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, the multiverse may come unraveled if we don’t play D&D.



Published adventures are often juggling a lot of objectives. The adventure may be trying to illustrate a specific style of campaign, it may be highlighting a certain type of creature or opponent. And sometimes, it may be trying to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. In this episode, we’re going to look at Vecna: Eve of Ruin, and see what kind of fine tuning you might want to explore when engaging with this plane hopping epic adventure.



From the Bardic College

The Hand and Eye of Vecna first appeared in the Eldritch Wizardry supplement in 1976. Back then, all we knew about Vecna was that he was a lich that left some body parts behind. Vecna’s name is an anagram of Vance, in honor of author Jack Vance. The idea of a matched hand and eye set of artifacts comes from Micheal Moorcock, where the Corum stories introduced the Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn. Vecna has had a resurgence in modern times, at least in part due to Stranger Things using Vecna for the name of its most recent season’s villain. If you still can’t get enough Vecna, you can put your life in Vecna’s hands by using Vecna Healthcare’s online health portals. No, really, that’s a thing.

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 coterminous to our gaming reality.



Fantasy stories abound with places beyond the mortal realms. Fae domains, magical islands outside of time, and the lands of the dead, among others. How can you instill this kind of otherworldly adventure into your game? How do you make a realm outside of mortal existence feel different, memorable, and distinct? What are some of the pitfalls of taking your mortal adventurers and placing them beyond? We’re going to example these questions in today’s episode, as we pass beyond the veil.

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, a whole lot of them have a family resemblance to D&D.



In 2008, Wizards of the Coast released the extremely restrictive GSL, making it unattractive to develop for the 4th edition of the game, which led to the creation of Pathfinder, a game that effectively allowed gamers to continue using the familiar structure of D&D 3rd edition in a familiar fantasy roleplaying game. In 2023, Wizards of the Coast attempted to assert that they could revoke the OGL and issue an amended one that gave them more control over creators, which resulted in a lot of creators building their own games. Today, we’re looking at one of those games, Tales of the Valiant, built on the Black Flag System Reference.

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