5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

Getting Started - 5th Edition Rules (SRD)

This Is NEW5th edition was much closer in nature to AD&D than to the 3.5 version and this was good for me. Some of the players were dissatisfied with the simplistic (compared to Pathfinder) character creation, but it absolutely made the play faster which was good with so many players. I started out using a number of House Rules that in the long run turned out to be unnecessary particularly as the new rule books were released. This is the system I am currently using.

I wanted to start almost at scratch in designing the new campaign.
After playing Pathfinder for several years, I decided at the same time that the campaign dungeon was complete and that as the player had increased in level that it had been increasingly hard to use the monsters in the Manual to challenge the party except in large spaces or on another plane. I was looking for a restart or the campaign and a change of system if possible.
When I decided to begin reffing again I took a long look at the then new version of D&D 5th Edition. I didn't love it at first sight, but after some research I saw how it could solve a lot of the problems in both AD&D and Pathfinder.Still I wanted to try the rules out before making a big commitment to it with the larger group. In Feburary of 2017 I started a small campaign of 5 players.
But equity important was the adventure they would play. My all time favorite adventure I had reffed was the old Judges Guild House of Stone adventure. I decided to design something completely new and embracing the new rules as part of its integral flavor.
The New House of Stone was created particularly for the 5th edition and can not be separated from it.

TAGA - The Forgotten Realms Game

The acronym TAGA stands for Totally Awesome Group of Adventurers.
I began the campaign in Feburary of 2017. I began without thinking that it would be more than a pickup game. But then two things happened. I really liked the game system and found that it was relaxing to ref for a group of 3. It was located in the Forgotten Realms and began with the the old Pool of Radiance (PDF) adventure. There they discovered an item of major magic which they were instructed to take to Waterdeep. The rest of the adventure takes place there. Currently the group is playing through the Dragon Heist adventure mixed with some home brew stuff.

When I began using 5th edition for the larger group (BOMA), I thought this group would not continue. But with the COVID emergency and increased travel by some folks, it was easy to use this campaign when a quorum was not happening with BOMA.
This group picked up 2 additional members (Cindy and Mike) and lost one (Lisa). I am surprised that the players are enjoying as much as they seem to! I don't spend much time designing the adventure as I have so much to do with the bigger campaign and I'm really familiar with Waterdeep/Forgotten Realms campaign setting; So far I have reffed 498 games in this campaign.

BOMA - The Hellia Adventure

This campaign is almost completely my invention. It's played in my world "Berth in SOS" and the plots and adventures are all written by me (with one or two minor exceptions). I intended it to be the primary campaign with the large group of 8 to 10 players, it had to be expansive and compatible with a broad range of player styles and feature more dangerous creatures than normal to challenge the group.
Because I started it in a period where it was hard to get the quorum of the main group and because I wanted to explore level 0 play, it started with just 3 players.
The concept was that a character living in a small town near a large lake in the center of the continent would receive word that he was not who he thought he was. His current family was a foster one and he was heir to a castle in a city far away on the coast. The objective was to walk 800 miles or so finding adventure on the road. This was a string of small event adventurers which lasted between 2 weeks to a couple of months.As the party traveled, they would meet the rest of the player characters and lots of interesting NPCs on the way.
Their objective was the city of Hellia. It is a medium sized coastal city which has not real city government. It like a city in medievil city like Verona that is ruled by great houses and torn with economic warfare.
It turned out that the player with the castle had been hidden away to prevent his death when his family was wiped out by assassins from a competing family.

They have returned the memories of the principle and reclaimed the castle from their enemies. After returning from a profitable adventure, the family has become a rising force in the city and their revenge is near.

The average age of the players at this time is about 64. Many of them are retired. This never ceases to amaze me! They are very engaged with their characters even though several were very hesitant to play in 5trh edition. In face one of the regulars of the House of Stone games dropped out because of it.
We still try to get together every Saturday night at 7:30 and play until 11:00 or 12:00. Since we are all good targets for COVID health problems there were only 4 games that year. But now we are playing regularly again.
The current adventure is a very traditional "dungeon style" quest. The objective is to get money and magic; not a noble goal but honestly this party is not much motivated by altruistic goals.
With lots of help they discovered a cylindrical tower made of black granite 140' high and 140' in diameter.
I had a lot of fun writing the adventure, and I'm not done with it at this time. It seems like a long time since I wrote a traditional dungeon crawl adventure!

The Bear Claw Clan

In the Forest of Cormanthor

When the COVID lock down started, the Hellia campaign stopped. While the Waterdeep campaign allowed us to get together with a small group occasionally, all of the adventures have been short and interspersed with lots of cross country travel and learning the lore of the locations in Cormanthor Forest.
My wife and I had a ton of time on our hands. So she created a group of 4 elf characters that were all related to one another. This one on one gaming has been really fun! It is almost exclusively a wilderness campaign with the adventures all revolving around elf issues in the Dales area of the Forgotten Realms lands.
Unfortunatly, this campaign ended when Lisa passed on. I have plans to write this adventure up in text.

All of the adventures have been short and interspersed with lots of cross country travel and learning the lore of the locations in Cormanthor Forest. Since both of us were really familiar with the way we like to play, this has become a really rewarding and low impact campaign I didn't see abandoning soon even when the larger campaign begins again.
Unfortunately the campaign ended with the death of my wife Lisa in September 2021.