Hey all, I've only gotten into DnD in the last 2 months or so, and I've started DMing a group of great and mostly experienced folks through LMoP and we've been having a good time. I also made a dungeon that we played for an off week that was pretty well received so far. I've been watching Matt Colvilles stuff and wanting to start developing a homebrew campaign.
I have a pretty good idea of the world and conflict I want to set up and I think what I want to do for the first few levels is weave in some of those old modules Colville recommends into the setting.
Basically, its sort of a melange of Heraclian era Rome with the Ancient Middle east (wars bt two super powers, smaller client states in between, both are beginning to teeter on the bring when tribes beginning to over run both from the south) So fantasy Rome, fantasy persia, fantasy Assyria and Armenia, and ancient Egypt and Babylon settings. With those broad strokes, I have the idea of starting the party in the 'Judea' equivalent in the Empire, ruled over by a corrupt Proconsul squeezing the locals for cash, scouting parties from the tribes beginning to creep into the territory from the desert, traders from fantasy Egypt and Babylon running into trouble from them. I was thinking of modifying both Hommlet and Cult of the Reptile god into the early level quests. Then Red Hand of Doom seems to fit the mold for the invading tribes theme.
I think between the Proconsul and the tribe issues + the usage of the modules recommended from Colville, should I be able to cobble together enough to get something going? Are there some other good 'side' quest things I can grab to slot in? I saw Illwinters Floorplan and Inkarnate recommended for building maps and such, are they good? I'm really super busy basically working 2 jobs, so any place I can cut corners and simplify my life as a DM would really be appreciated. We play over Roll20, so something like the MM built into it has been a real life saver time wise, entering stat blocks is just something I don't have time for.
How far ahead should I bother planning at the campaign level? Should something develop naturally over the course of the lower levels?
How much you should prepare is always a big question. It's hard to answer because, as you get more experience, you get better able to make things up as you go. Starting out, however, you feel like you want to have every tiny detail marked out in advance.
One of the most important things you can do, rather than preparing content, is condensing your notes. Old adventures like Hommlet and CotRG tend to have a toooooon of extra shit you can cut. CotRG has like 40 some different villagers you can talk to; cut that back to six and now you're approaching what your characters are more likely to experience. There's also four ways to get to the naga fight: getting drugged at the inn, getting captured at the old inn, finding the lair through talking to the villagers, and optional fight at the church. It's almost impossible to lose a fight in 5e, and most of today's players can't handle the emotional load of losing an unfair fight and being drug back to the lair. I'd condense those into two possible leads.
1)The players should start off by interviewing villagers or the priests (I'd consider cutting the church entirely). If they follow through with all of them, they can be attacked by charmed villagers and, knocking them to their senses, learn the location of the lair.
2)If they follow the leads of the charmed villagers to go to the inn, they get attacked and can learn the location of the lair by the assassin that was only pretending to be charmed.
That cuts down on the prep and openness of the book by half. I'd also make sure to have the names of the villagers written somewhere handy so you can keep track of them. Hommlet has the problem of two thirds of the book being lists of rooms in the church, inn, and guardhouse that the players aren't going to see unless they decide to be evil and loot the place. All you need is the barracks maps and encounters, and you're golden.
As for prepping the campaign level stuff, the answer depends on the scope of the game. Colville likes to make things political with kings and dukes, and having wars and riots is really important at that level of play. If your scope is closer to the ground, like in say CotRG where you're just helping out a small town that's besieged by lizardfolk, the grand schema of monarchs doesn't play in at all. You could use the fact that your players have saved these towns as a reason for them to visit the local king/duke and introduce the world at large.
@Carnarvon thanks so much, I have to pick up these and flip through them, I've done a bit of condensing in LMoP already (like the spare NPCs in the inn) My idea was to go through and basically take the broad strokes and adopt things. I wanted to keep things pretty personal to the players with the background of the world changing how things are occurring around them. I have to ask my group what kind of game they'd like. I figured that if they wanted to get into the politics of things it would be open.
I plan out everything. I don't trust myself not to get backed into a corner if I wing it. So I fucking go way overboard.
example of room description:
ROOM 3A. CROSSROADS OF FIRE
There is a long corridor leading off to the east, two going to the south and one leading to the west and of course the corridor you came down from the north. There are no murderous goblins shooting crossbow bolts at you. There is no debris on the floor hiding bear traps. There are no burning barriers and no illusionary walls. It’s unsettling.
MONSTERS: After the fireballs have been activated the ever present murder holes will open and the goblins will open fire. In addition 15 goblins from each corridor, including the northern one, will charge the group. This being the final stage to kill the characters.
TRAPS: Obvious pressure plates can be seen on the ground but they are disarmed. The less obvious and much more, well-hidden pressure plates are next to the dummy ones and release fireballs from each corridor, simultaneously, when activated. A Perception check of 20 must be made to discover the real plates and a DC 25 to disable them.
SECRET DOORS: NONE
TREASURE: NONE
DM NOTES: NONE
example of room description with NPC/bad guy possible conversation remarks:
ROOM 4a. LAIR OF THE BUGBEAR
The cavern is massive, at least 150’ from north to south and east to west. The cavern ceiling is at least as high as the cavern is long, with stalactites of all different sizes hanging down. As rough as the ceiling and sides of the cavern look, the floor is entirely different. It has been smoothed out and bleached white. Runes and markings have been etched into the floor at seemingly random and disorderly spots, much like a goblin itself is random and disorderly.
In the center of the cavern is a giant pool outlined by a stone wall with stone stairs leading to the top of the short wall. Neither the stone wall nor the stone stairs, are made of the cave rock that surrounds it. Again, an oddity that can only be attributed to goblin architecture.
On the east, west and southern sides of the pool, are benches and on the north side, in front of the stairs is an iron throne.
And sitting in the throne is a creature that one can only describe as a larger, hairier goblin. And by larger, I mean double the size of a goblin. It has a crown on its head and a metal rod resting across its lap. Unlike most bugbears the gnomes have come across, this one wears no mismatched armor. Completely out of character is what it is wearing: a wizards robes. The king of the goblins (for what else do you call a giant goblin with a crown on its head that sits on a throne) is watching a spectacle going on in the pool. 6 fully armed goblins are fighting each other.
The water is only ankle deep and as they attack each other, water is splashed on the throng of onlookers sitting on the benches. Inevitably a goblin loses its head, which usually happens when sharp things are given to small murderous creatures (no offense to gnomes) and the whole cavern becomes not only deathly quiet, but eerily still. The remaining 5 combatants bow to the dead goblin bleeding into the clear water and slowly back out of the pool. The water begins to roil, as if it is suddenly very deep and the smell of salty ocean water hits you. And from the water, a tentacle (a large one) slowly snakes out. It grips the tiny head of the goblin and the lifeless body and submerges again into the depths…of the ankle deep pool. About 30 seconds passes before a collective sigh is heard from the crowd
The Goblin King yells: “All hail Gumshee! He appeases the water beast! But Gumshee didn’t please the water beast. Spit on Gumshee!” All of the 20 or 30 goblins sitting on the benches spit towards the pool. Obviously not water you drink…
The Goblin King stands up from his throne and you see he is a full 7’ tall, and walks up the stairs to the stone wall surrounding the pool. He nonchalantly steps into the water that mere seconds ago housed an enormous sea creature with 20’ tentacles and now has goblin phlegm floating in it. “Maybe the god of the sea beasts is tired of goblin meats! Maybe he wants the meats of the invaders! ALL HAIL THE INVADERS!”
At that, goblins seemingly fall from the ceiling of the cavern, pour out of the ingeniously disguised warren holes, and rush up from the caverns you just came through. The spectating goblins have turned towards you, producing bows and crossbows from underneath the benches. The king’s rod is now somehow a staff and he bangs it on the pool floor and 10 slightly smaller bugbears rush in from the door in the southwest corner of the cavern. All armed in plate-mail and shields, wielding disgustingly long spears. They line up in a formation where their shields lock together with only the long spears sticking out and hardly a hair can be seen from behind the interlocking and pointy wall of death. The goblin wizardess you thought was blown up by her exploding staff of hate, steps out from behind the iron throne, with yet another staff in her hand. She taps her staff twice on the floor and two bubbles of force surround both her and the king. She smirks at the lot of you.
But even with all of this going on, it is the iron throne that catches your attention. It has begun to slowly transform from the metal it is made of into a hulking beast made of iron. It stands at least 8’ tall and is at least that width. It has diamonds for eyes, glowing runes carved into its metallic body and mutating hands that alternates between axe heads, sword blades and hammers. It moves much quicker than a big slab of metal should and thuds forward and stands next to the king, who pets it affectionately. He then unties the string at his neck and the wizard’s robes fall away revealing a splendid set of Mithril chain mail. “The sea god wants man meat, invaders, come please the sea god!”
MONSTERS: 10 Bugbears, 150 goblins, 1 goblin wizardess, 1 goblin king and 1 iron golem.
TRAPS: Ward Runes
SECRET DOORS: NONE
TREASURE: Rod of the Speedy and Lordly Storm Giant
DM NOTES: Should anyone try and talk with the king, they will find him surprisingly cordial and open to conversation. “I have nothing to hide, you invaders. I am the Goblin King, but I will not tell you my name because I don’t want to. And no, it’s not Jareth or Bowie…I don’t know why people think that.” “Yes, the pool is a portal thingy but it only works one damn way. Unless you’re dead or have no head! Haha! Hey that rhymed!” “If there is blood in that water, the sea beast comes a sniffing around and takes what made that blood back to its watery home. Sometimes it takes living things and makes them dead.” “I don’t know nothing bout a hill giant who can do magic…seems a little far-fetched if you ask me.” “Sometimes things just show up in the pool, even when there is no blood. Like this shiny thing…” as he points to his suit of armor “or this shiny thing!” He thumps it to his chest. “And gold…lots of it. Chests full just show up, obviously in tribute to me, but all seem to have spent some time in the ocean.” “Nasty dead things from the sea are offered up as well: like them big fish with all the teeth and black eyes, oh and them bigger fish that can swallow you whole and made all of fat; them things are tasty! And them pinchy spiders hiding they tasty meats under their red armor.” “A sea hag appeared one day and that gave us a scare, I will tell you that for nothing. But she was dead and probably prettier to boot! Haha! She brought my wizardesses a great gift, all them shiny staves. Now why in the world would a bloated ugly sea hag have six magic sticks? A day later a fearsome beast crawled out of the pool and even though it was uglier than the hag, it wasn’t dead. An eel, an octopus and a mind beast, all mashed together in a wet slimy body, it clawed into our minds and before we knew it, 50 of my subjects were dead. My metal pet saved us all…squished that fishy snake flat! Woot!” He slapped the iron beast on the shoulder in gratitude. The iron beast turns its diamond eyes towards the bugbear and then back towards you all. “Well, we made him, didn’t we?! We dried out an old book, figured out how to read the damn thing and then we followed the directions and boom! Ole Rusty comes to life and then turns himself into a throne! haha! The next time them damn baby stealing spawn come a calling, my throne is going to turns into a vampire murder machine! WOOT!”
“My corridor of horrors? haha! Did you ever think you would meet a bugbear as poetically inclined as me? Anyway, we built the tunnels and the murder holes and the traps to stop the spawn of the vampire from taking our young.”[/b] Which makes you shudder when you think that the blood might have been baby goblins. “You killed the bloody vampire?!” “I need proof! I need his head!” “What, no body or head?”
The king calls one of the goblins over to him, whispers in the little green murderers ears, and watches as he runs off down the cavern hall the way you came. “Stay where you are invaders! I have traps and wards all over this cavern. Stay there until my messenger returns.”
About 10 minutes later, not only does the messenger come back but 4 goblin wizardessess do as well. You wonder where the hell they were and what they were going to spring on you. “Wizard ladies! Go to the vampire’s lair and find out if the invaders are telling me true!”
The goblinesses look at the king, waiting for more information until one of them sighs, and then replies “my dear king, what exactly did the invaders say that we are to check the validity of?” “Don’t talk fancy to me, dammit! You know I don’t like it!”
Another sigh and she mimics the kings voice “I meant to say ‘what we checking on up there boss bear?”
The king looks annoyed but so does the wizardess “If the damn vampire is dead!”
The wizardesses gasp collectively. A hopeful look splayed across their weirdly intelligent faces.
He faces your group “One of you are to go with my wizards and if you are telling the truth, there will be a celebration I tell you!” “Listen, invaders, you could be vampire spawn for all I know. Although they have never been this talkative. They’ve actually never talked at all, just murdered everything and stole our babies but that’s not the point.” “Anyway, I need collateral: some of you stay here and one of you goes with my lady wizards or one of you stays here and one of you goes...wait...you know what I mean!”
example of a room with an encounter:
ROOM 2E. THE ROOM OF THE FIRE ELEMENTAL
This massive room (50’x50’) is filled with pillars, each of which reach the ceiling about 30’ up. It seems that no matter where you are standing, you cannot see the opposite end of the room. The pillars are not made of the white marble that the floors are made of. Nor are they made of the same stone as the ceiling and if they are, they are certainly not the same color or consistency: they are darker and earthier.
The smell of this room is different than the hall, like a chicken that’s been cooked too long. This fowl smell is getting steadily more pungent until you see the source materialize out of thin air in the middle of the columns: a being made of pure fire, a green hued fire, a fel fire. It attacks immediately.
MONSTERS: Fel Fire Elemental
TRAPS: NONE
SECRET DOORS: One in the northeast corner and one in middle of the western wall.
TREASURE: The Fire Seed.
DM NOTES: The elemental writhes in mid air as chunks of the green fire falls away from its body until there is nothing left except a bright, small, red lump laying on the ground. It’s hot to the touch but not scalding and it has all the characteristics of a seed.
BATTLE OPTIONS:
• The elemental will cast Flaming Snakes. (The elemental opens its mouth, or where a mouth should be, impossibly wide and large snakes made of green fire explode outwards)
• The elemental will perform Fire Breath attack.(The elemental raises both of its fiery arms and a burst of green fire erupts from its open palms.)
• The elemental will perform Fire Breath attack.
• The elemental will attack with Fire Swords
• The elemental will attack with Fire Swords
• The elemental will cast Flaming Snakes.
• Fire Breath
• Fire Breath
• Fire Swords
• Fire Swords
• Repeat the last 4 steps
I know it's way over the top but again, I'm not good at winging it.
Oh jeeze, if you haven't read any of the old TSR adventures, you're in for a trip. These adventures were normally made to be run several times with the same people, with different characters, and are going to a LOT different than what Phandelver gives you. It shouldn't be too hard for you to figure out, but I normally end up completely remaking the adventure using the broad strokes of the original.
CotRG: A naga finds an artifact that charms humanoids. It attracts lizardfolk as henchmen to help it capture nearby villages. Villagers that resist the artifact are eaten, others are sent back to town and help collect more villagers. Party interviews villagers and finds:
1)Newlywed former adventurers who say everything is fine, because they're used to backwater hicks being strange. They do note that a lot of the young men are missing. Has heard the local inn is really nice.
2)Jeweler who is very terse and gives little information. Word around town is that his wife is missing, but he refuses to talk about it unless the players win a persuasion/intimidate; at that point he says his wife hasn't returned from the local swamp. and tells the party look for her there. Recommends the local inn.
3)Overtly hostile blacksmith, with his family aiming crossbows at the party through their house's windows. Will attack if the party tries to persuade/intimidate them.
4)Abandoned church, all the priests and acolytes have either given up the faith, fled, or gone missing. Recommends those seeking faith to stop at the local inn.
5)Bereaved mother, upset at the church for abandoning her, offers the players her husband's [magical gear] if they find her son. Says the inn has a strange feel lately.
6)Retired wizard that saved the village from orcs, decades ago. Realizes something strange is afoot, and thinks he might know the location of the naga's lair. Doesn't trust the party at first, but will help out if your players are stuck.
The inn is filled with beefy thugs and an innkeeper that is almost openly hostile to the party. He tells the players that that room and meals are a copper piece for the week (tell the players that this price is ludicrously low). The food is drugged and the rooms are fit with gas traps that cause players to fall unconscious. Anyone who eats and sleeps in the room is taken at night by a burly thug through a secret door embedded in the walls of each room. Players that discover the secret door find a passageway that leads to an underground river leading to the naga's lair.
If the players refuse to eat, or try to leave at any point, the burly thugs immediately attack the party. Any players that are downed don't make death saving throws, as the thugs want them alive, and are immediately gathered up and hauled into the basement (even in the middle of combat). If the players start winning the fight, one of the thugs makes a break for it, but the rest fight on completely ignoring their own wounds or the deaths of their allies. The thug that runs is an assassin that got captured by lizardfolk and managed resist being charmed, but pretended to be charmed so that he could run when he had the chance.
Now there's a couple different ways the players can make their way to the lair of the naga. They can get abducted, find one of the hidden passageways in the inn, talk to the assassin, go looking for the missing son or wife in the swamp and get attacked by lizardfolk, or the retired wizard leads them by the hand to the swamp.
The lair itself is pretty much ready to be run as-is. I try to make sure to emphasize that the lizardfolk are using the charmed humans as shock troops and fodder; remind the players that they can take them out non-lethally. For the end fight with the naga, I gave the players disadvantage if they attacked him while he was underwater (where it can cast spells with impunity), trying to get them to find a way to drain the chamber. Mostly they just stood there and cast spells/shot arrows at it until it died. YMMV.
I haven't run Hommlet, personally, but it seems to be pretty simple.
@Carnarvon wow this is a huge help dude!! I'm gonna save this run down. Matt Colville made a similar breakdown/adjustment thing. My big thing is: if I can steal a plot/quest and a map for a dungeon, I've just save a huge chunk of time. I don't mind trimming down, its much better if I just go through the pamphlet, get the jist and make my own notes of it, and then run that, rather than a 1:1 thing. Thats why I really dig how Colville constructs things, I'm personally more in his position where I really have limited time but I really love running the game so far. I don't want to only have to run big campaigns I really want to do my own thing so I feel like I have more flexibility on things.
Curse of Strahd update. Things got pretty rough in the house. Our Warlock got dropped by a nasty crit but we were able to save him pretty quickly.
Vicious Mockery is doing real work. My bard is slinging insults at all kinds of things. We should be finished with Death House after next week's session.
So I've found myself playing in a 5E game. Someone made a warlock for me, and I've enjoyed my at-wills and encounter power mechanic. But now I have the opportunity to tweak the character as I see fit, and I'm curious what everyone's opinions are on the various build options. My dude was created as a Pact of the Blade warlock, but without a high Strength or Dex, so that seems like a bad fit. Also vanilla Blade Pact seems a little MADish to me. I'm kinda liking the Celestial pact since the party doesn't really have much of a healer, but I also like the idea of having a big magical sword. Right now I'm Great Old One and I'd like to stick with that because it's giving my character some fun flavor.
I know Hexblade Warlocks are very popular since they get to use Cha for attack and damage rolls with their blade. So if you want to emphasize the sword part you may want to go that route.
Generally for campaign planning, i have a bit of a check list that i set up.
1. Play pen; what is the area you want to do your adventure in.
2. The set up; how you are going to introduce the players to the adventure and hook them in.
3. Event's/locations; the big scenes that you want to do for your players.
4. the big bad; what is his goal and how can the players stop him (this may or may not involve actually fighting him)
5. climax: the last major event in the story where the players go all in.
Theirs a temptation to go whole hog and develop things to an absurd degree, but the flip side of GMing from preperation will be adaptation; you're players will develop goals of their own, break the maguffin, loath the plot protagonist or resolve issues in ways that you didn't consider and thus you will need to adjust your approach to the campaign accordingly.
So I've found myself playing in a 5E game. Someone made a warlock for me, and I've enjoyed my at-wills and encounter power mechanic. But now I have the opportunity to tweak the character as I see fit, and I'm curious what everyone's opinions are on the various build options. My dude was created as a Pact of the Blade warlock, but without a high Strength or Dex, so that seems like a bad fit. Also vanilla Blade Pact seems a little MADish to me. I'm kinda liking the Celestial pact since the party doesn't really have much of a healer, but I also like the idea of having a big magical sword. Right now I'm Great Old One and I'd like to stick with that because it's giving my character some fun flavor.
You can MC Paladin and get Smites and Lay on Hands, iirc
Generally for campaign planning, i have a bit of a check list that i set up.
1. Play pen; what is the area you want to do your adventure in.
2. The set up; how you are going to introduce the players to the adventure and hook them in.
3. Event's/locations; the big scenes that you want to do for your players.
4. the big bad; what is his goal and how can the players stop him (this may or may not involve actually fighting him)
5. climax: the last major event in the story where the players go all in.
Theirs a temptation to go whole hog and develop things to an absurd degree, but the flip side of GMing from preperation will be adaptation; you're players will develop goals of their own, break the maguffin, loath the plot protagonist or resolve issues in ways that you didn't consider and thus you will need to adjust your approach to the campaign accordingly.
Thank you! Yeah, I have enough together that I just want to start and see where things go, its one of those things where its like, plan doesn't survive contact with the enemy. I just need some experience and would be happy to develop things with my players, I trust them. Should I even worry about things beyond a certain point? Like at the small scale I can develop things a bit for them to run, and it seems like Red hand of doom modded a bit could slot perfectly into my setting. Although I have big political forces acting in the game, I'm not really sure if the players will want to get involved with them, and it seems like it would be so far away from their start that I don't need to worry for now. I'm in a weird middle ground rn because we're playing LMoP and probably will be playing that for the next few months still at the rate we're going, so I don't want to put too much time into developing a campaign yet. With my limited free time I'd prefer to just focus on running the game I have.
So, we had our first IRL Tomb of Annihilation session last weekend!
It was mostly good! Things didn't go 100% as I had hoped though. Too many consumables were consumed, making it more of a bender weekend with some gaming as opposed to a gaming weekend with some bending. One player was in dick-like mood, so his CN rogue was not...helpful. I got grumpy about it by the end of the weekend and took and an opportunity to punish that dickishness with the death of another PC. So things could have gone better. But fun was indeed had and progress was made.
Game Sessions details and thoughts on the module
On to specifics of the module and our playthrough.... as I fully expected, we didn't spend a lot of time in Port Nyanzaru. I brought them in by ship, instead of teleportation because I really wanted that scene with Aramag in the harbor shaking down ships for loot. It went over quite well. Got everyone's attention, and successfully put the breaks on the hunting pirates side quest I dropped for them, when they realized that getting out of the harbor again meant facing Aramag.
Then they waltzed right into some dino racing! My intention was to let them bet small, give them a taste of how dinosaur racing worked, and then maybe get involved in the actual racing later. Except the rogue wanted to fix the race. Splitting the party, he laid down a 100 gold bet, snuck into the paddock area and loosed a junior T-Rex to eat the people on the streets & then murdered the jockey (this was the start of my annoyances as DM) and took his place via an excellent disguise roll . So now we had a situation where all the players were controlling their dinos to participate in the race, but only one of them was not racing "fair" (using Mage hand to goose the testes of the other racing dinos and the like), while the NPCs were just running their weekly race as per usual. The module itself asks players to all take the roles of different racers and do their best, which is all fine and dandy. But when one PC is more invested, and actually involved, in the race then it gets weird. I had the other players take the roles of the other racers to keep them involved in the game, but it might have better to keep them as onlookers and involve them another way. The other players were like, "Who am I supposed to cheer for again? I thought I was in the bar, but now I'm riding a Triceratops? Why can he cheat and not us?" I really could have handled that one better at the table, but it got away from me and went in a dark direction. The instigator(s) thought it was funny, while I wanted to bring the town guard down on their heads and kill them and start again. My personal saving grace was that the rogue rolled a Nat1 at the start of the race and face planted his dino. He lost, big time. Instant karma.
After a giant exposition dump with Waganka, my party was ready to head off. And they kept looking at me to tell them where. My party missed my repeated hints both IC and OOC, that this was a sandbox kind of module. They were a tad frustrated with not having a clear direction. I hinted at guides, but they didn't want pay them upfront. I offered the Fort Belurian side quest and gave an overview of the Flaming Fist, but they didn't want to cause a rukus (a rare moment of wisdom, but my guys are not usually subtle so its for the best). I offered up the escort to Camp Vengeance side quest which they jumped at, and took up the Hrakhamar quest because that guide was "free". So they bombed into the jungle as fast as they could. I had fun picking and choosing random encounters and describing things going in the jungle from the relative safety of their canoe. Gorilla's swinging through the trees. Random Apatosaurs drinking from the river. An epic T-Rex vs. Giant Constrictor brawl.
The module, IMO, makes the crawl through the jungle too tedious. One hex per day is one thing... but calling for encounters 3 times a day is too much. Not all of them are combat encounters, but enough of them are. That many random, meaningless fights is asking for too much. Very quickly I found it more entertaining to handwave days of travel through the jungle. They know about how to collect fresh water, and travel with a ranger. Supplies arn't an issue until UI want to make it story-moment. I found that glossing over travel, with some choice descrptions inspired by the random encounter table and thrown in, and maybe one targeted encounter in between points on the map worked much better. Speaking of points on the map...
We had good times in Camp Righteous. Then the pissy commander of Vengeance ticked off my party with his attitude, so they told him to lump it and left, despite needing/wanting a forward safe zone. They really liked the idea of the Order of the Gauntlet, but flat out refused being ordered about and treated like recruits. My players pique was raised, and they refused to entertain helping him out. Again, my fault in not playing up the moderating influences of the subcommanders and establishing Vengeance as a safe point, and explaining to get a little you need to give a little....but some of my players were in a mood. Which put me in a mood. Its too bad they weren't the same moods.
They headed off to Hrakhamar with Mushy, back into the jungle and the rivers. Had a surprisingly pleasant chat with Nanny Pupu and will remember to come back her way again. From the vantage point Mbala provided, I added more sticky notes to the player map, Orolunga & Heart of Ubtao, and flat out told my guys to "think of the skyrim map" where there's all this cool stuff pops up for you to check out. Guides put pins on the map. They finally got it. So hopefully next sessions destination frustration will not be an issue.
That gorge with the fossilized coral in the walls was super cool. While moving through it, they passed another group of explorers along the way and bought from them some jungle weed. That was funny. One more near tpk with some ghouls later (we lost a player to overindulgence and the late time) and they made it to Hrakhamar. This went quite well, until the very end. When player cheekiness led to me pounding on a ko'd player. The fighter went down in one of the storage rooms and instead of aiding him, the rouge closed the door and pretended he didn't see it. This soured me, because it was done in purely as a dick move. That left a firenewt with one unopposed turn to go HAM, and I did instead of charging the bad guy out to face the healthy PCs and die swift death. Already with two faled death saves, the poor fighter didn't make his only death save roll, and out he goes. Steelhawk was done playing around, and hope the message got across. We left the session with the PC pocketing their adamantine and handing the Halls back to the Albino Dwarves.
It was mostly laughed off at the time. But since the weekend I've fired off a couple of emails at the group, explaining how I was disappointed at how some of the players didn't seem to be taking this seriously, and how this wasn't the type of game I wanted to run. I'm sure they probably think I'm just a butthurt whiner, but whatevs. I don't have patience for this juvenile style of D&D any more. Anyway, that's where we left it. And I'm sad now because our schedules, and rotating games (next weekend session is EotE in a few months!), means I won't be able to revisit this for at least 6 months. Likely more. Alas.
I still have no idea what role Artus serves in the module, aside from just being there.
In my experience, in personal groups, you need to cater to your players. Asking them to play outside of their comfort zone rarely works, as they're either disinterested or just not capable of the style of play you're looking for. Sandbox play is one of those things where you need a particular style of group to make shine, most players I've known would much rather have story arcs and be led by the nose when things aren't moving.
Having a player try to rig a dinosaur race sounds awesome to me, and totally in line with a thief's personality. I mean, that's what sandbox play is about, right? I can go do whatever I want, because I don't have to worry about ruining 'the main story' because I got kicked out of town. I just have to go somewhere else.
You might get more enjoyment out of an online group, where you can kick people at will, and attract people of a certain attitude.
This is my long time group, and to be honest I thought they would handle a sandbox well. And I think they will now that they know what's up. The whole adventure is not a sandbox, but the jungle itself is. The idea being that the group needs to explore the jungle before finding the location to advance the main plot. But you are absolutely right in that for next session I'll have more well defined path(s) laid out for them to take instead of flail around in the unknown.
Rigging the dino racing would have been awesome had it not involved the cold blooded murder of an NPC. I've dm'd the evil campaign already, and I don't want to do it again. I felt like this was where we were heading and wanted to close that door before it was fully open.
I don't want to kick anyone from my games, especially as these are my friends. It was an off session where we just weren't vibing. I think it's more notable this time because its rare for our experience
I think Artus introduced continuity from the Giants module they did a while ago (he was in one of the town's PCs could go to and was the focal point of that part of the story), plus there is a chance the PCs get the ring.
Not sure though, i haven't read the whole thing yet.
I never read that one, so don't know of his import in that module. But I'm struggling to understand why such an NPC was put in ToA. He's not an enemy (as written) and he's not explicitly an ally to the party either. He holds no import to the main quest, and only tangential import to a location in the jungle. A location, not even a side quest, just a location. A side quest was built around Artus just being the in the jungle anyway, as opposed to a side quest built around why Artus is in the jungle.
Either I am missing something, or Artus was just jammed in ToA to be a powerful ally to assist the PC's should they need it.
Well, looks like the game I'm in has been dealt a lethal blow. After the one player quit last week following his character's death, a few hours ago a second person dropped out of Discord and removed himself from our friend lists. Rather than try and recruit two new players, it looks like we're just going to wrap this campaign and try a new one. I get that it's tough to come into a campaign at 7th level but this is still disappointing.
Well in the previous adventure, should the PCs choose to go to a particular town (out of 3 that clues lead them to, and which turn they go to determines the middle part of the overall story),
The town is under attack by frost Giants, looking for Artus, and more importantly the ring. They used some magic to find him by blood, except it turns out it's actually his cousin or brother or sob (i forgot). The Giants only want the guy, do the PCs can either find him and sell him out or they can defend the town which the Giants attack otherwise.
Then later in frost giant town, they are looking for a bunch of artefacts and the ring is one of them. PCs came for a specific artefact and they can steal it with some skirmishes, but if they stick around there is way too many Giants to survive so they get out.
In tomb of annihilation,
there is frost Giants wandering the jungle looking for Artus with the blood magic. It's one of the random encounters. If you run into them they'll ask PCs if they've seen him.
And if the PCs get into a fight they can't handle, you can have Artus show up to save them. This then also could introduce a conflict depending on who they spoke to first, and how they feel about the respective parties.
I think he also can show up and help the PCs with the final dungeon, iirc from leafing through the tail end of the book, and there is consequences if he dies it not.
My guess is that he may play a bigger role in the next adventure, whatever it turns out to be. I hope it's Planescape.
Well, looks like the game I'm in has been dealt a lethal blow. After the one player quit last week following his character's death, a few hours ago a second person dropped out of Discord and removed himself from our friend lists. Rather than try and recruit two new players, it looks like we're just going to wrap this campaign and try a new one. I get that it's tough to come into a campaign at 7th level but this is still disappointing.
What i want more then anything else for the next campaign (especially since we're not getting a new one next month) is for the writing team to give us something new. the last 4 or 5 campaigns have all been deeply influenced by older moduals and while they're generally pretty good, I'm at the point where i want to see something that shows how awesome 5e can be when it's firing on all cylinders.
Apparently after the implosion last night, the DM and the two remaining players other than myself worked out the end of the campaign since he wanted to reuse the setting and there was a world-ending cataclysm we had to stop. They described the methods they were going to use, and I guess the DM rolled some dice or something to find out how it went. Apparently they decided that my character died, too? I'm a little miffed about that. Not necessarily that my character died, but that he died without me having any say. I think I'm going to bring it up tonight, but I also don't know what I would have wanted done differently? I told them they could talk without me (I was at work, so hopping on Discord was out) but I didn't realize they'd be settling all that.
If you were in the DM's shoes, how would you resolve that? End-of-Days-style event when the game falls apart, but you want to keep using the same setting afterward.
We had a tavern, we had stealing, we had someone trying to con a villager, we had cosmic horrors from beyond reality kidnapping villagers during a mystical storm, we had breakfast foods! It was all a good time.
Stat block from a giant spider, but give him Darkness (ink) and allow him to squeeze through areas one size smaller than giant squider (like squids, ehhh).
That squid-spider only has six legs, obviously it also needs two giant tentacles and a grab attack.
Maybe advantage on stealth checks (or imposing disadvantage on perception checks) to reflect the Squids ability to change color to match it's surroundings as an ambush predator?
Apparently after the implosion last night, the DM and the two remaining players other than myself worked out the end of the campaign since he wanted to reuse the setting and there was a world-ending cataclysm we had to stop. They described the methods they were going to use, and I guess the DM rolled some dice or something to find out how it went. Apparently they decided that my character died, too? I'm a little miffed about that. Not necessarily that my character died, but that he died without me having any say. I think I'm going to bring it up tonight, but I also don't know what I would have wanted done differently? I told them they could talk without me (I was at work, so hopping on Discord was out) but I didn't realize they'd be settling all that.
If you were in the DM's shoes, how would you resolve that? End-of-Days-style event when the game falls apart, but you want to keep using the same setting afterward.
As they did. The campaign is over so the canon doesn't matter much. If it really bugged a pollster I would agree to change the canon so it no longer did.
At level 12 a Dex fighter would have had the opportunity for four ability score improvements (4,6,8 and 12), meaning that they should be able to get their dexterity up to 20 pretty easily.
They have 2 Extra Attacks and an action surge ability.
And they can take Shadow Blade (a lvl 2 spell).
Also assume they have a Sorcerer on hand who likes to cast Haste.
Use the bonus action to summon the shadow blade.
Then attack 3 times, at 2d8+5 damage, with a +9 to the attack roll (+4 from proficiency, +5 from dexterity as Shadow Blade has the Finesse property).
Then they can use action surge to do that again, for another 3 attacks at 2d8+5
Then they do that get action from Haste, using it to attack again for another 3 times at 2d8+5.
Am I reading the rules correctly that I could get 9 attacks at 2d8+5?
It sounds like we may be in for a lot of dice rolling next time we fight something.
Posts
I have a pretty good idea of the world and conflict I want to set up and I think what I want to do for the first few levels is weave in some of those old modules Colville recommends into the setting.
Basically, its sort of a melange of Heraclian era Rome with the Ancient Middle east (wars bt two super powers, smaller client states in between, both are beginning to teeter on the bring when tribes beginning to over run both from the south) So fantasy Rome, fantasy persia, fantasy Assyria and Armenia, and ancient Egypt and Babylon settings. With those broad strokes, I have the idea of starting the party in the 'Judea' equivalent in the Empire, ruled over by a corrupt Proconsul squeezing the locals for cash, scouting parties from the tribes beginning to creep into the territory from the desert, traders from fantasy Egypt and Babylon running into trouble from them. I was thinking of modifying both Hommlet and Cult of the Reptile god into the early level quests. Then Red Hand of Doom seems to fit the mold for the invading tribes theme.
I think between the Proconsul and the tribe issues + the usage of the modules recommended from Colville, should I be able to cobble together enough to get something going? Are there some other good 'side' quest things I can grab to slot in? I saw Illwinters Floorplan and Inkarnate recommended for building maps and such, are they good? I'm really super busy basically working 2 jobs, so any place I can cut corners and simplify my life as a DM would really be appreciated. We play over Roll20, so something like the MM built into it has been a real life saver time wise, entering stat blocks is just something I don't have time for.
How far ahead should I bother planning at the campaign level? Should something develop naturally over the course of the lower levels?
One of the most important things you can do, rather than preparing content, is condensing your notes. Old adventures like Hommlet and CotRG tend to have a toooooon of extra shit you can cut. CotRG has like 40 some different villagers you can talk to; cut that back to six and now you're approaching what your characters are more likely to experience. There's also four ways to get to the naga fight: getting drugged at the inn, getting captured at the old inn, finding the lair through talking to the villagers, and optional fight at the church. It's almost impossible to lose a fight in 5e, and most of today's players can't handle the emotional load of losing an unfair fight and being drug back to the lair. I'd condense those into two possible leads.
1)The players should start off by interviewing villagers or the priests (I'd consider cutting the church entirely). If they follow through with all of them, they can be attacked by charmed villagers and, knocking them to their senses, learn the location of the lair.
2)If they follow the leads of the charmed villagers to go to the inn, they get attacked and can learn the location of the lair by the assassin that was only pretending to be charmed.
That cuts down on the prep and openness of the book by half. I'd also make sure to have the names of the villagers written somewhere handy so you can keep track of them. Hommlet has the problem of two thirds of the book being lists of rooms in the church, inn, and guardhouse that the players aren't going to see unless they decide to be evil and loot the place. All you need is the barracks maps and encounters, and you're golden.
As for prepping the campaign level stuff, the answer depends on the scope of the game. Colville likes to make things political with kings and dukes, and having wars and riots is really important at that level of play. If your scope is closer to the ground, like in say CotRG where you're just helping out a small town that's besieged by lizardfolk, the grand schema of monarchs doesn't play in at all. You could use the fact that your players have saved these towns as a reason for them to visit the local king/duke and introduce the world at large.
example of room description:
There is a long corridor leading off to the east, two going to the south and one leading to the west and of course the corridor you came down from the north. There are no murderous goblins shooting crossbow bolts at you. There is no debris on the floor hiding bear traps. There are no burning barriers and no illusionary walls. It’s unsettling.
MONSTERS: After the fireballs have been activated the ever present murder holes will open and the goblins will open fire. In addition 15 goblins from each corridor, including the northern one, will charge the group. This being the final stage to kill the characters.
TRAPS: Obvious pressure plates can be seen on the ground but they are disarmed. The less obvious and much more, well-hidden pressure plates are next to the dummy ones and release fireballs from each corridor, simultaneously, when activated. A Perception check of 20 must be made to discover the real plates and a DC 25 to disable them.
SECRET DOORS: NONE
TREASURE: NONE
DM NOTES: NONE
example of room description with NPC/bad guy possible conversation remarks:
The cavern is massive, at least 150’ from north to south and east to west. The cavern ceiling is at least as high as the cavern is long, with stalactites of all different sizes hanging down. As rough as the ceiling and sides of the cavern look, the floor is entirely different. It has been smoothed out and bleached white. Runes and markings have been etched into the floor at seemingly random and disorderly spots, much like a goblin itself is random and disorderly.
In the center of the cavern is a giant pool outlined by a stone wall with stone stairs leading to the top of the short wall. Neither the stone wall nor the stone stairs, are made of the cave rock that surrounds it. Again, an oddity that can only be attributed to goblin architecture.
On the east, west and southern sides of the pool, are benches and on the north side, in front of the stairs is an iron throne.
And sitting in the throne is a creature that one can only describe as a larger, hairier goblin. And by larger, I mean double the size of a goblin. It has a crown on its head and a metal rod resting across its lap. Unlike most bugbears the gnomes have come across, this one wears no mismatched armor. Completely out of character is what it is wearing: a wizards robes. The king of the goblins (for what else do you call a giant goblin with a crown on its head that sits on a throne) is watching a spectacle going on in the pool. 6 fully armed goblins are fighting each other.
The water is only ankle deep and as they attack each other, water is splashed on the throng of onlookers sitting on the benches. Inevitably a goblin loses its head, which usually happens when sharp things are given to small murderous creatures (no offense to gnomes) and the whole cavern becomes not only deathly quiet, but eerily still. The remaining 5 combatants bow to the dead goblin bleeding into the clear water and slowly back out of the pool. The water begins to roil, as if it is suddenly very deep and the smell of salty ocean water hits you. And from the water, a tentacle (a large one) slowly snakes out. It grips the tiny head of the goblin and the lifeless body and submerges again into the depths…of the ankle deep pool. About 30 seconds passes before a collective sigh is heard from the crowd
The Goblin King yells: “All hail Gumshee! He appeases the water beast! But Gumshee didn’t please the water beast. Spit on Gumshee!” All of the 20 or 30 goblins sitting on the benches spit towards the pool. Obviously not water you drink…
The Goblin King stands up from his throne and you see he is a full 7’ tall, and walks up the stairs to the stone wall surrounding the pool. He nonchalantly steps into the water that mere seconds ago housed an enormous sea creature with 20’ tentacles and now has goblin phlegm floating in it.
“Maybe the god of the sea beasts is tired of goblin meats! Maybe he wants the meats of the invaders! ALL HAIL THE INVADERS!”
At that, goblins seemingly fall from the ceiling of the cavern, pour out of the ingeniously disguised warren holes, and rush up from the caverns you just came through. The spectating goblins have turned towards you, producing bows and crossbows from underneath the benches. The king’s rod is now somehow a staff and he bangs it on the pool floor and 10 slightly smaller bugbears rush in from the door in the southwest corner of the cavern. All armed in plate-mail and shields, wielding disgustingly long spears. They line up in a formation where their shields lock together with only the long spears sticking out and hardly a hair can be seen from behind the interlocking and pointy wall of death. The goblin wizardess you thought was blown up by her exploding staff of hate, steps out from behind the iron throne, with yet another staff in her hand. She taps her staff twice on the floor and two bubbles of force surround both her and the king. She smirks at the lot of you.
But even with all of this going on, it is the iron throne that catches your attention. It has begun to slowly transform from the metal it is made of into a hulking beast made of iron. It stands at least 8’ tall and is at least that width. It has diamonds for eyes, glowing runes carved into its metallic body and mutating hands that alternates between axe heads, sword blades and hammers. It moves much quicker than a big slab of metal should and thuds forward and stands next to the king, who pets it affectionately. He then unties the string at his neck and the wizard’s robes fall away revealing a splendid set of Mithril chain mail.
“The sea god wants man meat, invaders, come please the sea god!”
MONSTERS: 10 Bugbears, 150 goblins, 1 goblin wizardess, 1 goblin king and 1 iron golem.
TRAPS: Ward Runes
SECRET DOORS: NONE
TREASURE: Rod of the Speedy and Lordly Storm Giant
DM NOTES: Should anyone try and talk with the king, they will find him surprisingly cordial and open to conversation.
“I have nothing to hide, you invaders. I am the Goblin King, but I will not tell you my name because I don’t want to. And no, it’s not Jareth or Bowie…I don’t know why people think that.”
“Yes, the pool is a portal thingy but it only works one damn way. Unless you’re dead or have no head! Haha! Hey that rhymed!”
“If there is blood in that water, the sea beast comes a sniffing around and takes what made that blood back to its watery home. Sometimes it takes living things and makes them dead.”
“I don’t know nothing bout a hill giant who can do magic…seems a little far-fetched if you ask me.”
“Sometimes things just show up in the pool, even when there is no blood. Like this shiny thing…” as he points to his suit of armor “or this shiny thing!” He thumps it to his chest. “And gold…lots of it. Chests full just show up, obviously in tribute to me, but all seem to have spent some time in the ocean.”
“Nasty dead things from the sea are offered up as well: like them big fish with all the teeth and black eyes, oh and them bigger fish that can swallow you whole and made all of fat; them things are tasty! And them pinchy spiders hiding they tasty meats under their red armor.”
“A sea hag appeared one day and that gave us a scare, I will tell you that for nothing. But she was dead and probably prettier to boot! Haha! She brought my wizardesses a great gift, all them shiny staves. Now why in the world would a bloated ugly sea hag have six magic sticks? A day later a fearsome beast crawled out of the pool and even though it was uglier than the hag, it wasn’t dead. An eel, an octopus and a mind beast, all mashed together in a wet slimy body, it clawed into our minds and before we knew it, 50 of my subjects were dead. My metal pet saved us all…squished that fishy snake flat! Woot!” He slapped the iron beast on the shoulder in gratitude. The iron beast turns its diamond eyes towards the bugbear and then back towards you all.
“Well, we made him, didn’t we?! We dried out an old book, figured out how to read the damn thing and then we followed the directions and boom! Ole Rusty comes to life and then turns himself into a throne! haha! The next time them damn baby stealing spawn come a calling, my throne is going to turns into a vampire murder machine! WOOT!”
“My corridor of horrors? haha! Did you ever think you would meet a bugbear as poetically inclined as me? Anyway, we built the tunnels and the murder holes and the traps to stop the spawn of the vampire from taking our young.”[/b] Which makes you shudder when you think that the blood might have been baby goblins.
“You killed the bloody vampire?!”
“I need proof! I need his head!”
“What, no body or head?”
The king calls one of the goblins over to him, whispers in the little green murderers ears, and watches as he runs off down the cavern hall the way you came.
“Stay where you are invaders! I have traps and wards all over this cavern. Stay there until my messenger returns.”
About 10 minutes later, not only does the messenger come back but 4 goblin wizardessess do as well. You wonder where the hell they were and what they were going to spring on you.
“Wizard ladies! Go to the vampire’s lair and find out if the invaders are telling me true!”
The goblinesses look at the king, waiting for more information until one of them sighs, and then replies “my dear king, what exactly did the invaders say that we are to check the validity of?”
“Don’t talk fancy to me, dammit! You know I don’t like it!”
Another sigh and she mimics the kings voice “I meant to say ‘what we checking on up there boss bear?”
The king looks annoyed but so does the wizardess “If the damn vampire is dead!”
The wizardesses gasp collectively. A hopeful look splayed across their weirdly intelligent faces.
He faces your group “One of you are to go with my wizards and if you are telling the truth, there will be a celebration I tell you!”
“Listen, invaders, you could be vampire spawn for all I know. Although they have never been this talkative. They’ve actually never talked at all, just murdered everything and stole our babies but that’s not the point.”
“Anyway, I need collateral: some of you stay here and one of you goes with my lady wizards or one of you stays here and one of you goes...wait...you know what I mean!”
example of a room with an encounter:
This massive room (50’x50’) is filled with pillars, each of which reach the ceiling about 30’ up. It seems that no matter where you are standing, you cannot see the opposite end of the room. The pillars are not made of the white marble that the floors are made of. Nor are they made of the same stone as the ceiling and if they are, they are certainly not the same color or consistency: they are darker and earthier.
The smell of this room is different than the hall, like a chicken that’s been cooked too long. This fowl smell is getting steadily more pungent until you see the source materialize out of thin air in the middle of the columns: a being made of pure fire, a green hued fire, a fel fire. It attacks immediately.
MONSTERS: Fel Fire Elemental
TRAPS: NONE
SECRET DOORS: One in the northeast corner and one in middle of the western wall.
TREASURE: The Fire Seed.
DM NOTES: The elemental writhes in mid air as chunks of the green fire falls away from its body until there is nothing left except a bright, small, red lump laying on the ground. It’s hot to the touch but not scalding and it has all the characteristics of a seed.
BATTLE OPTIONS:
• The elemental will cast Flaming Snakes. (The elemental opens its mouth, or where a mouth should be, impossibly wide and large snakes made of green fire explode outwards)
• The elemental will perform Fire Breath attack.(The elemental raises both of its fiery arms and a burst of green fire erupts from its open palms.)
• The elemental will perform Fire Breath attack.
• The elemental will attack with Fire Swords
• The elemental will attack with Fire Swords
• The elemental will cast Flaming Snakes.
• Fire Breath
• Fire Breath
• Fire Swords
• Fire Swords
• Repeat the last 4 steps
I know it's way over the top but again, I'm not good at winging it.
CotRG: A naga finds an artifact that charms humanoids. It attracts lizardfolk as henchmen to help it capture nearby villages. Villagers that resist the artifact are eaten, others are sent back to town and help collect more villagers. Party interviews villagers and finds:
1)Newlywed former adventurers who say everything is fine, because they're used to backwater hicks being strange. They do note that a lot of the young men are missing. Has heard the local inn is really nice.
2)Jeweler who is very terse and gives little information. Word around town is that his wife is missing, but he refuses to talk about it unless the players win a persuasion/intimidate; at that point he says his wife hasn't returned from the local swamp. and tells the party look for her there. Recommends the local inn.
3)Overtly hostile blacksmith, with his family aiming crossbows at the party through their house's windows. Will attack if the party tries to persuade/intimidate them.
4)Abandoned church, all the priests and acolytes have either given up the faith, fled, or gone missing. Recommends those seeking faith to stop at the local inn.
5)Bereaved mother, upset at the church for abandoning her, offers the players her husband's [magical gear] if they find her son. Says the inn has a strange feel lately.
6)Retired wizard that saved the village from orcs, decades ago. Realizes something strange is afoot, and thinks he might know the location of the naga's lair. Doesn't trust the party at first, but will help out if your players are stuck.
The inn is filled with beefy thugs and an innkeeper that is almost openly hostile to the party. He tells the players that that room and meals are a copper piece for the week (tell the players that this price is ludicrously low). The food is drugged and the rooms are fit with gas traps that cause players to fall unconscious. Anyone who eats and sleeps in the room is taken at night by a burly thug through a secret door embedded in the walls of each room. Players that discover the secret door find a passageway that leads to an underground river leading to the naga's lair.
If the players refuse to eat, or try to leave at any point, the burly thugs immediately attack the party. Any players that are downed don't make death saving throws, as the thugs want them alive, and are immediately gathered up and hauled into the basement (even in the middle of combat). If the players start winning the fight, one of the thugs makes a break for it, but the rest fight on completely ignoring their own wounds or the deaths of their allies. The thug that runs is an assassin that got captured by lizardfolk and managed resist being charmed, but pretended to be charmed so that he could run when he had the chance.
Now there's a couple different ways the players can make their way to the lair of the naga. They can get abducted, find one of the hidden passageways in the inn, talk to the assassin, go looking for the missing son or wife in the swamp and get attacked by lizardfolk, or the retired wizard leads them by the hand to the swamp.
The lair itself is pretty much ready to be run as-is. I try to make sure to emphasize that the lizardfolk are using the charmed humans as shock troops and fodder; remind the players that they can take them out non-lethally. For the end fight with the naga, I gave the players disadvantage if they attacked him while he was underwater (where it can cast spells with impunity), trying to get them to find a way to drain the chamber. Mostly they just stood there and cast spells/shot arrows at it until it died. YMMV.
I haven't run Hommlet, personally, but it seems to be pretty simple.
Vicious Mockery is doing real work. My bard is slinging insults at all kinds of things. We should be finished with Death House after next week's session.
Comics, Games, Booze
Comics, Games, Booze
Generally for campaign planning, i have a bit of a check list that i set up.
1. Play pen; what is the area you want to do your adventure in.
2. The set up; how you are going to introduce the players to the adventure and hook them in.
3. Event's/locations; the big scenes that you want to do for your players.
4. the big bad; what is his goal and how can the players stop him (this may or may not involve actually fighting him)
5. climax: the last major event in the story where the players go all in.
Theirs a temptation to go whole hog and develop things to an absurd degree, but the flip side of GMing from preperation will be adaptation; you're players will develop goals of their own, break the maguffin, loath the plot protagonist or resolve issues in ways that you didn't consider and thus you will need to adjust your approach to the campaign accordingly.
You can MC Paladin and get Smites and Lay on Hands, iirc
Thank you! Yeah, I have enough together that I just want to start and see where things go, its one of those things where its like, plan doesn't survive contact with the enemy. I just need some experience and would be happy to develop things with my players, I trust them. Should I even worry about things beyond a certain point? Like at the small scale I can develop things a bit for them to run, and it seems like Red hand of doom modded a bit could slot perfectly into my setting. Although I have big political forces acting in the game, I'm not really sure if the players will want to get involved with them, and it seems like it would be so far away from their start that I don't need to worry for now. I'm in a weird middle ground rn because we're playing LMoP and probably will be playing that for the next few months still at the rate we're going, so I don't want to put too much time into developing a campaign yet. With my limited free time I'd prefer to just focus on running the game I have.
It was mostly good! Things didn't go 100% as I had hoped though. Too many consumables were consumed, making it more of a bender weekend with some gaming as opposed to a gaming weekend with some bending. One player was in dick-like mood, so his CN rogue was not...helpful. I got grumpy about it by the end of the weekend and took and an opportunity to punish that dickishness with the death of another PC. So things could have gone better. But fun was indeed had and progress was made.
Game Sessions details and thoughts on the module
Then they waltzed right into some dino racing! My intention was to let them bet small, give them a taste of how dinosaur racing worked, and then maybe get involved in the actual racing later. Except the rogue wanted to fix the race. Splitting the party, he laid down a 100 gold bet, snuck into the paddock area and loosed a junior T-Rex to eat the people on the streets & then murdered the jockey (this was the start of my annoyances as DM) and took his place via an excellent disguise roll . So now we had a situation where all the players were controlling their dinos to participate in the race, but only one of them was not racing "fair" (using Mage hand to goose the testes of the other racing dinos and the like), while the NPCs were just running their weekly race as per usual. The module itself asks players to all take the roles of different racers and do their best, which is all fine and dandy. But when one PC is more invested, and actually involved, in the race then it gets weird. I had the other players take the roles of the other racers to keep them involved in the game, but it might have better to keep them as onlookers and involve them another way. The other players were like, "Who am I supposed to cheer for again? I thought I was in the bar, but now I'm riding a Triceratops? Why can he cheat and not us?" I really could have handled that one better at the table, but it got away from me and went in a dark direction. The instigator(s) thought it was funny, while I wanted to bring the town guard down on their heads and kill them and start again. My personal saving grace was that the rogue rolled a Nat1 at the start of the race and face planted his dino. He lost, big time. Instant karma.
After a giant exposition dump with Waganka, my party was ready to head off. And they kept looking at me to tell them where. My party missed my repeated hints both IC and OOC, that this was a sandbox kind of module. They were a tad frustrated with not having a clear direction. I hinted at guides, but they didn't want pay them upfront. I offered the Fort Belurian side quest and gave an overview of the Flaming Fist, but they didn't want to cause a rukus (a rare moment of wisdom, but my guys are not usually subtle so its for the best). I offered up the escort to Camp Vengeance side quest which they jumped at, and took up the Hrakhamar quest because that guide was "free". So they bombed into the jungle as fast as they could. I had fun picking and choosing random encounters and describing things going in the jungle from the relative safety of their canoe. Gorilla's swinging through the trees. Random Apatosaurs drinking from the river. An epic T-Rex vs. Giant Constrictor brawl.
The module, IMO, makes the crawl through the jungle too tedious. One hex per day is one thing... but calling for encounters 3 times a day is too much. Not all of them are combat encounters, but enough of them are. That many random, meaningless fights is asking for too much. Very quickly I found it more entertaining to handwave days of travel through the jungle. They know about how to collect fresh water, and travel with a ranger. Supplies arn't an issue until UI want to make it story-moment. I found that glossing over travel, with some choice descrptions inspired by the random encounter table and thrown in, and maybe one targeted encounter in between points on the map worked much better. Speaking of points on the map...
We had good times in Camp Righteous. Then the pissy commander of Vengeance ticked off my party with his attitude, so they told him to lump it and left, despite needing/wanting a forward safe zone. They really liked the idea of the Order of the Gauntlet, but flat out refused being ordered about and treated like recruits. My players pique was raised, and they refused to entertain helping him out. Again, my fault in not playing up the moderating influences of the subcommanders and establishing Vengeance as a safe point, and explaining to get a little you need to give a little....but some of my players were in a mood. Which put me in a mood. Its too bad they weren't the same moods.
They headed off to Hrakhamar with Mushy, back into the jungle and the rivers. Had a surprisingly pleasant chat with Nanny Pupu and will remember to come back her way again. From the vantage point Mbala provided, I added more sticky notes to the player map, Orolunga & Heart of Ubtao, and flat out told my guys to "think of the skyrim map" where there's all this cool stuff pops up for you to check out. Guides put pins on the map. They finally got it. So hopefully next sessions destination frustration will not be an issue.
That gorge with the fossilized coral in the walls was super cool. While moving through it, they passed another group of explorers along the way and bought from them some jungle weed. That was funny. One more near tpk with some ghouls later (we lost a player to overindulgence and the late time) and they made it to Hrakhamar. This went quite well, until the very end. When player cheekiness led to me pounding on a ko'd player. The fighter went down in one of the storage rooms and instead of aiding him, the rouge closed the door and pretended he didn't see it. This soured me, because it was done in purely as a dick move. That left a firenewt with one unopposed turn to go HAM, and I did instead of charging the bad guy out to face the healthy PCs and die swift death. Already with two faled death saves, the poor fighter didn't make his only death save roll, and out he goes. Steelhawk was done playing around, and hope the message got across. We left the session with the PC pocketing their adamantine and handing the Halls back to the Albino Dwarves.
It was mostly laughed off at the time. But since the weekend I've fired off a couple of emails at the group, explaining how I was disappointed at how some of the players didn't seem to be taking this seriously, and how this wasn't the type of game I wanted to run. I'm sure they probably think I'm just a butthurt whiner, but whatevs. I don't have patience for this juvenile style of D&D any more. Anyway, that's where we left it. And I'm sad now because our schedules, and rotating games (next weekend session is EotE in a few months!), means I won't be able to revisit this for at least 6 months. Likely more. Alas.
I still have no idea what role Artus serves in the module, aside from just being there.
Anybody up for pbp to tide me over?
Having a player try to rig a dinosaur race sounds awesome to me, and totally in line with a thief's personality. I mean, that's what sandbox play is about, right? I can go do whatever I want, because I don't have to worry about ruining 'the main story' because I got kicked out of town. I just have to go somewhere else.
You might get more enjoyment out of an online group, where you can kick people at will, and attract people of a certain attitude.
Rigging the dino racing would have been awesome had it not involved the cold blooded murder of an NPC. I've dm'd the evil campaign already, and I don't want to do it again. I felt like this was where we were heading and wanted to close that door before it was fully open.
I don't want to kick anyone from my games, especially as these are my friends. It was an off session where we just weren't vibing. I think it's more notable this time because its rare for our experience
Not sure though, i haven't read the whole thing yet.
Either I am missing something, or Artus was just jammed in ToA to be a powerful ally to assist the PC's should they need it.
Then later in frost giant town, they are looking for a bunch of artefacts and the ring is one of them. PCs came for a specific artefact and they can steal it with some skirmishes, but if they stick around there is way too many Giants to survive so they get out.
In tomb of annihilation,
And if the PCs get into a fight they can't handle, you can have Artus show up to save them. This then also could introduce a conflict depending on who they spoke to first, and how they feel about the respective parties.
I think he also can show up and help the PCs with the final dungeon, iirc from leafing through the tail end of the book, and there is consequences if he dies it not.
My guess is that he may play a bigger role in the next adventure, whatever it turns out to be. I hope it's Planescape.
Planescape would also be very cool.
That sucks...sorry man.
I'd be up to play a pbp game. Not sure if you're looking to play or run a game, but either way...
I have a buddy I play with who I am always afraid will quit in a show of rage should his character ever die.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
If you were in the DM's shoes, how would you resolve that? End-of-Days-style event when the game falls apart, but you want to keep using the same setting afterward.
It's a Squider
We had a tavern, we had stealing, we had someone trying to con a villager, we had cosmic horrors from beyond reality kidnapping villagers during a mystical storm, we had breakfast foods! It was all a good time.
Stat block from a giant spider, but give him Darkness (ink) and allow him to squeeze through areas one size smaller than giant squider (like squids, ehhh).
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Inspired monster design right here.
Maybe advantage on stealth checks (or imposing disadvantage on perception checks) to reflect the Squids ability to change color to match it's surroundings as an ambush predator?
Natural Camouflage - the Squi-der imposes disadvantage on Perception checks made against it
Slippery movement - Opportunity Attacks against the Squi-der have disadvantage.
Then give it a bite attack and a grab attack.
As they did. The campaign is over so the canon doesn't matter much. If it really bugged a pollster I would agree to change the canon so it no longer did.
I wouldn't bring it up
Bites vs grappled target have advantage.
That might affect sooooome of its signature moves...
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
At level 12 a Dex fighter would have had the opportunity for four ability score improvements (4,6,8 and 12), meaning that they should be able to get their dexterity up to 20 pretty easily.
They have 2 Extra Attacks and an action surge ability.
And they can take Shadow Blade (a lvl 2 spell).
Also assume they have a Sorcerer on hand who likes to cast Haste.
Use the bonus action to summon the shadow blade.
Then attack 3 times, at 2d8+5 damage, with a +9 to the attack roll (+4 from proficiency, +5 from dexterity as Shadow Blade has the Finesse property).
Then they can use action surge to do that again, for another 3 attacks at 2d8+5
Then they do that get action from Haste, using it to attack again for another 3 times at 2d8+5.
Am I reading the rules correctly that I could get 9 attacks at 2d8+5?
It sounds like we may be in for a lot of dice rolling next time we fight something.