En5ider Issue 5 Release!

En5ider Magazine, Issue 5, image by EN Publishing

I had another awesome experience recently working on Draconic Finds, a collection of original 5e dragon-themed magic items that you can check out from EN Publishing. Researching when coming up with the concept for this piece I realized how few items in 5e across many sources are only tangentially related to dragons and the lack of both draconic motifs or items crafted from dragons. It was also a great opportunity to practice my design skills and once again getting to work with veteran editor Mike Myler. 

There’s also some amazing work from the other authors here including a villain, dragonettes, and more for your 5e game!

En5ider Reactions Issue 17

Image is property of En5ider magazine

Issue 16 of EN5IDER merits its own post due to longer length and it being a pretty cool stand alone adventure. This is your spoiler warning.

Titled Don't Wake Dretchlor, this adventure is by Kiel Chenier, designed for characters of 5-7 level. It's a unique and creative scenario which employs a couple different spins on the typical dungeon crawl, while maintaining the ease of use of that structure. The transitioning into a defensive "cat and mouse" game as it describes itself, as players work to defeat and slow down the advance of a bound demon they unleashed from its wards during their exploration.

The adventure features a forgotten mansion as the dungeon, and provides just enough detail about a nearby settlement and the history of the site that you can run with it and flesh it out further, and easily modify it to fit into whatever setting you are playing in. The description of the village of Sacred Bend is particularly good, detailing the basic services of the settlement, a named tavern, and the healing services of the local priest in a brief paragraph!

The structure also adds relics, or small sites/objects within the house that can be destroyed to weaken the demon. These make great secondary objectives to break up the simple combat loop of D&D, yet containing the action to the bounded space of the dungeon. 

The adventure synopsis is another impressively organized, concise, and well written portion, effectively providing a roadmap of all the relevant high level details of the scenario to the GM. Many adventures miss this, burying critical plot info deep in a room's descriptive text.

Overall, I think this is a great adventure to insert into a campaign or even use as a contained one-shot.

En5ider Author Debut: Falkenburg Times-Pale Moon Consortium

I can't begin to convey how excited I am to announce the publication of my first effort as a freelance RPG author in EN Publishing's En5ider Magazine #4! As announced by EN Publishing earlier this year, En5ider, which has run for over ten years, has been relaunched in a monthly magazine format. I had the amazing privilege of having my article on the Pale Moon Consortium, and intriguing organization specializing in smuggling magical items and other illicit goods in and around the town of Falkenburg in EN Publishing's Elissar setting.

I had an outstanding time working through this new experience with veteran editor and creator Mike Myler and hope for future opportunities to collaborate with the amazing team at EN Publishing. If you'd like to check out the article, along with access to over 600 past En5ider articles, please consider subscribing to their Patreon!

En5ider 16 Reactions

By Mark A. Hart, King and Country in En5ider 16, outlines the idea of using nationality as a background. This is in contrast to the typical approach in 2014 5e of basing backgrounds on occupation. It provides a list of fourteen nationality background themes, and provides the tools to create custom backgrounds, along with a couple examples of fleshed out ones.

Overall I like the approach this article takes. Equating background with nationality could be a problematic topic, leaning into negative stereotypes. However, this treatment does a good job of showing how various fantasy tropes can be tied into a player character’s background about an interesting place. As a practical matter, it is a great guide to how to develop custom backgrounds in general, breaking down the pieces into a more step-by-step process.

Looking forward to future En5ider articles!

Krakovan Rebels: NPC

Vojislov Sorokyn

Appearance: Middle aged human male, Vojislov has pale skin and brown hair. His features are unremarkable, allowing him to move through his people undetected by their vampire despots. He is clean shaven except when in the field, when he allows his beard and mustache to grow. He does stand slightly taller than the average Krakovar male, at just over six feet, and is solidly built from a lifetime of hard work.

Roleplaying: 

• Vojislov always puts the people of Krakovar first, above the cause and above petty motivations like revenge.
• He is quiet and his eyes look distant, as though fixed on some far horizon.

Background: Vojislov Sorokyn was a blacksmith in a small village in central Krakovar before the invasion. Like most people, he simply tried to survive when the Blood Kingdom invaded, aided by the ghouls. His family was taken in a blood tithe by the local vampire lord. He swore vengeance and staked the vampire through the heart with his own hands. Now Vojislov dedicates himself to fighting to protect others from the same fate.

Key Info: 

• Vojislov always puts the people of Krakovar first, above the cause and above petty motivations like revenge.
• He has great mutual respect with the Shield Maidens of Sif.
• Vojislov has a personal vendetta against the Band of the Twice Damned—any who frustrate their designs are ones Vojislov considers his friends.
• He is concerned at the methods that the Grim Accord are rumored to be employing in their fight against the Duchy of Morgau. They harm civilians indiscriminately.

Stat Block: Champion Warrior (Monstrous Menagerie, pg. 497)

Additional NPCs in Vojislov’s band: Use veteran stats.

Stanislava Bulganin

Zorana Svoboda

Vjekoslav Koci

En5ider Reactions Issue 15

Party of One: Rewards of the One-on-One Campaign is by Matt Click. This article doesn’t provide any new mechanics or assistance for running one-one-campaigns, instead dedicating its word count to attempting to persuade the reader of the virtues of this type of play.

The article isn’t bad, but doesn’t really grab me the same way that others which offer more concrete tools for this type of play do. For instance, Arcadia Issue 22 provides Heroic Champions: Powerful New Classes for Parties of One by Bill Doyle, a bold and creative idea to actually allow a game master to use a normal amount of monsters with a fun challenge level for encounters in a one-on-one game. I’ll write more on this particular idea, which I tried out in my session on Hurkaz the Mighty.

Although this article disappoints, it did remind me of my preferred one above. It would certainly be fun to run some published adventures that it’s more difficult to get a group together for due to time constraints as one-on-one adventures.

En5ider Reactions Issues 12-14

Issue 12 of En5ider is titled Fantastic Times & Librams, by Russ Morrissey. A d100 list of titles of books, with authors, physical description and an optional rarity, price, and page count. I really love this article because I love books and it provides an easy way to include mundane books in adventures as loot or flavor. Not much else to the article than this, but the books are creative.

Image is property of ENWorld Publishing

Fire of the Mind, in Issue 13, is by James Abendroth. 

I am including a content warning for discussions of trauma and mental disorders for this discussion of the article.

This article discusses real world mental disorders and their potential applications for a 5e game. The discussion is generally understanding and treats those who suffer from these disorders in the real world with respect. However, I personally don't see a great need to gamify elements of mental disorders. The proposed player options mostly focus on roleplaying (like most mental effects in 5e). There are some mechanical suggestions for penalties or impacted skills, which could be used if you are playing with the optional sanity mechanics for 5e. However, I largely don't see a need to have player characters use this type of material in the 5e system. The GM advise is slightly more helpful in providing options of how to incorporate some of the behaviors descripted into their adventures through NPCs. Some care is needed to make sure to be sensitive in the course of gameplay though. Overall, it doesn’t break much new ground and it’s not likely that I’ll personally use this particular article.

Issue 14 is Strands of Life, by Giltônio Santos is an interesting article. It reminds me of the style and tone of articles I've seen in old issues of Dragon Magazine. The article includes a brief discussion of different classes capable of healing in 5e. Then various strategies of healing or preserving allies hit points are outlined. These are quite interesting. This includes a brief discussion of damage mitigation spells, direct healing, and noting that gradual healing spells are lacking in 5e compared to previous editions. Then it proceeds to address this and the gaps in healing capabilities in 5e. These spells aren't all worth including in your game, but I might test a few out with the Life Cleric in my current Ptolus campaign.

En5ider Reactions Issues 9-11

In issue 9, Circles of Power, by Mark Kernow, provides three druid subclasses. The first is the Circle of the Birds and Beasts. This class is similar in theme to the circle of the shepherd, but focuses on controlling animals in it's powers. They are very utility focused, but not necessarily combat effective. Not my favorite subclass, and reflective of some very early and quirky 5e design.

The next subclass, the Circle of the Elements, reminds me of a bender from Avatar the Last Airbender. Again, kind of odd design. The final class, the Circle of Life, has similar oddities, including a change to spellslot recovery that references the wizard's arcane recovery feature. Referencing another class or ability generally strikes me as bad design because it requires consulting another source rather than making the subclass ability standalone.  Overall, not my top article from En5ider.

Issue 10, by Carl Heyl, focuses on creating puzzles for your game that are actually fun. This brings up an issue I've often had with puzzles—challenging the players, instead of their characters, can be frustrating for them rather than a fun game experience. Additionally, there’s an inherent danger in putting anything important behind a puzzle because your players may not figure it out. While interesting, this article still didn’t quite crack the nut for me on this subject.

Issue 11, Winterheart, is a brief adventure by Esper. Spoilers from here out. And content warnings for self-harm, familial death, racism, and sexual assault. I'd recommend you just pass on this adventure if these concern you.

It contains some problematic tropes that diminished my interest at the beginning. It begins as a bit of a Romeo and Juliet story, but rapidly we find that Juliet (named Katina in this case) dies with her father while fleeing her lover's family. Her younger sister is captured and given to the Romeo character (named Aldric Sangellion) as a "war trophy" by his father. The objectification of this character (her name is Chryssa) bothers me. If I were to run this adventure, I'd treat her as a prisoner, rather than using the language of implied enslavement and elements of potential sexual assault currently conveyed. There is certainly enough material to turn Chryssa into a non-helpless captive too, as the core tension of the story (there are a few too many plot threads) seems to be that if she remains captured, the trauma of losing her family will drive her to commit suicide and unleash her nascent winter magic to create an eternal winter (a la super dark version of Frozen, and thus the title of the adventure). As is, Chryssa's depiction follows the trope of the young maid in the tower (and the room she is in is noted to be Aldric's bedchambers--which further reinforces the negative and potential sexual violence mentioned above). There's also some elements of motivation for the two families, driving their conflict, which involves a magic tree, and the racial tension from one faction being humans and the other elves.

You might be able to rectify some of the problematic elements by removing the more problematic language used to describe Chryssa's capture and imprisonment. The old tropes and other problematic themes could also be broken up by gender swapping characters, and not grounding the conflict in a racial difference. 

The dark, tragedy elements of the story are compelling to me, and I think provide reason not to toss out the whole thing. There's also a lovely little regional map that I think is a good tool to facilitate an adventure. But as I mentioned above, I certainly understand completely passing on this adventure. It's interesting to see how much EN Publishing has adjusted its content (similar to others like Kobold Press) to reflect a more inclusive view of the hobby. It's just unfortunate that it's really only been the past four or five years. I imagine there may be other adventures with these themes in the next several dozen issues.

Addendum to EN5ider Issue 3 Reactions

Several months ago I examined the first four issues of EN5ider, ENWorld’s long running Patreon magazine for 5e D&D. In my Empire of the Ghouls campaign, I finally had a chance to use issue three, which provided a framework to run an archery contest. I reskinned it as an axe-throwing contest during a beer fest for the goddess Ninkash in the Ironcrag dwarven canton of Gunnacks. It went phenomenally.

The players enjoyed the flavor I added through describing the contest, and of course got a laugh out of the constant rounds of beer the dwarves served (“We get to day drink and throw axes?”) I also threw in a churlish rival—the cousin of an ally NPC they’d met upon arriving in town. There was never any threat of violence, but it added dramatic tension as they advanced through the contest. I will note that I chose the region column on the table and it did seem like a lot of rounds to get to the finals, particularly when they get three shots a round to attempt to score three points and advance. They both were eliminated in the sweet sixteen round, but made a good lucky run of it. It did seem like if I hadn’t added the fun descriptive elements and if my players weren’t as engaged that it could have fallen flat though.

On the broader topic of festivals in games, I really enjoyed this first foray. I think it’s a cool idea to have some interesting mini games that riff on core mechanics which the players can choose to engage with or note. Describing the event can add flavor and world building (for instance, I had them attend a banquet in the temple of Ninkash the night prior. As a goddess of hospitality, they were given free room and board there. Lumbering keg golems moved around the tables, providing beer to them and their dwarven hosts).

En5ider Reactions Issues 6-8

EN5ider Issue 6 Cover, property of EN Publishing

Issue six of En5ider, by Jensen Toperzer, is about implementing pets for players. It's interesting to see an early and different take on this than how the various "pet" subclasses from WOTC shook out, and the design decisions made by MCDM on the Beastheart class. In this case, I think the latter implementation is better, although this one is admirable in attempting to use the available animal stat blocks. The flexibility of the companions in the Beastheart make them far more versatile and satisfyingly scalable in power for players in my opinion. However, it’s good to look at another attempt at an extremely early time in 5e’s lifecycle and recognize it as what is was: an innovative and fun goal to provide animal pet options to players beyond (at the time) only beastmaster rangers and magic users with find familiar.

Issue 7 is Nature’s Remedy by Russ Morrissey. This one again, like Morrissey’s previous article on running an archery tournament is equally interesting and easy to implement, providing a list of magical herbs with bonuses appropriate to a potion or other consumable magic item. These require a survival check to find, and either a medicine or nature check to then prepare, also providing a way to reward players who choose to use those often underutilized skills. It also includes a feat to buff these skills for interest players or that you could give out as a story reward for engaging with this content. The herbs provide a template that you could use to create your own, increasing the range of options available. This one is really good!

En5ider Issue 8 Cover, property of EN Publishing

Issue eight is by none other than Jame Introcaso, now of MCDM fame (readers of my Arcadia reactions will recognize James as the long time editor of that publication). I’ll admit that I haven’t given the chase rules in the core 5e rule books any thought since I read them almost two years ago, but the helpful chase cheat sheet in this article and the complications tables make me want to think about opportunities to include chases in my campaigns. 

EN5ider Reaction Issue 5

The Business of Emotion Cover by EN Publishing

Issue 5 of EN5ider is a longer adventure (eleven pages) called The Business of Emotion. It is billed on the cover as an adventure for characters of second to third level, by Paul Oklesh. There will be spoilers.

Personally, I don't love the adventure concept of a town drunk on a love potion that has devolved into debauchery, but that's mostly because I keep my games at a "safe for work" level, and I could see this spiraling quickly. Setting that aside, the adventure generally makes sense. I would have liked a few more locations in town as vignettes of the on-going crisis, and to provide more nodes for the mystery piece of the adventure. The call out boxes on the NPCs are helpful, but the information could be laid out better. In fact overall, the main problem I would have running this adventure is the amount of important information and details buried in block paragraphs, which makes it much more difficult to quickly parse and draw from. 

There's also some inconsistencies in formatting, including not bolding the names of relevant stat blocks with the notable exception of the owlbear at he end of the adventure. This too makes it harder to quickly know which stats to use for a GM. The stat block is unremarkable for the witch who is truly behind the negative effects on the town, but the exposure table to track player character exposure to the love potion through the river isn't bad.

All in all though, not my favorite adventure. Perhaps with some modifications I could run it, but otherwise I'd mostly mine it for parts and pieces.

EN5ider Reactions Issues 1-4

Trinket art from EN5ider Issue 1, by EN Publishing

The first issue of EN5ider was published when 5e was still young, on 25 February 2015. This four page issue by Ryan Chaddock outlines how to describe and use mundane, non-magical trinkets more effectively in your campaigns. The article is brief and concise, but I think gets its points across well, emphasizing these items as a way to provide plot hooks and roleplay opportunities to your players without the mechanical baggage of a magic item. I particularly like Chaddock's suggestion to use trinkets as a way to convey the culture of a group of adversaries or allies, like the items carried by a group of raiders or the gifts of a group of elves (not all the gifts in Lothlorien were magic items, right?) Practical advice on creating and describing trinkets is also offered in a nice callout box.

I’m most struck by the lack of mechanical content in the article, but it remains relevant and helpful for a GM. I think this is because of the conversational voice and the specific advice on how to apply trinkets to enhance your game. It’s almost a “bite-size” product, giving the reading something brief to take away and think about. I appreciate the honesty of the conclusion too: "Ultimately the choice to supply your players with these kinds of items is a negotiation. If your players seem uninterested, maybe trinkets are not for your group. Finding ways to keep them interested is the real trick. The payout is a richer game world, which is well worth it."

The next article is titled 5 Campaign Lessons from the Hobbit Films by Eric Pierce. This is the part where I realize that the final Hobbit film was released in 2014 and am amazed at the passage of time. The article is refreshingly critical, with the first advice to avoid GMPCs to not steal your players' thunder. It also brings up the interesting point that at this time in 2015 many tables were probably using actual player characters for NPCs with the party, rather than perhaps an NPC stat block or the simpler sidekick stat blocks introduced in the Essentials Kit or Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. There's some good general GM advice here, but nothing truly groundbreaking or innovative for most folks running a game. I do appreciate the advice on attempting to have your players provide secret desires for their characters that you can use alongside their external desires as plot hooks.

Archery Contests is by Russ Morrissey, the owner and creator of EN World. The article features a chart with scaling values to simulate the advancing AC depending upon both the tier of the archery contest the player finds themself in, along with the venue and level of competition, from a small village to the extraplanar level. This level of detail and design really makes this article interesting and useable. I really like this article, and it provides a great drop in event for any setting or location that you can use if you have a player who has specialized in archery.

The final issue we are looking at in this post is Battlefield Events, also by Russ Morrissey. It provides random events to add complications during your encounters. A similar design is used to simulate the fray of larger battles around the characters in Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. The options are generalized to be used in almost any scenario. I think it's hard to use this type of tool for every encounter, but the article provides a great place to go for inspiration on effects that you could use in a smaller table for a specific boss or crucial fight.

It's clear that the magazine is still finding itself in this stage, as the art and layout are less polished than they become in later issues. A bit of a mixed bag in terms of easily usable content for 5e, but I think there's generally been something of utility. Even if reading one of these articles forces you to reflect on your own GMing style then its probably of some utility.

EN5ider Reactions

EN5ider logo is property of EN Publishing

EN World Publishing's 5e magazine, at time of writing, EN5ider has almost six hundred issues over the past nine years and is still going strong. There's plenty of great material and information that I want to integrate into my 5e games and that I think will remain relevant even as the new edition draws closer. So I'm going to start a similar collection to my Arcadia reaction posts where I can document for my own (and perhaps your) record my annotations and thoughts on the materials in this great resource. 

Each EN5ider issue varies in size. Some, particularly the adventures published in serialized format, are much larger, while many are four to six pages. Because of this I will be looking at them in order of issue, but organizing my own posts into larger articles treating perhaps three to six small issues at a time. The longer issues will receive their own posts.

EN5ider Reactions Issues 1-4

En5ider Reaction Issue 5

En5ider Reaction Issues 6-8

En5ider Reaction Issues 9-11

En5ider Reactions Issues 12-14

En5ider Reactions Issue 15

En5ider Reactions Issue 16 

En5ider Reactions Issue 17

En5ider Reactions Issue 18