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Arcane Bolt, Diamondback Viper: Online additions

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So, my Monster Manual  is supposed to be on its way, but Canada Post in their infinite wisdom has gotten themselves into a strike position, which means there is no mail being delivered in Canada right now. There's no end in sight, so I'm going to be without a physical copy of the stuff I ordered for a while. Well, that sucks. However, there are alternative methods to getting things like this, and since I have in fact purchased the product, I feel neither guilt nor shame at getting an online PDF copy for free. But first, there are a couple of online things to look at, one spell and one monster. The spell is arcane bolt . It's a 1st-level sorcerer/wizard spell that is billed as an alternative to the ever-popular magic missile . Basically, it's got a higher damage range (2-7 per missile instead of 2-5), but the target does get to make a saving throw to avoid all damage. You get one bolt per two levels up to a maximum of 5 bolts at 9th level. It can be defended against exac...
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Map-a-Week: Volcanic Fortress

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Well, we were on vacation for a week, so I wasn't able to post this on Sunday since I was in a hotel with no computer access. Ah, well...the sacrifices we make for family. Anyway, this will be a short post since I'm still recovering from the trip, but here is the  Volcanic Fortress  provided as our Map-a-Week offering. It's...well, it's the most coherent and usable complete map we've been given so far, I think. Instead of a bunch of smaller maps crowded together on a single page with no obvious connections, this is instead a complete fortress. Now, it's a 'volcanic fortress', which suggests that the 'water' we are seeing in the center of the map is actually lava. Okay, then. I can go with that. On the other hand, it could just mean that this is a volcanic region (as evinced by the several small cratered eruptions on the side of the map) and that this is a river running through it and going over a waterfall. I think that would be easier to work wi...
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Dungeon Magazine #82

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Behold, the first 3rd edition issue of Dungeon Magazine! And, to my complete lack of surprise, these are all low-level adventures, the highest one being for 3rd-level characters. My copy lacks the included map, but I have no interest in running a Sherwood adventure anyway, so I'm not going to sweat it. And I'm not going to review the Sherwood adventure, either; I'll focus on the three that are generic enough to use in almost any campaign instead. The magazine starts with an editorial talking about how to make a campaign stand out with 'an edge'. It references the Praemal campaign , Monte Cook's 3e playtest campaign, and talks about how to use the new features of the game such as monsters with character classes to present new challenges to the PCs. And the editor (Christopher Perkins) talks about his own weird campaign which involves symbiotic plants everywhere. Hey, whatever works. D&D is flexible like that. The first adventure is "Evil Unearthed",...
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The Sunless Citadel

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The Sunless Citadel  is the first published module for the 3rd edition game. It's for 1st-level characters, with a suggested party of four. It has a good reputation in the past quarter-century, and from what I understand, it was redone for the 5th edition of the game (which I have never seen, nor will I look for it). The introduction says that a copy of the Monster Manual  would be useful...but it hasn't been released yet. Fortunately, there aren't a lot of different monsters in the module, and they are all statted out in the back of this 32-page book. The inside covers contain the two maps of the dungeon, as well as a trio of smaller maps that give the important locations for the adventure. Which are the town of Oakhurst and the titular citadel. There's also a cutaway map that shows how the levels of the dungeon are stacked, which is useful and something that wasn't often presented in earlier editions. So, the premise is that this citadel used to be above ground bu...
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Dragon Magazine #275 (plus Map-a-Week)

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It's time for another Map-a-Week before we dive into Dragon #275. This week's map is  Undersea Caverns . This is a set of six underwater locations that could be linked together in some ways, although I wouldn't care to try. I would likely use them as individual locations, particularly the sunken ship. And the bottom left looks more like a vertical map than a flat horizontal one with the water flooding areas 40 through 43. So, these would be separate for me. I'm going to have to hold off on stocking these until next month, since I don't have much in the way of aquatic monsters to work with until the Monster Manual  arrives. So, we jump to Dragon Magazine #275, which, as you can see from the above picture, is about warriors and combat. The issue starts with an editorial from the almighty Gygax, who talks about how the style of play has changed over the course of a quarter-century of game play. His conclusion? It hasn't changed all that much. Okay, then. I would te...
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Gazetteer

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I suppose it would have made a bit more sense to do this before I did the Living Greyhawk Journal entry. Ah, well. The best-laid plans of mice and men, as they say. Or does anyone still say that? Probably not; nobody reads anymore. So why am I doing this? Anyway, the Gazetteer was the first campaign product for 3rd edition, released even before the Monster Manual . It's a short, 32-page book with a couple of pull-out maps that give a brief overview of the default 3rd edition setting, aka Greyhawk. I'm going to start with the maps. For some reason, two of the maps are identical, showing the same region of the Domain of Greyhawk. But first, there's a full map of the Flanaess, from Blackmoor to Hepmonaland. I can't help but compare it to the classic and rightly-famous Darlene maps from the original Greyhawk Folio (1980) and World of Greyhawk Boxed Set (1983), and this doesn't compare at all. Whereas those maps were poster-sized, this is just a fold-out on one side. T...
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Living Greyhawk Journal #1

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Okay, so this is the first 'official' issue of the Living Greyhawk Journal. This one is a 32-page magazine that covers quite a few more things than issue #0 did. We start with an announcement about the start of the Living Greyhawk Campaign, which lots of people attended at Gen Con and thoroughly enjoyed. I mentioned my feelings about the campaign and its regional restrictions in the entry on issue #0, so I won't go into that again. Instead, I'm going to look at the Living Greyhawk stuff in terms of its actual Greyhawk content, and seeing how it matches up with what I remember from back in the day. So, first up is Places of Mystery, which discusses a few interesting places that can be found around the Flanaess. The first is the Belching Vortex of Leuk-O (he of the Mighty Servant of older D&D lore), which is located in the Hestmark Highlands. It's a black membrane set against a sheer cliff face on one of the mountains in the area, surrounded by a barren wasteland ...
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