Archives of Candlekeep: Gifts of the Aboleths
This article was first broadcast in Episode Two Hundred and Two on 10th March 2022. Aboleths are another B-level D&D creature for most people. They’re nearly always present and they’re really easy to find in the books; until the Aarakocra and the Aasimar came around the Aboleths usually got top billing in all the monster manuals because it’s really hard to beat “AB” as an alphabetical starting place. However if you start digging into the lore and the abilities of the creatures it’s sort of confusing they don’t get used more often because they can be genuinely terrifying. Their aquatic nature is probably the most common reason for them being left aside, but we’ll dive into that more in a minute. The Aboleth species owes its origins to the classic adventure Dwellers of the Forbidden City, put out by TSR in 1980. That adventure was a landmark one because it…
Heroes Rise, two hundred and second entry: Things We Wish We Knew
Welcome, brave adventurers, to Heroes Rise. This is the 202nd entry into our chronicle, recorded on Saturday, March 5th, and released Wednesday, March 9th over at heroesrisepodcast.com. In this week’s Adventurer’s Pack, Lennon closes to within 5 feet of his battle mats. Next we gather round the campfire for some Dissonant Whispers as we find out everything we wish we knew when we started playing D&D. After that we head into the Archives of Candlekeep and look at the Gifts of the Aboleth; before finally heading over to the Scrying Pool to see what you [all] have to say. Community Questions What tidbit of knowledge do you wish you had when you sat down to your first D&D game, or first TTRPG game for that matter? Tell us your missteps, woes, and lessons learned. How do you set up your tabletops when you’re crawling through dungeons? Do you freeform draw,…
Wisdom of the Masters: Architectural Philosophy and the Five Room Dungeon
This article was first broadcast in Episode Two Hundred and One on 3rd March 2022. Lennon: All right, I’ve gathered you all here because I’m afraid we have to let something go. Ostron: Okay, first of all there’s only myself and Ryu, and I’m not 100% sure Ryu’s not an HR clone, so it may just be the two of us. Lennon: How do you know I’m not an HR clone? Ryu: I’m pretty sure HR would not allow anything associated with it to start off with an idea that’s this silly. Lennon: I haven’t even told you what it is yet! Ostron: Your track record is not encouraging. For the sake of argument, though, lay it out for us. Lennon: Right, so the guild house has too many rooms. We need to get rid of two of them. Ostron: And we’re done here. Ryu: Hang on, hang on let’s…give…
Heroes Rise, two hundred and first entry: The Shortle Package
Welcome, brave adventurers, to Heroes Rise. This is the 201st entry into our chronicle, recorded on Saturday, February 26th, and released Wednesday, March 2nd over at heroesrisepodcast.com. This week we’re going to wander into the Market of Minauros to see what mysterious and magical items have filtered up for sale: Epic Legacy: Tome of Titans Crucible Magazine Downtime Center Next we open up our Quest Logs as Indigo Specter takes us through the Horrors of Hill House After that we hear some Wisdom of the Masters on Architectural Philosophy and the Five Room Dungeon; before finally heading over to the Scrying Pool to see what you [all] have to say. Community Questions Which of the marketplace entries caught your eye? Do you need some level 20 enemies? Are you trying to fill that void left when Dragon Magazine went out of circulation? Do you use downtime in your campaigns? What…
Heroes Rise, two hundredth entry: The One We Recorded Live
Welcome, brave adventurers, to Heroes Rise! This is the 200th entry into our chronicle, recorded live at twitch.tv/heroesrisednd on Saturday, February 12th, and released Wednesday, February 16th over at heroesrisepodcast.com. In this week’s Adventurer’s Pack, Ryu shows us how she handles conflict in games… this can’t be good… Next we check out some D&D News as we uncover: Some details from the Hasbro Earning’s Call and a touch of NFT controversy A new line of minis (1, 2) from WizKids partnership with Death Saves And some more info on the Dark Souls RPG, this time their take on armor, items, weapons and how this ties in to subclassing After that we dig up some Unearthed Mundana and discuss Unicorns; before finally heading over to the Scrying Pool to see what you [all] have to say. Episode 200 Celebration To celebrate 200 episodes, we did an entire day of live streaming…
Heroes Rise “Best” of 2021
Greetings.
I am the Realized Oikumenatal Solution To Removing Obfuscation, commonly referred to as R.O.S.T.R.O. The majority of the occupants of the guild house are presently distracted with celebratory activities and the exchange of physical goods. This has resulted in a lack of activities pursuant to the creation of an entertaining audio experience for transmission across usual auditory channels…
Heroes Rise, one hundred ninety-second entry: Live from PAX Unplugged 2021
Welcome, brave adventurers… to the one hundred ninety-second entry into our chronicle, recorded live at PAX Unplugged 2021, and released Wednesday, December 15th over at heroesrisepodcast.com.
Archives of Candlekeep: Spelljammer Redux
This article was first broadcast in Episode One Hundred Eighty Seven on 30th October 2021. Like many modern settings and elements of D&D, Spelljammer’s roots are in 2nd edition, and they owe their existence to a man named Jeff Grubb. As Keith Baker is to Eberron, Jeff Grubb is to Spelljammer, although he doesn’t have the laser focus on his setting Mr.Baker does for Eberron. Grubb is the author of the first Manual of the Planes and created the forgotten Al-Qadim setting, and is credited as being part of the team that originated the Forgotten Realms itself. Later on, he was also contracted by Wizards to work on a lot of d20 system resources such as d20 Modern, their d20 Star Wars RPG, and Urban Arcana, as well as writing some of the lore novels for Magic: The Gathering. Spelljammer specifically came out in 1989, and based on the forward…
Heroes Rise, one hundred eighty-sixth entry: Ruby Reductions
Welcome, brave adventurers…
… to the one hundred eighty-sixth entry into our chronicle, recorded on Tuesday, October 26th, and released Thursday, October 28th over at heroesrisepodcast.com.
Heroes Rise, one hundred eighty-fifth entry: Butt-kicking for Goodness
Welcome, brave adventurers…
… to the one hundred eighty-fifth entry into our chronicle, recorded on Saturday, October 9th, and released Wednesday, October 13th over at heroesrisepodcast.com.