THAC0 with Advantage THAC0 with Advantage

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D keeps coming up on the random encounter charts.



What happens when player characters come in contact with non-player characters? That interaction in D&D is called an encounter, and its where much of the game takes place. Some encounters happen in a set place in time, some happen at random, and some emerge from play. With all of this variability and versatility, what’s the best way to make encounters sing? We’ll take a look at that on today’s THAC0 with Advantage.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D has cast a temporal loop spell over us that we can’t escape.



There are a thousand stories you can tell with Dungeons & Dragons, but what if you really want to tell the same story more than once? Because roleplaying games present players with so many choices, sometimes it can be fascinating to go back and see if your current players will take the road less traveled, or if some mistakes are built to last. We’re going to explore running the same adventure more than once, and how to get the most out of the experience.



From the Bardic College

Adventure I6 Ravenloft came out in 1983, and in addition to being the origin of the famous vampire antagonist Strahd Von Zarovich, the adventure also featured a unique structure that allowed for the cards drawn by a fortune teller during a reading to randomize elements of the game, making I6 a natural adventure to play multiple times. On top of all of this, Konami completely stole the image of Strahd Von Zarovich as a stand-in for Dracula on the cover of 1987’s Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is the recursive program that we’re still running to solve for a perfect campaign.



In some fantasy stories, everything is steeped in myth and magic, and anything that distracts from those themes detracts from the story. But that’s not every fantasy story. For decades, pulp heroes could just as easily wield a sword as a laser pistol. Sometimes it’s worth it to see the looks on your player’s faces when the dragon they’ve been hunting is actually a cyborg with laser vision. Today we’re going to talk about when and how to include science fiction in your D&D campaigns

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D still acts first in all of our rounds of gaming.



Imagine a table full of gamers. Each one of them has a character with multiple options available to them. Now think of all of those characters in the same scene with a giants, a dragon, and a band of ogres. How do you keep all of those characters straight and make sure that everyone gets to take their turn? We roll for initiative, and let the dice tell us who gets to take what turn and when. We’ll explore how 5e D&D works, as well as variations that exist in the game.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is the crucible that trained us in the tabletop RPG disciplines.



We’ve looked at the kind of background details you can add to divine and arcane spellcasting characters, and what questions you should ask about your setting when adding these details. It’s easy to assume that characters like fighters and rogues don’t need these kinds of details on the origins of their abilities, but martial character backgrounds can still add a wealth of details to your game setting. Shields high, we’re charging into martial character backgrounds!

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is the patron to whom we swore allegiance to get our powers.



In the Great Wheel cosmological system, the souls are tortured by two separate yet equally important groups. The demons who improvise destruction, and the devils, who prosecute long term plans. These are their definitions. In other words, we’re going to talk about the differences between demons and devils, and if you need there to be a difference in your D&D game.