Creating ATypical Fantasy-a blog about tabletop games and GMing

I ran the entirety of Wizard of the Coast's Storm King's Thunder and there was one aspect that really stood out to me. Ok, not entirely true; there were a lot of aspects that stood out to me but this isn't a review. Oh and in case this is not obvious, spoilers. Like, most of them. Doing all of them would take too long. (p.s. If any members of my new DnD group read this please note this includes concepts and ideas for the game I will be running for you all. So please... stop now. Looking at you Beckett) The villain and climax of the Storm King's Thunder campaign is the fight against the vile Blue Dragon Lymrith; a creature who spends the whole campaign manipulating various events in the storm giant court while in the guise of one such creature. The result of her manipulations? Well... stuff whose effects are only felt overtly if you are a storm giant. Which you aren't because you're a player character. Please note, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, from a...

Over the past several years I have been adapting a campaign by the Thursday Knights (dnd twitch streaming/podcasting group) that I have called the Mad Mage (I am honestly not sure what the creator called it. I should probably just ask... ... ... and done). I am going to avoid story spoilers here but a huge part of it is the main villain starts to amass this army of mages and the party encounter them as they go on in their adventures. I can still remember their first big battle with them. Fighting atop a mountain in the midst of a snowstorm and something like 15 mages come charging down into the valley and... oh no. What is this? SPELL SLOTS. For 15 mages. Having to keep track of each and every mage on the battlefield in regards to their expendable resources was overwhelming and I basically stopped paying attention. I had them all cast magic missile and started recording for basically one mage because they all did the same thing. It was lazy and that poor dwarven ranger in the...

Oh... oh hey This is a thing now. It's made and stuff. Well then, best way to start is an introduction. My name is Maia Cross (hence "the Cross DM. Yes I like my dual meanings. Yes ATypical Fantasy is another one. No I don't have a problem yet). Art by Jimi Bonogofsky That is a good approximation of the me you would probably meet in the near future (hair dye is expensive... and while I do have a table shirt that shirt is not real and it makes me sad). Beyond that, I am really tall and I have a love for tabletop games and game design. I started DnD sometime around 2010 when some friends got together for a 4th edition game which went for many years though is now stopped because schedules are hard and the 4th edition character creator is defunct. Since then, I have DMed in a multi-year long 5th edition campaign where I been adapting a dnd 4e campaign to the latest edition. Said campaign was made by the illustrious Thursday Knights  and the podcast they have of this ...