Travis Miller's Blog About Sword & Sorcery Fiction and Classic Fantasy Adventure Gaming
Adventures written by other people can be hard to fit into a sandbox campaign I build myself. There are ways of doing it but it also requires picking adventures that fit the setting I've created. If I create a setting that is very different from the implied or intended setting of the game I'm running then I'll have an even harder time finding an adventure that fits.
An "adventure", in roleplaying game lingo, is a situation or scenario intended for play with a particular roleplaying game within an implied or specific setting. An adventure, as a product class, has a few characteristics that make it different from most forms of written entertainment. What is an adventure for? An adventure scenario is a …
Continue reading What I Look For When I Shop For Published Adventures
Starting game masters often build too much of their world before their campaign starts. Too much world building can produce a lot of stuff that players never engage with in play. It can make it hard to use material I find after the campaign starts because I'll have to revise elements of my world or …
Continue reading How I Do Worldbuilding For My Sandbox Campaigns
Not all stories need a transformation. Certain genres, like sword-and-sorcery, were built around characters who are who they are.
I don't like elves, dwarves, and halflings in Dungeons & Dragons. We all know the way they look and feel in D&D was lifted out of Lord of the Rings. The inclusion of elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, ents, and balrogs (don't get me started on balrogs) into Dungeons & Dragons was a design mistake in …
Continue reading Tolkien’s Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits Don’t Belong in Dungeons & Dragons
2024 is the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why D&D has lasted so long, been so successful, and continued to gather new fans throughout that time. The answer I've come up with is that it is not just one thing. The reason D&D is such a …
I talk to comics writer Justin Jordon about his comic, Reaver, our mutual appreciation of Joe Abercrombie and why magic should always take more than it gives.
Grumpy Wizard 
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