Monthly Archives: October 2019

Let’s stock a 5 Room Dungeon!

D&D, RPG

Ok before I start stocking the 5 Room Dungeon Meet Thy Doom. My homage to the classic FPS shooter Doom from iD Software.

I thought I better share the “final” map for the dungeon.

Yeah I updated it again after yesterday’s post. The additions are some secret compartments that items and monsters can be hidden in. Plus I show where the trigger is in the red room (door 4). It will be a light beam or some other trigger. I’ve also show in the blue room (door 3) that potion(s) are locked behind the portcullis wall on the raised platform in the room. I’ve also decided that the Green room (door 1) will operate slightly differently. Once they get the key the walls won’t disappear. But the secret doors will still open releasing the monsters inside them.

Ok in D&D sadly looking through the Monster Manual (MM), Volo’s Guide to Monsters (VGM) and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes (MTF) an imp like the ones in the game.

However I did find in VGM a Kobold Scale Sorcerer. Which can be used as is, or re-skinned as the imp from Doom. The Kobold Scale Sorcerer is a level 3 spell caster and has a CR of 1. It knows the fire bolt cantrip.

Although if you want something a little easier Magmins from the MM would be worth a look.

Once again there is no Lost Soul but we do have a Flameskull in the MM. It is a CR4 creature, but it’s AC is 14. So not hard to hit. It’s 40 HP and spells (5th level spellcaster) and only destroyed with holy water. Does make it a bitch to kill off.

Shotgun Guy/Zombieman once again classic Doom characters. Which we need to map across.

For these two classic pieces of cannon fodder I’m going to suggest using one or two of the NPC’s from Appendix B of the MM.

For the Zombieman I’d use maybe a Scout, Thug, Bandit or Guard. The CR for these are all under 1. So you could throw a few of these at the players.

For the tougher Shotgun guy I’d use possibly a Bandit Captain, Berserker, Knight or Veteran. Which have a CR of 2 or 3. Possibly even a Gladiator if I wanted to increase the challenge with a CR of 5.

There are no Cacodemons in D&D but there are Beholders and Spectators. Not exactly the same. I’d go with the CR3 Spectator. But like all things it depends on the level of the party tackling the dungeon. I might change the eye rays of the Spectator, and look at what options I had from the related Beholders.

So which monsters go into which room?

Red Room (door 4): Imps

Blue Room (door 3): Lost Souls

Yellow Room (door 2): Mixture of the previous three rooms monsters spread amongst the platforms.

Green Room (door 1): Shotgun Guy and Zombieman.

Hallway: Cacodemon

I do think that there needs to be clues/warnings spread through out the level foreshadowing what they will be facing. So maybe tapestry’s or murals on the the walls.

Which D&D monsters would you use and for which classic Doom creature?

Progress on works in progress!

D&D, RPG

I was going to write a post on my prep for session four of the campaign.

But those works in progress are so much fun to work on.

The Temple of the Slaad has got to a stage now where it needs words to bring it to life.

I think this list naming the rooms gives an idea about each rooms use.

Room 1: Slaad Temple

Room 2: Crypt

Room 3: Living quarters

Room 4: Storage room

Room 5: Inner Slaad birthing room

Meet Thy Doom

So the following brief notes give an idea how I see each room working.

The players start in the hall way, with the double door behind them sealed shut. No matter what they do the door will not open without the correct key.

In front of them four coloured doors, (from left to right) red (4), blue (3), yellow (2) and green (1). The only unlocked door is the green door. The rest need the appropriate coloured key to open.

Behind the green door: once the players pick up the red key the maze walls disappear, monsters appear.

Behind the red door: when the players step into the room the platform at the far end of the room lowers revealing the key and monsters.

Behind the blue door: monsters in this room are contained within portcullis like cages. The room is flooded, but it’s shin deep. On the altar in the middle of the room is a button. When pressed it lowers the portcullis like cages, freeing the monsters.

Behind the yellow door: on the four platforms (not middle one) are monsters. Once defeated a second portal opens to take players to next platform in the sequence.

I might tweak the map adding in some secret recesses that will hide monsters (green door room) and potions and scrolls.

Some works in progress

D&D, RPG

I thought I’d share with you today a couple of 5 Room Dungeon ideas that I’ve had floating around in my noggin for the past week or so.

This first idea was inspired by the Slaad and the Slaad tadpole inparticular, and the movie Alien.

I have a name for the dungeon Temple of the Slaad.

The scenario will start out with the party standing in front of a rather large statue of a Slaad, the doors behind them locked. They hear screams of agony coming from the altar area at the back of the temple. When they get there there is a monk writhing in immense pain on the altar. Imagine that John Hurt scene from Alien when the chestburster popped out. Except it’s a Slaad tadpole.

That’s as far as I’ve got with it in my mind. I’ve not worked out what the rest of the rooms are, and how I’m going to recreate that intense suspense for the dungeon yet.

This second idea only clicked last night while I was drifting in and out of sleep. It’s a dungeon inspired by the classic video game Doom, entitled Meet Thy Doom.

It is definitely going to be a meat grinder of a dungeon. Players will need to get the coloured key to unlock the door of the same colour. But like Doom there will be a crap load of monsters, and a healthy supply of healing potions.

Mystery Solved – Inside my DM Folder and Index Box

D&D, RPG

I promised this post yesterday in my rather long session post-mortem.

My DM folder is I think a cross between the Jim Murphy one (video below) and the one used by Dael Kingsmill. But I think every DM’s folder will be unique to them. However they will have some common elements.

I always think it’s of use to get a peak behind the curtains and see what other DM’s are doing to get ideas and inspiration. It’s why I have written so much about D&D recently. The posts are acting as notes for me, and I hope are of use to others.

So what is in my DM folder (currently)?

It starts with some pages printed from The Lazy Dungeon Masters Workbook. The pages I picked out were ‘The Lazy DM Preparation Process” (Page 3), and pages 5 -7 and 10 of the Fifth Edition Reference. I wasn’t interested in the madness pages from that section (at this point in time). There is also a copy of the 5e Campaign Worksheet that I keep handy during sessions.

These are followed by my own created DM cheat sheets that summarise various rules like running the types of ability checks, and how to calculate the various checks.

I then have a print out of the player spreadsheet I have that lists each players stats, passive perception and saving throw target for spells.

Next I start on the current campaign specific stuff, like sailing terms, player handouts.

Those are followed by a print out of Appendix B: Nonplayer Characters from the Monster Manual. Along with stat blocks for creatures like crabs, sharks and seals.

Then I have a print out of a Dragon Magazine about the “Red Rage”. This is campaign background info.

I have a print out of the town I’m using as Mintarn which has the building key on it. Plus the Dragon Magazine article that describes each of those buildings.

I have my session notes printed out, and I make notes on these, and keep these in the folder.

These are followed by dungeon maps used so far in the campaign.

We then hit a final section aimed at new players and character creation. This contains a check list of things to point out to new players about playing the game. Just added are copies of the cheat sheet I did for Jonathan. A character creation cheat sheet and some blank character sheets.

I think after looking at the above it’s fair to say that my folder breaks into three logical sections. The first section is obviously general DM aids, the second section is campaign specific stuff, and the third and final section is new player and character creation.

The inspiration for the contents of my index box comes from this Jim Murphy YouTube video.

As you already know I have the initiative and combat reminder cards from the D&D Essentials kit in there. Along with a handful of dry erase index cards.

The first section I have is a maps section, that like the rest of the sections currently looks very sad (I have only just started this remember).

The second section is for Traps, followed by a section for Plot Hooks.

Section four is for Monsters and contains a selection of D&D Monster stat cards. These are campaign related, but also fairly generic. So there are goblins, orcs, kobolds etc. And they cover being at sea, forests and dungeons.

In the following spell section I have some spell cards that the monsters use. Saves me having to look them up.

After that I have a section for the Essentials Kit side kick cards.

I have a potions section next, that at the moment just has three cards in for potions that came from DnDice when I bought my folding dice tray from them at this years UKGE.

Remember I’m trying to work on improving my descriptions. Well this next section is aimed at helping me with that. It’s a description section that is home to cards with words and descriptions to aid me describing various environments.

Empty at the moment, but that python script will help fill it up, is a pre-generated character section.

And finally for now there is a magic item section.

So that’s my DM folder and Index Card box. The contents of both is fluid. Over time they will shift and change as my experience as a DM grows, and my needs change. But it’s an early snap shot. One that I hope others find interesting.

When we last left our heroes… #3

D&D, post mortem, RPG

In this session our party left Queen’s Cove to escort the town contribution to the islands tribute to the Red Rage. Their journey started off eventfully with Sahuagin attacking just before dawn. They also had to clear the road from a fallen tree. And discovered an abandoned guard tower. At Mintarn they were rewarded handsomely for their efforts, and got a chance to spend their reward in a bustling market.

Post-mortem

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

So session 3 has happened.

If you remember in the past week I wrote about alternate methods to handle travel within D&D (you can read the post here). For this session I went with the method described by The Angry GM. The other link that summarises the method was really handy in prepping.

It allowed me to produce the following notes to refer to during the session.

For the encounters I went with rolling a d4 to chose which members of the party were on watch if/when the encounters happened at night.

Before the start of the session I made the decision that even if there was going to be no encounter during the travel that I’d have the tiles out for camp. Otherwise if I only put tiles out when there was going to be an encounter I’d be sign posting to the players something was going to happen. This way I felt it’d be less obvious when or if an encounter was about to happen.

Instead of rolling a random encounter if need be. I had a page of about four encounters noted down. I knew that the Sahuagin was going to be one, and then I chose three other creatures that could possibly attack. My notes for these encounters were so simple, the name of the monster and the quantity. With the official D&D Monster Cards for each of the monsters at hand I didn’t need to open up the manual, or as previously make note of the stats. All I did was note down the HP on a bit of paper, and tracked the damage received on a bit of paper.

The encounters were not just fights, I also had a hazard that needed dealing with. I used a group challenge to clear the road from a blockage. I took this from The Adventures in Middle Earth journey section. I liked that it was not just a simple pass or fail. But had degrees of passing and failing. Which resulted in getting benefits or some kind of set back.

The discovery I had planned was an abandoned guard tower. Which if they checked it out would mean that as the notes show slow them down, but additionally not noted I had them rewarded for checking it once they reached Mintarn.

Overall from my point of view I think the travel went well. I think it was more interesting than the two suggested methods in the DMG. I’d certainly use it again. However I think that the next two bits of travel (depending on the hook selected) are better suited to one of the other alternatives.

Let’s look at the only combat encounter of the session, which was the Sahuagin attack. Mistakes were made. I forgot about the NPC characters with the party. They didn’t actually get involved. This was picked up by a player near the end of the combat. But I explained they wouldn’t get involved, especially the driver who was just a commoner, not a fighter. And that the fighting was what they were getting paid for.

Before the session I had seen that Sly Flourish in his YouTube video about prepping for the Lost Mines of Phandelver first chapter had talked about having an npc somehow cast Aid on the party to help give the level 1 characters a better chance against the threats they would encounter. I thought this was an interesting idea, and made the NPC guard a paladin who knew the spell. Just incase.

Kobold Fight Club had the Sahuagin encounter of three attacking Sahuagin as hard. Four would be deadly according to that. So I erred on the side of caution and had three attack the party. I think this was too easy for the party. It should have been at least four I think. I should have thrown in an extra Sahuagin during the combat.

The players had been warned at the start that there had been reports of the Sahuagin attacks happening along the coastal road. So I was happy I had sign posted the threat enough. Luckily the dice allowed the raid to happen.

If you remember I was using the Sahuagin attack as a hit and run. So I wanted the attack to end randomly with the Sahuagin making a run for it. The encounter would not be playing to it’s natural conclusion. I used the dice countdown as used in the WOIN system. So at the start of each round I rolled the dice pool of 4d6. Because this was a short fast countdown a four or above would result in the die being removed. Naturally the players were unaware of this going on. And I thought it worked really well. Definitely something I’ll use again.

I messed up the attack of opportunity rule! ‘Nuff said about that I think.

There was something new I tried. I picked this up from the Dungeon Dudes from one of their YouTube videos. Not sure which one. And it wasn’t even planned before hand. It was just something that I did out of nowhere. When a character killed a monster I asked them to describe their killing blow. I’m not sure it entirely worked. I’ll give it another few tries to see if it feels better.

Jonathan printed off an A4 sized colour map of the Mintarn archipelago for me to give to the players. Plus he kindly did an A3 sized colour map of Mintarn. I think the island map helped a lot with the players to see where they were in the world. Plus it will allow planning by the party when they get adventure hooks. The town map was very handy for the players I thought for showing where they were within the town. I used coloured cubes to represent the characters on the map, and show their individual locations. The draw back was that players got distracted by features in the map they hadn’t come across. But it did allow me to point out points of interest as they were taken through the town.

I am trying to encourage the players to make the maps their own, write notes on them, etc. We will see how this plays out.

I’m really not too happy with how Mintarn played out. Especially the market section. I think it was too open, and the players were almost at a loss what to do. My prep could have been better also. I hadn’t thought about the deities the temples worship. And I was asked that question! I didn’t handle this that well. Could have been a lot lot better, especially with the improve and roleplay.

The session started off with a big foobar, which I realised near the end. I forgot to explain absence of character! Oops.

My descriptions still need a lot of work, the index cards helped. But this is an on going work in progress.

It was interesting when the players searched the abandoned guard tower. Well more looked inside and went up on the battlements. No one searched the room itself. I had a small magic item and some copper coins for them to find as a “reward”. I did drop hints at the end of the session that they should have searched the room. Failing an investigation check is different to not even looking. And those that went in their passive perception isn’t great, so I didn’t feel they would catch the glint of something.

I thought handing out post it notes with hooks on worked well. Although the party has come up with their own adventure hook. They got fixated on the gladiator arena within Mintarn. I will have to work that into the planning.

I did give Jonathan a players cheat sheet. Which summarises what actions can be made, why and what falls under certain ability checks. I’m waiting to get some feedback on how he got on with that.

The players finally got some home made print outs for the magic items they picked up in session 1 in the pirates lair. Which I was happy to be able to do, and I think the players found this useful.

From time to time I’m going to pin to the player facing side of the DM screen reminders of the Matt Colville advice, and this was one of those times. Written on two dry erase index cards were the two quotes “Death is always a possibility…” and “Anytime you are out numbered…”. I think these are useful things to remind players of on a regular basis.

I had a lot less stuff with me this time. Here is a photo of the stuff I took with me, minus my DM folder. Which I did take, and I’ll cover in another post.

1. Sand timers in various time increments.

2. D&D Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated – for this session there were tiles from both the dungeon and wilderness sets. But only the ones I needed.

3. Mechanical pencils for players that needed them.

4. Post-it notes

5. My dice

6. Blank notepads for players if they have nothing to write notes in.

7. Index card box (will a brief describe contents below)

8. Meeples and wooden disks and cubes to represent npcs/monsters, etc.

9. Scatter terrain to populate maps.

10. Folding dice tray and area effect template.

11. Pens, dry markers, clips, ruler, dry marker erazer.

12. Minis of creatures

13. Players Handbook

14. Dungeon Masters Guide

15. Big book of Battle Maps

16. Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Screen Reincarnated

Ok this post is getting long. Luckily it’s not print with limited space.

So what is in the index box?

I have the initiative and combat reminder cards from the D&D Essentials kit in there. Along with a handful of dry erase index cards, a selection of D&D Monster stat cards, plus other useful stuff. But I feel this will need a post of it’s own to do it justice, possibly with the my DM folder.

More D&D Coding

coding, D&D, RPG

After yesterday’s little bit of coding to generate some initiative numbers in python, I decided to do some more coding.

This time it was to generate random D&D characters. Yeah I know there are websites out there that do this already (such as D&D Beyond). And that their results are more complete than mine.

But that’s not the point. This was an exercise to create something that meets my very basic needs.

Here are some examples of the characters it generates at the moment.

At the moment for a half elf it doesn’t do anything clever when choosing which two abilities to give the boost too. It just picks them at random. But ideally it would chose ones that fit nicely with the class. For a human it does the easy to implement +1 to everything.

Next up if I decide to take this further I’ll get it to randomly chose the skill proficiencies, followed by backgrounds. Height and weight might be an interesting exercise as well.

This has been a fun little distraction to avoid final prep for tomorrow’s session. But now I can’t avoid putting it off any more. I need to do those final little bits.

Pre-generating initiative

coding, D&D, RPG

You know what is über lazy?

Writing four lines of python code to generate random numbers between 1 and 20. Just so I didn’t have to go into the next room, get a d20 and roll it four times and record the results in my notes for Saturdays session!


I run the python script using Pythonista on my iPad, screen grab the results. And there I have it. Enough random numbers to use for the monsters initiative for the session plus any improvised encounters or last minute tweaks/on the fly additions to existing plans.

I do like rolling the monsters initiative before hand. It’s a minor speed up to combat. But one I think is definitely worth doing.

The python code is Mickey Mouse. Very very basic (pun intended). But that’s all that is needed. No need to over complicate things.

Including the kitchen sink

D&D, RPG

I can’t remember which video was the first to appear in the YouTube recommendations on DM kits. But I suspect it was the Jim Murphy video.

In that video he went through his DM kit and folder. And that got me thinking and searching YouTube for other similar videos.

I suppose with the impending third session for my campaign I hit upon these at an opportune moment. There is a bit of me that leans towards taking everything including the kitchen sink for a session. Which is strange when I think back to my light weight journey when backpacking. So it looks like I may be starting a similar journey with being a DM.

Let’s face it taking the three core D&D books, plus say the Sword Coast book, all that 3D stuff, minis, etc etc gets pretty heavy and cumbersome. Could I cut back?

I also needed to sort out my session notes. I work with printed copies of stuff, despite between sessions storing everything digitally.

I liked the use of the 3 by 5 index cards, and the DM folder by Jim. I also took away from the video about having some mechanical pencils and notebooks to give to new players (or existing ones) plus making up dice sets incase they are needed.

Another two videos I liked are The Arcane Library video and the
Sly Flourish (of Lazy DM fame) video.

Both Sly and Arcane Library recommend these flat plastic minis by Arcknight. Which would be nice to cut down on weight and amount of stuff to lug around. But they are not readily available in the UK, and the international shipping/import isn’t something I want to even think about.

I also like the home made token idea from Sly a lot. I’ve seen that in another video or two as well. Something to look into doing.

It’s been an interesting exercise watching these videos and one or two others, and picking and choosing the bits I like the look of. And thinking just exactly what do I need to be taking with me.

One of the great finds in all of this were Dry Erase Index Cards. These will be a very flexible addition to my toolkit. They can be used for initiative order (although I do have the cards for this from the Essentials kit), they can have a condition written on them to remind a player, used for messages to players, and whatever else I can think up or need them for on the day. So some of them have gone in the index box.

The index box will also have a handful of official D&D monster cards in it. These will be the cards for monsters I need for encounters in that session, plus some to use in a random encounter if needed. By doing this I don’t need to carry the Monster Manual with me.

Over time I see the index box building up into an invaluable part of my DM’s kit. Hopefully it will be as useful as the one Jim Murphy has with characters, npc’s, maps etc inside it that can be used at the drop of a hat to create an entertaining, fun adventure. Although I am having a hard time finding 3 by 5 grid index cards in the UK. I got some A6 ok. Which I can cut down. But 3 by 5, easy to get in the US, nigh impossible in the UK.

In one video, can’t remember which they included a couple of timers to use during sessions. I got a set, and will just get it down to a couple of them to use.

I suppose I could cut out the books totally, and go digital. I have everything digital. But call me old fashioned but I prefer to have the physical copy. Hence why my notes are printed out. Devices fail, as do internet connections. I think dropping down to the Players Guide and the DM Guide will help a lot. Plus an organised DM folder, instead of having my notes just lose and unorganised will make a difference.

I now have the Wilderness tiles that WotC currently do. I’m able to make something from them that loosely resembles a coastal road for use in the session. Plus a road section will be ideal for organising the party walking order. But whether I’m carting along 3D tiles and minis, cardboard tiles, battle maps or combination of will be dependent on the session.

Naturally everyone’s DM kit is unique to them. But there will be some commonality between them. I’ll post a photo of what I ended up taking at the weekend as part of the session write up.

1v1 Brawl experience

Game day, magic, MtG

I just don’t get 1v1 Brawl.

But then again I’m not a big fan of 1v1 Commander.

This afternoon I got to play with the first ever officially released WotC Brawl precons.

Yeah I know I’m late to the party, they came out when Throne of Eldraine dropped a couple of weeks ago. But I wasn’t able to pick mine up until last week. And luckily Diego was gracious enough to play some MtG using them.

As always when it comes to using precons with friends I let them choose the deck they want to play first, and I choose from what’s left.

Our first match up was Knight’s Charge (Diego) versus’ Faerie Schemes (me).

There was some nice synergy in this deck with playing artifacts and enchantments. Stuff happening when you played them, or creatures getting buffs based on the number I controlled. It seemed more cohesive than the other deck. Which I assumed wanted to get get lots of equipment out and equipping those knights with them and swinging in for damage.

I won this match up.

Our second match up was Savage Hunter (Diego) verses Wild Bounty (me).

Ok I was 4 cards away from milling myself. I had all but one land out. Once again this seemed like an uneven match up. Chulane was definitely a Commander I liked the look of, and would like to build a Commander deck round him. Probably my favourite Commander of the four Brawl decks. The Korvold deck just didn’t seem to be generating enough tokens to get the value engine going. Although Diego did get me down to 12 health before I won.

Firstly let’s look at the product itself. These decks are missing the necessary tokens for the decks. Why they weren’t included I have no idea. Maybe they weren’t expecting people to play them, but break the decks up to build Commander decks with.

The Life Wheel is just horrid and cheap. It’s a cardboard wheel. Awful. I’d have preferred the tokens instead.

The cardboard deck box to hold the deck with is a cardboard deck box. I’ll repurpose it’s for something else.

The decks now will be broken up and the land cards used in other decks, and Arcane Signet going into every deck. Heraldic Banner has a couple of mono colour decks I want to add it to.

And that’s the thing I’ve heard stories on the Internet that’s these Brawl decks are going for silly money (mainly in the US I think) and that some of the individual cards are worth more than the original retail price!

I think in a multiplayer game the decks might not seem so one sided. The whole political thing kicks in, alliances forged, everyone coming together to knock down who ever has managed to claw their way to the top of the pile.

And that’s what I don’t get about 1v1 Brawl and Commander. That political element of the game is such a big factor of what makes the formats enjoyable. Although I still don’t see much point for Brawl apart from as a marketing exercise to try and sell more booster packs.

I know why they have 1v1 Brawl online. The multiplayer version is a bit challenging for them to implement. But seriously 1v1 is an ok experience at best. I don’t know why you would choose it over Standard in this scenario. They are going to have to keep a separate ban list for 1v1 Brawl. Which they have done in the past after the failed launch of the format. Just play Standard.

Nah Brawl isn’t for me. But thanks for the Commander cards WotC.

Not all those who wander are lost

D&D, RPG

Ok it was extremely hard not to use a Tolkien quote from one of his books as the title of this post. So I took the easy route and went ahead and used one.

It introduces the subject of this post really nicely. Getting from A to B in D&D. You know that bit that takes our party of adventurers from that nice “safe” town or city to that extremely dangerous dungeon/liar full of who knows what monsters, traps and treasures.

As a disclaimer for the post, I’m not going to go into detail on each of the methods for handling travel (can you imagine the length of this post, or number of posts I’d have to bore you with?). I’m going to briefly describe them, hopefully enough to pique your interest, and where possible provide links to the source material. Also bare in mind this post is acting as my notes and thoughts on the subject, and is something for me to refer back to at a later date. But I also hope you dear reader find it interesting and of use.

In the Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) we as DM’s are given two suggestions for how to handle this wilderness travel between locations, A) the travel montage, and B) hour by hour.

“Just as movies use travel montages to convey long and arduous journeys in a matter of seconds, you can use a few sentences of descriptive text to paint a picture of a wilderness trek in your players’ minds before moving on.”

We are advised to use the travel montage if the destination is more important than the journey.

The alternative given by the DMG is the hour by hour approach. Which it suggests should be used when “…wilderness travel feature prominently in your adventure and isn’t something you want to gloss over…”

The hour by hour approach uses a combination of planned and random encounters, and possibly a travel montage if there are long periods without anything happening.

You can find the specifics in chapter 5 of the DMG for these two suggestions.

I think in my short time as a DM now, I’ve used both methods. So take that into account for this next bit, and bare in mind my experience is extremely limited.

Personally as a DM I’m have not found the travel montage very satisfying. I feel I’m short changing the players. Maybe it’s due to me not feeling too confident in my descriptions of the journey. I certainly know descriptions are an area I need to work on.

The hour by hour approach I did was more a travel montage with a planned encounter. This I knew I wasn’t happy with. Both parts just didn’t work for me, or I wasn’t happy with. Obviously the travel montage bit for the reasons just given. The planned encounter was a skill challenge. Which I feel in hindsight could have gone better. And it was down to how I ran it. It was the first one I’d ever ran. I’m not giving up on skill challenges yet.

Naturally there are going to be more wilderness journeys in my campaign. We have one in our next session (it’s not a spoiler, they know they are doing it).

So I went looking for advice on how to improve things, make travel more exciting and immersive for the players, for those occasions that the journey does matter. Which technically I think is when the players first visit a new location. Once they have been to a place and got back safely, I think it’s ok to skip to the montage to speed things up. Otherwise you are kind of sign posting something is going to happen when you don’t use a montage.

“Short cuts make long delays.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Third Party Advice and Alternatives

This wouldn’t be a D&D post without me squeezing in a quote or talking about Matt Colville and what he has to say about this subject. And yes he has done a video on this very topic. It’s called Making Travel Interesting, Running the Game #58 funnily enough.

Matt argues for the montage, and only use another way when or if the travelling through the wilderness will advance the plot. But if you want to add tension to travel to think about using skill challenges. And then goes on to discuss how he would use skill challenges to get from point A to point B.

Which brings me nicely onto the D&D Beyond Encounter of the Week from the Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus series of encounters they ran. You can read the actual post here. The linked to encounter uses a skill challenge to navigate through a wilderness. And from my reading of it is being used to a similar way described by Matt Colville in his video.

I think I’ve already in a previous post said I like the looks of using a skill challenge for navigation, and have/had an adventure hook planned that would/will use it. The only draw back at the moment is that less than positive experience with my first attempt at a skill challenge.

In Tomb of Annihilation chapter 2, WotC present another way to get from A to B. If I’m summarising this correctly, is hex based using a map. In the book I think each hex is 10 miles on the map they are using. So each day of travel (basically a hex) if not lost get shown their position on the map. The party then chose a navigator that rolls to see if they get lost or not, after choosing a direction and travel speed. After the check, the DM rolls for encounters during the day, and finally at the end of the day checks for dehydration.

I kinda like the looks of this, and for me sounds a good fit for travelling over a large distance on a map.

Dael Kingsmill has a fantastic video entitled “Overland Travel in D&D || Dael Kingsmill” on the subject. Dael’s homebrew stuff is really cool. There is a really nice example of a variation of the montage that involves the players. I’d seen it elsewhere described. But this saves space and time just telling you to watch this if that interests you (here is the link to the article she mentions about it). Dael also makes a point her suggestion does involve a bit more prep work.

Dael’s system is a modified/extended version of the one we will look at next from The Angry GM. She has the party select three roles, navigator, provisioner and scout (watch the video for more on them, ok just watch the video). Dael uses a stack of cards for different events that can happen, and these are broken up into the six chucks of the day that the Angry DM uses. Plus some cards (to my knowledge the content of these cards has never been released) that are specific to the type of terrain being travelled on. One of these cards is selected at random and it describes what happens during the day, with various choices and encounters for the players.

Another system I like the sound of. But requires a lot more work up front. But once done.

The Angry GM. Apparently like marmite you either hate him or love him. But his post Getting There is Half the Fun is really good. Although if you are not interested in his look at the current state of travelling before getting onto his solution, it is a long read (much longer than this) before you hit the part you are interested in. So you can either skip a lot of the post or pop on over to another blog for a post titled “Travel Rules (from an Angry Man)“. Which is a really nice summary, and has the all important discovery table missing from the source.

The Angry DM method sounds complicated. And I’m not even going to try explaining it. It really is easier and quicker to read the posts above for the details. Instead I’ll point out bits I like. I like that at the start you have the players decide on a route from a couple or more options presented to them, based on danger level, number of days and whatever other information you give them about each route. The players set a marching order each day, and decide the pace they will travel that day. Plus the players can vary that pace through out the day. The difficulty level of the route is really how many encounters potentially can happen each day. There is the possibility for the party to make discoveries such as an abandoned shrine or derelict tower along the way. I like how it assumes every member of the party will be on watch, unless an individual expressly says they will not do it. So if an encounter happens at night a die is rolled to see which party members were on watch.

As I said when you read it, it sounds complicated. But I went through the process of planning a couple of routes and they take seconds. Very quick to plan.

Journeys are an important part of The One Ring. There is a lot of travelling in Middle Earth. And more than one commentator online suggested looking at how The One Ring handled things. Naturally The One Ring is a different system to that of D&D, so if it looked good would need converting somehow. Luckily for me and everyone else the publisher of The One Ring has done the hard work for us by publishing the Adventures in Middle Earth RPG (the d20 OGL version of The One Ring).

In away when you look at the actual details of journeys in this system, they have some things in common with The Angry GM and Dael’s suggestions, such as assigning roles. I like that events from one stage can have a knock on effect in the next. Naturally this too will involve some work before hand. But once set up…

The basic rules for Journeys are in the Players Guide Chapter 8, and the underlying mechanics are in Journeys Extended Chapter 4 of the Adventures in Middle Earth Lore Master book. Journeys in (and I keep wanting to call this MERP) Adventures in Middle Earth are split into three parts, with each part feeding into the next in some way. The three parts are embarkation, travel and arrival. Each part has it’s own table that you roll against. And for our needs the raw tables will enable us to create custom ones suitable for D&D and the campaign you are running. They may need a slight tweak here and there when they mention a class or skill into the D&D equivalent.

The thing is I think all the ones I briefly describe above (with links mostly) have their own merits and drawbacks. I don’t mind my players knowing this next bit, it’s not a spoiler really. But we will be experimenting with most, if not all of the above alternatives at some point. Then based on feedback we may just stick to one or two. Or I may just pick the one that fits the best with what I want that travel to achieve at the time.

Well I hope folks found this post useful and got you thinking.