The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2024 has just been released. The second book of three, the new 384-page guidebook offers updated, hands-on advice and rules to help DMs run sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.

As a companion to the Player’s Handbook 2024, this hardcover, full-color book is a welcome and gorgeous addition. Also available in digital format on D&D Beyond, the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2024 is a comprehensive, deep dive to help people run Dungeons & Dragons and create new materials for their campaigns.

The world’s greatest roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons, has issued a brand new, 377-page Player’s Handbook 2024 with streamlined rules.

The hardcover, full-color book is beautifully designed with gorgeous end pages and museum-quality art. In the introduction, both DMs and players are provided with an overview how to use the book and what’s changed since the 2014 version. Many of the changes–easier character creation, enhanced classes, upgraded weapons, new and enhanced spells, are clearly elements that have been refreshed for playability and ease-of-use.

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977 is a 576-page, glossy-paged tome with silk bookmarks, color-coded sections, and a short commentary by gaming historian Jon Peterson. A museum-quality book that weighs a little over two pounds, the lightly annotated contents are reproductions of notes, drafts, and publications filled with handwriting, illustrations, and antique typefaces. Combined, they chronologically tell the story of how Dungeons & Dragons was designed and how its early concepts evolved from miniature war gaming to tabletop roleplaying.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards of the Coast delves into the past, to dig up six, classic D&D adventures and present them with light updates, new art, and 5th edition rules. These beloved classics include “The Lost City” (1982), “When a Star Falls” (1984), “Beyond the Crystal Cave” (1983), “Pharaoh” […]

Vecna: Eve of Ruin is a campaign book for characters of levels 10 through 20. Compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, the campaign tasks the players with a seemingly-impossible job: to save the multiverse from annihilation. The campaign book is offered in two editions: standard and an alternate cover. The standard edition cover, illustrated […]

Hiya, I am breaking a review hiatus to offer a review of Loot Goblins, by Michael’s Mind Online. The creator generously offered me a review copy, and I am happy to support their game design efforts-especially since this is their first, published game on DriveThruRPG! Loot Goblins was designed for PocketQuest 2024’s HEIST theme and, […]

The Deck of Many Things Bundle is the latest Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition sourcebook and game accessory. Included in the physical product is a 192-page sourcebook titled The Book of Many Things as well as beautifully-boxed Deck of Many Things containing 66 cards and a hardcover 80-page card reference guide.

The 22-chapter sourcebook, which is available in standard and alternate printings, features Asteria (p. 188) on both covers and is structured around The Deck of Many Things as well as a standard deck of playing cards. This information-dense guidebook includes an introductory chapter written for history buffs that explains the origin and evolution of this titular magic deck. Following Chapter One: Fool, The Book of Many Things offers thematically-appropriate dungeon master tools, character creation options, factions, guilds, and cults, adventure locations, maps, monsters, and statistics for the deck’s creators (the human warrior, Asteria, and the medusa, Euryale) in twenty-one, idea-packed chapters.

Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse is a boxed set available in standard and alternate full color editions of Morte’s Planar Parade, Sigil and the Outlands, Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, and a Planescape-themed campaign screen. The alternate edition offers the same content, but is printed with collectibility in mind; all four pieces are part of a […]

Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk is a campaign supplement for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition that recently debuted in September 2023. Geared for DMs, the supplement builds off of The Lost Mine of Phandelver included in the Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set. That same adventure is reprinted in this supplement as well, and it’s worth nothing that the material has been slightly edited to better fit the campaign. The monsters from Chapters 1 through 4 are not included in the Bestiary, however, so if you require rules for non-named NPCs and creatures along with common magic items, you’ll need a copy of the Monster Manual and the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants begins with a poem written by Bigby about a giant demigoddess named Diancastra, the daughter of Annam the All-Father, progenitor of the Giants. An epic poem details her role in the saga of giants, and sets a thematic tone for the book. Throughout the supplement, Bigby adds colorful commentary to flesh out the informational voice written by Makenzie de Armas, Dan Dillon, Ben Petrisor, and Jason Tondro.

Giants are referred to as a creature type, as listed in the Monster Manual, and are mythological descendants of Annam. This includes fomorians, death giants, trolls and ogres, cyclopes, and ettins as well as goliaths and firbolgs.

The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons is a 127-page, system-agnostic, descriptive field guide to dragons. Written by Sindri Suncatcher, a kender wizard familiar to Dragonlance fans, the narrative guide provides an overview of dragon anatomy, society, lairs, hoards, combat, magic, etiquette, and language. Notes in the margins flesh out Sindri’s take on ten different types […]

Review written by Brian LeTendre When the Scarred Lands setting first debuted during the d20 boom of the early 2000s, I bought every single book in the line. The way the setting was introduced, and information about it revealed, felt like the unraveling of a mystery. I first got introduced to the world of Scarn […]

Once upon a time, many years ago in the closing months of the 20th Century, one of my best friends said to me “We’re going to do something new. Something different. We’re going to play Wraith.” being in a group of players that was consistently made up of myself, the significant other of my best friend, and my best friend-as-Storyteller, I was immediately intimidated. I had no idea how to play Wraith, and – truth be told – had no idea how the rules worked or how the setting would be laid out, etc.

Let’s be clear here; Vampire is easy. You’re a vampire and you live in a city and you blah blah blah all night long until the sun comes up. And let’s also be clear that with Werewolf, you’re a werewolf and you live in the near-city or wilderness – or, as I’ve proven in MY OWN games of Werewolf that I’ve run – in the city proper and you blah blah blah all day and night long until your phase of the moon hits and you’re rocking at full-tilt Gnosis and Rage…

But Wraith was different.

Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition is one of the best core books for the World of Darkness bar none.  To say that it brought Wraith into the 21st Century in style would be a gross understatement, and for Onyx Path Publishing, the book is a triumph of literary accomplishment as well as updating the game and streamlining it while keeping the parts of it that absolutely needed to be held close.

Handbook for the Recently Deceased, however, affords both the player and the storyteller a succinct, capsulized glimpse at Wraith: the Oblivion that keeps the would-be storyteller who is anxiously awaiting the opportunity to throw his or her players across the Shroud from cutting deep into their printer’s ink reserves and spitting out chapters to serve as the building blocks for what they can expect from the game.

What is reality?  I mean, think about it for a minute.  Since the dawn of human sentience, we’ve been thinking about things like “Am I just a bit-part player in someone else’s dream?” or “Is everything around me real because I want it to be?”

Is reality real?  Or is it what someone else wants it to be?

That sentence sets the groundwork for about 95% of the conflict in Mage: the Ascension.  There are warring factions in the world around you.

Some would answer that question with “Absolutely.  Reality is something that must be maintained and is what it is because it is the best possible environment for humanity to exist within.”

Some would answer that “Reality is what we need it to be.  When we need to elicit change, it is one thing.  When we need stasis, it is something else.  But have no illusions, WE are the masters of what reality is and is not.  You need only the will to change things to make them change, and the knowledge of the Spheres to make it happen.”

Lore of the Clans is a sourcebook supporting Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition and is written by Alexander, Kevin Czarnecki, Joshua Doetsch, Matt M McElroy, Andrew Peregrine, Ree Soesbee, Rob Wieland, and Christopher Wilde.  Released in 2015, the book collects together information that covers the Clans of the Camarilla, the Clans of the Sabbat, the Independent Clans, the Caitiff (whom we old farts used to refer to as the “Clanless”) and their respective Antitribu, which is a vampire who is and acts as the antithesis (and, in some cases, anathema as well) to the Clan that they were originally “Embraced” into.

Us “old farts” also remember a time when we had to wait for Clanbooks to be released on a schedule.  The die-hard Vampire: the Masquerade guys and gals would clench up so hard that they were able to make diamonds within the proximal recesses of their buttocks while they waited for Clanbook: This or Clanbook: That to be released.  This book brings them all together between two covers, which is a bit of a revolution for the game.

Every so often I get something to review that I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. Getting a copy of Eternal Lies campaign book for the Trail of Cthuhlu RPG (from Pelgrane Press) to review was one of those times. I’ve played Trail of Cthulhu once or twice at gaming cons, I’m familiar with several Cthulhu based games, and I love adventure/campaign sourcebooks in general so I thought this would be a quick and easy review. However, I was simply shocked when I opened up the PDF file for the first time to discover that Eternal Lies has a four hundred page count!

How could this be? As I understood it, Eternal Lies is a sourcebook for only one complete campaign. I’ve seen campaign books half this size with several adventures in it, but nothing this large before. How can this book be 400 pages? And all 400 pages for one campaign? The audacity! The immensity! The madness! The size, and there for the incredible scope that this adventure must be was suddenly daunting.

From the moment I opened up the PDF on my laptop I knew Gygax, a quarterly adventure roleplaying aid, was going to tap into everything that has made gaming great since the beginning. The cover was “classic” in every way and it reminded me of the many old Dragon magazines I have flipped through over the years. I immediately felt comfortable like I was meeting up with an old friend, one I had not seen in quite some time and someone I was very fond of. The cover art titled “Still Unlucky” by Daniel Horne depicts two poor adventurers being snuck up on by a nasty looking ettin and it made me laugh.

Monsterhearts should come with two warning stickers. The first is “Warning: This is a game for mature gamers and deals with adult themes.” It doesn’t have this because that sort of warning fits the Book of Erotic Fantasy rather than a genuinely mature take on the subject matter. It has lead to some of the most intense and immersive experiences I’ve ever had roleplaying, but I refuse to play it with my main tabletop roleplaying group.

The second is “Warning: This game can go into uncomfortable territory. Discuss expectations and respect boundaries.” It doesn’t have this, and Monsterhearts is the only game I’ve played that’s imploded when it has become clear that one player doesn’t know the meaning of the word “consent”. Better there than in real life.

So what is Monsterhearts? Monsterhearts is based on the Apocalypse World rules and claims to be about “The messy lives of teenage monsters”.

I first got hooked into the World of Darkness about three years ago; I became intrigued by the Vampire: The Requiem setting thanks to a particularly good game I was in at the time, and my passion for the world hasn’t diminished since then. In support of Free RPG Day (June 15 this year) Onyx Path released a sharp-looking product called Reap the Whirlwind, a complete quick-start introducing new players to the vampire branch of the World of Darkness.