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 Taco Tuesday of narrative gaming.

How do we get new gamers. WE TEACH THEM!!! Ang and Jared are talking about running new games for players on this weeks installment of Thac0 with Advantage

In 1994, TSR put out a boxed set called First Quest, one of their new line of CD enhanced game accessories. In addition to having a recording of voice actors playing a game of D&D (ahem), there were different tracks to introduce each location in two separate dungeons detailed in the boxed set. A sample version of the product was included with Dragon Magazine. Would it sound really sad and pathetic to say that someone working second shift that couldn’t get a regular group of players together in 1994 might have listened to this over and over again on the way home at night? We didn’t have podcasts back then, okay?

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 cool side of the pillow stuffed with d20s.

There are a large number of genre’s that Dungeons and Dragons says it can emulate. Ang and Jared go through them and provide advice on what they think works, doesn’t work, and some general thoughts on how players and GMs might make them work. They also get into their campaign journal and talk about their Tales of the Valiant playtesting.

D&D has attempted to emulate genre with various settings in the past. One example of this was the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Lankhmar, City of Adventure supplement, which attempted to downplay the effectiveness of D&D style magic for player characters to emulate the more barbarian/fighter/thief focused aspects of the setting. All the spells in the game had their casting time bumped up to the next tier, so rounds became turns (10 rounds) to cast, and hours became days. That all seems like a lot of work compared to just giving the Gray Mouser the Magic Initiate feat.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re all friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we all love lots of other RPGs, D&D is a mass media property that hooks us in even when we aren’t gaming.

We’re talking about the D&D Movie: Honor Among Thieves. That’s its. Full Stop. Strap in. Let’s go.

If you just want the D&D movie stuff head to 32:11 in the Podcast

While the kids from the 1980s D&D cartoon didn’t originally go to the Forgotten Realms (the cartoon debuted 4 years before the first Forgotten Realms boxed set was published), the kids have been portrayed as living out their D&D fantasy in Faerun in various media. In 1996 TSR published a Forgotten Realms: The Grand Tour comic book which featured Presto trying to apprentice himself to Elminster. Baldur’s Gate II contains a brief reference to Hank and Bobby being eaten by Tiamat. I guess the kids learned about resurrection spells before this movie came out.

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 likes to experiment with our emotions.

Take the rules. Learn them. Use them. Report on them. Get revisions. Repeat. It’s the playtesters life. Then there’s playing at 10th level and above which many many people do, right? No, they don’t? Ok, well, for those who do Ang and Jared get into it and some ideas for how to make it fun.

The AD&D adventure Throne of Bloodstone included pregenerated 100th level characters, with notes on running 100th level characters. Some of the advice for running adventures for 100th level characters in that adventure was to focus on endangering the PCs stuff, rather than endangering the PCs, for example, destroying the wizard’s spellbook. That’ll make you a popular DM!

• Write for Gnome Stew
• Dungeon Dudes on spicing up those boss monsters
• Worlds Beyond Number
• Worlds Beyond Number Patreon

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 fried food on a stick in the carnival of our lives.

Dragon Heist, Princes of the Apocalypse, Tales of the Old Margrave, White Plume Mountain, Tales from the Yawning Portal, The Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Curse of Strahd, and Storm Kings Thunder are just a scant few of the adventures that have been published for 5e. We’re taking a varied look at how to utilize these adventures in your games on this weeks Thac0 with Advantage.

The first published adventure for D&D was Temple of the Frog, which was included in the Original D&D supplement Blackmoor. The first stand alone adventure, however, was Palace of the Vampire Queen in 1976, a year after Temple of the Frog, and wasn’t published by TSR. Many of the early adventures were “tournament adventures,” meaning that players were being scored on how well they did in the adventure. No pressure.

• Write for Gnome Stew
• The Legend Of Vox Machina (Amazon Original Series Soundtrack) ‘2 x Zoetrope Picture Discs’
• A D&D TV Show is coming to Paramount Plus!

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 has inlaid our neural pathways with mithril.

You don’t want a railroad but you want your PCs to feel like they’re part of the story. How can we do this? Ang and Jared talk all about it in this weeks THAC0 with Advantage

You won’t find Hobbits, Ents, Balrogs, or Wargs in D&D now, but that wasn’t always the case. Early in D&D’s history, it borrowed more directly from it’s inspirational material, but the Saul Zaentz Company, which held the rights to Middle-earth licensing, filed a lawsuit against TSR. The Saul Zaentz Company was apparently a little overzealous, because they also wanted D&D to remove the words dragon, dwarf, elf, goblin, and orc from the game as well. The judge looked at this request and said, “this shall not pass

• Player Versus Player Conflicts – Seth Skorkowski’s YouTube channel
• Dark Knights of Steel

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 likes to make us drop everything else in the hobby for the last month when we aren’t even playing.

Have you ever died in a D&D game? No. Not you. Your character. That’s part of what Ang and Jared are talking about on this episode along with healing, resurrection, reincarnation, and everything to do with death and healing in DnD.

The first rules that let people survive after they dropped to 0 hit points appeared in the AD&D 1st Edition DMG. If you were at -3 hit points or less, you were still alive, but you kept losing hit points until you hit -10 and died. If you reached -6 or lower, the DM could just decide to maim your character. Plus, your character was incapacitated for a week without being able to get back any hit points. Best case scenario, one of your buddies carries your body out of the dungeon. Worst-case scenario, your friends just watched Weekend at Bernie’s and decide to bring you into that encounter with the local Mind Flayer.

• Deep Magic 2 (with some Black Flag compatibility stretch goals)
• The Oracle Character Generator for Fantasy RPGs by Nord Games — Kickstarter
• Dungeon Denizens by Goodman Games — Kickstarter
• Grim Hollow: Valikan Clans by Ghostfire Gaming — Kickstarter
• Home-Field Advantage – A Compendium of Lair Actions

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 gaming tradition that transcends whoever owns it at the moment.

What are your favorite memories from each edition of dungeons and dragons? That’s the question Ang and Jared answer in this episode, plus there might be a bonus song on the end titled My Favorite DnD things.

A company called Mayfair Games started making unofficial D&D supplements in a line called Role Aids in the early 80s. TSR threatened to sue them, not for the content of the supplements, but because they said they were compatible with AD&D. In the 90s, they went back to court over how well Mayfair abided by their previous agreement. In some corners, this wasn’t seen as a move to enforce the agreement, so much as a move to force Mayfair out of competition. Thankfully, that was the last such instance in D&D history . . . wait, there seems to be some papers stuck to the back of this . . .

• Legal Eagle on OGL 1.1
• Green Ronin’s 3rd Edition Era Megabundle

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 followed us home and we want to keep it.

It’s a pile of gold with gems, three swords, a suit of armor, a small cask, 27 gold ingots, a statue of a dragon with a series of gems embedded in it, there’s also a bunch of silver, and a lot of copper on the bottom. Oh, don’t forget to grab that gossamer sheet that looks like it was made out of fairy wings. Hey what’s this? Nope. Put it all back. Treasure is tainted. It’s got Electrum pieces in it.
All jokes aside. this episode is all about treasure and rewards. So let’s grab our dice and begin our adventure with Jared and Ang.

From the Bardic College: Electrum is a real thing. No really. It’s a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, and it was used for coins in Greece, Carthage, and Rome. So when you get 2000 electrum pieces, don’t think “this could have been 1000 gold pieces,” think “people actually used these things.” Then think, “we need to get this converted to 1000 gold pieces.

• Shannon Applecline’s year-in-review for 2022 on RPGNet
• The Oracle Story Generator

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 our sanctuary, so you’re only going to hurt us with an area attack.

We’re back with a hefty episode about the One D&D Playtest. Ang and Jared dive into the cleric changes and some new designs surrounding the Ardling and Goliath. That’s right. You can play anthropomorphic animals or a variety of giant types. Also. They included a change log. Thank the gods.

D&D was born of a lot of conflicting influences, and the Cleric is a great example of this melting pot of pop culture. It was originally introduced in the game as a class specifically about hunting the undead, but then picked some some limitations based on assumptions from characters like Archbishop Turpin or Odo of Bayeux using clubs or maces in their depictions. Have fun staking a vampire with a blunt stake!

• Shard VTT
• Empire of Exiles by Erin M. Evans