Category Archives: D&D

Update on planning session 5 #3

D&D, news, RPG, session planning

With rumours of a new D&D source book flying around the Internet. All we actually have that some are taking as a clue that it is Forgotten Realms based, is a dice set coming out in March.

I think WotC have got the right balance in these products between being useful and full of tatt. The map included is the Sword Coast on one side and Waterdeep on the other. Who knows what the conspiracy theorists will be reading into that, especially with the set being named after Laeral Silverhand—Open Lord of Waterdeep, FORGOTTEN REALMS LAERAL SILVERHAND’S EXPLORER’S KIT.

On the alternatives to D&D front, news was breaking that FFG was making “massive” redundancies within certain departments. I believe the two main ones effected are the Interactive department (basically their in-house software dev team) and the RPG team.

With no official statement there will obviously be various conspiracy theories going round. Redundancy is never a nice thing to go through. And it needs remembering that there are people here that have just lost their jobs. Our thoughts firstly should be with them and their families during this uncertain time.

How this will affect the RPGs that FFG produce (Star Wars, L5R, Genesys) and their on going development and support we don’t know. It’s possible that any new developments will be outsourced in some way.

So after that bit of news like stuff…

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.

With our next session only three days away it’s time to do those final bits of prep before scraping together the pennies to print bits out.

I think I know how the session will flow, and the main combat encounter.

The session will start off in the tavern over breakfast, and some adventure hooks being seeded.

I’m pretty sure the main combat encounter will be the gladiator arena that has been discussed in the previous prep post. I have decided that the end of the encounter will be interrupted by Hoondarrh, the Red Rage of Mintarn landing in the middle of the arena demanding their tribute is delivered early.

It will also see the party given the job of investigating the outpost they discovered on their journey to Mintarn to find out what happened to the guards and workers sent to open it up again.

For the arena I’m going to draw the map in advance on a Pathfinder battlemap. I’d love to do the 3d version. But resources are severely restricted at the moment.

I think with all the above that should be roughly the two hour session taken up. Which you will remember is the duration my group likes for their sessions.

Looking forward to Saturday.

Initial Impressions on Your Best Game Ever

D&D, RPG

During this Christmas break I stumbled across a new book about playing RPGs by Monte Cook Games called Your Best Game Ever.

There are one or two books out there about being a GM and running a RPG. Some are system specific, others more generic. This book falls into the later.

Your Best Game Ever is written by Monte Cook, with contributions by various people from the RPG world. These contributions appear as side boxes through out the chapters with sage advice from the likes of Matt Mercer or Matthew Colville. Which are the only two names I recognised. The others I’d never heard of.

The book is aimed at both players and GM’s and offers great advice for both sides of the GM screen.

Your Best Game Ever starts off with a couple of chapters talking about what an RPG is. These two chapters describe what an RPG is, general terminology, why you would want to play one, how to find a group, etc. You get the idea. These are the chapters selling the idea to the reader and any one curious about RPGs.

This first section is then followed by five chapters aimed at Being A Great Player. So they are spent talking about how to create a character, role playing that character, and developing the character.

Naturally after the player advice it’s time to focus on Being A Great GM. This was the section most of interest to me. With advice about creating worlds and adventures, and running a session. Even though generic is still very relevant.

The final main section of the book is all about Getting the Most Out of RPGs. This is looking at running a group, organising the session, what do with player absences and other things that might crop up. Followed with some advice on hosting the session, playing online and dealing with issues.

Almost as an appendix is a final chapter with some snack recipes for whoever is hosting the session to use. A person’s mileage out of this chapter may vary depending on gaming group, culinary skills and how fancy you make your sessions.

There is some great advice in this book. I find the style of writing very accessible. One of the recurring themes throughout the book is that an RPG is a collaboration between players and GM. Whether this is in telling the story itself at the table or dealing with any issues.

I like the advice from the guest contributors. The majority are written. But there are some guest arts as well contributing art or comic strips.

Overall this is a well written, accessible book on playing RPGs that will appeal to both players and GMs, whether new or experienced, irrespective of the system you are playing or intend to play.

Skeleton Minotaur

D&D, RPG

Yesterday a skeleton minotaur dropped through the door.

I just had to paint it!

I know right? Who is this person?

But I do enjoy painting skeletons!

Maybe it’s because they are so quick and easy to paint. Maybe it’s because the bones come out looking so awesome.

Sadly for you I was sharing on social media my progress throughout the day.

Naturally the first thing to do was prime the miniature.

Doing the base coat and shading followed after the base coat was dry. But I had been getting impatient waiting for that to dry.

Finally some dry brushing, and flock on the base to make it dungeon ready.

Pretty happy with the final look. The bone has come out nice. As did the stone axe.

If I can track down another skeleton minotaur or two in different poses, and more importantly at a reasonable price, I’d love to grow this side of the undead horde.

Red Dragon

D&D, RPG

I spent yesterday painting the red dragon miniature from the D&D board game Wrath of Ashardalon.

For the record the D&D board games are a cheap way to pick up miniatures for use within D&D itself. Although I don’t think the figures are 28mm but a little larger. Or that’s what I thought when I looked at the skeletons in the Ravenloft edition. They looked larger than the ones I already have from elsewhere.

Back to Ashardalon the red dragon. The previous day I had applied white primer to the model. I’m not sure I’m a big fan of painting on primer. But it’s all I have at the moment so I have to lump it.

Naturally after the primer was dried it was time to base coat the dragon. I did a little research online before hand looking at how others had painted their red dragons. There were a couple of photos of the same model that I had. I did like the idea of painting the breast/chest plates a different colour. So the majority of the model was base coated with a flat red, the rocks/stones were a dungeon grey, and the claws and horns with skeleton bone. Then finally I used lava orange for the breast/chest plates.

After they had dried I used a red tone shader for everything apart from the stones/rocks and claws/horns. For those I used Nuln Oil.

Finally I used a pure red to dry brush the dragon. Followed by dry brushing with the same colours used for the breast/chest plates and claws/horn. For the stones/rocks I used a stone grey. And I really liked how that turned out on them.

The final step as always is to flock the base.

My plans are to use the miniature to be Hoondarrh the red dragon within my campaign. The players will bump into him at some point.

The Wizkids Gelatinous Cube arrived yesterday.

I’m looking forward to putting that on the table. And for those that watched the Jim Murphy video on the Undead Lair, it’s an interesting complication. It’d be nice to get some of the other oozes as miniatures, but that’s a project for another day.

Update on planning session 5 #2

D&D, RPG, session planning

The Chinese I believe have an old saying “may you live in interesting times.” And after last nights election results we can definitely say even after all the doubt and uncertainty, even chaos of the last year or so, things are set to get very very interesting indeed.

However you haven’t come here to read me bitching about politics. You are here to read about board games and role playing. Which technically I could argue are affected by the decision made by the British public. But that will be for a future post when we will have the impact of those decisions come to fruition.

However let’s get back on track and talk D&D and my prep for the next session. But first I have to cut and paste this warning in for my players.

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.

In my online searching for how to run a gladiatorial arena I came across some advice given on a reddit thread I think it was to look at an Adventure League adventure called Shackles of Blood (DDEX3-2). In this adventure it sees the party taking part in such a situation of gladiatorial combat Hillsfar Arena, recreating a famous battle.

The encounter itself takes part in a flooded arena against halflings.

I like the idea. I can tailor the opposition, and reskin this easily for my campaign.

Because this is an Adventure League adventure there is plenty of advice about running it. There is a colour battle map by one source. Some even made 3D versions of the map, along side giving some great advice.

Naturally access to a 3D printer allows you to do something a bit more impressive like the following:

(source here)

I’ve got to work out how I’m going to present this to the players. I love the 3D but realistically without a 3D printer, not achievable. So something like the first photo might be though. Although I do have foam core I could use.

Who knew being a DM meant being a craft type? It sure does utilise a lot of skills that you initially wouldn’t think of.

Adjusting the Lich

D&D, RPG

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.

Monday’s post about my preparing for the next D&D session, I spoke about having to adjust the Lich stats so it could be used as the boss in the Jim Murphy Undead Lair.

It is by chance also the boss he uses within the video as well. So in this post I’ll be making use of his advice, along with the advice of you guessed it Matt Colville.

Before I start these are the Lich stats:

I’ll cover the other bits like actions, spells, etc as and when needed.

Let’s look firstly at Jim Murphy’s advice. After all it’s his idea. Jim talks about taking the Lich down from an 18th level magic user to a 5th level one. So to do this he suggest scaling down everything to the appropriate level, including saving throws against any spells he throws, any special abilities are either not available or greatly diminished in power.

This advice from Jim leads nicely in to the adjusting monsters advice from Matt Colville. However Jim does let his Lich keep counter spell. He says that the Lich with it’s spells and what ever abilities it has cause a minor inconvenience.

With the basic stats above I’m leaning towards lowering the AC. At the moment by a single point. But that might get lowered on the day to 15.

The HP need reducing drastically. Saving throws have been halved and reduced by 1 or 2 points.

Skills I’m leaving, and will adjust on the fly if I need them.

AC: 16

HP: 54

saving throws: Con: +4, Int: +5, Wis: +4

So let’s look at these other things the Lich can do.

I don’t need to worry about the rejuvenation. But I want to keep the legendary resistance. However I’m going to dial it back and make it a once a day thing. Which in reality is for the one encounter I plan to use the Lich in.

So what spells will I give my Lich?

Firstly the spell save DC is too high. That needs to drop to something the group has a chance of meeting. And the to hit bonus is way way to powerful. For one or two of my group it’s an instant hit without rolling!

Spell save DC: 15

Spell attack bonus: +4

I’m only picking about two or three spells. This is mainly because I’m going to be making this an action oriented monster. Actions plus lots of spells would I feel make this too over powered for a low level “baby” Lich. Also because this is a boss monster, and you know from the undead liar video, lots of undead are being thrown at the party. I’m going with defensive spells for “baby” Lich.

I’m also going to give the “baby” Lich only 4 spell slots.

Spells: shield, counter spell, dispel magic and ray of frost

The Lich has the following legendary actions:

As has been pointed out previously this is a “baby” Lich. So I’m just going to drop these legendary actions.

Although technically my Lich could be argued as being in it’s liar and have access to the following lair actions:

The only one I will make available to this “baby” Lich is the regaining spell slots action. The others just seem too over powering at this lower level. And because there are only have 4 slots I’ll use 1d4.

So now onto the Matt Colville advice from his recent (at the time of writing) Running the Game video Action Oriented Monsters. Naturally I’m using “baby” Lich as a boss.

Actions: Cast a spell

Bonus Actions: raise the fallen dead – each round a fallen undead comes back.

Reactions: Cast counter spell

Villain Actions:

Round 1: “stay awhile, stay forever” – entrances and exits shut and become locked.

Round 2: “kill him!” – focuses the undead on a member of the party that has used magic.

Round 3: “I have you now” – a minotaur skeleton appears and attacks the party.

So that’s my modified “baby” Lich I plan to use. What do you think? What would you do differently?

Update on planning session 5 #1

D&D, RPG, session planning

As usual I need to start this type of post with the usual default copy and paste warning to the players in my play group.

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 next session is going to be a “difficult” one to prepare for.

The reason being that no adventure hook was actually picked up at the end of the session. It’s a decision the whole group needs to make, and we were one adventurer down last session due to illness. So it was left with the party back at the tavern waiting for their companion to get better.

Now that leaves me a window to actually offer and try doing something with the party suggested by Matt Colville (yep hardly into the post and he gets mentioned) about downtime. I think I can make this work. Particularly for a couple of the party. I could for instance talk to the absent player and have him do a side quest by himself that happened whilst the others were off doing stuff on the main campaign. They faked being ill and went off and did X. Or the rogue of the group I think could go off and explore the city during the night whilst the others are sleeping. So I’ve messaged them to see if they are interested.

In the meantime I have an idea that the group may want to take part in the gladiator games in the next session. So I need to research how to run such a thing in D&D, and also make it so it’s not boring. There will be no death in this. If they reach zero hit points then they become unconscious and out of the tournament. Healers will be on hand to help them recover to full health. There will be magic items up for grabs as the prizes.

I also want to seed going back to the guard tower that the party found along the coastal road. I know how that’s going to work. For awhile I was unsure what creature or creatures would be the cause of the guards and workers not being heard from. I had toyed with the idea of goblins, dryads, knolls or even an ankheg. But hadn’t made a decision. Then after watching the Colville video on Action Oriented Monsters for another reason (see below), he covered the ankheg. That was it, I’ll use the ankheg as an action oriented monster for the encounter.

Another seed I’ll prepare is the Traitors’ Graves and the lost black dragon Lashonna lair. This will be the catacombs adventure from The Lazy DM’s Workbook. It’s going to be full of undead naturally. If only I’d been getting undead miniatures! I like the idea of using the undead lair from Jim Murphy with this dungeon. It’d mean changing one of the locations or adding it as a secret room to be discovered. However I’m pretty sure I’d like to use a Lich as the boss for the undead lair, and as the overall main baddy for the dungeon. But a level 22 creature for a level 2 and 3 party! So naturally I’d have to go through the process of adjusting the Lich stats. In the Murphy video there are some suggestions on how to run the Lich boss. But then I remembered the recent Colville video about action oriented monsters, and thought I’d give that a watch as well. That gave me food for thought also. So I think in the next post I’ll look at how I adjusted the Lich to be used with my party of adventurers.

I do now have a wish list of miniatures I’d like to add to my undead army. Such as a minotaur skeleton, or the t-rex skeleton. Plus some oozes like the gelatinous cube to use as well. But getting your hands on them is a real pain in the UK, they seem out of stock everywhere. Or if they are the third party has hiked the price up in that age old tradition of supply and demand and exploiting a situation by trying to scalp the unsuspecting or desperate. Which thankfully I am neither.

Wave 2 of Skeleton Horde started

D&D, RPG

Yesterday was such a shite day for me. I had a sick bug or something and was sick two or three times. Spent the day slipping in and out of the depths of sleep. Between the sleep and vomiting there was that constant feeling I could be making a fast move for the bathroom.

The attack chihuahuas were even kind to me and never left a “surprise” for me to discover in the morning. They are quite the little practical jokers some nights.

But today I’m feeling much better.

So much so I even felt up to putting six more skeletons together, and apply the white primer to them.

Once these are fully painted that will take me to thirteen in this part of the undead horde that are dungeon ready.

I’m not sure what the skeletal creature is. But I’m calling it as a skeleton dog. There is also a pile of bones I can use as scatter terrain. Which is useful. Mainly because I can place a couple (which is all I got on the sprues) in the dungeon as a “warning” of what’s to come.

Looking forward to throwing the Jim Murphy Undead monster mambo at some players.

5 Down, 13 to go

D&D, RPG

With the finishing touches to the zombie horde still to be done. I deviated from the plan and built five of the skelton miniatures that arrived.

Once again I had to cut and glue things together before being able to start painting.

I used a white primer with these. Once dry did base coats, that I have to admit weren’t doing much for me. They looked so flat and lifeless. It was only once I applied a wash that the miniatures started to come alive.

The final touch was some highlighting, and flock on the bases.

Not an amazing paint job but table ready (just) or as I like calling it dungeon ready.

When last we left our heroes… #4

D&D, post mortem, RPG

In our fourth session our party of adventures joined up with a ships captain who had fallen on hard times and his dwarf ships wizard to help them gain a new boat. After defeating some pirates, raiding the warehouse, the party and their ‘new friends’ stole the boat. After hiding the boat the party returned to the tavern. Oh the boat belonged to Angrath the minotaur pirate.

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.

We were once again a player down for this session. But we had some warning this time, and had the character in bed at the tavern suffering from a bout of sickness. A case of D&D reflecting real life! Plus it seemed the easiest way to handle the absence.

However we were also welcoming two new players to the group for their first session. So in reality numbers wise we were a player up this session.

I thought the role play of them meeting up at the tavern went fairly well. Once directing the characters to each other it was really out of my control.

The main encounter for the session was the stealing a boat caper.

For this I used the warehouse from the docks mini adventure from the Lazy DM’s Workbook. That was an A3 battle map, that I had stuck to some foamboard, and covered over the various rooms in the warehouse. Which only got removed when the players explored the room.

I used some of the D&D Tiles Reincarnated: City to recreate the jetty, accompanied by a keelboat made up of the 3D boat tiles I had.

As I explained to the new players I generally roll just once for the creatures for attacks and saving rolls to speed things up.

This was a very heavy combat session. For starters at the end of it, if successful they were getting a boat! So I couldn’t just give it to them easily. They had to earn it.

I hadn’t planned on treasure in the warehouse, so I generated that on the fly. I wanted to reward them, but not be over generous. After all they had just got a boat.

When it comes to the killing blow or when a player rolls a natural 1, I am still liking giving control over to the players to describe how the creature dies, or they do that epic fumble.

There was a point that I had to rule that a gnome could not just pick up and tie up a prison with a heavy chain as an action during combat. That 6 second time slice is just not long enough for them to do that.

I think I had the tactics about right for the pirates. Having them raise the alarm as quick as possible. Whether the numbers of pirates encountered was enough that’s another question. I think this was a challenging encounter at best. I don’t think it was even close to deadly.

When it came to the warehouse I didn’t use the notes from the room descriptions. But at that point of the session we were over running and needed to get to a point for stopping. But still the descriptions would not have added anything time wise. I must do better here.

Overall I thought the session went well, everyone had fun.

Now onto session 5 which will hopefully be in 2 weeks time.