Necromancers of the Northwest Alex Riggs and Joshua Zaback

For the last edition of the Necromancers of the Northwest podcast before it goes on hiatus, we take a look at the D&D Next playtest, and our thoughts on how well the mechanics lived up to the promises delivered by Wizards so far, and what sorts of things to keep an eye on as the edition continues to grow and expand.

Our Enchantment Week special begins with a review of Enyclopaedia Arcane: Enchantment: Fire in the Mind, by Mongoose publishing. After that, Josh and Alex discuss the difficulties of enchantment spells at the table, and ways that good GMs and reasonable players can compromise to work around them towards a better game. Finally, the podcast wraps up with a Seed to Story that takes a decidedly haunting turn.

In a slightly-delayed Dragon Week installment, this podcast features a review of Mongoose Publishing's "A Slayer's Guide to Dragons," as well as a discussion on ways to make using dragons a more fun, memorable, and above all easy thing for GMs to do.

We celebrate the beginning of the D&D Next playtests by taking a look at some of the design goals that Wizards of the Coast has been putting out regarding the upcoming edition, and providing our own commentary and insight about them.

In this week's podcast, Alex reviews a product that might very well finally put an end to the debate about whether or not to use random encounters in your game. After that, we spend some time examining different approaches a GM can take when it comes to letting his party purchase magic items, and the pros and cons of each.

In the first of our new, sleeker, more compact, travel-size podcasts, we focus on bringing you the random, in the form of a special, feature-length Seed to Story, where, with a little random inspiration, we create not just an adventure hook, but also a magic item, and an NPC. It's a triple threat!