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 an evil spell put on us that made us shun our friend when Blackleaf died.

Arcane magic can reign down destruction, create something from nothing, and bend the rules of the multiverse. But how often do you think about the means by which your character harnessed that power? Do you believe in a grand theory of magic, or is magic a mystery even to you? We’re going to look at how to work more magical roleplaying details into your arcane caster player character.

The first official D&D glimpse the public got of the Forgotten Realms was in Dragon Magazine #62, in the first installment of Ed Greenwood’s Pages from the Mages. Instead of just publishing articles with new AD&D spells, the articles described specific spellbooks, their history, the wizards that owned the spellbooks,  and what was contained within them, including the new spells. Greenwood’s motivation for publishing the articles? He wanted to give his NPCs new spells, and he thought it would be fairer to his players if an editor accepted them into a professional publication.

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 the bag of snacks at the back of the shelf that you thought you already ate.

No matter how long it is between our game sessions, its easy to lose track of what was going on the last time you played. Even though we want to get caught up, no one wants to wait 15 minutes for the GM to read the previous session into the record. We’re going to look at the best way to balance recapping your last session  with having enough momentum to hit the ground running.

The displacer beast is one of the most iconic of D&D monsters, and even appeared in Honor Among Thieves, looking damn cool. The displacer beast isn’t in the 5e SRD, meaning that D&D products not made by WotC can’t use them. Ironically, the displacer beast was inspired by Coeurl, an alien hunting cat with tentacles on its shoulders, that appears in A.E. Von Vogt’s story “Black Destroyer,” in July of 1939. Couerl tracked down the crew of a spaceship one by one, killing them, until it gets tricked into going into an escape pod where it gets shot into space. So the displacer beast came from the same inspiration as the xenomorphs from Aliens. But displacer beast kittens are still cuter than facehuggers.

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 phoenix that just keeps rising from the ashes.

Last year was a roller coaster ride for all things Dungeons & Dragons. The year started with breaking a 23 year old promise with the OGL, a reversal that saw the 5e SRD added to creative commons, the release of the Dungeons & Dragons movie, the excitement of the 2024 anniversary year plans, and the sudden, sobering stop of the December layoffs from Hasbro. We take a look at this tumultuous year and what it means for the game and the brand.

The setting that is currently called Mystara started off as the Known World. Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay created the setting as a shared world that multiple gamers could contribute to, for their home games. When the BX edition of D&D came out, Schick and Moldvay were told that the Greyhawk setting was reserved for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons only. That’s when the Known World became known to D&D players, as it became the backdrop of the BX, and later BECMI D&D adventures. When Basic D&D was phased out of existence so TSR could focus on only developing AD&D 2nd Edition, the Known World was renamed Mystara, and was ported to AD&D. Unfortunately, modern gamers haven’t been exposed to the Known World, which is ironic, considering they have been exposed to the Forgotten Realms.

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 taught us when to bring the snacks.

Ang and Jared discuss Beer & Pretzels versus Wine & Cheese, and it’s not just what they’re having for the holidays. Come with us on this episode of THAC0 with Advantage as we explore different play styles in D&D, from casual and cathartic to engaging and exacting.

Auril’s Blesstide is a floating holiday in the Forgotten Realms, where people in Waterdeep dress in white and don’t eat hot food, to appease the Frost Maiden in hopes of a mild winter. The Wonders of Gond was a holiday randomly determined by the church of the Wonderbringer in which they encouraged people by making gadgets and toys to hand out to people to brighten their spirits. Wintershield is the first day of the year, where people gather to discuss the previous year, look at maps, and talk about politics. This is how you know the Forgotten Realms is a fantasy world, because no one thinks explicitly talking about politics on purpose during the holidays is a good idea. 

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 what taught us our RPG manners.

This episode is all about being a better player. Ang and Jared talk about their past trials with rough players and what they believe helps be a better player at the DnD table. Let us know what you think are some quality traits to bring to the table and any tips you might have for being a better player.

Now that we’ve seen Sigil in D&D 5e, it’s interesting to take a look back on the history of the city and how entrenched it is in D&D lore. It didn’t appear in the AD&D 1st edition Manual of the Planes, but was the focal point of the 2nd edition AD&D Planescape campaign. AD&D 2e ends with Vecna attempting to enter Sigil and vaguely causing the Great Wheel to break into a multiverse. This led to different D&D campaign settings having distinct planar cosmologies, such as the Great Tree arrangement of the Forgotten Realms. We don’t get to see Sigil in 3rd edition, but are instead introduced to another planar metropolis, Union. While a lot of people think of D&D 4e as being the “oddball” of modern D&D, Sigil shows up in the Dungeon Masters Guide II as a location for Paragon Level play. We haven’t seen Union since the Epic Level Handbook, and Sigil showed up in the D&D 5e Dungeon Masters Guide even before the Planescape campaign setting was released. If you made it through all of that, you can now comment on how our esteemed narrator pronounced Sigil after all of those references. 

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 what we spend most of our segments on.

Time keeps on slipping slipping slipping into the future… and we should probably have some way to track it, some reason for keeping time, and have some interesting holidays and festivals to break up the monotony of the passing of the days. Maybe even put some cool adventures inside those holiday moments. That’s what todays episode is all about.

The round is the measure of time that is most often referenced in D&D. In Original D&D, AD&D 1st Edition, and AD&D 2nd Edition, a round was one minute long, however, AD&D 2e makes the point of saying rounds are an abstract, kind of like hit points, not an absolute measure of time. Basic D&D through all versions of the Basic set, and up to the Rules Cyclopedia, has 10 second rounds, but also mentions that combat that takes less than one turn (10 minutes) should be considered to take one turn (10 minutes). That’s because we need to know when your torches burn out. D&D 3rd, 4th, and 5th has six second rounds, most likely because that means 10 rounds equates to one minute. Who uses torches anymore, we all have darkvision or light spells?

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 haunts our dreams, always lurking just beyond sight . . . in the shadows.

It’s all about those spooky monsters that make us feel that uncomfortable unsettling unnerving waver in the pit of our stomachs when they show up in our games. Ang and Jared talk about the scary monsters, the ones that should be scary, and why those monsters that do scare us make us feel that way.

While a few important NPCs have been granted the descriptor of witch, like Tasha or the Simbul, actual classes have been pretty sparse. There were a few classes in the early days in Dragon Magazine, and a witch kit in AD&D 2e. The third party Mayfair product Role Aids: Witches presented a 2e witch class with nine subclasses. 3e saw five official prestige classes, two based on the Witches of Rashemen from the Forgotten Realms setting. From 3rd parties there was the Quintessential Witch from Mongoose Publishing, and the Witches Handbook from Green Ronin, both presenting witch classes. Pathfinder stepped in with their own core Witch class from the Advanced Player’s Guide. Even in D&D 5th edition, most witch options have been 3rd party offerings, including a wizard subclass from Schwalb Entertainment, and a witch class from Kobold Press’ Deep Magic Volume II. I guess the concept of an official witch class in D&D is just . . . cursed?

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 the wraith that haunts all of our pretty, pretty dice.

What do we have here? 2024 D&D rules updates. Now it’s just Unearthed Arcana again and not One D&D. There’s EN Worlds Level Up: Advanced 5E that’s got a starter box coming. Interesting. We got Kobold Press and their Tales of the Vaillant, and there’s the Cubicle 7 D20 RPG. They’ve all been updating we finally got some time to catch up, check them out, and let you know what we think.

How tall are elves? Well, they average 5’4” and max out at 5’8” in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. In AD&D 1st and 2nd edition, as well as 3rd edition they average 5’1” and max out at 5’5”. When it comes to the 2014 Players Handbook they’re all around 5’5” and reach the lofty point guard heights of 6’2”. But if you read your Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance books, they’re the same height or taller than humans, going all the way back to the Old Grey Boxed Set or the Dragonlance Novels. Basically, Gygax wanted us to know that D&D elves weren’t Tolkien elves, unless they were.

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 encouraging me to buy more dice.

Do you think about your next campaign while running your current one? Do you have a google drive document or folder filled with campaign ideas you’d love to get to the table but just will never have the time for? Is your brain just soup and mush full of campaign ideas floating around just waiting to bubble to the surface? Jared and Ang have all of these things happening to them. Join them to hear how they sort it all out and while your at it, let us know what campaigns ideas you have that you just haven’t gotten to the table yet.

While D&D has had many published adventures over the decades, most people only think of published campaigns in terms of the 2000s on. While some people point to the original Dragonlance Saga (DL1 to D14) as the first adventure path, when the original Greyhawk adventures were pulled together into compilations, the assumption was that they could serve as a full Greyhawk campaign experience, starting with the Slavelords series, moving on to the Temple of Elemental Evil, then Against the Giants, and finally the Queen of the Demonweb Pits. I’m surprised no DMG has said “If you’re out of ideas for how to end a campaign, just go fight a god.

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 encouraging me to buy more dice.

Ah, the Campaign. They start. They proceed. Most fizzle into the nothingness of the astral sea like dead gods floating amongst the crystal sphere’s. But some. Those few. Reach their glorious conclusions, providing that closure and finish we all so enjoy and greatly desire. Ang and Jared talk about all that today and more when it comes to D&D campaigns.

Modern versions of D&D and similar games usually assume the “optimal” party of characters is 4-5 characters, all at the same level. Earlier edition adventures didn’t have exactly the same recommendations for how many characters and what level they should be. Against the Cult of the Reptile God was for 4 to 7 characters levels 1s to 3rd. The original Ravenloft adventure was for 6-8 characters of level 5 to 7. C4 To Find a King was designed for 10 players of levels 4 to 7. So, um, were you suppose to start with 10 friends, and then cut your friend group down to 8, and then 7, or how was that supposed to work?