I recently completed my first campaign of Shadow of the Demon Lord (aka SotDL), so I figured I’d write down my impressions. I won’t go terribly deep on details about the system, as plenty of articles already exist about that. The Pitch My group mostly plays D&D 5e but was very open to the idea of trying SotDL. One of the big selling points was the relatively short campaign length (11 adventures) and fast character progression (one level per adventure), which didn’t require a long-term commitment....

I attended my second KublaCon last weekend. Like last year, I had a fun time overall. Most of what I wrote last year still holds true (including the frustrating Shuffler), so I won’t repeat it here. It felt like the results were posted sooner this time, which helped. Then again, the website was virtually unusable (it kept timing out) for most of the con… They really need a new system!...

Today, I received a package in the mail. The contents revealed the following: Yes, it’s my physical copy of The Dark Eye from the recent, highly successful, Kickstarter for the English translation of the game’s 5th edition. I figured I’d take this opportunity to kick off the “RPGs I’ve played” series I’ve been meaning to write. After all, for me it all began with The Dark Eye - or rather, with the German original, “Das Schwarze Auge” (aka DSA)....

I know not everyone likes them, but I’m a sucker for GM screens. At the same time, official GM screens usually don’t include the exact information I need. Too often, they include obscure random tables that I rarely (if ever) need, while omitting critical information that I need to reference all the time. Therefore, I like the idea of customizable screens such as this one (branded as a Savage Worlds screen, but really just a generic 3-panel screen with various inserts available online)....

I recently got back into tabletop RPGs after taking a 16+ year break from this hobby. In this post, I’ll share my experience. I first started playing RPGs in the mid-80s. Growing up in Germany, my first system was naturally Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) - the most popular German RPG, easily beating out D&D. The Dark Eye just kickstarted an English translation of the 5th edition, BTW. Two of my high school friends started playing RPGs around the same time, and over the next few years, our circle slowly kept growing....