Grissenwald? Can the dwarves of Grissenwald offer any aid, or is such a journey just a flimsy excuse for Bruno to seek the attentions of a certain lady halfling?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads. With each new location the group finds more wild antics, and somehow inevitably, yet another bizarre costume change for our favorite halfling doctor.

Dan and Paul are joined by Professor of Philosophy Landon Schurtz to take advantage of his work in the fields of games, design, and aesthetics. What do we count as a game, and why? Does the definition of "roleplaying game" expand over time? Is traditional roleplaying a different beast from narrative storytelling games? And why do we do this crazy hobby in the first place?

In this episode we make numerous references to the following work on philosophical game theory, highly recommended:

C. Thi Nguyen's, "Games: Agency as Art" (sponsored)

Games: Agency As Art (Thinking Art)

Dan & Paul discuss the possibility of TPKs (Total Party Kills) in D&D of any edition. A lively, wide-ranging discussion that touches on the very roots of D&D. Do you permit it, promote it, or prohibit it? How often do you see it in classic play? As a player, does it make a campaign more rewarding or less? More memorable or less so? How best to handle the aftermath of a TPK, and how your campaign world can grow stronger and deeper for it.

The gang steels themselves to face off against Count Orlock, and is shocked to encounter more ghosts from their past. Will they take the opportunity to finally be rid of their vampiric adversary, or join him in his attempt to ward off other powers of Chaos?

Join us in the latest installment of our Original Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy mash-up, and delight in the shenanigans of a group of so-called adventurers continuously find themselves in over their heads. Featuring the second half of our special guest appearance by Andy Grimaldi playing Quinn Fireforged.

The gang has dinner at the Orlock estate, and makes the acquaintance of their new friend, Quinn Fireforged. Together they try to navigate the unusual social pressures of dinner with a bloodthirsty fiend.

Paul & Dan take sides on the great D&D Alignment debate. Pretty sure we'll resolve this in the hour.

Dan & Paul discuss the online version of Gen Con 2020 on its last day. Panels, games, the online experience, conventions past, present, and future.

Check out the panels Paul hosted here:

Zoom and Enhance -- https://youtu.be/Fqtn5rhJGgU
One Shot NPCs -- https://youtu.be/SVkMvClMRGc

The gang arrives in Kemperbad, does some shopping, meets some new friends, and reunites with one old one.

Dan & Paul are joined by gaming cultural consultant James Mendez Hodes to discuss the current state of race and cultural issues in D&D and other RPGs.

Wizards of the Coast Diversity Statement
James' Website
James' Patreon
Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall

Bruno experiments in chiropractic medicine, Indigo gets a hug, and Yeffi discovers she has the worst smuggling partners in the world.

Dan and Paul discuss experiences with superhero games: High or low power level? Licensed characters or custom? Abstract or granular? Marvel, DC Heroes, Hero System, Mutants & Masterminds, Savage Worlds, and a whole lot more.

Digging further into the mystery of the cursed dwarven worksite, the gang discovers some strange ancient artifacts, and one disturbingly familiar one.

Paul and Dan speak with Nerdarchy's own Doug Vehovec about blogging, "Out of the Box: Encounters", Marvel FASERIP, and a whole lot more.

Nerdarchy
Out of the Box: Encounters

The gang is back, well, most of them. They spend some quiet time together as guests of Franc, and perhaps promise a little more in return than they're comfortable with, before finally deciding to leave Altdorf.

Special live play birthday session! Paul & Dan are joined by guests Colleen, Andriy, Fury, and (disinvited artist) Isabelle to play in the Cheat Your Own Adventure storytelling system. What path would you take?

Cheat Your Own Adventure
10 Dead Rats Season 1 on YouTube
Cow and Covid-19 on YouTube
Andriy Duyko on Instagram

Dan & Paul discuss injecting trade and economic options as part of your D&D game; things we've done right, things we've done wrong. What's the best way to deliver it to players who want it?

Trade on the Reik @ Paul's Gameblog -- https://www.paulsgameblog.com/2020/06/26/trade-on-the-reik/

In the Season 1 finale, Yeffi goes off on a mysterious errand with Franc, while the rest of the gang heads over to The Cracked Tavern to meet Drachilda. It does not go quite as they expected.

Paul and Dan get to chat with best-selling author R.A. Salvatore about gaming, writing, running D&D, the new Drizzt Do'Urden book, the creation of Icewind Dale, and a bunch of other awesome stuff.

R.A. Salvatore's personal gaming & book store -- https://rasalvastore.com/

Also look for the 5E adventure from the game sessions with R.A. Salvatore and Paul Siegel -- https://www.dmsguild.com/product/294052/RA-Salvatore-Presents-The-Vile-Crypt-of-the-Reawakened-Sisterhood

The gang returns to Altdorf, does some shopping, and seeks out more clues on the elusive cult of the Purple Hand.

Paul and Dan weigh in on their different viewpoints on the best encumbrance system: from OD&D to B/X to 5E. Should we weigh things in coins, pounds, stone, or slots? How much do the individual player tastes matter?

The gang sets sail in their new boat to Weissbruck! Their goal of a quick resupply before moving on to Altdorf is interrupted by shadows of the past.

Paul and Max host (and Dan joins as a last-minute guest): Let's dig into Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics system -- between us we've run a 2-year campaign and a whole lot of con games with DCC, what are the awesome and not-so-awesome parts?

The gang boards a boat headed up river to Altdorf, and meets some unusual people along the river.

Dan & Paul discuss the pros & cons of Wandering Monsters. Where do they come from? Do you need to edit them to their environment? Should you roll randomly, and when, and how? Great ways to fine-tune and use this core D&D mechanic.

A fight breaks out at the Warehouse, and we finally break out the Insanity Cards during the gang's last night in Bogenhafen.

Dan and Paul discuss monster tactics with Keith Ammann, author of The Monsters Know What They're Doing.

The Monsters Know What They're Doing -- https://www.themonstersknow.com/

An unexpected ally helps the gang out, only to mysteriously disappear. Bruno steals a pot, Indigo eats some apples, Trebbiano gets a letter, and Yeffi kills a man.

Dan & Paul get nitty-gritty about the classic D&D Wizards class; on the history, Vancian spells, spellbooks, expanding spell rosters, how they fit into a party, what kinds of players the attract, and more!

The gang has breakfast with Councilor Magerius, makes an unannounced visit to the Teugan estate, and lose track of each other in the wine cellar.

Dan and Paul get and in-depth chat with special guest Ernie Gygax about his role in developing classic D&D, DM'ing for big dungeons groups, his most recent and current projects, and a whole lot more.

Marmoreal Tomb @ Kickstarter -- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1709227718/ernest-gary-gygax-jrs-marmoreal-tomb-campaign-star

Classic RPG Retreat @ Geek Nation Tours -- https://geeknationtours.com/tours/classic-rpg-retreat-lake-geneva-2020/

Editor's Note - We experienced some connectivity issues during this interview, and as a result Ernie's voice sometimes appears to break up. We hope the interview is still enjoyable despite these hopefully not too frequent interruptions.

Yeffi makes contact with the Thieves Guild of Bogenhafen, and proves to be an incredibly competent thief. With new friends in tow, the gang puts together a very lucrative job.

Dan and Paul discuss the fighter class, from Fighting Man to Battle Master.

With Yeffi off visiting friends at the Crossed Pikes, the remainder of the group follows up with their friends at the Physicians Guild, meets some members of the Stevedores Guild, and takes another trip down a stinking hole.

Dan and Paul talk to Toby Drewry, lead developer of the d20Pro virtual tabletop, and CEO of Mesa Mundi Inc. A deep dive into theory and use of VTT's.

Check out d20Pro here (free 30-day trial download, and on sale through 2020 lockdown period):

https://d20pro.com/

WanderingDMs Podcasts: https://wanderingdms.com/ WanderingDMs

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wanderingdms

The group continues to chase down the mysterious illness of the Justice, and finds a concerning connection with some illustrious citizens of the town.

Dan and Paul discuss the use of miniatures in D&D, how to find the balance between supporting visually complex set pieces and quick on-the-fly encounters, and how it all translates into virtual gaming.

The party returns to the surface world, gets a bath, and has some trouble reconnecting with their patron.

Dan and Paul talk to Adriel Wilson of 9th Level Games about heightening narrative aspects in games, constructing ongoing stories, comic books, novel dice mechanics, and more.

More 9th Level Games: https://www.9thlevel.com/

The gang takes on their dirtiest job yet, makes some new friends, and discovers something far worse than what they went looking for.

Dan and Paul discuss Virtual Helgacon: their annual house con turned online for the covid lockdown. Covering games we've played recently like D&D, Fiasco, Troika, and Book of War. Online gaming technologies like Discord, Zoom, Roll20, Skype, and vMix. Ideas for upcoming online conventions like Tabetop Events' Con of Champions.

The party continues to enjoy the festival, witnesses some real surprises at the freak show, and tracks down the truth about the law offices of Lock, Stöck, and Barl.

Dan and Paul discuss D&D games for one player: classic programmed modules, one DM vs one player, and many other options.

The party makes it to Bogenhafen just in time for the festival. Yefi meets a fellow dwarf, Indigo plays the shell game, Trebbiano buys a cage, and Bruno attempts to figure out love.

Dan and Paul discuss how to play tabletop roleplaying games over the internet. From video chat to virtual table tops, they cover all the best ways to keep your game running when everyone cannot get together at the same table.

The trail goes dead as the party attempts to find the murderer and the meaning of the purple hand tattoos.

Editor's Note - I'm afraid the internet was not kind to us during this one and several of our cast suffered from intermittent audio issues resulting in some echo that comes and goes. At around 1:40 all audio but mine cut out and I spent a few minutes trying to fix it. I've cut out most of the dead space and my own humming and hawing and the quality actually goes up after that point. My sincere apologies though, and I hope very much to have this corrected once and for all next week.

Web DM Jim joins Dan & Paul to discuss the interplay between 0E and 5E game styles, old-school sensibility, and bringing maximum drama and tension to the table and streams.

Web DM on YouTube: https://youtube.com/webdm

Web DM Patreon: https://patreon.com/webdm

The gang tracks down the mysterious men with itchy ears, and makes a grisly discovery.

Editor's Note -- we had a rogue microphone generating some static mid-game. It does eventually get taken care of, but we apologize for the chunk in the middle where it can be heard regularly.

Dan and Paul discuss Holmesian Basic D&D and The 5E Ruined Tower of Zenopus with author and Holmes historian Zach Howard.

Zenopus Archives Website: http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/

Ruined Tower of Zenopus on DM's Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/301308/The-Ruined-Tower-of-Zenopus

Blood flies at the Orlock ball, and the party makes a new friend with a guy named Frank.

Dan and Paul discuss their personal careers and history in gaming and video games live from the PAX East show floor.

The gang goes shopping, meets a witch hunter, and dresses in drag to attend a vampire's ball.

Dan and Paul speak like from the convention floor of TotalCon 34. They discuss the many games Paul ran, the problem of communicating game style in a convention blurb, meeting up with patrons, and much more!

Paul and Dan discuss the merits of different XP award systems: How to weight monsters, treasures, and magic. Points vs. milestones. Linear vs. geometric progressions. And lots more.

A pleasurable evening is spent at the coaching inn, and a devious plan is hatched on route to Altdorf.

Dan and Paul are joined by Web DM Communications Director Emma Lambert, and they discuss the ins and outs of attending gaming conventions.

Editor's Note: We had some audio issues during the first half of this video. I processed the audio to make it sound better, but at the expense of it appearing a little out of sync with the video. Everything gets much better around 30-35 minutes in, so thanks for your patience!

Posing as coachmen, the party encounters mutants along the road, and an intriguing opportunity arises for Indigo.

Dan and Paul make cookies! And talk about food at the gaming table while playing roleplaying games, as a prop in roleplaying games, and in the fiction and mechanics of roleplaying games.

The crew makes it to Carroburg, delivers their charge, and plots their course to Altdorf.

Note - This episode experienced some unusual audio problems. I've done my best to clip out the worst of it from the beginning for the sake of the podcast version. My apologies to our listeners, I hope I made it as enjoyable as possible.

Dan and Paul are joined by Steven McAuley and surprise guest Joe Manganiello to discuss their roots in old school gaming, and how it impacts their current 5th Edition D&D games. Cool sites that Steve & Joe mentioned on the show:

https://www.critit.co.uk/
https://death-saves.com/
https://www.gf9.com/

Wandering DMs on the social media:

https://twitter.com/wanderingdms
https://www.facebook.com/WanderingDMs/

Audio podcast versions of all shows on our website:

https://wanderingdms.com/

Please support us on Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/wanderingdms

EDITOR'S NOTE - Unfortunately I had the monitor up too loud and our mic caught some of Joe and Dan's audio, giving it a bit of an echo, which is a bit more noticeable here in the podcast format. My sincerest apologies for making such a rookie mistake.

Trebbiano becomes sick and is confined to his bunk. The rest of the crew does their best to deal with the creature lurking in the hold of the Belle, and things don't go quite as planned.

Paul is joined by guest Colleen Nachtrieb to discuss their new actual play stream Ten Dead Rats. They discuss the system, the setting, and how live streaming differs from normal home play around the table.

The characters meet in Marienburg. A surgery becomes more of a shanking. The going price of a bagful of dwarf is debated. The party discovers there is something unusual about the package they are asked to deliver.

Dan and Paul are joined by special guest Ian McGarty. They discuss self publishing D&D publications online, and reflect on their experiences creating, testing, and promoting their work.

Dan and Paul kick off season two with a boat-load of exciting announcements, followed by a discussion about starting up a new campaign.

Dan and Paul discuss their trip to PAX Unplugged 2019 in Philadelphia.

Dan and Paul discuss how to plan for ending your roleplaying campaign. How do you give your players a satisfying conclusion without just fizzling out?

Dan and Paul discuss fantasy languages in D&D -- from monster and racial languages to alignment languages, the magic used to understand them, and how restricting access to them can benefit your game.

Dan and Paul discuss how to effectively use puzzles and riddles in your D&D game.

Dan and Paul discuss all the mechanisms for foretelling and enforcing fated outcomes in D&D.

Dan and Paul discuss the passage of time in D&D games, from hours of torchlight, to weeks of spell research, to what their game calendars look like.

Dan and Paul discuss horror in roleplaying games, if D&D is a horror setting, and make several other exciting announcements.

Dan and Paul are joined by special guest DH Boggs to discuss the history of D&D as run by Dave Arneson.

Links from the Show

DH Boggs' publications at DriveThruRPG
The Secrets of Blackmoor documentary

Dan and Paul discuss the gear they've bought for gaming over the years - what works, what doesn't, and what has turned out to be just plain silly.

Dan and Paul go over words of advice for new DMs thinking of running their first game.

Dan and Paul discuss magic that takes over your character, from paralysis to charm, and how to deal with it from both the player and DM's perspective.

Dan and Paul discuss metagaming in D&D - what it is, how to prepare for it, and how to deal with it when it catches you by surprise.

Dan and Paul discuss how to introduce new characters into a game, whether due to new players showing up to the table or an unexpected character death mid-game.

Dan discusses the basics of D&D dice math and probability, and dispels some common misunderstandings. There will be a quiz!

Torben Mogensen's Troll dice roller: http://hjemmesider.diku.dk/~torbenm/Troll/
Second Best D&D Adventure podcast: https://secondbestdnd.simplecast.com/
Paul's Gameblog: https://www.paulsgameblog.com/

Dan and Paul discuss what is unique about the role of the DM at the table, and why they enjoy DMing games.

Dan and Paul discuss Humor in Gaming, including systems that have supported to to various degrees, and how best to write and prepare for including humor in your game.

Dan is joined by guest artist and educator Isabelle Garbani, who works from Brooklyn in sculpture, recycled materials, and public installations. Together they look at and discuss the evolution of D&D art in the 0th and 1st Editions of the game (1974-1980). A stark contrast in Dan's decades of awareness of those art pieces, and Isabelle's observations seeing them for the first time. Things get heated! Opinions expressed not necessarily those of Wandering DMs.

We should also mention that Isabelle teaches art courses at Wagner College on Staten Island, NY -- notably, the site of the first release of the Holmes Basic D&D set (Origins '77)! See more of Isabelle's work at: http://www.isabellegarbani.com/

Dan and Paul discuss the separation of player and character - should you do it, when should you do it, and what problems does it create or solve?

Paul and Dan discuss additional classes beyond the big four - from AD&D sub-classes to the current list on D&D Beyond.

Dan and Paul discuss how they were first exposed to the hobby, and how that process has changed for new players over the years.

Dan and Paul discuss infravision in old school D&D. We touch on combat vs. exploration, how it plays into other visibility effects such as invisibility and detection magic, and a variety of other related topics.

Dan and Paul discuss technology and software they have used or in some cases created for their D&D games.

Dan and Paul discuss how to deal with level disparity in your D&D campaign.

Dan and Paul discuss the pros and cons of hiring in some help to your D&D adventuring party.

Dan and Paul discuss the frequency of intelligent swords, their powers, how to adjudicate battles for control, and share some stories of using intelligent swords in their own games.

Visit Paul's Gameblog for:

A comparison of contested will rules across editions of D&D.
A simplified system for adjudicating battles of will.

Dan and Paul discuss the deadliness of old school gaming, and how they handle critical hits, death, and resurrection.

Dan and Paul wrap up their experiences playing at a local house-convention.

Dan and Paul discuss the differences between running an ongoing never-ending home campaign, and a short 4-hour convention session.

Dan and Paul discuss dragons, and how they differ across editions.

Dan and Paul discuss their experiences playing and running hex-crawls. They explore what worked, what didn't, and give advice on what they think makes for a really good hex-crawl adventure.

Dan and Paul discuss the module S1: Tomb or Horrors, including the history of the module and their experience running and playing it.

Dan and Paul discuss the cleric class, and why they have been removed from OED.

Dan and Paul discuss the history of the thief class, and how they use thieves in their own campaigns.

Dan and Paul chat about improvisation as a DM tool, and how we teach such things to bourgeoning DMs.

Dan and Paul discuss what exactly qualifies as "old school", or at least agree that it's impossible to qualify.