Intro

I'm Dan (he/him).

Basically I've read enough DIY D+D blogs that I wanted to start my own. I'm also looking for a place to leave recaps of the games I run or play in, and to reflect on what worked, and what didn't. I got back into playing D+D in 2020 during the pandemic and it's been one of the highlights of the past year.

Currently I'm refereeing two games.

The first is completely standard D&D 5e, playing weekly since like August 2020. We're currently playing through Out of the Abyss after finishing Curse of Strahd, where I was a player. The GM from the Strahd game is a player in this game. They're currently halfway through the first part of the campaign after wrapping up business in Gracklstugh (where I added a bunch of extra material), and I'm not sure what we'll want to do once they get to the surface. It's been a fun game but I'm increasingly not a fan of the adventure as published.

The second game just had its first session and will also play weekly. The group is a bunch of old friends of mine + we've played together in various groups, playing mostly 3.5 D+D, over the last 10 years. In 2020 we played a Conan 2nd edition game and a Mutants + Masterminds game, and this is our first time playing 5e together + I think all the players' first experience with this edition. We all heard about the Brancalonia campaign setting last year and got excited to run a game in that world; now that I've read through the books I've scrapped most of it and put together my own weird-medieval-Italy setting that's closely inspired by actual history. I've put together a bunch of house rules for 5e that I'm hoping will work well with this group and I'm hoping I have enough experience refereeing 5e by now that I can manage the game smoothly.

I'm hoping that by recapping these games, and any other ones I join, that I can better define what works + doesn't work for me as a referee / GM and for the tables I play at. Hopefully they'll be fun for me to write, too, and hopefully they'll help me remember the best parts of these sessions. I'm also looking forward to writing up the house rules I'm using in any of these games, and paying attention to whether they're doing what I want them to do.