Category Archives: D&D

Some thoughts on short sessions

D&D, RPG

A couple of weeks back I saw a tweet where some-one was going to be running a D&D session at work in their lunch hour.

It struck me at the time what a challenge that would be. I thought a two hour session was tough.

Running a session of D&D with tight time constraints such as an hour or two is difficult.

At a high level (as far as I can tell with the limited experience I have) a session is best described as a series of encounters. These encounters can be either social or combat driven. Naturally these are broad catch all descriptions, and that they can be broken down into finer more descriptive descriptions such as chases, interrogations etc.

I’ve found that in my two hour sessions that they are roughly four or five encounters of some kind, with the combat encounter being the main showpiece of the session. It’s something I’m challenging myself to shake up. I don’t want my sessions to be formulaic and predictable. But I do need to make sure that whatever the number of sessions and combination of, that the mix is roughly even. So that the session allows each player to experience the part of D&D they enjoy, and hopefully characters to shine.

How that person is running an hour session I have no idea. I can’t see it having more than two or three encounters in a session. Possibly if they are hacking through a dungeon just a single encounter.

So far I have found that when running a session as a DM you have to be very economic with descriptions and the scale of encounters, especially combat. It’s a tight line to walk. One I don’t feel I have the hang of yet.

There are many tools, and frameworks out there to help a DM plan a session. One I think that helps me a lot so far in the planning is the 5 Room Dungeon. The nice thing is that the 5 Room Dungeon doesn’t have to be just for a dungeon. Each “room” of the dungeon is an encounter which can be anything or anywhere. So easy to use as a framework for planning, and it matches up with what I find fits into a session for my group.

I think if I had that time restriction of an hour I’d be tempted to plan an adventure as normal and just see how much can be done each session. There wouldn’t be a nice clean beginning and end, just finishing at a convenient point. Which let’s face it is every session really. I think the important thing is to try and avoid a session feeling rushed because of the time constraints of it being a lunch break.

Then last night WotC on their D&D YouTube channel released a video of a panel from the 2019 PAX Unplugged. This panel was basically a promotional panel for an up and coming live stream series called T.O.R.C.H. Which is a live play game of D&D using the latest D&D products.

The DM for these shows will be the legendary DM and WotC D&D chief writer/designer Chris Perkins. During the panel they were asked how long these live stream sessions would be. To which Chris Perkins responded one hour and forty five minutes.

That got me really interested in watching this series when it is shared on YouTube (I’m not a Twitch person). I’m not interested in the performances of the players. For that is what most of these sorts of things are performances for the camera and home audience. I am interested in what Chris Perkins will be doing as a DM. Particularly how he structures the sessions, story/plot progression, pacing etc.

Once I’ve seen a couple of sessions, during which I’ll be making notes. I’ll write another post following up this one with my observations and hopefully what I can use in my own games.

D&D Tokens Revisited

D&D, RPG


Back in November of last year I made some tokens for D&D and a cyberpunk rpg. These were based on tokens created by Sly Flourish.

Yesterday Sly put up a YouTube video (embedded below) on how to make them. Which compliments a recent post he did as well on the subject.

I made double sided tokens, however Sly has been making single sided tokens that use 1″ adhesive magnets and 1″ epoxy stickers.

I have found that the epoxy stickers I got are a bit sticky! So when stored in the little container they clump together. They do come apart with a little force. But not ideal. Not sure how to get over this. I’m hoping it will be less of an issue over time.

This is such a great and simple idea. Very portable and gets round the “high” cost of minis. Ok they don’t have that 3D table presence. But they are very effective. And make tracking damage and conditions for the monsters easier, and identifying which one is doing which.

Update on planning session 6 #2

D&D, RPG, session planning

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.

Technically not a post specifically about the next session.

Yesterday the third series of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was released on Netflix. I’m probably not the main audience that the series is aimed at. But I’m enjoying this reimagining of the character/tv show a lot. I think they have done a good job of producing something that appeals to a wide audience.

However this isn’t meant to be a review of the show.

Whilst watching episode three it struck me that I can borrow a story idea for my campaign.

A long running plot thread for my campaign is this mystical weapon that belonged to The King of the Seas. A weapon that was broken up and it’s pieces scattered to the wind. The players have heard rumours that a piece of this weapon has been discovered.

In this latest series of Sabrina as part of a contest to retain the throne of hell. Sabrina and a demon lord upstart called Caliban are competing to find three “McGuffins”, sorry magical items. The person that finds all three first becomes ruler of hell.

So far one piece was found. A crown that had a guardian who was awoken when the crown was taken.

It was this that got me thinking. I could use this in my campaign. Naturally there will be challenges to overcome and minor guardians involved with the remaining pieces. But once they are all assembled to make the mystical weapon this will awaken the decayed remains of The King of the Seas. Who will come to claim his weapon. Naturally there will be an epic battle over who has this mystical weapon.

So that’s the idea. It’s long term. But these are my notes as well as a short distraction for others.

I’ve also decided how the Tyrant of Mintarn should be played. I think she should be like Lord Vetinari, Lord Patrician of Ankh-Morpork (from the Discworld books). These two quotes from the Wikipedia page sum up how the Tyrant will be played “…include his mastery of diplomacy and manipulation, his distant and menacing air, his everpresent calmness and composure (which, ironically, make other people ill at ease), and his skills as an Assassin; in The Truth, another character relates that “Vetinari moved like a snake”.”

“…general acknowledgement that very little goes on in the city that Vetinari does not know about. Thus, when a visitor stands in audience with the Patrician, they can be assured that Vetinari knows exactly why they’re there, even if the visitor does not.”

I’ll use this last snippet about Vetinari/Tyrant in the next session when the party are escorted to “their” ship and waiting in a neat bundle in the cabin on a bed is all the wizard needs to cast the find familiar spell. This should raise many unnerving questions in the party. For starters the party thought they got away with the stealing of the ship.

There was a doh! moment about the next session. I had forgotten the date that we had agreed to try and make at the end of the previous session. I know, I should have written it down. I remembered we had agreed that the next session would be a Sunday and in February. So my mental faculties were not completely abandoning me.

But I was forced to ask on our Messenger group what date we had agreed. Luckily one or two others had remembered, and replied with the agreed date.

So disaster avoided.

Back to a side project

D&D, RPG

I decided to get back to working on the dungeon based on the tunnels that are under Wisbech.

As D&D dungeon maps go they aren’t as exciting and interesting as the maps you get from professionals. No rooms for starters. They are tunnels. So I’ve had to take some artistic licence and add one or two. And I feel I need to add one or two more.

I’ve also added some sloping parts to the tunnels and flooded an area of one.

As a work in progress it’s coming along and taking shape.

I have spells doing the cross hatch stuff. It’s so boring to do. But the look afterwards is worth it. Look at the bits with it and the bits without.

I like the fact one route round (the longest) is obstacles to over come. While the shorter route is more perilous.

The real challenge has been to make the tunnels “interesting”. Making them lead to a liche lair makes sense to me, without the adventurers brave enough to wander down having to explore room after room. Using traps, obstacles and hazards I think makes the tunnels more “interesting”.

Now to play test it. Oh and more cross hatching.

A Doctor Who Inspired Adventure!

D&D, RPG

I gave up on Doctor Who just after Capaldi took over. The writing seemed particularly poor in the episodes I had watched. And feedback from my friend Duncan during his tenure as the Doctor who had stuck with the series did not hint that the writing had improved. It was a shame, they had wasted a great actor as the Doctor.

When Jodi Whittaker was named as the new Doctor. I didn’t care that they had swapped the gender of the Doctor. My concern was would she be let down by the writing as Capaldi had been?

Once again my friend Duncan who was proving to have a high tolerance for the badly written show, confirmed that this new Doctor was also being let down by poor scripts. So I’ve stayed away from the show.

That is until I got sent this tweet by my friend yesterday.

Curiosity got the better of me. I watched the episode.

For the record we are talking about Season 12 Episode 3 – Orphan 55

A brief synopsis of the plot (taken off Google) is as follows:

“The Doctor and her companions discover the luxury resort where they are staying is hiding a number of deadly secrets; they must discover why there are ferocious monsters attacking Tranquillity Spa.” (You can read a more in-depth look at the episode here)

Just to get it out of the system before looking at the reason why my friend got me to watch this episode. Wow the writing is worse than I had imagined.

So how would this novice DM make this work in D&D?

Firstly we are looking at a cross between a mystery and a horror alienesq scenario. In fact I could see this working really well in the new Alien RPG or one of the kids on bikes type RPGs out there like Tales from the Loop.

In my campaign the setting would most likely be a remote mysterious island that the party stumble upon. However in other campaigns I could see this working with a remote village, an outpost of some kind.

Which ever is chosen, the location will appear idillic. A paradise.

I’d then have a body discovered, and have the party get roped in investigating the death.

As the investigation progresses I’d maybe start adding more bodies. With it slowly being revealed that the locals know who or what is doing the murders. I’d have witnesses being cagey, giving partial inaccurate descriptions that conflict with each other. Maybe use this as a little misdirection and make the players suspect one or two of the locals. I’d possibly throw in a chase scene where the party nearly catch the killer in the act.

I’d use the surrounded by creatures idea from the episode. These naturally will be the killers. And it will turn out that the occupants of this location knew they had settled in a dangerous location, and that the odd murder was a price the occupants were prepared to pay. This will be the big reveal.

This is when we switch from the mystery part to a more the end of Aliens, the final stand before being completely over run scene. The odds will be overwhelming. After a heroic stand (using a dice countdown to determine when) one of the surviving locals will show the party a secret way out of the location, that will be run as a group challenge to escape.

I agree with my friend the premise is interesting as a possible adventure for an RPG. I’d need to come up with a credible reason why these people had built in such a dangerous location. Something better than the poor Planet of the Apes reveal that was implemented in the episode of Doctor Who.

Will I use the idea and develop it more? I don’t know. I’ve not run a mystery yet. It would require a lot more effort to prepare, particularly researching how to run a mystery in D&D. But the idea has potential.

Update on planning session 6 #1

D&D, RPG, session planning

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.

This post is going to be my to do list for the next session and some thinking aloud.

The magic items that were given to the party as payment in advance for escorting the tribute I took from the YouTube video Five Low-Level Magic Items for Creative Players by the Dungeon Dudes. To save you clicking a link, the items were Bag of Holding, Robe of Useful Items, Immovable Rod, Deck of Illusions, Decanter of Endless Water.

Which means before the next session I need to create item cards for those items. But I also need to work out what patches the robe has. And I’m tempted to use a deck of real cards for the deck of illusions.

The rod and decanter will be very useful for the party on their sea bound travels. But I’m looking forward to seeing how the party will use these items.

A big decision I need to make for the next session is what happens and how I handle the travelling at sea.

I’ve discussed in a previous post a while back the options for handling wilderness travel. Which this basically is. I think my deciding factor should be the duration/distance of the journey.

What makes this one a tough decision is that I’m looking at about a day and a half of travel each way. Which is borderline. At the moment I’m tempted to describe the journey. But it’s also a great opportunity to try out a version of the method described in the Tomb of Annihilation campaign book.

I’m so tempted to have sahuagin attack the party again. But this time they will be attacking with sharks, and one thing I picked up from the Rising Tide book was that they used a craft called a manta made up from the wrecks of other ships.

This is how it is described in the book when one is encountered:

‘The oblong barge used by the sahuagin to travel above or below water was much smaller than most of its kind that the young sailor had heard described… the manta had been cobbled together from ships wrecked at sea or scavenged from shorelines. The boards were stained green with undersea scud from being submerged for so long, but fitted neatly into a wedge shape that made it very maneuverable. It rode low in the water, but the finned shapes of the sahuagin could be seen hunkered down on the benches. They paddled furiously, moving in response to a measured cadence, totally focused on their prey.

Jherek had heard stories about mantas that crewed as many as six hundred sahuagin, but firsthand stories were few and far between. Most men who saw them perished in the sea devils’ attack. From his initial estimate, he guessed that there were forty or fifty sahuagin aboard, easily twice the number of crew aboard Butterfly.” Extract from Rising Tide by Mel Odom, Wizards of the Coast (18 Mar. 2013).

Story wise I could have the sahuagin attack while the party has the tribute. This would mean the party would potentially have to deal with the repercussions of losing the tribute.

If they manage to get the tribute to Hoondarrh’s lair on the isle of Skadaurak. There is some good info from WotC in an old Dragon magazine article (here) that covers Hoondarrh’s lair. In that article it describes this island lair as…

“… a vast complex of subterranean rooms — in fact, a recently-built “dungeon.” It has no less than three shafts where a large red dragon can fly in and out with wings spread; one of them turns back to angle almost straight up into a mountain peak, and there ends in the main treasure cavern.

The rest of the island is honeycombed with trap-filled false lairs. Some of these are even home to a few bold brigands, whom Hoondarrh suffers to live because they amuse him with their furtive diggings, and they have learned not to dare any open assault on his main caverns. From time to time he snatches one up and dumps the man in Baldur’s Gate or Waterdeep or Athkatla, to babble tales of the vast and rich lair that sprawls through the very heart of the isle of Skadaurak, and so lure more adventurers hence.

Though Hoondarrh is not known to possess any sentient servants, his lair seems alive with golems and gargoylelike automatons of various sorts — and even with captive monsters that are kept ravenously hungry.”

So far I’ve not found any maps online for Hoondarrh’s lair. Which means I’m going to have to come up with something map wise myself based on the above description. That’s assuming the party don’t just drop off the tribute at the most convenient spot and make their way back to Mintarn.

So that’s my things to do and thoughts for the next session so far.

I don’t want to be more powerful!

D&D, RPG

Yesterday there was an interesting YouTube video by the Roll for Crit folks looking at a recent post on the interweb looking at D&D Beyond stats showing hardly anyone played the higher character levels (original D&D graphic below).

Note from D&D Beyond on above chart: “Campaign Character Level Spread – Lower level characters are most popular. Adam did note that there are 16th – 19th level characters in campaigns, but the percentage is so low that it rounds up to 0%.”

The Roll for Crit video was interesting in the discussion about the various reasons. However I felt they missed out a couple of points.

As pointed out in the video D&D Beyond is a small subset of those that actually play D&D. However it’s a smaller subset still if you consider that some of it’s user base will only be using it as a digital reference and not actually running their campaigns with it. I’m using it for instance to get access to the “free” D&D Essentials adventure resources.

I’d also love to see stats from similar online services like Roll20 to see if the trend continues on those platforms also. That would widen the sample size naturally. But still only be a subset of the total number of people that play D&D.

The big question for me is how representative is this data of the wider D&D audience? Something I’m not sure we will ever know. But from antidotal accounts, surveys and observations from cons etc we could draw an approximation to how representative this data is.

So for the time being, because there is no evidence to the contrary, that what we are seeing on D&D Beyond is a fair representation of the wider D&D playing audience.

With that assumption in mind. I’m going to make another assumption now. I have no data to back this up. I’m not even sure it exists either. But there will be a large number of people playing D&D on D&D Beyond and the wider community that the only adventures and campaigns that they play are the officially released ones. Like Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Tomb of Annihilation, Tyranny of Dragons etc. etc. Or even the Adventures League stuff.

Which brings me to my second point. These official campaign books finish around that level 10/11 mark if I remember correctly. Definitely at that lower end of tier 3. And that’s assuming that the gaming group make it that far. These official campaign books can (depending on the frequency of the groups sessions) be a year or more of playing. Which means that a lot of the points made by the Roll for Crit folks come in, like life events getting in the way.

Plus when a new campaign book gets released some players like to jump in and play the new stuff. Which means that the “old” campaign gets shoved to one side.

Each time a group starts one of these official campaigns they roll new characters to play. Which is natural because the campaigns start at tier 1. But also because the players will want to use any campaign specific class/race options that are introduced.

Unless WotC do some sort of survey about this and share the results (which on the MtG side they don’t usually do, we never see the results of the player surveys they do on a regular basis), we won’t know what the reasons are. I suspect it will be a combination of the points I’ve mentioned and those mentioned in the video. Plus others we haven’t even thought of.

Finally as part of the discussion on levelling up that was raised within the video they mentioned the classic XP and milestone methods that are in the players guide and DM guide. However they forgot about the checkpoint method as detailed in the appendix on shared campaigns in Xanathar’s Guide. Which is the system I prefer.

The Roll for Crit video can be viewed here.

EnWorld post that sparked this all off here.

D&D Beyond here.

When we last left our heroes… #5

D&D, post mortem, RPG

In this session our party took part in a historical recreation of an infamous halfling battle at the Mintarn arena as party of a celebration organised by the Tyrant of Mintarn. Which was gatecrashed by the red dragon Hoondarrh, demanding that their tribute is delivered early. Afterwards the Tyrant recruits our party to deliver the tribute to Hoondarrh.

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.

This was a slightly shorter session than usual. Our sweet spot is around the two hour mark. But the way things worked out, this session ended up being an hour and a half roughly. However this still counted as two experience check points. Which meant that three players at the end of the session were able to level up to level three. The others had been able to do that at the end of the previous session.

One bit of business I had to do to the start of the session was some house keeping with the groups dwarf sorcerer. This basically entailed checking the equipment they had, and then informing them that the find familiar spell had been used incorrectly in the previous session. I then had to break the bad news to them about not being above to cast it until the casting requirements were met.

One thing that hadn’t occurred naturally during the previous sessions was providing the opportunities for the groups druid to see animals for them to transform into (once they were able to do so). The Mintarn Arena presented the ideal opportunity for this. Historically gladiator arenas were known to use animals of various types as part of the “entertainment” that they provided. So as the party were wandering around the arena behind the scenes they came across various caged animals, such as wolves, bears, boars, tigers and panthers.

At the end of the day after the days happenings at the Arena the party had a chance to go shopping at the market. I had the market closing up for the day. I wanted a way to restrict what the characters could buy. I don’t want the players getting used to the idea of they can just buy everything they need all the time. I want scarcity. Making the players make decisions during the rest of the session about how they use their equipment and spells.

Part of the reason the session didn’t last as long as I thought it would, was down to the main encounter of the session at the arena. I had pre-drawn the battle map out on my folding white board. Sadly this was the reason why the encounter was quicker than anticipated. The folding white board wasn’t wide enough. So the gap between the outer towers and the middle tower was less than it should have been. It had become jumpable! And yes that was the first thing the players attempted. Luckily the halfling druid had entangle in it’s spell list.

“I didn’t know you could do that.” Was the comment made when I had the halflings on their turn rile up the crowd. It was the reason I did it. So I think showing instead of telling worked in that instance.

Because the main goal of this arena encounter had been achieved quicker than planned. I had to stretch it out, and have the encounter continue. This was explained by the Tyrant and the arena owner not wanting an entertaining recreation to end. So decided to let it continue. This had the players thinking that the Tyrant had other reasons for doing so. A bit of doubt over the motives of the Tyrant seemed a good thing.

I’m also glad I didn’t spend much of my scarce monetary resources creating a 3D version of the battle map. If I already had the stuff that would have been a different matter. Having raised battle tiles is something I will invest in at a future point in time when funds are more plentiful.

I’d always planned to have Hoondarrh gate crash the encounter. Once again I used the WOIN countdown mechanic to determine when this would happen. I do like this mechanic a lot for determining when certain events happen. It removes the having to decide when it will happen. Although you still have the option of triggering the event if the moment seems appropriate.

Dropping Hoondarrh in was a surprise for the players. They were not expecting that. It also presented a comedic moment. But it also highlighted how little the party remember from previous sessions. Is this due to poor note taking, the gaps between sessions, or me not putting enough emphasis on certain facts and story plot points? This is something I’m going to have to monitor closely.

I liked giving the players one less magic item than there were players. It meant they had to negotiate between themselves who had what.

Overall despite it being a short session, everyone had a good time I think.

Reinventing the wheel

D&D, FEG@TA, RPG

Even as an inexperienced DM one early skill I think is important for a DM to develop (especially if they are running a homebrew campaign of some kind) is to know when to not reinvent the wheel.

I enjoy the creative process that being a DM exposes you to. Coming up with a world, story lines, adventures and all that each entails. They all have their own creative challenges.

However if like me your spare time is a precious commodity that is in short supply. Then how you spend it between sessions preparing is pretty important. You want to get as much done as possible for as little effort.

That’s where knowing when to reinvent the wheel comes in handy.

The first thing I do when I have an idea is research it. For example I had no idea how to run gladiator combat in an arena. I would have been surprised if it hadn’t been done during the 45 odd years of the games history.

My googling turned up a recommendation for an Adventure League module that had the perfect encounter for me to base the encounter I was planning on. All I’ve had to do is work out the changes I need to make to fit in with my campaign. Which is mainly location and characters.

It’s also worth as you read D&D or general RPG material squirrelling away stuff that may be of use in future. Such as those generic lairs that are part of the Lazy DM Workbook. Or as I’ve identified in the D&D Essentials adventures a couple I can repurpose for my campaign. This goes for towns as well. For Mintarn I’m using the map for Alhaster that was created for a Dungeon magazine adventure.

Not everything has to be 100% perfect for you to use it. Even if what you have found is only a 60 or 70 percent fit. That’s still a lot of work you have saved yourself.

Having a folder whether it’s digital or physical of all these snippets is a great resource you can call upon to help stop you reinventing things.

But there will be times when you do need to create from scratch. And being able to tell when that time is, allows you to spend that time productively.