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About

Welcome to the blog.

I am Taliesin, also known as Arparrabiosa, and for the past 20 years, I have devoted a great deal of time and effort to playing and running Dungeons & Dragons. Over these two decades, I have gained experience in campaign design, game mastering, and creating homebrew worlds that might be useful to you. In addition to my direct experience, I have also studied numerous sources and resources, such as The Alexandrian, Sly Flourish, or Matt Colville’s YouTube channel, among many others, which have shaped and enriched my understanding of the game. The purpose of this blog is to share that experience with you in an organized way, providing ideas, tools, and useful advice, whether you’re a player or a game master, and no matter if you play D&D or another system.

What will you find in this blog?

  • Game Master Tips: I’ll explain how to plan everything from short adventures to long campaigns.
  • Published Content Analysis: I’ll examine commercial modules and offer recommendations on how to adapt them to the specific circumstances of your table.
  • Worldbuilding: I’ll guide you through the process of creating your own world, using my own, Ezora, as a practical example of worldbuilding.
  • Original Material: I’ll share original adventures, encounters, and backstory elements, ready to use and designed to be easily integrated into any campaign.

I hope you find ideas here that enrich your games, whether you're just starting out or have years of experience in roleplaying. From here on out, we’ll explore different facets of the game together, always with the intention of learning and honing our skills.

Taliesin

Favourites of the Comunity

Chardaukan Hexcrawl: an Introduction

In this series of articles, I will guide you through the process of designing a sandbox hexcrawl, using Chardauka, one of the continents in my world, as a case study. Throughout these articles, we’ll tackle both adventure content creation to fill the hexes and the worldbuilding elements that bring the setting to life.   As I mentioned in another article, the first step in designing your hexcrawl is to have a hex map. If you’re looking for tips on how to create one, you can check out my advice in the article Drawing a Hexmap . Once we have the initial draft of our hex map, the next step is to decide on your players’ base of operations. For my Chardaukan hexcrawl, I’ve chosen the city of Garampur for this purpose. This decision aligns with my interest in deepening the lore of its culture and its strategic location near the center of the hex map, granting players greater freedom to decide which region to explore. I chose a scale of 1 hex = 12 miles, imagining that traveling on foot ...

Chardaukan Hexcrawl: Adapting Fever Swamp

In this series of articles, I will guide you through the process of designing a sandbox hexcrawl, illustrating each step with Chardauka, one of the continents of my world. Throughout these articles, I will cover both adventure content creation to populate the hexes and the worldbuilding elements that bring the setting to lif e. Portada de Fever Swamp, por Andrew Walter «The air is moist. The moisture mixes with your sweat—the heat is relentless. The drone of insects gives you headaches, and the fever from the infected wounds has left you delirious. Your raft is damaged, and there are spirits in the trees.You’ve only been here for three days.» Fever Swamp is an adventure written by Luke Gearing for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and published in 2017. Gearing is also the author of the renowned Wolves upon the Coast . The module in question, which you can purchase here , is a small sandbox hexcrawl set in a swamp. Its content is evocative and original, with descriptions that i...

Drawing a Hexmap

Maps are an interesting tool in any campaign, but in a sandbox, they take on a special significance. While they are a traditional resource in pure exploration hexcrawls, creating a map gives players the chance to venture into the unknown and discover what lies in each hexagon, inviting them to take risks and explore the world thoroughly. Additionally, the map-making process not only defines the region geographically but also helps shape and unify key elements of the setting, becoming a valuable part of worldbuilding. Drawing the map should be one of the first tasks when preparing a sandbox, as it provides both a framework for the game and a visual reference for players that will guide their sense of discovery. If you're using a published campaign setting, you already have a map ready to go and just need to overlay a hex grid, allowing you to focus on filling the hexes with unique content. However, since Chronicles of Ezora also delves into worldbuilding, we’ll start from scratch, a...