Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, we’re still processing our game notes

It’s natural for a GM to wonder if what they presented in the last game session is what their players wanted. Did that section that you spent hours outlining provide the response you were hoping? Is the secret mastermind going to be rewarding for the PCs to uncover? What if I asked for too many ability checks? What if I forgot to ask for the ability checks that one player just put all of their effort into increasing? In today’s episode, we’re going to look at gathering feedback and putting that feedback into action in our games.

In 1976, Lost Caverns of Tsojconth was used as a tournament module at Wintercon V, and wasn’t revised and distributed for sale until 1982, when it came out as S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Some of the long term D&D elements that showed up in the tournament module were Iggwilv, Graz’zt, and intelligent weapons. The mass market version in 1982 went on to include three more demon lords, the Demonomicon of Iggwilv, the Prison of Xagyg, and all of those summoning and imprisoning spells that eventually showed up in AD&D’s Unearthed Arcana. As part of the marketing for the 2024 anthology Quests from the Infinite Staircase, WotC released a condensed version of Tsojcanth called Descent into the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth which included tournament rules. So you can run this for your players, and tell everyone that doesn’t win that they need to get gud. That will go over well.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D can still be unpredictable.

We all know the fantasy archetypes that spring from fantasy RPGs. The naïve but steadfast paladin, the stoic ranger who relates better to animals than people, the arrogant wizard that looks down on anyone less intelligent than they are. But we also know people that intentionally play against those archetypes. The hard drinking hedonistic paladin of the goddess of love, the ranger that has friends in every tavern in every city along the Sword Coast, the wizard that loves teaching and explaining new things to others. Today we’re going to look at playing against type, why you may want to do it, and how sometimes it can be very similar to playing a rigid archetype. 

While there are a lot of people who have argued otherwise, D&D has had rules to facilitate roleplaying almost from the beginning. Alignment is the first step along that path, but it created moral absolutes that were often wielded against players instead of supporting their character decisions. The 2nd edition Ravenloft Boxed Set introduced the Dark Gifts, temptations that would slowly turn PCs into the same Darklords whose evil they were resisting, but although these provided some benefits, they were, like alignment, mainly a tool of negative reinforcement. Player’s Option: Skills and Powers introduced one of the worst things you can do in any RPG, giving PCs more starting abilities for taking a flaw, where the real game was picking a flaw that would never affect you significantly. D&D 5e introduced Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, that involved positive reinforcement! You get something extra for roleplaying . . . just . . . not if you already have inspiration. And they’re not framed as “yes/no” questions, so deciding if you get inspiration can turn into a debate or at least a prolonged discussion in the middle of a session. So close.

The Heroes of Hovel’s Way is an epic fantasy story about two young heroes, Odie and Eremon. These heroes have the potential to deal with a dire threat from an ancient time that is poised to return to the world. A titan destroyer, Valhalmorris the Mountain Strangler, stirs. The fate of the Barony of Kastakin may be in their hands. We play the game to find out. We invite you to join us on the journey.

Music and Sound effects are from Envato and Storyblocks and are under a royalty free license

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D still isn’t on its last breath.

Only two things in life are certain. Death and Taxes. Or in D&D, Death Saves and Upkeep rules. In this episode, we’re going to look at character death. How should you handle it? Can you run a game without it? How does it affect the stakes of your game? What does it mean to have a meaningful death in the game? We’re going to teeter on the boundary between life and death today in this episode of THAC0 w/ Advantage.

In OD&D, at zero hit points meant death. But people developed an affection for words on a character sheet. It wasn’t long before an alternative developed. In the AD&D 1e DMG, negative hit points were introduced as an optional rule. You didn’t die until you reached -10 hit points, losing one hit point per round until healed or stabilized. Regardless of magical healing, you were out of commission for a week afterward. AD&D 2e changed this recovery time to 24 hours, but you also lost all of your prepared spells. D&D 3e introduced the disabled state if you landed on exactly 0 hit points. You could lie there and do nothing, or start bleeding out after taking an action. But if you want to see the precursor to D&D 5e’s Death Saves, you need to look at the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, the collected BECMI era rules, which introduced the idea that if you dropped to 0 hit points, you could make a save versus Death. If you made the save, you had 10 minutes of additional life, as long as you didn’t take any more damage. But if you failed, the next thing your character would hear is dialogue in all caps. DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.

The Heroes of Hovel’s Way is an epic fantasy story about two young heroes, Odie and Eremon. These heroes have the potential to deal with a dire threat from an ancient time that is poised to return to the world. A titan destroyer, Valhalmorris the Mountain Strangler, stirs. The fate of the Barony of Kastakin may be in their hands. We play the game to find out. We invite you to join us on the journey.

Music and Sound effects are from Envato and Storyblocks and are under a royalty free license

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is a spawn point for new players.

On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about zero level humans. But in this case, we me people that haven’t played D&D before. We’ve talked about new players before, but what about specific techniques? How do you introduce concepts in bit sized chunks that will go down easy? We’re going to talk about setting up your D&D sessions with new players by looking at video game tutorials in today’s episode.

There are many famous villains in D&D. Acererak, Lolth, Tiamat, Orcus, Strahd, Lareth the Beautiful, Verminard, Lord Soth, Manshoon, the Xanathar. But for a generation of D&D players, one of the worst villains is Bargle. The BECMI Red Box Basic set taught players the rules by running them through a “choose your own adventure” style scenario which ended in a confrontation with a magic item stealing wizard named Bargle. Bargle’s greatest crime, however, is fridging the NPC that has been your friend all through the intro adventure. There is no way to save Alex . . . I mean . . . Aleena the Cleric, you just have to figure out if you can make Major Force . . . er . . . I mean Bargle, pay.

The Heroes of Hovel’s Way is an epic fantasy story about two young heroes, Odie and Eremon. These heroes have the potential to deal with a dire threat from an ancient time that is poised to return to the world. A titan destroyer, Valhalmorris the Mountain Strangler, stirs. The fate of the Barony of Kastakin may be in their hands. We play the game to find out. We invite you to join us on the journey.

Music and Sound effects are from Envato and Storyblocks and are under a royalty free license

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D presents us with irresistible conundrums.

Sometimes information is its own reward. Sometimes its exciting to learn new things, or to string together some facts and learn a greater truth. If you’ve ever wanted to run a mystery in your fantasy TTRPG games, or if you’ve run one, but you want to reexamine how to do it for the next time, we’ve got an episode for you. We’re going to look at running mysteries in your fantasy games. Time to conjure some clues.

The Assassins Knot, an AD&D adventure from 1983, presented a murder mystery for the PCs to solve. It specifically mentions that the adventure may be less challenging due to the resources and abilities available to characters 6th level or higher. It contains a timeline of events that will happen each day, as well as reactions that happen when characters take various actions. It’s not a bad blueprint for a D&D adventure. But it feels a little unwieldy to have a suggested party of 6 to 10 characters of levels 2 to 5. 

The Heroes of Hovel’s Way is an epic fantasy story about two young heroes, Odie and Eremon. These heroes have the potential to deal with a dire threat from an ancient time that is poised to return to the world. A titan destroyer, Valhalmorris the Mountain Strangler, stirs. The fate of the Barony of Kastakin may be in their hands. We play the game to find out. We invite you to join us on the journey.

Music and Sound effects are from Envato and Storyblocks and are under a royalty free license

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends who have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D collects stray fantasy elements the way English accumulates unrelated words. 

The lore of D&D was pieced together from a ton of fantasy and folklore. But what if you took that approach to the mechanics and procedures of your game? What can you steal from Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games that will help you run your D&D games, or any other fantasy RPG? We’re going to podcast to find out.

With the Vancian Magic system, you prepare spells and then forget them until you have a chance to prepare more spells. This has been foundational to D&D from the beginning…aaaand almost immediately fans were attempting to create alternate systems. One notable example was the spell point system. Fan publications like Alarums & Excursions circulated some of these systems, and when the RPG Tunnels & Trolls came out, it relied on a spell point system. Gygax was very normal about all of this and called these alternate rules “beneath contempt,” but in 1996 (after Gygax was no longer at TSR) Player’s Option: Spells and Magic presented D&D players with the worst of both worlds–a spell point system that you used to determine what you could memorize, not what you could cast. In the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana sourcebook, there was another shot at spell point implementation, but with Sorcerers still relatively young, the system stepped on that classes’ strength by giving wizards similar flexibility with a wider range of spells. The 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide also has a spell point system, which adds a limitation of one spell per day each from 6th level or higher. That said, the 5e spellcasting is way less “Vancian” than previous editions, with characters able to use their spell slots to cast whatever they have prepared. So does that mean the system has become above contempt?