The Campaign Handbook has now been out for nearly a month, and as of writing, it is ten sales away from gold. My last big product, Adventures in Hawk’s Rest, took over a year just to get to copper. I never expected the Handbook to do anywhere near as well as it has!
It’s been awesome to get positive feedback not just from Justin Alexander but also Keith Ammann, author of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing and, most recently, Making Enemies.
Which prompts the question: what next?
Well. I have plans.
But that’s another article.
Today, I wanted to write about something I got sent in the post. This doesn’t happen very often, so it’s always exciting.
I should say in starting that D&D can sometimes get bogged down with unnecessary paraphernalia. DM screens. Initiative trackers. Spellbook cards. Combat risers. If you’re not careful, it can all get rather . . . involved. So I’m a little wary of adding stuff to my game bag.
Condition trackers might be one of those things you feel you can do without. And sure, for some combats, you don’t really need them. But if you’re running a big boss fight, or you’ve got a large group with lots of spellcasters, you can quickly find yourself keeping track of lots of moving parts. And then, even if you keep track of everything behind the screen—and that’s quite a bit of cognitive load—you have a secondary problem: your players can’t see your notes. And that’s when condition rings are a really neat idea.
Previously, though, I’ve only used the kind you see on Etsy—simple coloured rings you throw over a mini in the hope they stay attached. And . . . they’ve never been particularly satisfying to me. They fall off. They dangle precariously. They get lost.
All of this is why this new product from Wasted Wizard, above, is genuinely exciting. It has a number of neat improvements over what I’m used to. First, they are stackable. This was always a problem with the old style of condition rings—you might get one or two over a mini, but three was probably impossible. Second, there’s a full range. You don’t just track conditions in 5e—there are also spell effects like ‘hasted’ and class abilities like ‘raging’, and I never seem to see those on other products. (The number of times I’ve wanted a faerie fire marker—and now I have one!) Lastly, they come in a really nice display box! I really like the colour scheme, too: bold without being flashy. It’s also great to have a generic marker for ‘magical effect’ and ‘physical effect’ when there’s isn’t something exactly right for what you need.
This is a review, not product placement, so I would point out a few minor drawbacks. First, I could see situations where you need more of some markers and fewer of others. I’m not sure any party needs four ‘raging’ tokens, for example, but four ‘grappled’ tokens might not be enough. Second, they won’t work on square bases or large minis, as they are designed for 25mm round bases—which are by far the most common, but still, it’s worth noting. Third, though the product itself seems to be very much AI-free, Wasted Wizard do use AI art on their website, and I know that will be a deal-breaker for many gamers. In fairness, I think the company might be just starting out, so hopefully they will continue to grow, and support real artists as they do.
Overall, though, I’m pretty impressed! If you’re interested, you can check them out at the website, here. They currently retail for $34.99.
Stay tuned for updates on the next project! I’ll give you a clue:
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