How do you bring a 4-year Dungeons & Dragons campaign to a satisfying, epic ending? With an epic, solo boss. Some would say you shouldn’t do that in D&D 5E because the action economy favors a more numerically balanced battle. But with seven level-15 PCs, that’s exactly how we finished off the main quest in DM Thorin’s homebrew, mostly improv, campaign.

We realize that reviewing a homebrew campaign is different from Curse of Strahd or Storm King’s Thunder – after all, you can’t go pick up the contents of Thorin’s head at the bookstore. But everyone should try their hand at homebrew at one point or another, and this episode is choc full of tips and feedback for creative DMs everywhere. That includes frank discussion of what worked, what didn’t, our biggest challenges (looking at you, Roll20), where the world seemed too shallow, and what was most interesting in this long-running homebrew D&D campaign. We hope it helps you craft even better games for your table.

1:00 Wrapping up the 4-year Woodstock Wanderers campaign

4:00 The final showdown with the Malbion, a solo archmage made to face seven 15th-level players

12:00 Just the right amount of wrong: How to make the PCs hate the villain without making them hate the game

19:00 What was different in DMing a homebrew game vs. a WotC published campaign

25:00 How the transition from in-person to Roll20 affected the game (and not for the better)

28:00 Home-made terrain (by our crafty player Scott of Paper Terrain) made in-person gaming even cooler

32:00 What did we like about the campaign?

38:00 The deal with the GOO: Instigating party tension and temptation

50:00 What was most memorable (besides Ghatanothoa and the final battle)?

58:00 What would DM Thorin change if he had it to do all over again and what were his high points?

64:00 What didn’t work?

66:00 Advice for homebrew DMs

68:00 Final thoughts