After watching the Joker movie Friday, and then defending it on national radio Saturday morning on the BBC Radio 5 Live breakfast show. I thought I’d share my brief thoughts of it here before looking at a unique marketing idea.

Ok the Joker is apparently between reviewers becoming very much a marmite movie. They either love it or hate it. Very few in between.

Like the majority of regular joes that paid to see it I loved it.

But word of warning this isn’t your regular run of the mill comic book movie. Don’t go in expecting to see a MCU action packed sfx spectacular or a DCU train wreck. This movie also does not tie in with any of the other DCU movies. Look at Joker as the cinematic version of the many Batman one shots that show Batman in different times and settings. An elseworld story if you like.

What you have here is a movie that depicts the descent of a mentally ill person to becoming one of the most iconic comic book villains of all time.

The cinematography of the movie is amazing, as is the tone and retro feel of it all. Gotham isn’t the dark gothic beast of Burton, it’s more real, gritty, run down. Which is helped by the washed out tone, and looking like its set in the late 70s or 80s.

The story has a few influences, the most obvious is Killing Joke. But you can see Taxi Driver, V for Vendetta, King of Comedy also. Joker tries to reflect our current society and the them vs us between the rich and the poor. And the interesting twist of depicting Wayne as a “villain” that fits in with that theme. I’d also feel there will be a Falling Down comparison. It will definitely spark similar conversations.

The acting by Joaquin Phoenix is amazing. His depiction of Arthur/Joker is amazing. The amount of weight he must of lost for the role to make him look starved, skeletal. Talk about method acting. But the laugh, the physical acting. Even down to Arthur’s voice. The detail. I felt like I had a hard decision to make for my favourite Joker. But I think Ledger still tops my list by a hairs width. But it’s that close.

The score/soundtrack is amazing. It’s menacing, broody. Love it.

I love Joker. It’s a movie that will spark debate. It certainly demands multiple viewings.

While I was being wow’d by Joker, Twitter was briefly went crazy (not really) of a great bit of marketing for Wendy’s. Which I believe is some sort of fast food outlet in the US.

Wendy’s took the D&D d20 system and produced a free RPG! The RPG is called Feast of Legends.

In Feast of Legends…

“You are adventurers in the realm of Beef ’s Keep, where the nations have been splintered over major disagreements in how to treat the realm’s people. Creepingvale and the United Clown Nations have led their people into a collective darkness known as The Deep Freeze. While the world currently feels like a cold and desolate place, you reside in the one nation that remains a true beacon of hope: Freshtovia.”

I’m assuming United Clown Nations is a certain fast food chain that has a clown as it’s mascot. I’m getting flashbacks to Judge Dredd and The Cursed Earth story line and the two fast food inspired warring factions.

Naturally at its heart this is a piece of marketing. But thematic marketing I’ll grant them that. Which starts with the table of contents and continues through out.

The marketing even permeates through to the buffs you can get if you are eating Wendy’s food while playing.

The orders are like classes and if you are actually eating the physical order while playing that matches your chosen order, you get advantage for the day!

“As you’ve probably discerned, food is a major aspect of Feast of Legends. As such, what you’re eating in the real world will create direct buffs that affect your character in the game. Each of these buffs will go into effect for the entire duration of play for the day. So you might want to swing by your local Wendy’s or hit up delivery real quick.”

Or if you “dare” to eat a rivals products during play…

“Just as important, if you’ve settled for something other than Wendy’s, it can cause your character to weaken. Players eating any of the following during gameplay will gain the following debuffs for the duration of the session.”

I think it’s great that they give some example preconstructed characters for players to jump straight in with.

There is also a DM section and campaign to play through.

“Feast of Legends: Rise From The Deep Freeze is an adventure set in the realm of Beef’s Keep. The realm is vast, encompassing mountains, deserts, coasts and more. Your players will begin in Freshtovia, a kingdom ruled by Queen Wendy. Each player will begin at level 1, progressing to level 5 over the course of play.”

The following is the premise for the campaign.

“The main threat to the land is the Ice Jester of the United Clown Nations who resides in the lands known as The Deep Freeze — a dark, desolate place filled with frozen dangers. Recently the Ice Jester has been sending frozen minions across the realm to spread icy havoc. And now there are rumors that the Ice Jester has found a powerful magic device capable of throwing all of Beef ’s Keep into a new frozen age. The fate of the realm rests in the hands of a few fresh, never frozen heroes.”

I love the portrayal of the rivals mascot. Not having a Wendy’s in the UK, I’m picking up from the not so subtle messaging that the rival uses frozen patties, whilst Wendy’s uses fresh patties.

As a free way to try an RPG this looks fun for those that are fans of the Wendy’s fast food chain. It’s definitely a fantastic piece of marketing. I’m not sure how much mileage those of us out of the US would get from this. But there are some interesting ideas in their that could only really work in a product like this, for instance those buffs for eating related food.

You can get the pdf HERE.

A couple of days this week I’ve been out and about, and had time to catch up on some podcasts. One of the ones I caught up on was Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk.

It’s a particularly nice podcast in my opinion. Firstly it’s UK based, Morrus is also the creator of the WOIN system and the Judge Dredd and World’s of 2000A.D. RPG (that uses WOIN as it’s basis).

One particular episode on Stealing Rules got me thinking and agreeing with them on a couple of things.

The first is using Morrus’ countdown dice mechanic from his WOIN system. He’s right to feel proud of it. When I read it in the Judge Dredd rulebook I thought that’s pretty cool. It’s also something that can be used in D&D quite easily.

Basically you create a dice pool of d6 dice. Then when you roll them, you remove any 6’s from the pool. And you keep rolling until there are none left. That’s as I said the basic concept. You can speed things up or slow things down by adjusting the number range used to remove a die, and the size of the dice pool.

It acts as a timer that you can use to simulate things like a countdown before an alarm goes off, or a trap/bomb triggers.

I love the concept. And definitely think it can be used in my current campaign. I’m thinking it might even lend itself to determine the length of combat. Hear me out. There is an encounter coming up where I want the NPC’s to attack my players, but it’s a smash and grab. Get in and get out quickly. It’s not a fight to the death. So how long should that last in combat rounds? If I use this countdown dice mechanic, and set it up for a quick countdown, then roll the dice at the start of each combat round. If it runs out the attackers split and fade into the night.

There is another nice part of this mechanic, where you can trigger things to happen when you reach certain numbers of dice. Say for instance once you hit 3 dice something bad happens like more enemies run into the room.

I think the hardest part is going to be deciding the size of the dice pool to use and the speed of the countdown.

You can read more about the countdown dice mechanic here.

The other one that I thought sounded interesting and worth investigating a bit more in-depth was the The One Ring/Adventures in Middle Earth (the D&D d20 version) journey rules.

For easy of use and porting into a full D&D 5e campaign I’d look at the Adventures in Middle Earth rules.

But I like the idea of using a system that is targeted at making travelling more interesting.

However that’s a research project for another day.

I’m kinda doing some stealing of rules at the moment. Except I’ve been stealing from the D&D Adventurers League. In particularly for character advancement. I like the points system it uses.

What rules do you steal for your RPG games?

I’ve talked in previous posts about trying D&D for free. But what if like me you want to run something more spooky/horror related to “celebrate” Halloween at the end of the month?

Well keeping with the free criteria that’s totally possible. Yes you can try D&D for free and have a fantasy horror theme to the adventure.

WotC back when they released the Curse of Strahd campaign book for fifth edition also put up on their website a free pdf of the adventure from Appendix B of the book called Death House.

Naturally it’s set in the fantasy horror setting of fan favourite Castle Ravenloft/Barovia and it’s vampire master Strahd von Zarovich. Sadly this free adventure doesn’t see us in the castle or going up against Strahd. But still it ticks the boxes we are looking for free, and fantasy horror.

Below are the main links you need to run the Death House adventure, including some advice from a way more experienced DM than the noob that I am.

Link to Death House pdf

Additional Curse of Strahd Character Options

Sly Flourish – Advice on running Death House

Free D&D Basic Rules

Naturally you can use the pregenerated characters that WotC have created or create your own. You can get the character sheets whichever way you decide to go here. The advantage of creating your own is you can use the additional setting character options linked above.

Death House suggests using the Creeping Fog scenario from the first chapter in the campaign book. ‘This scenario assumes that the characters are camping in a forest when the fog engulfs them. They are quietly borne to the edge of Barovia.”

I like this idea. We are running this adventure as a one shot basically (although nothing to stop you turning it into a campaign). It’s simple, gives a bit of mystery, and gets the players to Ravenloft and the village Barovia.

You may have to find a monster stat or two on the web, for instance the shambling mound.

I hope people have found this useful. Let me know in the comments below if you have run this adventure and any tips you may have. Or maybe if you do run it for Halloween how you got on.

This post is all about me scratching an itch. For a couple of weeks or so now the idea of creating a halfling monk has been niggling away from the back of my mind. Distracting me from the prep I need to do for the imminent session 2 of our campaign.

The inspiration for this character comes from my childhood and teenage years.

I’m a child of the seventies, among many of the tv series from that time one of my favourites, and still have fond memories of is Kung Fu.

It was a very popular tv series at the time, even breaking in to the comedy acts of popular comedians at the time.

Kung Fu told the story of a Shaolin monk called Caine, that wondered from town to town in the old west, searching for a half brother. Along the way he helped people in his unique way using his martial art skills. Caine had ended up in the US after killing the Emperor’s nephew in revenge for that nephew having killed his elder and mentor.

A bit later in my youth I came across the Marvel comic The hands of Shang- Chi Master Of Kung Fu (also to set to join the MCU in Phase 4 iirc as well). Which I loved. Shang-Chi was the son of Fu Manchu, who he did everything he could to oppose.

Another influence also from that time is Bruce Lee (who also I believe was an influence for the Shang-Chi character). Mainly his characters who like Caine did everything to avoid combat. But usually as a last resort after being pushed to the limits has to use their superior martial art skills to get justice.

For creating our halfling monk I’m going to be using options from the Player’s Handbook, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide.

1. Choose a race

Naturally this is a halfling. Which means we get the following ability score increases.

Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.

Age: Let’s have Tye just entering adulthood. Which for a halfling is 20.

Size: Tye will be the race average of 3ft tall, and 40 pounds.

Speed: halflings walk at a speed of 25ft.

Halflings are lucky. Which basically means they get to reroll a natural 1. They are also brave, which means they have advantage in saving throws against being frightened. Tye also being a halfling has Halfling Nimbleness. He can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than him.

Tye knows common and halfling. Being a lighfoot he is also Naturally Stealthy. Tye can attempt to hide even when he’s obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than him.

2. Choose a class

Once again we have already determined this.

The quick build advice for creating a monk is to have dexterity as our highest score, followed by wisdom. And to have the hermit as our background. We’ll follow that advice.

As a monk our hit points as a first level character is 8 + our constitution modifier. Our hit die is a d8, and we get 1d8 per monk level.

We now need to make some choices as we work through the rest of our class traits. First up our monks proficiencies.

Sadly Tye isn’t proficient with armor. Which is common sense. Armour would just get in the way of doing all those martial arts moves. Our AC equals 10 + Dexterity modifier + Wisdom modifier.

Naturally all those years in the monastery training means Tye is proficient with Simple weapons and shortswords.

Tye gets the “following benefits while unarmed or wielding only monk weapons and not wearing armor or wielding a shield:

• can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolIs of unarmed strikes and monk weapons.
• can rolI a d4 in place of the normal damage of his unarmed strike or monk weapon. This die changes as Tye gains monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table.
• use the Attack action with an unarmed strike or a monk weapon on your turn, Tye can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.”

Tye is keeping with Caine as our template will be proficient with the flute.

Saving Throws: Strength, Dexterity

As a monk we can choose to be proficient from two of the following skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, History, lnsight, Religion, and Stealth. I think for Tye we will chose Stealth and Acrobatics. Our background will give us Religion.

Being a monk means we get some starting equipment decisions to make. Our first choice is between a shortsword or any simple weapon. I think in keeping with our inspirations Tye would have a quarterstaff as his weapon of choice. This does 1d6 bludgeoning damage, weighs 4lbs and has Versatile (1d8) as its property.

An explorer’s pack I feel is the natural choice for Tye over a dungeoneer’s pack. Our halfling monk is wandering around Faerun just like Caine. In the explorer’s pack Tye gets “a backpack, a bedroll,a mess kit, a tinderbox, 10 torches, 10 days of rations, and a waterskin. The pack also has 50 feet of hempen rope strapped to the side of it.”

Finally monks also get 10 darts (1d4 piercing, finesse, thrown (range 20/60 feet)

The hermit background also comes with some extra proficiencies.

Skill Proficiencies: Medicine, Religion

Tool Proficiencies: Herbalism kit

Languages: One of your choice – this is a difficult one I feel this needs to fit in with Tye’s background. Draconic the language of dragons and Dragonborn.

Equipment: A scroll case stuffed full of notes from your studies or prayers, a winter blanket, a set of common clothes, an herbalism kit, and 5 gp

3. Determine ability scores

I rolled the above dice to allocate to abilities.

Strength = 12 Modifier +1

Dexterity = (16 + 2) = 18 Modifier +4

Constitution = 15 Modifier +2

Intelligence = 14 Modifier +2

Wisdom = 16 Modifier +3

Charisma = (15 + 1) = 16 Modifier +3

4. Describe your character

Gender: male

Background

Tye grew up and trained at a monastery in the Sword Mountains that was part of the halfling monastic order called The Hin Fist.

The monastery had been carved into the mountainside on the southern side of the Sword Mountain range where it looms over a treacherous pass.

Tye’s parents had died when he was very young, when a goblin raiding party attacked their farm near Triboar. Villagers arrived too late to save them, but in the destruction left behind found Tye hidden, scared, crying, cold, and hungry in a bush. Fortunately back in Triboar monks had been visiting from the Hin Fist monastery. Once the villagers arrived back in Triboar with Tye, a debate took place about what to do with him. The monks seeing that they were discussing a halfling child, said they would take Tye in.

Tye has been following the Monastic tradition Way of the Open Hand. There is a Way of the Drunken Master which I’d love to use. It’s very Jackie Chan and of the movie with the same name. It’d be fun to play a character using that fighting style. But Way of the Open Hand is our tradition of choice fitting in with our inspiration.

“Monks of the Way of the Open Hand are the ultimate masters of martial arts combat, whether armed or unarmed. They learn techniques to push and trip their opponents, manipulate ki to heal damage to their bodies, and practice advanced meditation that can protect them from harm.”

Due to the number of dragons in the area the monks revere them, and speak dragonic, and use a dragon icon as their monastery’s emblem.

Tye has passed the final test for his monastic order to become a monk of The Hin Fist, which is shown by a dragon icon branded on the inside of both of his wrists. This harks back to the marks that Caine got completing his final test.

Like our inspiration Caine, Tye is on the run. On one of the monastery’s regular visits to Triboar Tye and his Master/instructor where amongst the monks on the visit. A group of guards that were part of a party from Waterdeep had a run in with Tye’s Master. The result of this run in was a relative of one of the Lords of Waterdeep killed the Master with a crossbow bolt in the back. Tye killed the relative when he grabbed one of the guards daggers and threw it at them. And yes this is the Kung Fu backstory! The Masters dying words to Tye were to flee, not to go back to the monastery.

There is naturally a price on Tye’s head by the Lord of Waterdeep.

I’m leaving this bit open about which Lord and how much the reward is to the DM so that it can be used to fit in with any plot hooks the DM wants to use.

Alignment: lawful

Personal characteristics

3ft tall, and 40 pounds.

Tye has a full head of brown hair.

Harking back to his monastic order Tye dresses in lose garments, that are coloured yellow and green. Naturally Tye wears long sleeved garments or if short sleeved bandages of some sort to cover up his dragon icon markings.

Tye like our influence tries to avoid conflict and using his martial art skills. When confronted Tye will take a lot of abuse. So that bully pushing him around in the tavern, Tye will just turn the other cheek. After all he is on the run, and has to disguise that he is a monk.

Like Caine, Tye is conflicted between wanting to remain anonymous and a sense of social responsibility.

Tye plays the flute as his only pastime apart from meditating.

Tye like Caine is humble, intelligent, inquisitive, and usually very soft-spoken.

5. Choose equipment

See above. It’s the basic starting equipment for our race, class and background that I’ve already discussed.

Until now a group of friends wanting to get into D&D had a single official option, The Starter Set (I look at the contents here). Yes over the Summer we got the Stranger Things D&D Starter Set (I look at that here). So technically my opening sentence was not quite accurate.

However WotC have now released a new option with the D&D Essentials Kit. Where as the Starter Set allowed you choose an included pre-made character and start playing. The focus of this kit is to create your own characters and start playing.

The essential kit comes with blank character sheets naturally, considering it’s focus.

It also has a cardboard deck box that is used to store the 81 included cards. These are a new addition to the beginner sets. There are cards for initiative order, magic items, character conditions, sidekicks and quests. A nice addition, making life as a DM a tad easier.

Also included is a cardboard DM screen. Which was thicker than expected, but still relatively flimsy. It is basically the DM Screen Reincarnated screen that you can buy.

Another addition is a double sided map that can be used with the players. On one side is a town map of Phandalin and on the other a region map of the northern part of the Sword Coast round Neverwinter and the Sword Mountains.

Both of these were much needed additions, and noticeable omissions from the Starter Set.

WotC have also started by the looks of it to add a second d20 die in the included dice. This allows players to roll for advantage/disadvantage by rolling both dice at the same time. Another nice little touch.

The rulebook and adventure book are bound a bit differently to the Starter Set equivalents. In the Starter Set they are more magazine like, and held together with staples. Whilst now they are more book like and glue/heat bound (I think that’s how you describe it). They also now have a cardboard outer cover that is the same type of cardboard used for the DM screen.

The rulebook has doubled in size from 32 to 64 pages. The additional pages cover creating your own characters, rules for sidekicks, more equipment and spells.

The rules allow you to create characters that are either a dwarf, elf, halfling or human. Which can have one of the following classes, bard, cleric, fighter, rogue and wizard. With background details provided for an acolyte, criminal, entertainer, sage and soldier.

The sidekick rules are a great addition that allow a DM and a single player to play D&D. The sidekick can be controlled by the player or DM during those sessions. But they are basically friendly npc characters that join the party.

The included adventure Dragon of Icespire Peak is a collection of 9 quests where the party are based in Phandalin. The party select which quests to follow from a notice board within the town.

Naturally I’ve not had time to play any of them yet. But there does seem to be a sandbox feel to the way these are presented. The party start off being given a choice of 3 quests, once they have completed at least 2 of them, a further 3 quests become available. And like the initial quests, once 2 of the new quests have been completed a final 3 new quests are unlocked. The players are in control of which and when the quests get done.

The nice thing is if you have the Starter Set and The Mines of Phandelver adventure this new adventure can work as an extension to that campaign. Or even slot in as side quests during.

I do like Phandalin as a base location to adventure from, and that section of the Sword Coast. It’s a rich area to explore. However I do think that the Starter Set edges it over the Essentials Set for bringing the town to life with the information given. Particularly with it’s summary of the major NPC’s, and one or two more locations detailed. Although I do like the Phandalin tales table in the Essentials adventure book. If you have both adventures you are in luck and can use the information from both.

There are a couple of the quests that I’m going to straight up use in my homebrew campaign. They save me a lot of work. One can be used as is for a current adventure hook, and the other has given me an idea for a new one.

The adventure book also has a map key on the back cover. About time. WotC does forget to do these normally.

I like the Essentials Kit a lot. It fixes some of the omissions from the Starter Set, like the DM Screen, the players map, and one I didn’t know it needed the cards. Plus the addition of getting D&D Beyond comes to get the adventure on there, plus additional linked content (I don’t use D&D Beyond – criminal I know) and 50% off the digital version of the players handbook on there, makes this great value.

The decision a new group needs to make is do they just want to jump in and start playing (Starter Set) or create their own characters and play (Essentials Kit). Although if you own both, choose the appropriate way to get a character and then choose the adventure path they want to explore. Although as I said combine both into an epic beginners campaign is also an option.

Personally I think that the adventures are worth the asking price alone, and make great resources for more experienced groups as well. Phandalin is a great base to use for homebrew campaigns also.

My friend posted a comment at the weekend on this blog that expressed eloquently why they were not enjoying D&D.

I’m sharing here some of those points bought up not to dismiss them but to help others also feeling the same way. Maybe one or two of the points made will resonate with you. I’m also going to mention some things we are trying to see if they make a difference at our next session.

“There are so many different numbers that I’m simply confused. As I’ve mentioned in the past, if it was simply Skill, Stamina and Luck, and perhaps Magic (the classic Fighting Fantasy traits)…”

In D&D there are only six abilities that describe the character. I think what adds to the confusion is the skills. All of a sudden you have 18 additional stats to worry about.

And to be fair looking at the “classic” character sheet (left hand side of the image below) you can see where they are coming from. You can’t as a new player not look at it and be overwhelmed by all the different numbers on it. Particularly the abilities and skills.

So before reinventing the wheel I went looking for a simplified character sheet. And I found one. Here is the link to drivethrurpg for one I found, and sent to my friend to try (right hand side of the image below).

There is an additional simplified page for spells by the same author at that link.

Another thing to try and help with this is covered in the next point.

“I can’t make head or tail of the Player’s Handbook!”

Despite being on it’s 5th Edition the Player’s Handbook can be overwhelming, and not the easiest of things to navigate. Luckily WotC do have an alternative that distils the information needed by a new player to a more less cluttered format in the guise of the Starter Set Rulebook.

On the original post my friend did on bgg about their experience they were given the following advice. Which also ties in with the first point raised.

“…we try to make it easier for a new player by asking them to describe what they would like to do and then the DM walks through the rules for their description.”

Which is a very good suggestion also. One that I will try and do. It will be hard as I’m finding my feet as a DM as well. But it is something I should do.

“I don’t like the role play aspect the same as one or two others really enjoy (I’m not willing to get into character; that’s just not me)…”

I think I’ve said something similar about being a DM and the voices. I’m also on record about how I think internet RPG shows like Critical Roll et al with their professional voice actors, comedians etc give a false impression about what playing a RPG is like for the majority of players. Not only that but false expectations. What they do is provide great entertainment (for a lot of people, I sadly find them hard to watch). Which is their intent.

This wouldn’t be a D&D post if I haven’t mentioned Matt Colville. And his latest (at time of writing) video in his Running the Game series on this subject. I hope this helps folks out there.

My advice play the way that you feel comfortable. Don’t let others influence the way you play. It’s about having fun. Not everyone is into “Roleplay” (me included). That’s the beauty of the an RPG, it allows all types of play.

What advice would you give to these valid points?