Title says it all - would love to hear your thoughts/ideas/requests!
PS: The epilogue is humming along! The players' return to Vallaki and the "Festival of the Dawn," as well as the players' return to Tser Pool and the Village of Barovia are now fully written. To be completed: Return to Krezk, Escher's Epilogue, and Endings & Beginnings (the eventual fate of the valley, Muriel, and Ireena + Ez).
2025-11-19 01:05:35 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone, and happy Halloween! I know it's been a hot minute since I last posted, and I apologize for the long quiet—but I think you're really gonna dig the stuff that I've got to share today.
First: I've partnered with Eidolon Publishing to develop two cool new toys for Curse of Strahd: Reloaded.
First, Eidolon has put together a ready-to-run, fully-...
2025-10-31 12:01:41 +0000 UTC View PostI'm sorry in advance for Yet Another Eidolon post, but I promise it's worth it.
Tomorrow evening, at 6 PM Eastern on Thursday, July 3, Eidolon Publishing's web team will share a sneak preview of a prototype of our original DMing platform, codenamed "Project Beacon." Without giving too much away, Project Beacon (once complete) will:
host all of Eidolon's upcoming adventures,
make prepping, running, and modding adventure sessions as easy as po...
2025-07-03 02:25:05 +0000 UTC View PostMy new TTRPG publishing company, Eidolon Publishing, is hiring a new operations manager! Full details below:
Description. As operations manager, you would act as project manager for our entire (soon-to-be 20+ person) company and maintain company documents and procedures. You would train and work under our operations director (our current operations manager), and w...
2025-06-15 19:11:06 +0000 UTC View PostMy new TTRPG publishing company, Eidolon Publishing, is hiring for four positions (though we’d love to fill multiple positions with one candidate): an art director, a brand manager, a layout designer, and a graphic designer! Full details below.
Responsibilities.
Art Director: As our art dir...
2025-06-02 21:21:01 +0000 UTC View Post“After Curse of Strahd, what will you reload next?”
Rime of the Frostmaiden? Descent Into Avernus? Waterdeep: Dragon Heist? Tyranny of Dragons?
Now, you finally have my answer: Every single one of them.
Meet Eidolon Publishing—my new TTRPG adventure publishing company.
Eido...
2025-05-27 16:50:17 +0000 UTC View PostNow that Curse of Strahd: Reloaded is (largely) complete, what’s next?
First, I’m not quite done with Strahd yet. As mentioned on Friday, I still need to publish the Epilogue, as well as the optional downtime arc, Arc N: Tales of Vallaki. I also intend to eventually make a number of overhauls to existing arcs, such as by making...
2025-05-25 12:12:19 +0000 UTC View PostI’m excited and honored to announce that the final core release of my guide to running Curse of Strahd, Curse of Strahd: Reloaded, is now available. This release, titled Arc U: Dreams of Dawn, includes:
The War Council. 2025-05-23 12:55:53 +0000 UTC View Post
As I’ve previously mentioned, once Curse of Strahd: Reloaded wraps up this month (yes, this month!), I’ll be launching a new adventure publishing company to produce more fun, satisfying, low-prep campaigns for DMs to use—starting with a Lost Mine of Phandelver: Reloaded Kickstarter this summer. And although Phandelver isn’t starting full production just yet, I want to get ahead of the curve and start hiring staff writers and game designers to help build out ...
2025-05-10 23:41:43 +0000 UTC View PostI'm excited to share the twelfth public installment of my revised Curse of Strahd guide, Curse of Strahd: Reloaded. This new release contains Arc T: The Three Fanes, which includes:
Communing with the Ladies. A rite of communion with the Ladies of the Fanes to learn ...
2025-05-08 12:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post
If you're not familiar with his work, JamesRPGArt is an artist who has done stunning landscape work for a multitude of D&D and homebrew locations, but none more beautifully than Curse of Strahd's Barovia. He's done an incredible amount of work to support the community with original artwork—if you've watched Curse of Strahd: ...
I have good news, bad news, and other bad news. The good news is that I've allocated four hours every night for the next three weeks to finishing Reloaded (and, since we only have one-and-a-half arcs left, I expect to hit that timeline). The bad news is that Berez is taking longer than I thought, and I'm still finalizing Baba's statblock and fight.
The other bad news is that, following some instructive deliberations in the Patreon Discord server, I now intend to revise the Van ...
2025-04-19 14:59:18 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 10 of the Dungeon Master's Guide: Reloaded series, my drafts for a future DMing game-and-narrative-design textbook, is now available on the Bronze Masterpost. This chapter reflects more than four months of iterated revisions and theoretical development; at under two pages, it may seem underwhelming, but I'm confident that it's the most important breakthrough I've had so far (and one that h...
2025-04-12 03:24:38 +0000 UTC View PostLast time, we discussed my experience reworking Patrina’s RAW storyline into something more coherent. In short: I concluded that Patrina had tried not to become a vampire, but to become a lich; that Kasimir had killed her for doing so; that Patrina had used the Sunsword’s broken hilt as her phylactery; that her soul had rebounded into the Sunsword’s hilt when Kasimir killed her; and that she hop...
2025-04-12 02:02:43 +0000 UTC View PostAs I've previously mentioned, I'm cooking up a new adventure publishing company, which I intend to launch once Curse of Strahd: Reloaded is complete.
Our first product will be a Lost Mines of Phandelver: Reloaded Kickstarter—but there's one problem: I have no idea what kinds of perks or rewards people might want out of a Kickstarter! (That's doubly true for Reloaded-style Kickstarters, since we're required to make all actual adventure content free...
2025-04-07 23:51:48 +0000 UTC View PostProgress on Arc T: The Three Fanes is ongoing and proceeding well apace! The arc, which is now 17.4k words long, is approximately two-thirds complete. Since my last update, I've completed the following additions:
designed encounters in the Berez churchyard, goat pen, and garden
drafted the players return to the Vallaki Vistani camp and reunion with Arturi Radanavich
drafted the three-way reunion between Arturi, Van Ric...
2025-04-07 21:12:38 +0000 UTC View PostLast time, we discussed the problem with Patrina Velikovna's RAW storyline. To briefly recap: In RAW, Kasimir’s storyline centers around resurrecting an evil sister whom he correctly killed for the wrong reasons. Now, Kasimir wants the players’ help to resurrect her from a misguided and inaccurate belief in her redemption. This resurrection storyline has no clear role or place in the campaign, and...
2025-03-30 22:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostI've officially broken ground on Arc T: The Three Fanes, which is already 8.5k words long and fully outlined. Thus far, I've completed the following work:
wrote the players' return to Soldav and the Shrine of the Rozana
designed the players' communion with the Weaver and/or Huntress in the Cavern of Lights
designed an encounter with the roc of Mt. Ghakis to obtain the third winery gem
drafted the players' ret...
2025-03-30 18:15:34 +0000 UTC View PostI’m excited to share the eleventh public installment of my revised Curse of Strahd guide, Curse of Strahd: Reloaded. This new release contains Arc S: A Sword of Sunlight, which includes:
History of the Temple. A comprehensive history of the Amber Temple, i...
2025-03-22 16:19:35 +0000 UTC View PostIf you've seen any of the incredible artwork interspersed throughout Curse of Strahd: Reloaded, you're probably already familiar with Caleb Cleveland's work. The illustrator of the official ABCs of D&D picture book and the creator of the fan Curse of Strahd "Faces in the Mist" series, Caleb is a fantastically talented illustrator who's generously allowed me to feature his ...
2025-03-18 01:03:03 +0000 UTC View PostI've previously mentioned that, when Curse of Strahd: Reloaded is complete, I'm launching a new adventure publishing company to produce more fun, satisfying, low-prep campaigns for DMs to use—starting with a Lost Mine of Phandelver: Reloaded Kickstarter this summer, and continuing into both Reloaded and homebrew campaigns beyond that. Our goal is to keep making great free adve...
2025-03-16 14:05:34 +0000 UTC View PostI'm excited to share that Arc S: A Sword of Sunlight is two-thirds fully edited, including everything outside of the sealed treasury, amber vault, lich's chambers, and archmage's library! Only ten thousand of thirty-four thousand words remain to be edited (largely focused on the arc finale—entering the amber vault, communing with the vestige of the Vampyr, fighting Patrina, and reigniting the Sunsword), and I'm aiming to have them all revised by this coming Sa...
2025-03-10 03:05:29 +0000 UTC View PostGood evening, and thank you all for your patience as I've continued work on Arc S: A Sword of Sunlight!
I'm glad to share that the rough draft of the arc is very nearly done, with all scenes drafted except for Strahd's third trial and the players' departure from the Temple (including their final confrontation with Neferon). I intend to finish those final two scenes this week, as well as to draft the entirety of Arc T: The Cavern of Lights 2025-02-18 03:10:05 +0000 UTC View Post
I've released the newest chapter of the DMG: Reloaded, my in-progress prototype textbook on DMing and game/narrative design. This chapter, fittingly titled Design, discusses two important parts of D&D game design ("points" and "puzzles"), and (per popular demand) synthesizes my recommended adventure design process.
You can find it, as well as the other released chapters, at the Bronze Masterpost 2025-02-02 01:49:31 +0000 UTC View Post
The lore of Patrina Velikovna, Kasimir's archmage sister, is scattered across multiple locations of the RAW Curse of Strahd module. As far as we can discern from the book's lore, however, we can roughly summarize her history as follows:
In 245 BC, Rahadin refuses to bow to an unnamed dusk elf prince and is exiled. (All dates are approximate, and based off of rough guesswork and cross-referenced context clues.) Sixty-five years later, in 310 BC, the du...
2025-02-02 01:12:38 +0000 UTC View PostHello all! I want to begin this brief update post by apologizing for my lack of activity over the past two weeks. I'd hoped that January would see a flurry of activity . . . and promptly found myself walloped by a three-week (four-week?) on-and-off cold that just wouldn't die.
Fortunately, I've started taking the whole "let yourself rest and recover" thing more seriously, and seem to be on a steadier upswing (one which should hopefully leave me in normal working o...
2025-01-27 02:38:34 +0000 UTC View PostFollowing my last update, I've recently discovered a new method of writing that supercharges my speed when writing rough drafts: using a text editor that (1) only shows the last character I typed, and (2) doesn't let me backspace. With it, my current writing speed is around 2,000 words an hour, with automatic formatting/grammar fixers doing all the cleanup so I don't have to.
Assuming I can ...
2025-01-11 17:57:05 +0000 UTC View PostInternal Arcs Series
Part I: External & Internal Arcs
Part II: How to Run Internal Arcs
Last week, we talked about internal arcs: what they are, why you might choose them over (or in combination with) an external arc, and what they might look like in fiction. This week, we're going to examine how internal arcs can ac...
2025-01-11 16:31:14 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Curse of Strahd: Reloaded wraps up this year, I’m launching a new adventure publishing group to produce more fun, satisfying, low-prep campaigns for DMs to use—starting with a Lost Mine of Phandelver: Reloaded Kickstarter this summer, and continuing into both Reloaded and homebrew campaigns beyond that.
Our current team includes me (CEO/Content Manager), a Finance Manager, and an Operations Manager. But before we start hiring writers a...
2025-01-04 21:34:37 +0000 UTC View PostWith the holidays (finally) behind us, I've thus far added 1.5k words of a planned 20k to Arc S: A Sword of Sunlight, as well as fleshed out/outlined my notes for most scenes through X21.
My current schedule is to write five nights a week, adding at least 1k words (or equivalent) each time (but up to 1.5k or 2k if I can manage it), with a planned pattern of: (1) pre-outlining every scene in detail; (2) writing each scene with minimal edits upfront; then (3) ret...
2025-01-04 20:06:36 +0000 UTC View Post