Why Read so Many RPG Magazines?

A few months back, I read Anatomy of an Adventure by M.T. Black. Then I also noticed Black’s highly viewed posts on EN World looking at old issues of Dragon Magazine. He practices what he preaches in terms of adventure and game design—read and copy the masters, and when you finish you’ll have discovered your own style. So though I was reading both old and new RPG magazines before this, it gave new impetus. 

In fact based on what I’ve read about this hobby, the zine predates the game, and provided a common forum for discussion of ideas and concepts. Later descendants of the fanzine format were and are the official magazines of various publishers. 

These types of products play an important role in continuing to develop the hobby, I think even to this day. Take a look at the names in many of the magazines, old and new, for newer and more established publishers. Then take a look at the writers and designers in their books on your shelve or in your digital library. Magazines provide a place for new freelance writers and designers to cut their teeth in a more traditional publication space. Anyone can make a product and put it on DriveThruRPG (that’s not to diminish the self-publishing route, which is very hard on its own). But the process of working with editors and other designers fostered by magazines seems to fuel the larger TTRPG industry, and is the path towards authors credits in hardbacks from established publishers. 

Take a look at the early publishing credits of most of Wizards of the Coast’s design team if you don’t believe me. Experienced designers learned their craft writing then editing for Dungeon or Dragon magazines. More recent designers have some of their first publication credits in MCDM’s Arcadia. You’ll see En5ider authors in the author and designers credits sections of hardback titles from MCDM, Kobold Press, Ghostfire Gaming, and more.

So if you want to understand this hobby, find great ideas for your home games, or even start writing, take a look at EN Publishing’s En5ider, or Gate Pass Gazette. Learn from the work in Wildmage Press’ Horizons. Read the magazines from decades past and you’ll find things that inspire you, and you’ll drive your own creative energy.

Fan Kobold Press Northlands Adventure: Return of the Azure King - Pitch

I was a little disappointed to discover that my submission to Kobold Press' (KP) most recent open pitch call had not been selected. I would like to offer a hearty congratulations to those whose adventures were selected! According to the latest KP update on their Northlands kickstarter project they were:

• In the Hall of the Hill Troll Chief by Atgeir

• Storm Champion's Barrow by Miranda Crowell

However, I enjoyed my pitch, and I have an abet small platform to share it here under the KP fan content policy, as it uses elements from their outstanding Midgard Campaign setting. Further, the guidelines provided to folks who were eligible to submit is that we can do with it what we please, while of course respecting KP's copyright. So I have decided to post my idea and make a personal goal to follow through as if it had been selected, using the KP fan content policy to share it for free here on the blog.

Over the next couple months, I will draft an 8,000 word adventure based upon my pitch and post it here (perhaps broken into several posts for readability). The non-specific eventual deadline of early Spring 2026 was provided, so I will look to have this project completed by the beginning of March. Significant spoilers for the adventure are in the pitch. I will look at including a brief non-spoiler blurb when it is completed for any readers who would like to suggest this adventure to their GMs, while any GMs potentially interested in running an original adventure set in KP's Northlands region of Midgard should read on.

So without further ado:

Return of the Azure King

For Adventurers of 8th Level

The Cradle Cave at the heart of the city of Tanserhall was breached and the holiest relics stolen, a hammer and anvil of Thor and Volund. The rulers of Tanserhall tracked the thieves to Veles Fang, where the trail goes cold amongst the rivers and marshes. Panicked by memories and legends of Thor’s wrath when he cast Tanserhall down, they request the adventurers’ aid. 

On a journey for the sagas, they encounter Khazzaki riders, Kariv wanders, and dwarven reavers, discovering clues leading to the fabled Red Mounds of Rhos Khurgan. These clues and rumors are dark—that the shadow of Ulf the Azure King has returned, a despot so terrible that fallen Domovogrod and Tsar-ruled Vidim allied over half a century ago to defeat him. There are dark symbols of a god spoken of only in whispers—Chernobog. All leads point to the cursed 32rd red mound. 

Exploring the red mound, the adventurers discover the truth. Fjolmod, son of the Azure King, has returned from exile in Vellarsheim alongside troops of the Thursir warlord Mensnark Obsbane. Allied with cultists of the Cauldron of Chernobog, Fjolmod seeks to imbue his father’s weapon, Menneskelig-dod, with unholy power and conquer the whole of the Northlands.

2e AD&D Birthright Campaign Setting Review

This article is spoiler free, only providing specific information that the original books describe as safe to share with players as part of setting background.

Birthright is an interesting setting, and frankly not discussed much in my abet limited experience in the hobby. On ENWorld I've seen its fanbase called "small but vocal." It is small indeed, with much of the community residing on a fan website that has existed for roughly two decades and a more recently created discord server. For me personally, I didn't hear about Birthright until I heard it mentioned in passing in a video by Matt Colville. Appearing later in the life cycle of 2e AD&D, it seems as though Birthright never got as much attention as other settings like Planescape and Spelljammer. 

It's also of note that as older materials, the Birthright Campaign Setting and other supplements, available on DriveThruRPG, include the disclaimer that "Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were commonplace in American society at that time. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today." Those interested in exploring this setting should keep this in mind and use player safety tools. 

The setting and rules of the original box set is laid out in three books. Let's take a look at them.

Atlas

Really interesting overview, providing the meat of the setting lore. It is written from an in-character perspective, by a chamberlain waiting for a wise emperor to rise and rule the fallen empire once more. I found the narrative style less annoying personally than when it was used for the Planescape 2e sources. The lore sets the continent of Cerilia up as a land that has been settled by humans, in a generally low magic setting. There still remain untamed frontiers to explore, which seems a major idea for some regions (there are some potentially problematic themes of colonialism as elves, dwarves, and orog peoples lived in Cerilia before the arrival of humans). 

The background of the setting is that a thousand years or longer before the present timeline there was a massive battle between the forces of evil and good, in which the gods also participated and destroyed one another. Their energy created new gods from some of the combatants and also diffused amongst those who survived on both sides, creating powerful magical bloodlines amongst the humanoids and also creating the dark antagonists, the awnsheghlien. These adversaries are functionally immortal and are natural bad guys for your adventures. 

There is a mystical element to the awnsheghlien, particularly as these are unique monsters, which I think is sometimes lost in D&D. So while normal versions of monster stat blocks might easily be used for some of them, it would also make sense to make modified or legendary versions of some (like a modified medusa stat block for the Gorgon).

Then the setting takes the bloodline theme and combines it with the divine right of kings to create a feudal system of rule. After the battle an empire arose that unified much of the continent, but it fell as the ruling bloodline weakened. The seeds of a plot that could be as radical as reuniting the empire, or as small as dealing with the local politics and the threat of nearby neighbors emerges. The rules presented in the rulebook then support this different style of gameplay. I like the fallen empire trope, and already planned to employ a similar theme in my own world. The world is distinct and interesting, and I’d definitely consider a campaign here.

The descriptions of the various lands are interesting, and I think you could do worse than using Cerilia without the domain system as an adventuring setting alternative to others like the Forgotten Realms.

Rulebook

Character Options

It’s always been interesting considering the class and character restrictions based upon ancestry which are included in older sourcebooks. Honestly seems rather silly at this point. However, I do appreciate the brief sections on each people that detail their culture and what makes them unique.

Domains

The domain system is what really makes this setting unique and cool. It will not be for everyone. There's a lot conceptually you need to take in and understand to effectively use the system. The GM really needs to be an expert, and it is more akin to a strategic simulation game than a roleplaying game. It's the intersection of these two styles of games that makes Birthright truly shine though.

First, you really need this beautiful stitched together map of Cerilia to understand this system. If you want to use another setting with this system, you'll need to figure out how to divide up the map according to provinces, which according to the book should be between 1,000 and 1,500 miles square, or about 30-40 miles per side if you are doing rough squares. The book notes the exact dimensions aren't important, but if you want to maintain some of the verisimilitude in ability to communicate and travel quickly within the area then this is a good rule of thumb. You don't need to do the entire map necessarily though, just the area you are interested in running your campaign. Then you can follow the principles of spiral campaign development as your players venture further afield, then detailing the provinces and new regions they are going to.

(Major aside: Khorvaire in Eberron, and Midgard are good settings to potentially look at for this. Khorvaire would function well if you wanted to play out the Last War, and Midgard has this type of intrigue and warfare baked into the setting already. The Forgotten Realms works less well because the Sword Coast is primarily city states, and the nobles aren't as tied to geographic holdings in the lore outside of those cities).

Provinces are assigned a level (the book essentially suggests these will primarily range from 0-9). The level assigned generally reflects the population, and through that the economic and political potential of the province (the book says importance and prosperity, but words from actual scholarship are much more descriptive and helpful to us in conceptualizing these). A major city of greater than 40,000 people is at least level 7 (i.e. a province containing Ptolus would be 7 or 8). 

Within a province you have four types of holdings:

• Guilds (Associated with the 2e Thief class)
• Law
• Sources (Sources of magical energy derived from the land itself)
• Temples (Centers of divine power and influence)

There are a number of slots for each of these holdings within a province equal to its level (except for sources, they have other rules later). There is also a limitation based on the size of the province for how many regents (rulers) those holding slots can be divided between (for instance, a level 3 province can only have one regent per type of holding. This is true even if the holding doesn't use all the available slots. Meaning this province can have a level 1 temple holding, but no other regents can take those slots.

Next the various types of assets that a regent can have are discussed, which is essentially anything other than a holding, including armies, money, and more. 

Reading this, it becomes very apparent that some sort of digital ability to manage data is necessary—those folks who did this by hand in the ‘90’s deserve a round of applause. A CSV file might suffice, with holdings nested under provinces and listed with their respective levels and regents. Regents' assets need to be tracked too. There's also the added wrinkle of tracking the interrelations of regents, scions, and their bloodlines. The type of hyperlinking available in Foundry or other non VTT document management tools also could be a way to provide lists of provinces, the holdings, and regents, along with their associated resource gain each turn.

In addition to all of this, there are the procedures for running domain turns and a skirmish battle game with cards for units (wait this sounds familiar). These rules provide some parameters that to me make them more usable that the more amorphous domain rules that Kingdoms & Warfare provided, certainly inspired by this previous product. Though you definitely need digital tools to keep track of everything, the procedures follow a certain logic, and some lists and flowcharts nicely demonstrate how everything ought to flow. The domain rules also explicitly are designed to work alongside adventures and guidance is given on how to advance time and interweave the domain turns with adventures—a degree of specificity that I find more helpful than the tired “make it up as you go” advice that I've also seen. The framework allows for deviation better than having to haphazardly create something on the fly.

Ruins of Empire

This book is densely packed, providing the domain data for a number of NPC regents and domains in Anuire, which is essentially a European fantasy themed portion of the setting. The level of detail included in this and other Birthright supplements (which we'll also take a look at in future posts) 

Final Thoughts

This setting offers a type of play not everyone is interested in. That’s okay, but I’m glad that people still continue to think about domain management and building kingdoms as part of the fantasy TTRPG hobby. This is an interesting setting from a historical point of view and offers one example of how to approach this problem. Various aspects of Birthright could be drawn from or combined with other systems—for example, division of a map up into regions is very similar to A5E’s exploration mechanics. If I were to run this setting, I might make use of the exploration encounters from A5E in this way to do pointcrawls with regional nodes.

You can also see how Birthright emphasized an ideal of generational play, with characters developing their holdings, perhaps gaining control of a province with regency, and passing on their power to a trusted heir. I like this idea in other works I've seen it in, like the much more recent Broken Weave. Similar mechanics from games like Pendragon could be adapted too.

There are also obvious different styles of play available in Birthright. For example, each player a ruler of a kingdom, which would focus significantly on the domain level game, and potentially include conflict between player domains. There's also the ability to place an NPC or a player in charge of a kingdom, with the others acting as vassals, promoting both cooperation, or providing a smaller scale for intrigue. There's also the option of simply adventuring in the setting with no players acting as scions or regents, but getting to interact with the politics and intrigue.

I would love to try out this campaign setting one day. For more reading and reflections from an older fan of the hobby than me, check out the blog post from Grognardia on the setting.

Gate Pass Gazette Issue 0 Reflections

This issue contains four articles: Constructed Heritage, Artificer, Lycanthropy Synergy Feats, and Jabberwock. Written to support EN Publishing's Level Up A5E system, I think the Gate Pass Gazette is a great way to dig into what differentiates this from 2014 or 2024 5e. For readers, I highly recommend picking up a copy of the Annual 2022 Gate Pass Gazette compilation which I am reading through in this series. However, one of the incredibility generous things about EN Publishing is that almost the entirety of this content has been released in the Creative Commons, ORC license, and OGL through the A5E SRD. 

Constructed Heritage by Anthony Alipio provides essentially a Warforged or Gearforged heritage option. This generally seems in line with A5E's other options. It's of note that this character option largely disallows magical healing, requiring the mending cantrip to be used on the construct in the same round for magical healing to be effective. I particularly like the heritage gift option of the Military Frame which provides some really cool features. 

The Artificer by Andrew Engelbrite is an A5E version of the Artificer class. I've taken a look at this class before and been struck by how similar it is to the original 5e version rather than being a significant revision like KibblesTasty's Inventor class. As mentioned above, the major benefit here is that this work is licensed under Creative Commons, meaning that if more creators were aware they  could potentially create Artificer content compatible with most variants of 5e (disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and you shouldn't take this as legal advice).

The next article is Lycanthrope Synergy Feats by Thiago Rosa. There are outstanding and interesting mechanical ideas here and essentially a cool way to progress and increase the power of a character infected with lycanthropy. I think it certainly provides an interesting character progression option. I would have appreciated some more clarifying language to explain how to implement this subsystem and to take these as feat options when feats are normally provided in the character's class progression. 

The Jabberwock, by the amazing monster designer Paul Hughes takes it's inspiration clearly from the poem by Lewis Carroll. This monster entry is written in the same style as the Monstrous Menagerie for A5E (not coincidentally Hughes was lead designer for that product).  I really appreciate the extra details like encounter ideas and signs of the monster that are provided. The Jabberwock itself is a great example of the fantasy driving design, with interesting mechanics for the jabber curse that the creature can inflict and for it's flight, among other things. 

Overall, some interesting material. The Artificer offers interesting possibilities for design and could be potentially adapted for other versions of 5e. The Jabberwock can definitely be used in whatever version of 5e you are playing in a forest infulluenced by the Fey lands, or even in that other world itself. 

Looking forward to checking out Issue 1 next!

Gate Pass Gazette Reflections Main Page

Eberron: Rising From the Last War Reaction

This post was originally written and posted on Amazon as a product review.

I'd never heard of Eberron prior to getting interested in D&D. When I did heard about it, I was unsure if I liked it. I considered myself one of those people who didn't necessarily like technology in my fantasy setting. Also the book had some weird halfling and a velociraptor-thing on the front, so it must be a little weird, right? Man, was I wrong.

Eberron is AWESOME. Fantasy noir, magic so common it appears like advanced technology, political intrigue, mysteries all around just the continent of Khorvaire as detailed in the book. And there's like four or five more continents left to find.

This book is probably one of the best WOTC products for 5e. It is a true setting sourcebook, providing setting information and practical advice for crafting adventures in Eberron. The level of setting info is particularly rare amongst 5e products which have lately focused their page count on player options and mechanics as well as providing long adventures instead of providing useful setting information and story hooks (see Dragonlance and Spelljammer as examples of this). That deficiency is not the case in Eberron: Rising from the Last War. There are descriptions with adventurer hooks for numerous locations in the continent of Khorvaire and short sections on other continents and locales in the world of Eberron.

There is a good player section with mechanics for Eberron character and a significant amount of setting information. If you just let your players read the first few chapters of the book they will have all the setting info they need for a satisfying experience in Eberron. The bestiary isn’t bad either. I always think there could be more monsters though.

The flip side of this is that all of the work to create an adventure is on the DM. This is not an “out of the box” adventure. It is a setting book. There are plenty of story hooks and villains provided that can be used to create adventures. Other adventures can be adapted to the setting fairly easy with several like Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Princes of the Apocalypse, and others having notes on how to use them in multiple settings including Eberron. The plus side of this exclusively being a setting book is that it has significant longevity. You can still use your Eberron book regardless of the edition of DnD you are playing. When the new core book versions come out in 2024 this book will remain relevant to anyone planning to use the Eberron setting in the future.

Heretic's Guide to Devotion & Divinity Review

I've had my eye on this title from Eventyr Games for a while now. The Heretic's Guide to Devotion & Divinity delivers on tools that I was hoping for from Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous but which were missing.

Rather than outlining a pantheon and established lore, this title seeks to help a GM in the solo play of setting creation by providing practical advice on creating your own material that touches on themes of religion. 

I don't know that I can provide high enough praise for how Heretic's Guide to Devotion & Divinity delivers on its promises. In the spirit of sourcebooks from earlier editions, this book truly delivers a GM options into interweave religion and its themes into their RPG. It approaches its purpose from a mature perspective, and provides awesome tools. This includes a section on building stat blocks for deities should you decide that you want to go the way of previous editions of D&D and allow them to be fought—and possibly killed. 

Further chapters provide actionable and inspirational advice on weaving elements into your campaign, whether that be through descriptive or ritual elements, or in holidays. There are flavorful examples and idea seeds for religious ceremonies like funerals and weddings ready to employ in games, and providing an awesome vehicle to add lore or secrets and clues of your story into. Others include discussions of how to make the use of spells like Resurrection more impactful and descriptive. This makes sense! This is a powerful moment in a narrative, and giving a GM tools to make the use of these spells more evocative leads to more immersive games.

Compared to similar books on employing religion in your fantasy tabletop roleplaying games, this book stands head and shoulders above competition like the Book of the Righteous. The tools that it provides to GMs are the type of world building materials I wish were more common. I highly recommend anyone interested in exploring these themes or creating their own fantasy pantheons with realistic details for their games to check out Heretic's Guide to Devotion & Divinity.

En5ider Issue 7 Release!

En5ider Magazine, Issue 7, image by EN Publishing

I am thrilled to announce my debut published adventure in En5ider Magazine, Issue 7, from EN Publishing! The End Has Come is a tier two adventure where adventurers must combat the rebirth of a dark god, and attempt to prevent—or at least delay—the apocalypse. 

En5ider Magazine, Issue 7, image by EN Publishing

Working on this issue was another amazing experience—with even more authorial collaboration that my previous articles. My adventure leverages heavily the wonder work of Chris Rippee on both the Raiment of the Devouring King, and the Society of Tasteful Friends. Those who check out this adventure will also find magic items and monsters from the other great contributors’ articles to this issue. With the awesome leadership of our editor, Mike Myler (who also has an awesome ongoing Kickstarter project you should check out!) this really was the type of experience I have always hoped to have with other creators.

I hope you will consider checking out the En5ider magazine Patreon, and that those who do will enjoy these carefully crafted articles for your 5e tabletop games!