Amazing Adventures brings pulp action to D&D

Amazing Adventure 5E is now on Kickstarter!

Before Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, there were modern adaptations of the d20 mechanics for other genres, including action adventure, investigation horror, sci-fi, and supers. Some of the well known adaptations included d20 Modern, True20, and Amazing Adventures.

If you are interested in playing a non-fantasy genre with familiar D&D-like mechanics, you can! Troll Lord Game is Kickstarting its Amazing Adventures 5E (coming in December), which takes its d20-based Amazing Adventures and updates it to include 5th Edition mechanics.

Disclaimer: I have no association with Troll Lord Games other than being a huge fan of their games and adventures.

Class archetypes include the Arcanist, Gadgeteer / Powered, Gumshoe, Hallowed, Hooligan, Mentalist, Pugilist, Raider, and Socialite.The stretch goals are about to unlock the Archer, Gunslinger, and Soldier with the Acrobat, Duelist, and Pirate not far behind. (Just 5 days left!)

An Amazing Adventure 5E preview can be found here!

If you've wanted to play Dakota James, archaeologist and adventurer... or Professor Ann Igma, investigator of the paranormal... or Captain Conundrum with astounding powers of... riddles...? Amazing Adventures 5E has you dialed in. If you've ever wanted to mix magic, psionics, super powers, and super science, Amazing Adventures 5E provides an easy framework to simulate these within a d20-based game.

Need Pirates with black power weapons alongside sword and shield? No problem. Want mobsters with Tommy Guns? Got it covered. A Gadgeteer hero with a repulsor ray? Sure thing. Amazing Adventures 5E gives you the tools to abstract these concepts into familiar mechanics of 5th Edition.

If you can't wait until December, Amazing Adventures and the Amazing Adventures Companion are both available from DriveThru RPG. The earlier version of AA also uses familiar d20 mechanics and is worth checking out!

Lastly, even if you find you are not interested in Amazing Adventures, Troll Lord Game has several 5th Edition adventure titles for use with D&D. My absolute favorites are A0 The Rising Knight and A1 Assault on Blacktooth Ridge. They are both available in a low-cost bundle!

D&D 5e Monster Conversion: Barghest

Noting that the Barghest was missing from the Monster Manual, I decided to try my hand at converting the d20 version.

I'm not certain about the challenge ratings. I'm going to do some more comparisons to the Monster Manual to determine. It's hard to tell how much tougher the damage resistance makes these creatures.

I tried to make the spell selection as close to the d20 version, but I think I need to add in a "Rage" equivalent because that would appear to be an important component of the tactics of the 3.x version. If you have any suggestions for the spell abilities, let me know in the comments.


Note: This version of the Barghest comes from the d20 System Reference Document with the stat block converted by the D&D 1E/3E to 5E Monster Converter by +Brent Newhall. It is presented under the terms of the OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a.

#RPGaDay Part 1 - One to Ten

I don't always have the freedom to post once a day, so I'm going to have to knock out the blog roll topic in 3 posts.

Still have my books from 1979-ish

1) First RPG Played - I posted about this very topic over a month back. I think it's a funny read so check it out. I'll wait.

For those who want to skip the gamer story, my brother started me out with OD&D (white box) sort of... But that incident doesn't really count. I really learned how to play with a combination of the Holmes blue book and the AD&D Player's Handbook. I consider AD&D my first RPG because we really weren't playing the Holmes rules.

2) First RPG Game Mastered - While I am almost certain I DM'd for some of my friends at an early age, I remember almost nothing from those pre-teen AD&D games. I have a vague recollection of running part of X2 Castle Amber, but 30 year old memories are not coming easily to the surface.

Dice Inking the Old School Way

You can see the wear on the old die that isn't high impact. 

So I was going through my dice sets the other day in the way we partially-OCD gamers do before starting up a new campaign. Several of my precision dice were not inked or had the ink chipped away, so I needed to find a good product to refill the numbers.

Looking at some of my retirees brought back memories. For those of you not old enough, d20's used to be numbered 0 - 9 twice. You colored half the sides to designate 11 through 20. Eventually they improved the molds enough to print 2 digit numbers in the smaller space, but many of those early dice were considered "cheater" dice because all of the high numbers were on one side. Note the grouping on the white d20.

Nowadays, you only need to color your precision dice for number visibility. [Side Note: Pre-painted dice are not considered "precision" dice because the painting process rounds the corners and can alter the shape of the die. Check out Lou Zocchi explaining the process].

Anyway, getting back to the main issue, my precision dice were hard to read because most of the numbers had lost their ink. I had gone over them a number of times with different pen types, but the ink never lasted long after drying.

Then I saw my daughter coloring with Crayolas the other day and I thought, "Hmm... why not try the old ways." So I stole borrowed her silver crayon and started to go to work on my blue gem d20.

The neon Gel FX color really stands out against the green.

Surprise! It seems sometimes the old ways are better. The faces came out pretty well and I was pleased with how easy the application and clean up was.You don't need to worry about ink drying before moving on to the other half of the die.

While I used silver on the blue d20, I also found some Gel FX Crayons in her 96 color set. I had once read that these bright neon colors are good for contrast on dark d20's and they did not disappoint. The Yellow Gel FX color is a fantastic contrast on the green gem die. Crayola also has some Metallic FX crayons that I think I'll give a try to see if I can get a little more contrast on the blue die. The silver looks good, but it is nowhere as bright as the Gel FX Yellow (you can even easily read the tiny Gamescience "G" on the 1).

Crayola used to sell a separate pack of only Gel FX crayons, but these are apparently no longer available and become extremely hard to find. Ironically, I found a 4-pack in the Target $1 aisle just last week... but I think this was crazy coincidence. The Metallic FX might be your best bet for a bright high-contract crayon color.