Curse of Strahd--D&D Encounters S22 S12

Cody & I drove to Kingslayer Comics for some Wednesday night D&D Encounters. I am DM'ing and Cody is playing Talon the Gnome Illusionist. Talon is from a Zendkar game that I am running and Cody uses that in his RP during the Encounters game which makes him sound hillarious has the rest of the party battles werewolves and he is off in the woods fighting Eldarazi--it is seriously gold!

Melissa & Jack were not there because it was the premier of Warcraft at the Spectrum--Jack took Alexander and they had a total blast! 

The guacamole  she sent was off the chart! I may start a guacamole recipe thread on pinterest or something it was so good!

The table is very cluttered with snacks, dice, camera's, mini's, etc

I ran without a screen last night which I think did save a ton of space.

And gave Cody more room to draw plans and climb over the board.

Our miniature collection is starting to straighten out.

I spent the first part of the night on character review and plot points--I am confused by the PC's and they are confused on their mission. I am not sure if the review helped at all or just served to further confuse them.

At the end of the day, the decided to return to the Hags at the Bonegrinder & kill them to take the orb which they think will help the Wizards of the Wine restore the vineyard to health. They always say that I told them to do this & I never ever do.

We did not have much rolling, but we did have some critical hits

Cody received this horrible fumble!

But quickly overcame it with this show of strength!

Why Dungeons & Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life) | Ethan Gilsdorf | TEDxPiscataquaRiver

This is a very interesting talk.

There is nothing new here. The speaker is not that charismatic. The points that are made are not that strong. The frothy emotional appeal is not that endearing.

The reason I enjoy this is because it clearly demonstrates the challanges of the current hipster talk over of the RPG community. Ethan does not speak hipster--he is completely incapable of capturing why D&D is currently gaining popularity. 

By focusing on historically important D&D Fandom Tropes he may actually be marganalizgin the current batch of fans, which I find very interesting & relate to a lot. 

D&D has changed, but the majority of our commentators either have not noticed or assumed that the changes of popularity are based on more people suddenly realize that the grognards were correct. Which is not true. In fact, is likely the opposite of true.

Cody's Wizard of the Vines plan

Curse of Strahd (Tome 264)

This is a fantastic review of the latest D&D Adventure book.

Here is the Blurb:

In this episode of the The Tome Show, Jeff & Tracy are joined by Sam Dillon and David Gibson to discuss Wizards of the Coast's latest 5e D&D adventure, Curse of Strahd. Their discussion is followed by an interview with the product's lead designer, Chris Perkins.

The initial overview of the product & detailed breakdown of the content includes a ton of references to previous Ravenloft material which is awesome. The discussion of the encouraged play style is helpful if you are planning to run this.

Overall this is the kind of podcast that Jeff and gang do best.

The interview with Chris is awesome--Chris is an amazingly informative and interesting guess and he and Jeff speak almost the exact same language. The responses to specific criticism is completely amazing.

I strongly recommend this episode if you are planning to run this and/or if you need general Ravenloft tips or lore. Very much worth listening to. 

DR. RAFFAEL BOCCAMAZZO ON D&D AND AUTISM D&D PODCASTS - 05/05/2016

This is another amazing episode of the official D&D Podcast. The blurb is short:

 Clinical Psychologist  Dr. Raffael Boccamazzo visits the office to talk about using Dungeons & Dragons to help autistic kids learn social skills.

But this does not tell half o the story--Raffael is an old school DM who brings a lot of fantastic trivia, out of context quotes, and general playfulness to the proceedings making this an above average episode.

The actual discussion around the work Dr Boccamazzo is doing is also extremely interesting--the value of play, the importance of parental involvement in children's activities, and the overall wisdom of the approach is all very instructive, informative, and instersting.

I have actually recommended this episode to a lot of people who are not actual D&D players--strongly recommend listening to this episode.