So I know I haven't posted anything for my descent into avernus campaign in a bit, but things have been interesting and in their own way, somewhat epic.
First off, we came across a forest of metal trees with dozens of knights impaled on trees, being slowly tormented by stirges, over and above the complaints of my fellow party members, I went and rescued one of the them from the tree and pissing off the stirges in the process. Our pyromaniac monk/cleric argued that we should check the tree at the top of the hill since it seemed the biggest and nastiest rather then help the knights, which my character (an aasimar redemption paladin) agreed to if he agreed to help save the knights afterwards.
Once up the hill, we find that the person up their was a vampire that had apparently helped during the original hell ride when zariel charged into avernus, but ultimately he fled and shut the portal behind him. As a result, he was there as an act of divine judgement after his death. Hesitantly, I chose to leave him there, but he was decent enough to warn us about the arrival of the forests protector: a Narzugon riding in on a nightmare.
What followed was a benny hill esque sequence, since we figured we couldn't beat this thing and were making to escape with side logic being that if we killed his mount, the fiend wouldn't be able to chase us down in our demongrinder. So we peppered the horse with shots while backing up, my character taking the time to try and catch it's attention so the others could get to the vehicle. The warlock, who had made it to the grinder first turned around and tried to run the narzugon down, failed, and had the hell knight climb onto the engine. The warlock (after getting stabbed with a lance) then turned the engine around, allowing me to hop on (get stabbed) and nail the fiend with the engines wrecking ball (It also caused our GM to issue the quote "No Gaddez, you can't channel a smite through an infernal warmachine, even if it is a melee attack"). The warlock was then able to eldritch blast the knight off of the engine and allow us all to get away.
After a side adventure into a hellwasp nest though, I pointed out to the party that we needed to go back to the forest to rescue the knights, citing both the Monk's agreement and also that Narzugon's were paladins who had effectively made deals with devils and forsaken their oaths, and as a redemption paladin, I had to help those people. With the stakes clicking for him, we headed back and released everyone including the guy on the hill with the condition that they aid the city of Elturel.
And then we got a summons from Bel which I'm sure is going to be all kinds of good times :snap: .
I used my son'scollection of mini-figs (The Nexo Knights line from a few years ago are baller for D&D!) the first time I did a map for my Dungeon Dads group. He was so interested in why I borrowed them, a year later he "stole" a set of my dice, now owns the Essential Kit, and pesters me constantly about playing D&D with him. Much to his dismay its usually half an hour before bedtime, so I am a constant disappointment.
I think the best mini I ever used back in the day to phys rep a character was an atlas battlemech from the battletech starters kit to represent a Mul. The GM got irritated by the fact that a mini for a half dwarf was taller then any other model and insisted that I not use it after a few weeks, so I came back a few weeks later with a different one and our conversation went a little like this:
"What is that"
"Awesome"
"..."
"No really, it's called an awesome"
So i have finally pulled my first big reveal on the party and it went fantastic(second happens next session). We had a bunch of fetch quests and money quests at the start because the parties employer has made it clear she needs them to build a mirror on the moon.
Anyway we get to the session for that and the apparatus of kwalesh(s) the players have acquired have been turned into mecs by miss frizzle and now we’re also playing lancer
ToA Session report: Met Withers and hung out, then annihilated the Tomb Guardian forge. Not much else happened besides realizing we could probably trap or interrupt those night hags.
Withers provided us with a survey:
Please rate this dungeon on the following qualities, using a scale of 1-5. Your feedback is important to us!
1. Atmosphere and Aesthetics
Cliché / Unforgettable
2. Difficulty of Traps and Puzzles
Too Easy / Brain-Melting
3. Monsters
Pushover / Deadly
4. Pain, Suffering and Annihilation
Not Enough / Just Right
5. Efficacy of Guards and Wards
Ineffective / Impregnable
6. Would you recommend this to other adventurers?
Not Likely / Very Likely
We regret to inform you that the Gears of Hate and Wardrobes of the Lower Planes are currently undergoing maintenance. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and request your patience while we work to improve your experience.
Reading all the characters' different responses was hilarious.
+8
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
Making a plan for Dragon Heist, not sure whether it's a good idea.
Following on from my plan to let the players run job interviews to staff Trollskull Manor, I thought it might be cool to do something similar in terms of renovating and decorating the building. After they get settled in for a few days, I'm going to have Floon and Renaer show up expecting to find Volo, only to find out that he's passed ownership on to the players. Volo had been planning on renovating the tavern and opening it for business, and these two dipshits had been assembling a sort of brochure for him about different decoration options -- types of flooring, furniture, statues and taxidermy, etc. In his absence (he had to leave town immediately because Lord Fingle found out he had been fingling Lady Fingle), they give the brochure to the players, in case they're interested in picking up where he left off. The brochure is gonna be many pages of stuff like this:
(font and prices not representative, just a mock-up)
I've built out a full "ruined" map of Trollskull Manor, so they can get an idea for what they're working with, with this being a snippet of the entrance on the first floor:
What I'd like to do is dedicate a full session to:
1) Downtime Activities (including picking bedrooms in the upstairs residence)
2) Leveling Up to 3rd level
3) Renovations and Staffing
4) Financing
5) Getting to Know the Neighborhood
And basically play it out like the best parts of a remodeling project -- getting to check out all the neat samples, fantasizing about how it'll look when it's all done, etc. And then when it's all done, they've got a fully remodeled map for their headquarters, along with a crew of handpicked NPCs.
What I'm not sure about is: In this plan, there aren't really any combat encounters (unless they go full murderhobo, I guess). There's obviously lots of opportunities for social skill checks and such, and plenty of roleplaying decisions to make. In my mind, it seems like the kind of thing I would really enjoy as a player, because I'm really into base-building and management games like that. But I don't want it to feel like a bait-and-switch for the players, where they show up for a session of D&D and it ends up feeling like...I dunno, The Sims?
Making a plan for Dragon Heist, not sure whether it's a good idea.
Following on from my plan to let the players run job interviews to staff Trollskull Manor, I thought it might be cool to do something similar in terms of renovating and decorating the building. After they get settled in for a few days, I'm going to have Floon and Renaer show up expecting to find Volo, only to find out that he's passed ownership on to the players. Volo had been planning on renovating the tavern and opening it for business, and these two dipshits had been assembling a sort of brochure for him about different decoration options -- types of flooring, furniture, statues and taxidermy, etc. In his absence (he had to leave town immediately because Lord Fingle found out he had been fingling Lady Fingle), they give the brochure to the players, in case they're interested in picking up where he left off. The brochure is gonna be many pages of stuff like this:
(font and prices not representative, just a mock-up)
I've built out a full "ruined" map of Trollskull Manor, so they can get an idea for what they're working with, with this being a snippet of the entrance on the first floor:
What I'd like to do is dedicate a full session to:
1) Downtime Activities (including picking bedrooms in the upstairs residence)
2) Leveling Up to 3rd level
3) Renovations and Staffing
4) Financing
5) Getting to Know the Neighborhood
And basically play it out like the best parts of a remodeling project -- getting to check out all the neat samples, fantasizing about how it'll look when it's all done, etc. And then when it's all done, they've got a fully remodeled map for their headquarters, along with a crew of handpicked NPCs.
What I'm not sure about is: In this plan, there aren't really any combat encounters (unless they go full murderhobo, I guess). There's obviously lots of opportunities for social skill checks and such, and plenty of roleplaying decisions to make. In my mind, it seems like the kind of thing I would really enjoy as a player, because I'm really into base-building and management games like that. But I don't want it to feel like a bait-and-switch for the players, where they show up for a session of D&D and it ends up feeling like...I dunno, The Sims?
Does this sound like a fun session to you guys?
That's clearly a question better suited to your players. Would they like an entire session of base building? If so, fantastic!
However, I might have a "random" encounter ready to go in case of antsy-ness by your party. A group of were-rats coming up from the sewers looking to squat or something just as the party is measuring out the bar renos or the like.
You may not need it, but just in case you might be glad to have it.
In my regular play-group, it's pretty common to go an entire session without a fight. I don't see it as a big deal myself, but yes if that's what your players are used to then you should probably check with them first.
A session dedicated to base building / RP / whatnot would be pretty fun to me. There's room to include an 80s movie style cleaning up montage.
I second the idea of prepping a basic encounter in case your party gets bored.
+3
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
That's a good idea. They will have just scuttled an important Xanathar Guild operation, so it would be easy for him and his goons to pay them an unfriendly visit in the middle of the night to beat the piss out of them, followed by a stereotypical mob boss conversation about how they need to stay out of his way from then on.
In context, he may even make them an offer (they can't refuse?) to finance the renovations in exchange for a slight stake in the business and a legally binding non-compete clause, which could get REAL awkward when they eventually find out he has part of the key to the vault.
For my first print on this new printer I wanted to print my curse of strahd warlock's character:
I was super skeptical of her putting a nose ring in there, but this thing is supposed to have a good resolution and by golly it nailed it, it looks better IRL than on the camera but yikes these new chinese resin printers are nuts for just over $200. Once this is painted it's going to look better than most of the official minis
phrozen sonic mini, it's super duper fast too, clocking in at around 1 hour 20 mins for a mini at .05mm
for being told by my business professor in college that 3d printing was a dead technology it seems to be advancing in leaps and bounds in the entry level market
the only problem with this new breed is the tiny print beds, but I got my Ender 3 FDM printer if I want to print an Inn or airship, this can comfortable print 5 or 6 minis with room to spare at much higher quality
Yeah 3D printing in both the hobby and industrial space is anything but dead. Home printers are getting crazy cheap and good, and industrial printers are becoming really incredible.
Unless he was talking about something with the variant done by Carbon3D not being 3D printing, he was crazy. Even then their method isn't ever gonna approach the hobby market or even all the industrial market space.
we had to pitch a small business idea as a final project in that capstone business class, complete with projections, cost estimates, location, market research, etc
my group's small business idea was literally heroforge (this was actually right before they popped up on the internet)
he actually laughed at us and gave us a C because "nobody would pay for that", despite all of our numbers being sound and him having no criticism of the actual financials
nobody would pay for that...
And yes I have e-mailed him just a screenshot of this page with a link to the rubric grade sheet he gave us
we had to pitch a small business idea as a final project in that capstone business class, complete with projections, cost estimates, location, market research, etc
my group's small business idea was literally heroforge (this was actually right before they popped up on the internet)
he actually laughed at us and gave us a C because "nobody would pay for that", despite all of our numbers being sound and him having no criticism of the actual financials
nobody would pay for that...
And yes I have e-mailed him just a screenshot of this page with a link to the rubric grade sheet he gave us
You should sue to get your tuition for that class back.
+8
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
we had to pitch a small business idea as a final project in that capstone business class, complete with projections, cost estimates, location, market research, etc
my group's small business idea was literally heroforge (this was actually right before they popped up on the internet)
he actually laughed at us and gave us a C because "nobody would pay for that", despite all of our numbers being sound and him having no criticism of the actual financials
nobody would pay for that...
And yes I have e-mailed him just a screenshot of this page with a link to the rubric grade sheet he gave us
You should sue to get your tuition for that class back.
"My classmates and I were actually prepared to go into business together on this plan, until we were discouraged by the professor's response. Now seeing how wildly successful an identical plan was around that time, we have no choice but to seek compensation for damages done..."
Yes I'm kidding.
WACriminal on
+6
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
Decided it might flow better for my party to discover Renaer and Floon's notes about the tavern renovations as a packet of information inadvertently left behind by Volo, rather than contriving a reason for Renaer/Floon to relay the information to them. Then, I realized that Volo could have had an ulterior motive for paying them with the deed to the Manor. The letter they find begins as follows:
Dearest Volo,
Please find attached the summary of research you requested from me.
Concerning The Possibility Of Sale Unfortunately, I must report that there do not seem to be any interested buyers. The property’s reputation for being haunted and cursed (though almost undeserved, as you have discovered), along with its current state of disrepair, is enough to scare off any with the wealth to pay a fair price for it. I have exhausted my contacts both professionally and socially; no one wants to own Trollskull Manor.
Concerning The Zoning Dispute
I have also consulted with a few barristers of my acquaintance, and they have confirmed the worst. Though parts of the North Ward are indeed designated for residential use, the alleyway and its surroundings fall within a small zone intended for business purposes. The apartments upstairs are permitted as domicile(s) for the owner(s), providing the main purpose of the structure remains professional in nature. Therefore, the city’s notice to you earlier this month was accurate; if Trollskull Manor is not properly restored, licensed, and opened for business by Ches 15, the owner (in this case, you) may be fined in excess of 10,000 gold dragons and even face brief imprisonment (no more than two weeks, I believe it’s just to prove a point) if the negligence is found to be malicious.
Given all of this, I believe the most prudent course of action will be to take immediate action to pursue restoration of the tavern. Attached you will find a series of notes and advice I have taken concerning your options in this regard, including some investors who would agree to finance such expenses. Their terms are somewhat predatory, no doubt due in part to the property’s negative reputation. Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
So the person who does the Wonderdraft map making software which is super nice, just released Dungeon Draft into early access and it also looks super cool.
So the person who does the Wonderdraft map making software which is super nice, just released Dungeon Draft into early access and it also looks super cool.
Bought this last night after work. It is very good, although there is definitely still some early-access jankiness. Wonderdraft is so good and smooth now, though, that I have no doubt Megasploot will get this to a similar condition.
The biggest problem with it right now, IMO, is that there's no support for custom assets yet. That's on his near-future roadmap though, so it's definitely coming.
Just tooling around with it last night, I was amazed at how easy it was to quickly create rooms with complex shapes. The ambient + point lighting system is also really impressive in terms of its simplicity-to-aesthetic ratio -- easy to instantly transform the map from day to night mode, fiddle with colored lights, etc. It's just a really solid, promising piece of software. Easily worth $20 if you make lots of maps.
+3
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
So the person who does the Wonderdraft map making software which is super nice, just released Dungeon Draft into early access and it also looks super cool.
Bought this last night after work. It is very good, although there is definitely still some early-access jankiness. Wonderdraft is so good and smooth now, though, that I have no doubt Megasploot will get this to a similar condition.
The biggest problem with it right now, IMO, is that there's no support for custom assets yet. That's on his near-future roadmap though, so it's definitely coming.
Just tooling around with it last night, I was amazed at how easy it was to quickly create rooms with complex shapes. The ambient + point lighting system is also really impressive in terms of its simplicity-to-aesthetic ratio -- easy to instantly transform the map from day to night mode, fiddle with colored lights, etc. It's just a really solid, promising piece of software. Easily worth $20 if you make lots of maps.
I saw the water is animated so i wonder if they are shooting for being able to make it a live image somehow for the digital crowd.
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
Does this seem like enough options for flooring, with the understanding that I can do a little hue-shifting on stuff if they're looking for something specific?
Recap of last episode:
Our party (dwarven monk, aasimar sorceress, human eldritch knight and half-orc bard) fought an ice drake (or a glass drake, we were never exactly sure what it was.) The battle went ... not well. So we ended up with me (the monk) unconscious and the eldritch knight (DM controlled cause the player was not available) suffering from brain damage for the whole fight, kept performing a ritual, that ended up breaking reality.
For this adventure the DM required us each to send her a serious injury our character would be suffering from (turned out we all went more dramatic than she was expecting):
- Sorceress: lost an arm.
- Bard: lost half his face, including an eye and ear. (He also broke his nose during our adventure below, but a natural 20 on a medicine check from me fixed that one and it is now actually straighter than before)
- Monk: permanently deaf.
- Knight: (didn't play last time and forgot he had to sent an injury: an icicle to the knee. Easily fixed by the Sorceress.)
We woke up in a shadowy place, filled with smokey apparations (that were harmless) and each (except the knight) got used to their new injury. The sorceress had the toughest time, but thanks to the Bunny of Soothing (episode 2) was still functional. She healed the Knight's injury, but could do little for the rest except passing me notes with Mage Hand. A couple of history, arcana and religion checks and we determined that we were not exactly in the afterlife, but a shadowplace between life and death, ruled by the Raven Queen (or the Crow King as my dwarf assumed, because the Sorceress drawing was just a black bird with a crown). A quick glance around and we saw light from 1 side, so that was now our destination, but time and distance and gravity worked weird in this world.
We found various glowing spots that each had a meaning to one of our characters:
- The Sorceress found a glowing arm hanging in the sky. She used her wings to fly up. Eldritch Knight being the only one not having seen those wings before, was confused. We also established that my dwarf has no clue that this not normal for Elves (as the Sorceress said she was before), having known no other elves so far, so she is taking this all in stride. Anyway, Sorceress figured out that this was her missing arm, but it's only working if she was not concentrating on controlling it. My monk shouted at her "just do what you always do, act without thinking" and her response was flipping double bird at her, so well.. I was right. Attempts to sew the arm back on weren't working, but Sorceress could live with a floating arm that kinda did what she wanted it to do (plus bonus: she could now do rocket punches). Monk was kinda jealous when it turns out her unarmed (pun intended) attacks now did D6 psychic damage, while she was still on D4. For our next direction we let the psychic arm randomly decide "The arm knows! Follow the arm!"
- Next glowing spot was mine. The monk is a brewmaster at the cloister and those are her best memories. By now she was not only deaf, but mute as well, but she felt and smelt the scent of fresh beer, so she set out to brew. DM only didn't account for one thing: my monk is a brewer, but not a big drinker. The pride is in making something for others to enjoy. So once she had finished the beer, she immediately offered it to one of her party mates instead of drinking it herself. The bard drank it and the monk could now hear through his missing ear and speak through his mouth. Not as planned, but again, we could live with it, so on to the next spot.
- The bard needed to face himself, being an egomaniac, and embrace it. He ended up with a glowing eye that could see through the shadows in this dimension. (Also still my walking ear and voice). With his new eye he could also see a castle at the center of the shadows. The Knight didn't need anything to fix, so we set out for the castle.
Before the castle was a large ravine. I went to get something to drink, by the time I returned the Knight had fallen in the ravine in an attempt to cross it and was now endlessly falling down the ravine then appearing in the sky again and falling in the ravine again, Portal style. During one of his falls, he figured out that he could summon his weapon in the shape of a javelin and throw it at us. I caught it, we tied a rope to it and I told him to "pretend to be a white whale". One harpooning later (I actually think the most damage I've done this entire campaign has been to the Knight. I'm sure that the most damage he has received this campaign has been from me.) Still it worked and with a bit more thinking, we managed to enter the castle of the Raven Queen.
Both Knight and Bard immediately hit on her... and both rolled amazingly well on the charisma checks. (Sorceress and Monk figured that it had been quite a while for the Queen). Also my Monk had to listen to all of the flirting between Bard and Queen (it's in my head) and feared that it may actually lead to sex which she would have to listen to. She asked the Sorceress to knock her out should it actually come that far. Luckily things did not went there, instead Raven Queen is worried, souls are stuck in her place and not moving on. We all get sent back to the regular plane and in return we owe her something. (And this is why I don't trust gods.)
Steam/Origin: davydizzy
+4
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
I feel really good about how today's session went, considering how badly it almost turned out.
I made a little list of tasks I needed to complete this week before the session. At the end of the list, I wrote, "Review the adventure details" and planned to read back through the PDF and notes in their entirety the night before the session. I had already read it all, and knew the broad strokes pretty well, but I wanted that final refresher.
Last night, I ended up having to stay more than 2 hours late at work due to a system failure I was responsible for fixing. Then, when I got home, Situations Had Arisen that I needed to take care of here. So I didn't get a chance to even look at the adventure again, much less actually read any of it, before I needed to go to bed.
We had originally planned for the session to run from 12-6 today. We had all agreed to bring groceries and make grilled cheese for ourselves real quick at the start of the session, and power through our little in-character downtime summaries while we ate. Things went off the rails almost immediately as one player was pretty late, and another player said he would need to leave around 5 to get to a store before they closed, which meant that I had over an hour less than I had planned for running the session.
As soon as I realized that, I started running down the bullet points in my head trying to remember exactly how all the pieces fit together, and assess what I might be able to change without compromising the campaign structure entirely. Honestly I was having the smallest, least consequential internal panic because I realized while making these assessments that I didn't actually have any concrete evidence that the session would have taken 6 hours as planned, so I didn't know whether I was cutting too much, too little, or what.
I opted to cut their introduction to the captain of the city guard in the Dock Ward, and removed 2 NPCs they were supposed to meet in the Xanathar Guild hideout and replaced them with a single inattentive goblin they could have bypassed if they wanted, as well as a combat encounter with a Gazer in the sewers. They all used a surprise round to murder the goblin in like 3 different ways with a coordinated strike because they already have a taste for killing it seems, but everything else moved smoothly. I also improvised ways to give them some clues a little bit faster.
In the end, they were all signing the deed to Trollskull Manor at 4:59 PM.
Tonight, I e-mailed them all a map of the Manor (with each room large enough to serve as a bedroom given a unique label) and a physical description of the building, so that we can work out stuff like room assignments and downtime plans before the next session.
You are not alone in being a DM who panics because you think you are ill prepared. I'm sure there are tons of us out there and it happens all the time.
I'm old now, and I've realized that even if you do fuck it up from time to time? Its Ok. Because it's just a game. And games are supposed to be fun.
... and also, there’s at best a 20% chance your players even notice that you weren’t as prepared as you wanted to be.
I ran a session off the cuff yesterday as our WDDH game got pushed back, on their way to deadstone cleft through the underdark (SKT) I was like
fuck I dont want to actually run the Stone Giant dungeon today, players are missing, so I called for a bullshit random encounter roll (this dice was meaningless) and quickly whipped up an abandoned fire giant settlement, crumbling and full of holes, and the party battled purple wyrms and ghost giants
it ate up about 3 hours and one of my players told me that was a great mini dungeon and commented on how cool the design of certain elements like the tunnel systems was and how well the narrative "neatly flowed" that the reason Duke Zalto was being such a shit is that his people were forced out of this place by purple worms (the party only killed one of the worms, the rest of the session was jurassic park mobile feasting their way through the complex to get away, and leaving rigged things to create a lot of noise to draw worms away)
yeah uh, sure I definitely meant to tie this to duke zalto and the main plot of the campaign, that is definitely some planning that I had!
The best skill as a DM is to listen to your players when they start connecting the dots and just knowingly smile. Never mind you didn't draw any damn dots, those were always part of your master plan, totally.
If the narrative the players tell themselves is better than what you came up with, their narrative is correct. If you didn't come up with anything, theirs is true by default
If the narrative the players tell themselves is better than what you came up with, their narrative is correct. If you didn't come up with anything, theirs is true by default
And you, as DM, should pretend it was your idea all along.
+10
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
If the narrative the players tell themselves is better than what you came up with, their narrative is correct. If you didn't come up with anything, theirs is true by default
And you, as DM, should pretend it was your idea all along.
This actually happened because my sorcerer's player knows more about the setting than I do. When I asked them each what their characters had been doing in their downtime, the exchange basically went like this:
Sorcerer: "I think I bought a cheap cloak with a hood and tried to keep a low profile."
Me: "...expand on that. A low profile from...?"
Sorcerer: "Well, I'm trying to avoid the attention of the mage's guild, since they require magic-users to register and can draft them into service."
Me, rolling a bluff check: "Right, right. I forget the name of the guild but I know what you're talking about. Roll...I guess that could be any of your 3 mental stats, depending on your specific method of hiding. Just pick your highest mental stat modifier and roll."
Turns out that rolling a 6 gets you an immediate notice-to-appear delivered by a representative of the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors. Who knew?
If the narrative the players tell themselves is better than what you came up with, their narrative is correct. If you didn't come up with anything, theirs is true by default
And you, as DM, should pretend it was your idea all along.
This actually happened because my sorcerer's player knows more about the setting than I do. When I asked them each what their characters had been doing in their downtime, the exchange basically went like this:
Sorcerer: "I think I bought a cheap cloak with a hood and tried to keep a low profile."
Me: "...expand on that. A low profile from...?"
Sorcerer: "Well, I'm trying to avoid the attention of the mage's guild, since they require magic-users to register and can draft them into service."
Me, rolling a bluff check: "Right, right. I forget the name of the guild but I know what you're talking about. Roll...I guess that could be any of your 3 mental stats, depending on your specific method of hiding. Just pick your highest mental stat modifier and roll."
Turns out that rolling a 6 gets you an immediate notice-to-appear delivered by a representative of the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors. Who knew?
A magical "womp womp" playing above the recipients head would seem appropriate
I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but it looks like the next MtG crossover leaked out over the weekend. Mythic Odysseys of Theros, which should fill the sort of Greco-Roman, swords-and-sandals space that D&D’s never really addressed.
Meh. Do people really want more MtG crossovers? Not me.
Gimme Dragonlance! Gimme Planescape! Gimme Dark Sun! Gimme more classic adventures writ large (Castle Greyhawk given the Ravenloft treatment for example).
Posts
If you didn't know, there was an official Lego Minotaur back in wave 6 of their collectible minifig line. Luckily he isn't one of the ones that resell for a ton.
https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?M=col088
Comics, Games, Booze
First off, we came across a forest of metal trees with dozens of knights impaled on trees, being slowly tormented by stirges, over and above the complaints of my fellow party members, I went and rescued one of the them from the tree and pissing off the stirges in the process. Our pyromaniac monk/cleric argued that we should check the tree at the top of the hill since it seemed the biggest and nastiest rather then help the knights, which my character (an aasimar redemption paladin) agreed to if he agreed to help save the knights afterwards.
Once up the hill, we find that the person up their was a vampire that had apparently helped during the original hell ride when zariel charged into avernus, but ultimately he fled and shut the portal behind him. As a result, he was there as an act of divine judgement after his death. Hesitantly, I chose to leave him there, but he was decent enough to warn us about the arrival of the forests protector: a Narzugon riding in on a nightmare.
What followed was a benny hill esque sequence, since we figured we couldn't beat this thing and were making to escape with side logic being that if we killed his mount, the fiend wouldn't be able to chase us down in our demongrinder. So we peppered the horse with shots while backing up, my character taking the time to try and catch it's attention so the others could get to the vehicle. The warlock, who had made it to the grinder first turned around and tried to run the narzugon down, failed, and had the hell knight climb onto the engine. The warlock (after getting stabbed with a lance) then turned the engine around, allowing me to hop on (get stabbed) and nail the fiend with the engines wrecking ball (It also caused our GM to issue the quote "No Gaddez, you can't channel a smite through an infernal warmachine, even if it is a melee attack"). The warlock was then able to eldritch blast the knight off of the engine and allow us all to get away.
After a side adventure into a hellwasp nest though, I pointed out to the party that we needed to go back to the forest to rescue the knights, citing both the Monk's agreement and also that Narzugon's were paladins who had effectively made deals with devils and forsaken their oaths, and as a redemption paladin, I had to help those people. With the stakes clicking for him, we headed back and released everyone including the guy on the hill with the condition that they aid the city of Elturel.
And then we got a summons from Bel which I'm sure is going to be all kinds of good times :snap: .
I'm going to probably die of resin poisoning
$200 for a resin printer though!
But Lego for D&D minis is great!
"What is that"
"Awesome"
"..."
"No really, it's called an awesome"
Never had issues again 8-)
Anyway we get to the session for that and the apparatus of kwalesh(s) the players have acquired have been turned into mecs by miss frizzle and now we’re also playing lancer
Withers provided us with a survey:
1. Atmosphere and Aesthetics
Cliché / Unforgettable
2. Difficulty of Traps and Puzzles
Too Easy / Brain-Melting
3. Monsters
Pushover / Deadly
4. Pain, Suffering and Annihilation
Not Enough / Just Right
5. Efficacy of Guards and Wards
Ineffective / Impregnable
6. Would you recommend this to other adventurers?
Not Likely / Very Likely
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Following on from my plan to let the players run job interviews to staff Trollskull Manor, I thought it might be cool to do something similar in terms of renovating and decorating the building. After they get settled in for a few days, I'm going to have Floon and Renaer show up expecting to find Volo, only to find out that he's passed ownership on to the players. Volo had been planning on renovating the tavern and opening it for business, and these two dipshits had been assembling a sort of brochure for him about different decoration options -- types of flooring, furniture, statues and taxidermy, etc. In his absence (he had to leave town immediately because Lord Fingle found out he had been fingling Lady Fingle), they give the brochure to the players, in case they're interested in picking up where he left off. The brochure is gonna be many pages of stuff like this:
(font and prices not representative, just a mock-up)
I've built out a full "ruined" map of Trollskull Manor, so they can get an idea for what they're working with, with this being a snippet of the entrance on the first floor:
What I'd like to do is dedicate a full session to:
1) Downtime Activities (including picking bedrooms in the upstairs residence)
2) Leveling Up to 3rd level
3) Renovations and Staffing
4) Financing
5) Getting to Know the Neighborhood
And basically play it out like the best parts of a remodeling project -- getting to check out all the neat samples, fantasizing about how it'll look when it's all done, etc. And then when it's all done, they've got a fully remodeled map for their headquarters, along with a crew of handpicked NPCs.
What I'm not sure about is: In this plan, there aren't really any combat encounters (unless they go full murderhobo, I guess). There's obviously lots of opportunities for social skill checks and such, and plenty of roleplaying decisions to make. In my mind, it seems like the kind of thing I would really enjoy as a player, because I'm really into base-building and management games like that. But I don't want it to feel like a bait-and-switch for the players, where they show up for a session of D&D and it ends up feeling like...I dunno, The Sims?
Does this sound like a fun session to you guys?
That's clearly a question better suited to your players. Would they like an entire session of base building? If so, fantastic!
However, I might have a "random" encounter ready to go in case of antsy-ness by your party. A group of were-rats coming up from the sewers looking to squat or something just as the party is measuring out the bar renos or the like.
You may not need it, but just in case you might be glad to have it.
I second the idea of prepping a basic encounter in case your party gets bored.
In context, he may even make them an offer (they can't refuse?) to finance the renovations in exchange for a slight stake in the business and a legally binding non-compete clause, which could get REAL awkward when they eventually find out he has part of the key to the vault.
I was super skeptical of her putting a nose ring in there, but this thing is supposed to have a good resolution and by golly it nailed it, it looks better IRL than on the camera but yikes these new chinese resin printers are nuts for just over $200. Once this is painted it's going to look better than most of the official minis
for being told by my business professor in college that 3d printing was a dead technology it seems to be advancing in leaps and bounds in the entry level market
the only problem with this new breed is the tiny print beds, but I got my Ender 3 FDM printer if I want to print an Inn or airship, this can comfortable print 5 or 6 minis with room to spare at much higher quality
Well "ever" is a long time. Not soon at any rate.
my group's small business idea was literally heroforge (this was actually right before they popped up on the internet)
he actually laughed at us and gave us a C because "nobody would pay for that", despite all of our numbers being sound and him having no criticism of the actual financials
nobody would pay for that...
And yes I have e-mailed him just a screenshot of this page with a link to the rubric grade sheet he gave us
You should sue to get your tuition for that class back.
"My classmates and I were actually prepared to go into business together on this plan, until we were discouraged by the professor's response. Now seeing how wildly successful an identical plan was around that time, we have no choice but to seek compensation for damages done..."
Please find attached the summary of research you requested from me.
Concerning The Possibility Of Sale
Unfortunately, I must report that there do not seem to be any interested buyers. The property’s reputation for being haunted and cursed (though almost undeserved, as you have discovered), along with its current state of disrepair, is enough to scare off any with the wealth to pay a fair price for it. I have exhausted my contacts both professionally and socially; no one wants to own Trollskull Manor.
Concerning The Zoning Dispute
I have also consulted with a few barristers of my acquaintance, and they have confirmed the worst. Though parts of the North Ward are indeed designated for residential use, the alleyway and its surroundings fall within a small zone intended for business purposes. The apartments upstairs are permitted as domicile(s) for the owner(s), providing the main purpose of the structure remains professional in nature. Therefore, the city’s notice to you earlier this month was accurate; if Trollskull Manor is not properly restored, licensed, and opened for business by Ches 15, the owner (in this case, you) may be fined in excess of 10,000 gold dragons and even face brief imprisonment (no more than two weeks, I believe it’s just to prove a point) if the negligence is found to be malicious.
Given all of this, I believe the most prudent course of action will be to take immediate action to pursue restoration of the tavern. Attached you will find a series of notes and advice I have taken concerning your options in this regard, including some investors who would agree to finance such expenses. Their terms are somewhat predatory, no doubt due in part to the property’s negative reputation. Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say.
That's brilliant.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Bought this last night after work. It is very good, although there is definitely still some early-access jankiness. Wonderdraft is so good and smooth now, though, that I have no doubt Megasploot will get this to a similar condition.
The biggest problem with it right now, IMO, is that there's no support for custom assets yet. That's on his near-future roadmap though, so it's definitely coming.
Just tooling around with it last night, I was amazed at how easy it was to quickly create rooms with complex shapes. The ambient + point lighting system is also really impressive in terms of its simplicity-to-aesthetic ratio -- easy to instantly transform the map from day to night mode, fiddle with colored lights, etc. It's just a really solid, promising piece of software. Easily worth $20 if you make lots of maps.
I saw the water is animated so i wonder if they are shooting for being able to make it a live image somehow for the digital crowd.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0ds4KAwjva4U3NjY3M
EDIT: And then here's the tables and chairs: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0tf6H-h5xqkwy0-5ty
And the other decorations: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0v2YMp0XsVRY6OJsxj
EDIT 2: And the rugs: https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M17xObeZQBhQraxaFQV
Still working on option breakdowns for the tavern's menu.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Recap of last episode:
Our party (dwarven monk, aasimar sorceress, human eldritch knight and half-orc bard) fought an ice drake (or a glass drake, we were never exactly sure what it was.) The battle went ... not well. So we ended up with me (the monk) unconscious and the eldritch knight (DM controlled cause the player was not available) suffering from brain damage for the whole fight, kept performing a ritual, that ended up breaking reality.
For this adventure the DM required us each to send her a serious injury our character would be suffering from (turned out we all went more dramatic than she was expecting):
- Sorceress: lost an arm.
- Bard: lost half his face, including an eye and ear. (He also broke his nose during our adventure below, but a natural 20 on a medicine check from me fixed that one and it is now actually straighter than before)
- Monk: permanently deaf.
- Knight: (didn't play last time and forgot he had to sent an injury: an icicle to the knee. Easily fixed by the Sorceress.)
We woke up in a shadowy place, filled with smokey apparations (that were harmless) and each (except the knight) got used to their new injury. The sorceress had the toughest time, but thanks to the Bunny of Soothing (episode 2) was still functional. She healed the Knight's injury, but could do little for the rest except passing me notes with Mage Hand. A couple of history, arcana and religion checks and we determined that we were not exactly in the afterlife, but a shadowplace between life and death, ruled by the Raven Queen (or the Crow King as my dwarf assumed, because the Sorceress drawing was just a black bird with a crown). A quick glance around and we saw light from 1 side, so that was now our destination, but time and distance and gravity worked weird in this world.
We found various glowing spots that each had a meaning to one of our characters:
- The Sorceress found a glowing arm hanging in the sky. She used her wings to fly up. Eldritch Knight being the only one not having seen those wings before, was confused. We also established that my dwarf has no clue that this not normal for Elves (as the Sorceress said she was before), having known no other elves so far, so she is taking this all in stride. Anyway, Sorceress figured out that this was her missing arm, but it's only working if she was not concentrating on controlling it. My monk shouted at her "just do what you always do, act without thinking" and her response was flipping double bird at her, so well.. I was right. Attempts to sew the arm back on weren't working, but Sorceress could live with a floating arm that kinda did what she wanted it to do (plus bonus: she could now do rocket punches). Monk was kinda jealous when it turns out her unarmed (pun intended) attacks now did D6 psychic damage, while she was still on D4. For our next direction we let the psychic arm randomly decide "The arm knows! Follow the arm!"
- Next glowing spot was mine. The monk is a brewmaster at the cloister and those are her best memories. By now she was not only deaf, but mute as well, but she felt and smelt the scent of fresh beer, so she set out to brew. DM only didn't account for one thing: my monk is a brewer, but not a big drinker. The pride is in making something for others to enjoy. So once she had finished the beer, she immediately offered it to one of her party mates instead of drinking it herself. The bard drank it and the monk could now hear through his missing ear and speak through his mouth. Not as planned, but again, we could live with it, so on to the next spot.
- The bard needed to face himself, being an egomaniac, and embrace it. He ended up with a glowing eye that could see through the shadows in this dimension. (Also still my walking ear and voice). With his new eye he could also see a castle at the center of the shadows. The Knight didn't need anything to fix, so we set out for the castle.
Before the castle was a large ravine. I went to get something to drink, by the time I returned the Knight had fallen in the ravine in an attempt to cross it and was now endlessly falling down the ravine then appearing in the sky again and falling in the ravine again, Portal style. During one of his falls, he figured out that he could summon his weapon in the shape of a javelin and throw it at us. I caught it, we tied a rope to it and I told him to "pretend to be a white whale". One harpooning later (I actually think the most damage I've done this entire campaign has been to the Knight. I'm sure that the most damage he has received this campaign has been from me.) Still it worked and with a bit more thinking, we managed to enter the castle of the Raven Queen.
Both Knight and Bard immediately hit on her... and both rolled amazingly well on the charisma checks. (Sorceress and Monk figured that it had been quite a while for the Queen). Also my Monk had to listen to all of the flirting between Bard and Queen (it's in my head) and feared that it may actually lead to sex which she would have to listen to. She asked the Sorceress to knock her out should it actually come that far. Luckily things did not went there, instead Raven Queen is worried, souls are stuck in her place and not moving on. We all get sent back to the regular plane and in return we owe her something. (And this is why I don't trust gods.)
Last night, I ended up having to stay more than 2 hours late at work due to a system failure I was responsible for fixing. Then, when I got home, Situations Had Arisen that I needed to take care of here. So I didn't get a chance to even look at the adventure again, much less actually read any of it, before I needed to go to bed.
We had originally planned for the session to run from 12-6 today. We had all agreed to bring groceries and make grilled cheese for ourselves real quick at the start of the session, and power through our little in-character downtime summaries while we ate. Things went off the rails almost immediately as one player was pretty late, and another player said he would need to leave around 5 to get to a store before they closed, which meant that I had over an hour less than I had planned for running the session.
As soon as I realized that, I started running down the bullet points in my head trying to remember exactly how all the pieces fit together, and assess what I might be able to change without compromising the campaign structure entirely. Honestly I was having the smallest, least consequential internal panic because I realized while making these assessments that I didn't actually have any concrete evidence that the session would have taken 6 hours as planned, so I didn't know whether I was cutting too much, too little, or what.
I opted to cut their introduction to the captain of the city guard in the Dock Ward, and removed 2 NPCs they were supposed to meet in the Xanathar Guild hideout and replaced them with a single inattentive goblin they could have bypassed if they wanted, as well as a combat encounter with a Gazer in the sewers. They all used a surprise round to murder the goblin in like 3 different ways with a coordinated strike because they already have a taste for killing it seems, but everything else moved smoothly. I also improvised ways to give them some clues a little bit faster.
In the end, they were all signing the deed to Trollskull Manor at 4:59 PM.
Tonight, I e-mailed them all a map of the Manor (with each room large enough to serve as a bedroom given a unique label) and a physical description of the building, so that we can work out stuff like room assignments and downtime plans before the next session.
I'm old now, and I've realized that even if you do fuck it up from time to time? Its Ok. Because it's just a game. And games are supposed to be fun.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I ran a session off the cuff yesterday as our WDDH game got pushed back, on their way to deadstone cleft through the underdark (SKT) I was like
fuck I dont want to actually run the Stone Giant dungeon today, players are missing, so I called for a bullshit random encounter roll (this dice was meaningless) and quickly whipped up an abandoned fire giant settlement, crumbling and full of holes, and the party battled purple wyrms and ghost giants
it ate up about 3 hours and one of my players told me that was a great mini dungeon and commented on how cool the design of certain elements like the tunnel systems was and how well the narrative "neatly flowed" that the reason Duke Zalto was being such a shit is that his people were forced out of this place by purple worms (the party only killed one of the worms, the rest of the session was jurassic park mobile feasting their way through the complex to get away, and leaving rigged things to create a lot of noise to draw worms away)
yeah uh, sure I definitely meant to tie this to duke zalto and the main plot of the campaign, that is definitely some planning that I had!
And you, as DM, should pretend it was your idea all along.
This actually happened because my sorcerer's player knows more about the setting than I do. When I asked them each what their characters had been doing in their downtime, the exchange basically went like this:
Sorcerer: "I think I bought a cheap cloak with a hood and tried to keep a low profile."
Me: "...expand on that. A low profile from...?"
Sorcerer: "Well, I'm trying to avoid the attention of the mage's guild, since they require magic-users to register and can draft them into service."
Me, rolling a bluff check: "Right, right. I forget the name of the guild but I know what you're talking about. Roll...I guess that could be any of your 3 mental stats, depending on your specific method of hiding. Just pick your highest mental stat modifier and roll."
Turns out that rolling a 6 gets you an immediate notice-to-appear delivered by a representative of the Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors. Who knew?
A magical "womp womp" playing above the recipients head would seem appropriate
Gimme Dragonlance! Gimme Planescape! Gimme Dark Sun! Gimme more classic adventures writ large (Castle Greyhawk given the Ravenloft treatment for example).