Roll for Lore

This week on Roll for Lore , we're diving into the chaotic world of Olidammara, the Laughing Rogue , the Greyhawk god of music, revelry, wine, humor, and thievery in Dungeons & Dragons . Created by Gary Gygax, Olidammara is one of the most entertaining deities in the Greyhawk pantheon. While other D&D gods are busy waging divine wars and demanding worship, Olidammara is out drinking, s...

Undermountain Explained: Halaster Blackcloak, the Yawning Portal & D&D's Deadliest Dungeon | Forgotten Realms Lore Beneath the streets of Waterdeep lies Undermountain, one of the largest, deadliest, and most legendary dungeons in Dungeons & Dragons history. With 23 massive levels, ancient dwarven ruins, entire underground civilizations, and enough monsters to kill an army of advent...

This is a crazy good episode Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Floating on a forty-mile hemisphere of glowing brass above a sea of fire, the City of Brass is one of the oldest, strangest, and most dangerous cities in all of Dungeons & Dragons. This week, Sean and Jess take a trip to the capital of the efreeti empire on the Elemental Plane of Fire. We start with the name's roots in One Thousand and One Nights, then follow the city through nearly fifty...

https://www.patreon.com/c/RollForLore What the hell is a Mephit, and why has Dungeons & Dragons spent more than 40 years filling the multiverse with these annoying little elemental gremlins? In this episode of Roll For Lore, we dig into the surprisingly weird history of Mephits in D&D. They started life as reader-submitted “Imps of the Flame” in a 1979 issue of White Dwarf before making th...

No intro needed, this is episode was a blast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dark Sun is one of the most brutal, strange, and unforgettable campaign settings in Dungeons & Dragons history. In this episode of Roll For Lore, we dive into the world of Athas, the post-apocalyptic setting introduced for AD&D 2nd Edition in 1991. We cover the rise of the sorcerer-kings, the Cleansing Wars, Rajaat, defiling magic, the destruction of the natural world, and how Athas went f...

Tharizdun doesn't get a chapter in most Forgotten Realms books. He gets a footnote, a whisper, and a very large lock. This episode digs into the Chained God: the interloper deity who wandered in from Oerth, went irretrievably mad, and, depending on which edition you're reading, planted the seed that grew into the Abyss. We trace his fall, his imprisonment by the same gods who couldn't stomach what...

The Imaskari built the greatest magical empire in the history of Toril, and then they did something so monstrous that it took their victims' gods four thousand years to make them pay for it. This episode traces the full arc of Imaskar, from a fertile basin in −8350 DR to the dust desert it is today. We cover the Lord Artificers who ruled without gods, the portal network that let them conquer a con...

This is a great place to start if you are new to Dungeons and Dragons and DnD lore and you want to know what the Dungeon is all about, we will talk about famous Dungeons and the real world origins. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She's been in print since 1983. She made it into the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook deity list. She survived the Edition Wars and she's still in the current game. And if you asked a hundred D&D players to tell you one thing about her, most of them couldn't. This week Jess drags Wee Jas out of the Greyhawk footnotes and makes the case that the goddess of magic, death, vanity, and law is one of t...

Grab your Elder Sign, because Sean and Jess are diving into the sleeping god at the bottom of the ocean: Cthulhu. This one goes way past the tentacle face. Sean breaks down what a Great Old One actually is (older, weirder, and far more indifferent than any demon), why the Elder Gods sealed these things away instead of killing them, and how Cthulhu ended up dreaming in the drowned city of R'lyeh. T...

You have said Bigby's name out loud at a table. You have pointed at a monster, squeezed it with a giant spectral fist, and felt powerful doing it. But do you actually know the man behind the hand? Probably not... and he is so much weirder than the spell. This week we dig into Bigby, the most powerful anxious person in the history of Greyhawk. We trace him from his origins as a throwaway evil NPC (...

There are two events known as Tearfall in the history of Faruen and they are both buck wild, so if you like Dungeons and Dragons lore and are especially fond of apocalyptic dragon stuff.... JOIN US!!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One hundred episodes deep, and we finally set foot in the Feywild. Welcome to the Plane of Faerie, a warped mirror of the Material Plane where the colors run too bright, the emotions run too hot, and a single night of dancing can cost you a decade of your life. In our 100th episode, Sean and Jess trace the Feywild from its earliest D&D roots through its modern 5e form. We break down the great...

Grab a torch... it won't help, but grab one anyway. This week Sean and Jess drag Roll for Lore into the Shadowfell, Dungeons & Dragons' gloomy echo of the Material Plane, where the sky is a black vault, the food bleeds, and despair has actual game mechanics. We trace the plane's whole history: how Jeff Grubb's 1987 Demiplane of Shadow footnote became 4th edition's Shadowfell, and how, in Forgo...

She's Asmodeus's least obedient daughter, a criminal mastermind he promoted just to shut her up — and it didn't work. This episode we're breaking down Glasya , Archduchess of Malbolge and Princess of the Nine Hells, and Sean's newest crush. from her obscure 1983 debut in Dragon #75 to her defining arc in Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells . We cover her murdered mother Bensozia, her deca...

Directly beneath the gleaming streets of Waterdeep, past a mile and a half of solid rock and very bad decisions, sits the most wretched city in the Forgotten Realms. No laws. No government. No sunlight. Just pirates, slavers, illithids, drow factions who hate each other, a beholder crime lord who does most of his business without ever showing up in person, a renegade illithid who has decided to wo...

In this DnD lore cast we discuss the higher level demons found in the infinate layers of the abyss. You might need these for a planescape game but you also might need them for a Forgotten Realms or Eberron game because Demons are crazy and the Abyss touches everything. We go over: Yochlol - They serve Loth Alkilith- one of the slimiest of all slime boys Nalfeshnee - one of the OG D&D demons an...

https://www.patreon.com/cw/RollForLore Take a deep breath and grab your trident... this week on Roll for Lore, Sean and Jess head underwater to cover two of the Forgotten Realms' most criminally underused races: merfolk and tritons. We're talking full lore breakdown, from their first appearance way back in the original Monster Manual all the way through to their modern 5e treatment as both monster...

We are kicking off a deep dive into the Abyss and honestly... we don't even know where to start because the Abyss is massive and deeply unhinged. So we're doing what any reasonable lore nerds would do, we're going in challenge rating order and starting at the bottom. And the bottom of the demonic food chain is a wild and strange place to be. This episode is all about the low CR demons, the weird f...

Werewolves, werebears, wererats, wereravens, and the gods who fight over them. We dig into lycanthropes across the D&D multiverse and the lore is way deeper than you think. We cover Strahd's werewolf pack in Curse of Strahd and the wereraven Keepers of the Feather quietly resisting him. We get into Eberron and the Silver Flame's lycanthropic purge, the shifter genocide that followed, and the P...

Strap on your torches (and maybe a few extra) because this week we're descending into the Underdark, the sprawling network of caverns, tunnels, and lightless cities buried beneath the surface of the Forgotten Realms. From the drow of Menzoberranzan to the mind flayers, beholders, and the horrors lurking in the dark, the Underdark is home to some of the most iconic monsters and most brutal adventur...

The Abyss is the infinite chaotic evil plane of Dungeons & Dragons — home to demon lords, the Blood War, and 50 years of D&D lore that has grown weirder with every edition. In this episode we map out the essential reading list (from 1977's Monster Manual through 2006's Fiendish Codex I to 2018's Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes), explain the demon hierarchy from larvae and dretches up to balors...

What happens when you cross a drow with a dragon? You get one of the most criminally overlooked corners of Forgotten Realms lore — and one of the wildest stories in the entire Underdark. This week on [Show Name], Sean and Jess dive deep into the Drow-Dragon: a creature born from centuries of slavery, shadow magic, and a rebellion so brutal it reshaped drow society forever. We start with the basics...