Category Archives: D&D Grp2

D&D Grp 2 Session 11 Planning #7

con DM/GM, D&D, D&D Grp2, DM/GM Tips, flgs DM/GM, one shot, RPG, session planning, taster

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

Ok technically this isn’t for session 11, but then again the Bagman stuff isn’t possibly either. But these are notes for me to look back on when planning future sessions in the campaign so I don’t forget.

So there I was watching a YouTube about what other DM’s have in their DM kit and I came across the this one by Wally DM.

In it he mentioned that along with the Monster Manual he also includes a copy of his book Wally DM’s Journal of Puzzle Encounters.

“That sounds interesting”, I thought to myself.

So I googled it.

Which lead me to DriveThruRPG (which did not like me trying to log in using my Facebook details, which is how I normally do it!)

After watching the review embedded on the books page I purchased the pdf of the book (I’ll get a printed copy payday).

What sold me was the very first puzzle mentioned in the review using a stone statue of an owl and gems. It reminded me very much of puzzles from an early fps. I wanted to use this.

The Prismatic Owl puzzle (depicted on the cover) as it’s called in the book is one I will be printing out and adding to my folder for new players! It won’t work with Matt Colville’s The Lost Tomb of the Delian Order. But it could work with Frank Mentzer’s Dungeon, or some other maps I have in my DM folder ready to be called upon (you might like this Sly Flourish article on the subject), even maps generated on the fly using the cards/geomorphs I have would work with it.

It’s also something you could use when running a one shot at a con or FLGS.

I will definitely be using it at the first opportunity with my current campaign.

As I work my way through the book I’m pretty sure there will be more than a few puzzles I’ll want to use in the campaign.

D&D Grp 2 Session 11 Planning #6

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

Didn’t think I’d be posting about this so soon. But my friend Colin did a blinder.

I thought I’d get the model of the Bagman at the next Fenland Gamers club night in two weeks time. There was no way I thought I’d gave it last night. The same day I asked if Colin could print it. He DID!

Bagman

Looks like the party will be receiving a bag of holding sooner than later.

I am leaning towards the troll stat block. The art of the two looks so similar.

However I could take that stat block and use the Lazy DM Companion to adjust it to something more “challenging” for the party and fitting the Bagman. Could the Bagman be a dire troll?

Or I could use the Monster Generator from the Uncovered Secrets Volume 2 (aka Lazy DM Companion Volume 2) to generate a quick and dirty stat block.

There is a bit of advice that does need baring in mind when coming up with the stat block from a Dragon+ interview with the creator of the Bagman.

“Stephen felt that bagman should be an entity with high Stealth,
because nothing’s more disturbing in a horror movie than when something horrible is in the background and the main characters don’t see it.”Dragon+ issue 37, https://dnd.dragonmag.com/2021/04/21/in-the-works-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft-2/content.html[8/19/2022 7:05:37 AM]

That same interview gave an interesting plot hook to explore as well.

“And like an evil parasite, it was committing atrocities while you and the party were asleep in the towns you were visiting? The party might think they’re following a murderer but in reality they’re bringing this killer with them and they’re the problem!
And what if the party becomes paranoid that it’s one of their number who is doing this? Maybe this sneaky, evil being realizes that one of the party members is figuring it out so it decides to try and take them into the bag one night.” Dragon+ issue 37, https://dnd.dragonmag.com/2021/04/21/in-the-works-van-richtens-guide-to-ravenloft-2/content.html[8/19/2022 7:05:37 AM]

In the meantime I feel inspired to paint a mini!

D&D Grp 2 Session 11 Planning #5

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

YouTube threw up a video or two of the Dungeon Dad into my feed and I’m glad it did.

Dungeon Dad does this monster of the week thing looking at monsters in previous versions not in 5e. The one that first caught my attention was his video on the mageripper swarm. A swarm of creatures that attack magic users.

Half the group are magic users.

Now the hard part is where do the party encounter this swarm?

Another video he did was on The Bagman from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. This really did capture my imagination.

Once or twice the party have mentioned a bag of holding. So having a twist that comes with having one is awesome.

I love the idea of showing the players the sequence of art depicting the Bagman coming out of the bag of holding, along with some suitable creepy description of it emerging from the bag.

This might be something I could use to interrupt that long rest in the future.

There is also a 3D stl file that can be downloaded and printed using a 3D printer. Naturally I have messaged Colin with a link asking if he san print one for me.

I’m not sure if I’ll use the stat block the Dungeon Dad came up with or just run with the stats of a troll (one of the suggestions) possibly adjusted.

But still two cool monsters to add to the menagerie to call upon during a session.

D&D Grp 2 Session 11 Planning #4

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

This whole American import of Black Friday and the much more recent Cyber Monday and the pre-Christmas money grab that it is I do find kinda obscene and morally questionable.

However overcoming my inner conflict about the whole thing, I did take Monty Cook Games up on their Black Friday discount for getting the pdf version of their Ptolus City By The Spire source book for 5e.

The main reason I did this was to get the stat blocks for the npc cards. However this is a massive book, with a lot of digital extras too. I may just might have to pick up the physical copy at some point.

I already knew the art in the book was gorgeous from the npc cards I bought.

The cool thing is that the npc cards also tell you page numbers of where the stat blocks are. Which is very handy and time saving not having to search through the 679 odd pages that make up the book.

The stat blocks are in the margins of the pages, which works! They usually refer you elsewhere to a common stat block which might be in an official WotC source books, or on a given specific page of the book.

Sadly for me Rullus Hobb isn’t an npc but a player handout with no stats! But now with the sourcebook I can use the appropriate stat block from the book itself or from WotC stuff.

Granted I’m going to have to do some work to gather the relevant info into one place like on a blank card template from Arcane Library for easy reference during a session.

Apart from the npcs I’ll be using this city source book for ideas to use in my campaign. I’m pretty sure I’ll get more than a couple of ideas/hooks from here.

Well before I left to visit Nathan the postie arrived and had the Stormwreck Isle 2D miniatures with them plus the Amazon guy had the Deck of Many Things.

So at least I don’t have to worry about these arriving, and they are ready to be thrown into the DM bag and any session.

D&D Grp 2 Session 11 Planning #3

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

Well poor communication and the lack of anyone taking the initiative on setting a time means the session didn’t go ahead.

I’ve put up new dates and times for two weeks time. So waiting to hear if they work for everyone else now, and some sort of consensus.

In the meantime I’ve caved and soon a deck of many things will be in my grubby hands waiting for the party to discover.

In the now no longer running other campaign I used a deck of illusions. Which seemed at the time to go down well.

On a practical level the deck of illusions used a bog standard deck of cards. Nothing special about the cards or deck at all. You just have to remove the cards 3-7 of each suit, leave the jokers in to get the 34 cards that make up the deck of illusions. I need to recreate this deck for this campaign.

I know that if/when the party come across the deck of many things that a certain female gnome will not only pick up the deck, but draw a card from it.

The great Matt Colville did a video about the deck of many things years ago now as part of the running the game series of YouTube videos.

Some great advice in there for using the deck of many things. Advice I may just follow.

One of the cards in the deck of many things, the skull summons an avatar of death. I’d love this as a 2D mini (I love these from Wizkids) but to have enough to take on the party I’d need to buy multiple copies. They are also available as 28mm prepainted minis. But that wouldn’t save me much money (even if they were in stock).

Sadly for the group with the delay I have time to weave either or both of these decks into the campaign and the next session.

I like the idea of Rullus Hobb leaving one of these behind after their initial encounter with him.

Which reminds me I really do need to get a stat block for him.

I’m still waiting for the Stormwreck Isle 2D miniatures pack to arrive. It should be here real soon. Well in the next week. Hopefully.

Laters…

D&D Grp 2 Session 11 Planning #2

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

I’m not sure what’s happening tomorrow. There has been no chatter on our groups messenger chat.

As if reading my mind or the posts on here, Mike Shea has written an update for the City of Arches about the Sunken Rethrea area of the “under city”.

It’s a separate document at the moment that Mike (as we are on first name terms despite having never met or communicated with each other) has shared with his patreons (that’d be me and many others) to get feedback before adding it to the main document.

Sunken Rethrea is an area that the party will have to navigate through to get to the the vaults to find the key needed for the archway to Choul, and stopping Ibraxus.

With the addition of the following I am a little confused.

“Stairs of Darkspire. The mages of the Tower of Kartan have a narrow spiral staircase leading to the ruined tower of Darkspire. The mages warded the staircase and vaults with powerful magics to prevent the horrors of Rethrea from working their way back up into the lower tower. The mages of Kartan often send adventurers on quests through this staircase with keys able to bypass the wards. These keys only work for a short amount of time lest they fall into the hands of enemies below.”

Does this replace the following from the Kartan, Tower of the Arcane description?

“An ironbound glyphed door on the first floor stands in front of a stairwell leading deep into the ground below where numerous laboratories and vaults of the dark wizards remain largely untouched.”

Or is it in addition?

It’s definitely an interesting part of the city to explore, and as hinted previously an opportunity to introduce horror elements to the campaign.

If we do persue the Rullus Hobb plot thread Temple of the Three Sisters then I need to give Rullus some suitable minions. I see Rullus as some sort of Joker like character capable of the most heinous of acts.

Some of those minions might interrupt that long rest of the party!

D&D Grp 2 Session 11 Planning #1

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

It’s suddenly dawned on me this coming Sunday is our planned next session.

I have no idea what we will be doing.

I’m assuming the party will be following the Rullus Hobb plot thread. So I will need to keep a map handy for a temple.

The Dragon’s Rest map from the new Starter Set Dragons of Stormwreck Isle looks just perfect for the Temple of the Three Sisters.

Although the party are taking a long rest. I’m tempted to interrupt it! Allow them the benefits of a short rest, give them exhaustion (using the new One D&D rules for it), and drag them kicking and screaming into the world.

Not sure what or why they get disturbed. I need to think about this.

I had a revelation whilst writing the post about the arrival of two classic adventures that for the ruined cities buried beneath the streets of the City of Arches I can reuse town maps from other adventures.

Why I didn’t think of this earlier I have no frickin idea?

I can repurpose the Ruins of Thundertree from the Starter Set adventure Lost Mines of Phandelver for Sunken Rethrea, and Phandelver or one of the classic town maps for the Lower Reaches.

Bit tired, need to do some brainstorming. Catch you in the next post.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #10

D&D, D&D Grp2, post mortem, RPG

Later than planned but this has been a busy week at work, and I felt like writing the other post mortem for the taster session first.

So let’s get on with looking at session 10 of the campaign set in Sly Flourish’s City of Arches.

The party met up with Adele and Tantalos outside her Emporium of Magical Relics. Where they were told a mystery person is trying to find out lore and artifacts that will allow the Children of Ibraxus to open an archway to Choul and allow the return of Ibraxus.

Whilst Adele and Tantalos went off to speak to the Golden Council, the party were sent off to Kartan, Tower of the Arcane to speak to archmage Savandra Thricecursed.

Instead of asking about the impending threat of the archway to Choul being opened up, the party decided to find out more about Rullus Hobb (an evil sorcerer who has a pretty large reward out on him). During their conversation with Savandra they were given some items that might help them.

The party adjourned to an inn to unwind and discuss plans. Which saw the party splitting into those that needed to unwind some more, milk contacts for information, and those that needed to get some rest (party poopers).

On the way back to their lodgings Jeb, Babs, and Dottie got attacked by a group of thugs. A fireball and some moves later the thugs were defeated just as the others turned up.

We left our party settling in for a well earned rest at their lodgings.

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. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else. #justsaynotometagaming

Work really does get in the way of having a good time!

Like the previous session I had another early shift on the day of our planned session. Which meant another ridiculous long day. However it’s the only way we could fit the session in. So needs must and all that.

This was a role play heavy session. Not my strongest strength as a DM.

It was strange in that sense.

I did end up throwing in an impromptu combat near the end to try and add a contrast to the rest of the session, and draw back in the odd player that may have started to get bored (of which I’m sure there was one).

For that combat I did have the players roll for initiative instead of using the cards to decide it. I used for my initiative roll a number from a list of die rolls I’d done before the session started. That list will be used in future combats.

I still get amazed by what the players pick up on and ignore.

With the players ignoring the thread about the return of Ibraxus and instead concentrating on the manhunt the majority of the secrets and clues went out of the window. They would have been dropped in the conversation with Savandra had they gone down that route.

Yes I could have stared the conversation to the Ibraxus stuff, but that would feel like I was railroading the players. I do like the players to have freedom in what they do. Even if it means I have to throw away what I prepped and improvise on the spot.

Although they will find that whilst they are off doing whatever the return of Ibraxus will progress. Even if it’s snippets of the story they get via Adele and Tantalos, who will be doing everything they can to stop it.

There is a potential John Wick 3 thread I can use that came out of the session with the Drenol character. Having Drenol excommunicated from the mercenary group he is a member of for offing another member might be an interesting sub-plot to follow.

As we left it the clock ticked over another day…

A date was set for the next session.

D&D Grp 2 Session 10 Planning #7

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

I now have the Arcane Library Combat Cards Ultimate bundle. For me it’s nice to have the srd item, magic, and monster cards. But it’s the templates I’m more interested in.

I’m going to be using the templates to up my handout game. So these magic items I’m generating using the Lazy DM Companion and Workbook tables such as the ancient gnomish longsword will be on them.

Plus any spells not covered by the srd I’ll copy and paste onto a template so I can reference the details quickly.

Apart from having to print them out this is such a cheap way to get your hands on a large amount of item, magic, and monster cards to use in a game. Plus you are supporting a really great content creator.

Now I have a day or two to create and print out the magic items for the next session.

I’ve also been looking at the spell glyph of warding for use as a trap. It feels appropriate that the magic users of Kartan, Tower of the Arcane would use this spell to protect valuable magical artifacts,objects, etc. They most definitely would of used them to seal the Sealed Vaults to stop the horrors within being released.

I’ve dug out my old Galeforce Nine Spell cards and pulled the ones that I might potentially use with the glyph of warding. I’ll keep these in the folder for easy reference.

I also came across an old note where Kelsey (of Arcane Library) talked about slow adventure pacing. In there was a photo of the “something happens” table from an old D&D DM screen. Basically this is the Mat Colville “orcs attack” table. However Kelsey also shared a d100 table that she created that did the same thing. I’ve printed out the short d20 table. It meets my potential needs (at the moment).

D&D Grp 2 Session 10 Planning #6

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign/session. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one. REMEMBER you have been warned.

Last night I took my DM bag with me to the Fenland Gamers fortnightly gaming session to show a friend who is just dipping their toes into D&D and being a DM.

Obviously I pointed out that this was built up over time.

I also took the opportunity to “refresh” my DM folder.

I consolidated one or two pages into one. They were only there for their list of names for NPCs. So those names are on a single page now.

I added some pages too. Such as a d100 table for generating NPC names. Along with notes on magic item crafting. Which is one area I want to explore more in the campaign. Visiting Kartan, Tower of the Arcane is the ideal opportunity to start this off.

Some pages got taken out because I have them in the Lazy DM Companion. Although I left a couple in that meet that criteria also because I want them on hand quickly!

I’m still waiting on a couple of character sheets so I can finish the reference cards for me to use during a session. I’ve had to message the players directly to ask for them. Otherwise I’m going to have to waste time at the start of the session getting the info required.

Come payday I plan to purchase the Arcane Library ULTIMATE BUNDLE: COMBAT CARDS FULL SET (5E). Which will give me the following:

  • The Monster Bundle: 357 pre-filled monster cards
  • The Item Cards Expansion Pack: 495 pre-filled magic item cards
  • The Spell Cards Expansion Pack: 319 pre-filled spell cards
  • Seven form-fillable PDFs for making your own items, monsters, legendary creatures, PCs, spells, and spellcasters
  • Print-friendly, black-and-white versions of everything

I do like what the Arcane Library produce. I’m using the character cards templates for recording the character info.

While the party are visiting Kartan, Tower of the Arcane they will bump into Dram, halfling wizard. Well I had to find a way to insert him somehow.

More in the week.