Tag: Dungeons and Dragons

So during D&D Encounters, UCI Librarian to the stars John Sisson stopped by to inform us that he was in the IMAX ad for Doctor Strange!

Such solid nerd brag!

I have been working a lot + listening to a lot of Phish. Likely not spending enough time in D&D Preparation and this week was a big Role Playing week–the Sword Coast Coalition meet there first Giant!

We had the same players–Melissa, Cody, Brian, Scott, Eric, and Jon the new guy!

New guy Jon had never played 5E–and on his very first roll, with advantage [a mechanic he had never heard of before] he scored an amazing double crit!

I had plenty of room behind the screen

the table had a lot of fun

 

but for me the current success is almost entirely based on Chris Perkin’s work and the fact that the current stories are so great–they are connected to D&D’s roots, the contain quality beats throughout, and they flow easily at the table.

D&D has a long history with Strahd and Curse of Ravenloft captured all of it with amazing precision. The tone was pitch perfect. The story was fantastic.

The way the story unfolded was VERY natural and the players at my table never felt rail roaded. More importantly, the players were remembering events from months earlier [which often does not happen in D&D Encounters groups]. Almost like Perkin’s favorite TV Shows and Movies this module worked really well in drawing the players into the location, the story, and relationships with NPC’s and other characters.

As a DM, Curse of Ravenloft was suprisingly easy to run–there was enough content that I could skip entire sections that I did not like, did not really grok,  or did not feel would work at your table without any impact to the story.  The flow from week to week with Curse of Ravenloft was amazing.

I had tons of room at the table this week