Category Archives: D&D

In hot pursuit

D&D, RPG


I thought for the start of this post we’d look at the D&D 5e Starter Set.

This is basically everything (except pens/pencils and the friends to play with) you need to start playing D&D in a box. In a previous post I’ve already talked about being able to give D&D a try without using this Starter Set. Although you’d still need dice. But with an internet connection or app you don’t even need them. I came across this page on the WotC website the other day that simulates rolls from the various dice used.

But I digress. I’m looking at the Starter Set.

The Starter Set can be purchased for between £15 and £20. I got my copy from my FLGS at about the mid point of that price range.

In the box for your money you get a set of 6 dice, 5 pregenerated character sheets, a blank character sheet, the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure, and a rulebook.


The rulebook is a nice 32 page summary of the basic rules needed by new players and dm’s to play the game. Naturally it’s not as comprehensive as the Players Handbook or the free pdf of the basic rules that WotC have on their website. The rules included doesn’t cover creating your own characters. However that’s not the point of this Starter Set. Which is to give you everything to start playing right out of the box. Besides if that’s something you want to do the info is in the free pdf already mentioned. But it does the job.

The supplied pregenerated characters of two human fighters, half elf wizard, halfling rogue, and dwarf cleric are standard fare and in my opinion a bit cliched. But I understand why they went with the tropes. It’s not the mix of classes I’m critiquing. Although a trope in itself, it’s also a good example of a balanced party for beginners. It’s the races that are used for each class I find unimaginative and cliched. For example why not have the halfling as a wizard? I play one. Mix it up a bit.

A nice touch on each of the character sheets is the background info on the race and class on the reverse side to the character stats. The background adventure info that gives each character a personal goal, defines their alignment and why they are at the start of the adventure, I love. A really nice touch. The gaining levels guidance is also really good. And guides the player up to level 5.

The Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure. A 64 page starting adventure set in the Forgotten Realms along the Sword Coast. Particularly south of Neverwinter in and around the Neverwinter Wood and the Sword Mountains. With the town of Phandalin acting as the base for the adventurers.

Our group are I’m assuming midway or just over midway through the adventure. Our sessions are about 3 hours long and are fortnightly. And we have been meeting up to play this adventure since July last year. Make of that what you will. Plus we are using our own characters not the pregenerated ones.

From a players point of view I’m enjoying the adventure a lot. It doesn’t feel like a railroad adventure, but more sandbox like. There are plenty of hooks to go off and do the adventures in the area. Which is what I like that illusion of choice. You can decide to act on the hook you get or not.

From a new dm point of view I’d have liked to have seen some player friendly handouts, such as a map of Phandalin. Maybe some pictures of the monsters players will encounter. Or how about some standees of the monsters to use? I’m stopping short of suggesting miniatures of the characters. Well we don’t know what sex that the players will chose. So 10 miniatures would just drive up the price astronomically and out of the intended audience and aim of this product. Or they could follow the Judge Dredd RPG guys and release a token pack for the Starter Set for players to buy.

The actual box for the Starter Set is twice as deep as it needs to be, and it’s why there is a bit of cardboard inside just to stop stuff rattling round. In this day and age of being environmentally friendly etc. there is no excuse for this sort of waste.

Overall this is a great option for those looking to get into playing D&D. It’s not expensive. So if your group of friends don’t like it you are not too much out of pocket. Although (and this wouldn’t be a post by me on D&D if at some point I don’t mention Mr Colville) my previous post (link in the second paragraph above) about the one-shot noob dungeon by Matthew Colville is even cheaper (FREE). Both great options for trying the game. If I was to recommend anything, I’d say try the free one-shot first, then if you enjoyed that, move onto this Starter Set.

Let’s see what shenanigans Dram and co have been getting up to since last we saw them.

After a short rest our band of adventurers looked for signs of the wizard formally known as Glasstaff.

A trial led north through the forest.

The motley crew followed the trial through the woods until they came across an abandoned camp site. Ace used his skills to determine that the camp was relatively fresh, the extinguished fire still warm. His best guess was that the person who had been here had left no more than a couple of hours before their discovery of the site.

More footprints led off from the camp site in a northerly direction, once again through the trees.

Dram and co resumed the pursuit of whoever was making the trial.

Shortly they came to the Neverwinter River. It was too wide for Dram to Misty Step across and avoid getting wet feet or having to swim across. So Dram paddled out into the river and then cast Misty Step to take him to the opposite bank.

As Dram sat on the opposite bank drying off, he watched the rather humorous crossings of his companions. Grull had tried tossing the gnome across the river. Only for the gnome to fall short and splash down into the middle of the river.

Their efforts to get out of the river were just as comedic. But eventually the others all got across to join Dram on the opposite bank, just a lot more wetter.

The pursuit resumed until they came across another clearing in the dusk of early evening. Four humanoid shapes appeared to be trying to dig up some graves.

Ace stealthy crept round to one side to get a closer look. Sadly at the opposite side of the clearing Grull wasn’t as stealthy. One of the humanoid shapes noticed him.

It attacked.

The chaos of battle ensued. Two of the humanoid figures attacked Grull. Dram from his safe spot let off a volley of Magic Missiles at those two.

Grull, the gnome and Ace just seemed to be standing there letting the attacking figures attack them! Dram was puzzled with this reaction of his colleagues. Surely they should be fighting back, defending themselves?

Dram cast Cloud of Daggers. The air in front of Grull was filled with spinning daggers. Exactly where the two attacking figures were standing.

Suddenly the paralysed heroes sprung back into life and finished off the remaining two attackers.

Closer inspection of the corpses afterwards revealed they had been fighting ghouls.

After getting their breathe back, and some patching of wounds. The party once again looked for signs of their quarry. But the path seemed to have come to a dead end.

After a brief discussion the party decided to head North to try and pick up the trail. again.

After about an hour they had still not found any sign of a trail. So they set up camp for the night.

The night passed quietly. Except in the morning Sarmyar and her panther had disappeared.

Campaign Pitch Document

D&D, RPG

So the first session as DM hasn’t happened yet. It’s close. We had fixed a date but reasons meant that the agreed date fell threw.

Which means negotiations have to take place again for a new date.

In the meantime just on the off chance that Jonathan, Diego and who ever else took part in the one shot liked their experience and the job I did as DM I’d pitch a couple of campaign ideas to them.

But how to do it?

Oh yeah my go to guy Matthew Colville has some words of advice on this. After all I got the idea from him and this video.

Ok here is a link to my first attempt at a campaign pitch document for three D&D campaigns I wouldn’t mind running. DandD Campaign Pitch

There be treasure

D&D, RPG

I know it’s been quiet on here for a couple of days. Much to the relief of everyone I would imagine.

So what have I been doing? Not much really, hence the lack of posts. I did hit the video by Colville talking about the West Marches format for running D&D.

It’s an interesting idea for running D&D for a large group of players interested in playing the game.

The problem with the majority of Colville’s videos are that they make you want to go and try it for yourself. Which I suppose is the whole purpose of them.

Although I like the sound of running a version of a West Marches style game assuming that enough players are interested, in reality it’s not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. I’ve still to DM my first game (it’s getting closer).

However I did like the idea of a treasure map to give to the players at the start of the West Marches campaign. I think it’s something that could be utilised elsewhere.

So using Adobe Sketchbook I’ve decided to attempt to create a treasure map, and develop my rather poor drawing skills. It’s also working on my Sketchbook skills. An app that has been on my iPad for a long time, but I’ve not used. So there is a learning curve there too.

The plan would be to have two versions of the map. The initial basic map (minus the hexes) showing the general locale and maybe the location of one or two known landmarks/dungeons. It would then be up to the players to keep the map updated as they progress further out into the world. If they make mistakes on the map, the idea is not to correct them.

The second version of the map would be for me the DM. Naturally this will be more informative, have notes, and the hexes. The hexes will allow me to judge distance, set up zones/areas. It would also be the accurate map naturally.

The nice thing about this is it can be used in not just a West Marches game but also in a “regular campaign” at the start. It’s interesting that none of our party in the game I am a player has bothered to create a map. The first map we have was given to us!

Final pieces falling into place

D&D, RPG

So the negotiations begin to find a mutually agreeable date amongst the interested parties. A date has been suggested. Now the wait to see if people can make it. And if not the bit that’s more complex than the current Brexit negotiations, finding a suitable alternate date.

In the meantime preparations continue for whatever date is finally settled on.

You already know the scenario/adventure I’ll be using (thank you Matthew Colville for your services to DM’s everywhere).

So I thought I’d get some bits together to bring the map of the dungeon to life.

I managed to get some goblin figures, plus a goblin mage that will double as a goblin druid for this scenario. Plus I decided on the undead creature I’d use for one of the rooms, so I got a couple of minis for them. Luckily the Wizkids pack comes with two of them in a pack. Which is all I need.

I also made the decision that the reason for the adventures to be in this dungeon would be held in a cage. Once again Wizkids do a nice one of these.

I already had the big bad. Luckily for me I only need one of those. The other in the pack was broken (I wrote all about that last year). As I write this post I’m trying to fix the broken one. Just in case.

I wasn’t able to find a brazier that I liked. The ones that Wizkids did were with flames coming out of them. I wanted something that looked empty or it held water. In my travels I came across a scrying pool. But it was a 3D model only. I needed a 3D printer. The same modeller also had some loot markers that would be really nice to have also.


But the problem was I didn’t have a 3D printer. Luckily after a post on Facebook a friend offered to print them both for.

I picked those up today just before Standard Showdown (you’ll be hearing about that tomorrow).

It would have been nice to have a plinth and statue of a knight on it. But unlike the other stuff I have it’s pretty situational and it’s reusability is low. Although the plinth part with swappable statues would be cool and reusable.

A number of plain sarcophagus would be handy and reusable, plus a more fancy one with a swappable top. The top would have a figure on it, like a resting knight, or king. But I can live without these.

As you can see I’m looking at stuff that I can reuse, and trying to avoid spending money on stuff that I can only use once. Getting the maximum bang for my buck.

Sadly I don’t have a massive mini collection. I barely have any. So I’m going to have to cobble together something from what I have for the players. So I’ll check my two D&D boardgames and see what figures I can borrow for the session. To be fair, if this was going to be an on going campaign then I’d hope that the players would get their own figure to represent their character. Just like we have in the D&D game I take part in on a Tuesday.

I’ve sprayed the 3D printed stuff with primer, and some of the creatures. I may be lazy and just apply a wash. We’ll see how the mood takes me. Motivation to get painting again has been a hard thing to come by the past few months.

For those interested below are links to the 3D models that were printed for me.

Link to the Scrying Pool 3D Model

Link to the Loot Markers 3D Models

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the Lost Mine of Phandelver we go

D&D, RPG

Sometimes this first half of the post is hard to write. Especially when my ramblings about RPG’s have spilled over into other posts. And I have to admit whoever reads those brain dumps of mine have been very kind and not (so far) left comments saying that they are a load of b.s.

At the moment in GoodNotes I have started a notebook to collate the information for that taster one shot I am planning to run. I’ll post a pdf at some point with that information in.

When you do eventually see those notes you will see that I have the stats for a goblin shaman in there.

I got those stats from a handy pdf D&D Denizens: Goblins, which you can get from the D&D DM’s Guild online. But why do I need them? Surely the stats of a goblin will be fine. Yes and no. In the video about the dungeon itself Matthew Colville has a goblin shaman and the goblin boss (not a goblin as such, and I don’t want to spoil the surprise) performing some ritual. So yes I could have just used the regular goblin stats and added maybe a couple of spells. But before I did that, I thought let’s see what the internet has produced. And that’s how I came across this pdf.

I’ve included maps of Phandalin and the local area, assuming that this one shot is being set there, in the notes. Although technically seeing as it is a one shot, setting it in an inn in some nondescript location would be fine.

I just need to write in some of Colville’s encounter advice/guidance from his video on to the page. I really really like this video. I think the behaviour/tactics he gives to the goblins will bring them to life for the players and for the GM. One piece of advice I’m already planning to use in my Android adventure I’m creating.

In my travels on the inter web I’ve come across a couple of books called The Lazy Dungeon Master and it’s follow up Return of The Lazy Dungeon Master (both available as audio books, which means I get them free using my credits on Audible). I’m listening to them now, so will talk about them sometime in the future. But the author has a useful site with a reprinting of a series of articles from D&D Beyond with advice for the first time DM. In one of those articles the author talks about “Theatre of the Mind” for combat and not using minis. Which as soon as I saw the article I thought this is treating combat narratively just like Genesys and others of it’s ilk. It’s more descriptive and cinematic. It’s something I’d like to explore.

I suppose it’s time to find out what Dram has been up to.

After munching on a delectable plate of meat, cheese and bread as he copied his new spell Message in to his spellbook. Dram decided to test it out.

Dram pulled out a thin piece of copper wire from his ingredients pouch, and held it firmly in his left hand. His right hand then pointed in the direction of Grull. Dram then said the words that invoked the new cantrip. He then whispered a message to Grull warning him that Ace was stealing from him. Dram had wanted to say something funny but that was the best he could come up with, an unfunny bit of mischief.

The spell seemed to work. But there was no response from Grull. Dram made a mental note that he would have to discuss the spell with Grull, and let him know he can reply as well.

A while later the voice of Grull boomed through the floor boards and walls of the inn calling Dram down to the rest of the group.

Dram cast his new spell once again asking Grull what he wanted. Once again Grull’s voice thundered throughout the inn in response. At least the spell worked!

Dram finished off the last mouth full of food, washing it down with a large gulp from his tankard of mead. He then left his room to join the others downstairs.

Back with the others Grull explains to Dram that there is a reward for capturing Glasstaff. This piqued Dram’s interest. In their previous run in Dram had ended up with some cool magic items. As he thought of those items his hand tightened it’s grip on the glass staff.

The gnome wanted to go back and kill the dragon. Dram wasn’t keen on that idea. Despite being killed by the dragon. Which was an interesting experience for sure. Dram kinda liked the dragon. It was a wonderous creature. Instead of killing it, if they really wanted to go back to get it’s treasure, maybe they could trick it.

But after some discussion common sense won out, and they decided to get the reward from capturing Glasstaff.

Dram left the others arm wrestling a dwarf and each other for money. He returned to his room and a midnight snack of cold meats and bread.

The next morning while eating his breakfast in his room, Dram used the cantrip again to let the inn keeper know that Nick was not responsible for the ruckus he’d heard during the night after he’d retired.

Moments later a second breakfast with extra bacon had been bought to his room by the serving girl.

After polishing off the second breakfast Dram decided to join the others downstairs.

Sitting at a table eating his breakfast was Sildar. Dram greeted him, and they discussed how good the food was. During the conversation Sildar mentioned that the rewards was 450 gold for capturing Glasstaff alive. Dram was taken aback a little by the size of the reward.

The others arrived for their breakfast. Grull showed Dram a map of the area they had been given. It had the location of where it was believed Glasstaff was hiding.

Apparently the gnome enjoyed the discussion from the previous evening about their immediate plans, that he revisited the subject again. Once again wanting to go kill the dragon. And once again Dram started to argue the case for the mines they had heard about or capturing Glasstaff.

Eventually they got their gear together and headed off in the direction of Glasstaff and apparently some gnolls.

The adventurers camp at the junction where they were told Glasstaff was. It was an uneventful night. The next morning after yet more discussion they head off towards Glasstaff’s last known where abouts.

After a short while they come across a hut in the middle of a small clearing. This was where Glasstaff was meant to be hiding.

Dram uses the staff to give himself Mage Armour. It pays to be safe when you are not sure what you are walking into.

The group scout round the hut. It looked ok. No obvious traps.

Dram stayed at the back of the hut and cast a sleep spell into the middle of the hut. He then cast the Message cantrip to let Grull know that is what he had done.

There was a commotion from the front of the hut.

Dram dashes to the front of the hut to find the door kicked in.

As Dram entered the hut he saw the gnome being smothered by a rug, struggling to escape from it on the floor. The others were attacking the rug.

Dram decided to help out by casting Melf’s Acid Arrow at the rug. It seemed to have damaged the rug.

The others continued the attack and eventually freed the gnome. Who looked a bit bruised and worse for ware.

Sarmyar went to open the chest that was in the back of the hut. Boy did she get a shock when all of a sudden it trapped her arm in it’s mouth! This wasn’t a chest it was a mimic. Wow did Glasstaff have a sense of humour or what?

Dram left the others to get Sarmyar free of the mimic and kill it. He didn’t really have much option really because they had all crowded round it to attack it.

Once his companions had finished making killing a mimic look hard. Dram examined a book shelf that was near him. He was a little disappointed. There was nothing of interest there.

Dram went over to the desk. After the rug and mimic, Dram suspected that Glasstaff might have booby trapped the desk also. But magic comes with a price and Dram was prepared to pay that price.

As Dram opened the desk draw, a trap was tripped and he was wounded and poisoned. Inside was a glass marble, a silver potion and some weird looking glasses.

While fighting the affects of the poison Dram examined the spoils. He dipped his little finger into the potion. when he pulled out his finger, it was gone! This was a potion of invisibility. The glass marble when tapped lit up. It took Dram a little longer to figure out the strange looking glasses. But these allowed Dram to read dwarvish.

This was a pretty sweat stash to get his hands on. There was a certain book he was going to study in greater detail when he returned to his room at the inn.

Before continuing on the group decided to rest a little.

And that is where we leave our dysfunctional group of adventurers.

Standing on the precipice

D&D, RPG

Becoming a GM/DM is a big step. Well it is for me.

For those interested in trying D&D whose only exposure to it is the Critical Roll series on YouTube/Twitch and I assume Alpha, I think when they experience me as a GM/DM they are going to be a little disappointed. I’m not Matt Mercer. If anything I’m the opposite to Mercer. I’m not a voice actor for starters. Right I’m stopping there because I don’t want to get into a rant about Critical Roll.

So before I even step up and sit in that chair behind the DM screen I already feel an unrealistic pressure and expectations sitting heavy on my shoulders.

I’m not an extrovert or performer. There won’t be any voices and accents from me. It’s not who I am. Maybe it’s a confidence thing. I don’t know. I’m not that self aware. But I can’t help feeling that because I won’t be doing that stuff that the adventurers will be disappointed.

But despite these hang ups, I still want to try being a GM/DM.

For my first foray into being a noob GM I’m going to run a one shot adventure for noobs. The adventure I settled on is the one Matthew Colville created on camera for the first ‘real’ video in his Running the Game YouTube series (link below).

I could have gone with the Starter set and the adventure included Lost Mine of Phandelver. But that is more a campaign and runs over several sessions. It’s not aimed as being run as a single session. And that also holds true for some of the older starter adventures from D&D’s history. However Phandalin the town from it could be used as the starting point for this one shot. As could any of the towns that Corville (I’m going to refer to him by his last name through out this post. I don’t know the guy, and referring to him as Matthew seems too familiar. Last name seems right. Besides who cares what I call him it’s not as if he will read this ever.) suggests from older D&D adventures that he recommends in later videos, such as Hommlet or Orlane to name a couple.


Colville rightly points out in his video right at the start all you need to start playing D&D with some friends is an adventure (above), the rules, characters and some dice. And apart from the dice for trying out D&D as Colville also points out the stuff you need is free. WotC provide online a free basic rules pdf for 5th Edition (the link I have below goes to a page with the latest version). They also provide blank character sheets if you want to create your own characters. Or as recommended by Colville to get playing straight away use the pre-made characters they also provide (link below for both). It’s these pre-made characters I plan to use for this first adventure.

D&D 5th Edition Basic Rules

WotC Character Sheets and Ready Made Characters

Matthew Colville Youtube video Creating the adventure (it also has links to his files for the above, and an Inn,People and Menu document)

Luckily Colville doesn’t leave us noob GM’s hanging. The next two videos in the series cover running the adventure.

The first of the two videos deals with the start of the adventure, the motivation for the adventurers to visit the dungeon. Or as is pointed out in the video I could go old school and just start the adventurers at the entrance.

The second video surprisingly covers what goes on outside and in the dungeon. I really like this video. Colville covers tactics for the monsters, and how the noob adventurers will learn important lessons for future adventures. Stuff they may not have considered or experienced before. It’s also useful advice in running a dungeon for a noob GM.

But with those three videos, Colville’s supporting files, the free WotC stuff, a little prep and some dice there is everything there for an afternoon of adventuring.

For me as a noob GM this is a perfect little adventure to cut my teeth on. It’s also a perfect little adventure for people to try to see if they like D&D. The support material by Colville is accessible and makes it seem like you can sit in that chair behind the screen and breathe life in to a make believe world.

Now to find some thrill seekers to join me in this adventure.

Other videos I like and hint to or suggest in the post above:

The Town

SandBoxing!

The sandbox vs railroad

All Hail King Grull

D&D, game night, RPG


I don’t know when or how Matthew Colville first popped into the stuff Youtube recommends to me. I do remember that it was his reaction/explanation video for some key twist/event in the climax of Critical Roll season one.

A brief aside I’m not a fan of Critical Roll. I think it presents an unrealistic view and expectations of the majority of RPG sessions. Not every group is made up of voice actors, and all that over theatrical stuff.

Back to Matthew Colville. On his channel he has a series of videos giving advice to DMs both new and old. Which I’ve been dipping into, watching episodes that catch my interest.

I think it’s the opening video in the series where he creates a starting adventure off the top of his head. It’s impressive and demonstrates his decades of experience. It also looks like a nice little dungeon to use at the start of a campaign with new players. And from what I can tell has been run by a lot of folks.

However from all the videos I have watched so far, and enjoyed I decided to share the following one. It’s about sandbox campaigns. Colville has done another discussing on rails vs sandbox. I fall on the side of sandboxes. Hence why I’m sharing the video. But there are also a few links to adventures that he uses to seed his sandbox world. So it’s an amazing resource for those looking into running their own sandbox campaign. I’m a particularly new fan/convert to the Dungeon Delve and Book of Challenges. They look fantastic resources for a GM.

Sadly for an Android campaign doing something similar using existing published adventures isn’t going to happen. At best there will be that GenCon/Pax Unplugged two parter. So to do something similar would require a lot more work.

A Judge Dredd sandbox campaign on the other hand using suitable existing adventures as Colville has for D&D is do able. Before this latest Judge Dredd system using the WOIN came out, there were three other systems with their own supplements and adventures. So more material to work with.

So after that it’s about time we find out what Dram has been up to.

Gundren the dwarf was lying on the floor of the room in pretty bad shape.

“The dwarf needs healing!” shouted Dram.

But his words fell on deaf ears.

Dram tried once more to get the dwarf the help he desperately needed. But the other members of the party were wrapped up in their own petty little interests to listen or help.

Disgusted with the others Dram wandered off back to the hall where he had roasted the group of goblins. Leaving the dwarf to an uncertain future. He wasn’t happy about it. Dram had done all he could to help the dwarf. But healing wasn’t in his skill set. He had no potions or spells. He was a wizard not a Druid.

On his way to the hall Dram witnesses Ace lock Nick in a small room. “That was more important than helping the dwarf?” muttered Dram to no-one in particularly and shaking his head.

In the hall at the far end the charred remains of goblins littered the floor near to the blockage that Dram and Grull had created. But despite that burnt smell of goblin flesh wafting round the room, his nose hadn’t let him down. In the opposite corner to the bodies near to where he had entered the hall was a large pot of stew cooking.

Dram grabbed a spoon, dipped it in the pot. Tentatively Dram tasted the contents. It wasn’t the best stew he’d tasted, but it was not the worst either. It was edible whatever the mystery meat used was. He tucked in. Maybe a full stomach will easy his disgust at his companions.

After eating his fill of stew. Dram decided he better share the rest with the others.

On his way back to the others in the hall way there was an owl bear! It was a fleeting glimpse of this beautiful creature before it disappeared behind a curtain.

He had just seen an owl bear! He was surely one of the luckiest halflings ever.

Once the initial shock had worn off. dram shouted “I saw an owl bear!!!!”

The gnome and Sarmyar joined Dram in the hall way. The gnome wanted to get some food but was too scared to go by himself. But Dram wanted to see the owl bear again, so he went behind the curtain moments before that the owl bear had disappeared behind. The other two joined him.

The room they entered was empty. No sign of the owl bear. However in the outer wall was a gap leading to the outside. Dram reasoned it must have escaped the keep that way.

Back in the room where the wounded dwarf had been left, Dram was pleasantly surprised to see the dwarf back on his feet and looking a bit healthier than he had been.

Everyone was now back in the room with them. Including an unconscious Nick.

After short rest, a battered Nick was back on his feet.

A brief discussion was held on what to do next. Did the group rest so they were in better shape for the journey back to Phandaline, or did they set off immediately and risk the open road? Resting first won out. But Sarmyar decided to head off on her own.

The party returned back to the hall to eat and rest.

Early evening bought a surprise. As the sun set a war-band returned from it’s patrol.

As the war-band approached the keep, Grull came up with a cunning plan of negotiating with the war-band. It was risky, but it just might work.

Back in the room where the bugbear had been, and the dwarf had been found, Grull wearing the crown of the bugbear, sat on the throne. Declaring himself the king of the keep. On one side of the throne stood the gnome, hidden in the corner of the room was Ace. Nick was hiding in the side room. And Dram was on the other side of Grull ready to cast a spell.

Three hobgoblins and a couple of wolves entered the keep and blocked the doorway to the room.

Grull and the leader of the war-band parley. Apparently the previous occupants were not that popular with the war-band, and there was very little loyalty towards them. An agreement is arrived at despite the clumsiness of Ace dropping a hobgoblin head on the floor.

The war-band would get the keep, and the crown. And the party would leave without any trouble. Everyone was a winner.

The journey back to Phandaline was uneventful. They met up again with Sarmyar just outside of town.

In Phandaline Dram went back to his room at the inn, and ordered food and drink delivered to his room. Whilst in his room he sat at his table, opened up his spell book and started writing down some new spells.

He was feeling more powerful…

War of the Spark Weekend has no D&D

D&D, magic, MtG, RPG

As far as my FLGS is concerned the D&D side of the two Ravnica weekends were a success.

WotC had provided two scenarios for stores to use

  • Krenko’ s Way
  • A zib for your thoughts

Ok Krenko’s Way was from the at the time just released, or about to be released Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica source book. But had some pre-made characters with it.

A zib for your thoughts was a brand new adventure that picks up after Krenko’s Way. It can be used with the characters from the first adventure or with supplied characters (I didn’t manage to get a copy of these, they are not included in the scenario pdf).

Apparently the weekend equivalent to the two Ravnica Weekends for War of the Spark will not have a D&D crossover scenario. But it will have something new and exciting instead.

I’m interested to see what this new and exciting is. But also disappointed that WotC didn’t use a three adventure story arc. And continue it to it’s conclusion as an option along side whatever else they have planned.

They provide enough ideas for a further scenario to use at the end of the second scenario.

“If you’re continuing a campaign set on Ravnica, this adventure sows numerous seeds to use as a part of your campaign. If you’d like, you can review the list of questions below to help inspire future adventures:

• Who was Vezska’s client? What do they intend to do with the information they sought?

• Who is in possession of the vial at the end of the adventure?

• What is the identity of the Dimir operative that sent retrieval teams to obtain the vial?

• Didthepartywithholdanyadditionalinformation they learned?

• What do the etchings mean on the door that Delrim discovered?

• Are there any NPCs that could become future con- tacts for one or more characters?”

I know my FLGS would have liked another scenario. There are plenty of ideas above to create their own. Or they can use the advice contained in the excellent chapter 6 (if I recall correctly) of Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica for rolling your own adventures. Or find a third party one online. So they have options.

Maybe we will see the D&D stuff return when WotC move to their next plane, and I’m sure print their next source book for it.

Planning the Adventure

D&D, netrunner, RPG

With the Android source book most likely dropping in the next week. I thought I better get a move on with this series.

“Fundamentally, adventures are stories. An adventure shares many of the features of a novel, a movie, an issue of a comic, or an episode of a TV show. Comic series and serialized TV dramas are particularly good comparisons, because of the way individual adventures are limited in scope but blend together to create a larger narrative. If an adventure is a single issue or episode, a campaign is the series as a whole.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)

When I started this series of posts I hadn’t got to that part of the DMs Guide. But it confirms that I’m not completely crazy with my comparison and taking ideas from other forms of entertainment.

This post continues the high level approach to creating a campaign and the adventures that make it up. Future posts will look at the details. But for now we continue to steal, sorry stand on the shoulders of giants.

“The basic elements of good storytelling should guide you throughout this process, so your players experience the adventure as a story and not a disjointed series of encounters.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)

The One-Damn-Thing-After-Another structure based on as previously mentioned 1930’s serials like Buck Rogers is discussed by O’Neil briefly. It’s a simple structure that is basically a series of encounters between your party and some big bad. They keep trading blows until finally one side is victorious. And potentially could be seen as “a disjointed series of encounters.”

We have already seen in the Paranoia post on planning an adventure the use of The Three Act structure. In the Dungeon Masters Guide they use beginning,middle,end for telling a story. Which is basically the Three Act structure.

In the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics we get presented with O’Neil’s Heavy-Duty, Industrial-Strength Structure for a Single-Issue Comic Book Story. Which happens to be the authors version of the Three Act structure that they developed over their many years in the comic book industry.

“Act 1

  • The Hook
  • Inciting incident
  • Establish situation and conflict
  • Act 2
      • Develop and complicate situation
  • Act 3
      • Events leading to:
  • The climax
      • Denouement“

    Act 1

    For my planning using the above structure the hook and inciting incident are combined into one. The inciting incident aka “the event that causes our party to react, that provides the danger or puzzle or task that galvanises our party into action.” (O’Neal) is how we get the story moving and entice our party.

    Establishing the situation, conflict, and the McGuffin should all fall naturally within that inciting incident, and the opening scene setting.

    But what is a McGuffin?

    “A McGuffin is what the hero and villain are fighting over… The only thing that matters is that the plans, documents, secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters… it must be credible. If the conflict is over something inconsequential or silly, your hero is diminished…” (O’Neal)

    Act 2

    “take the story in a new direction. Something unexpected happens…” So in terms of the scenario or campaign, we are adding plot twists, complications, new situation(s).

    Act 3

    This is it the climax of the adventure. The player characters have solved the biggest problems, maybe even all of them. Defeated the threat, and restored order to the world. To paraphrase O’Neil. If this is the end of the story arc it could be the big finale, the final confrontation between the players and the big bad.

    Denouement

    For our purposes this ties up loose ends, has the heroes returning/delivering items, returning to base, shopping. And set up the next or future adventure.

    So that’s a quick look at a basic structure to use for adventures.

    In the comic book world there are basically two schools of thought on script development, full scripts and plot first aka “The Marvel Way of Plotting”. This is relevant to us planning our adventures because we have a similar choice. Our equivalent of the full script is the full adventure with all the details. Or we can go with the Marvel Way.

    These posts I’m writing are starting at a macro level, and then zooming in to the micro. Which means because I am still at that macro level for this post I’m going to focus on the Marvel Way.

    Stan Lee “With the Marvel style, I would give the artists the broad outlines of the story, and fill in the dialogue after the penciling was completed.”

    Once I’m happy with the campaign planning, and the plots I’ve created. I can zoom in and do the detail. For me that detail is the equivalent of the drawing of the comic book, and the subsequent dialogue.

    So what I’m proposing is that for each of the three acts a paragraph or two is written describing what is happening story wise.

    Which means I haven’t gone into lots of detail, but I have a good overview

    I do appreciate that so far that all this planning is for a linear medium. Where as the nature of an RPG is non-linear. Or it is if you don’t keep the players on the path and stop them wondering off. So I think that there is potential to learn from the video game industry on this front. I’ll have to look through my text books and hope that I can find stuff online.

    But that will be for a future post. For now I’ll leave this here and keep an eye out for the postman and hope they are carrying a parcel for me.

    Exhausted but fighting on!

    D&D, game night, RPG


    I hope you have enjoyed the last couple of days of no posts happening. For you dear suffering readers the positive side of me being ill for a couple of days. Sadly as this post shows I’m back.

    The astute amongst you will have noticed I’ve been doing posts recently about planning a RPG campaign and in a soon to be finished and published post plotting an adventure.

    I thought in this first half of this post I’d share the tools/apps I’ve been using in getting ready for my first time as a GM and the Android universe.

    I’m a fan of both the physical and digital versions of books. So for the digital side I use the two most popular apps for ebooks the Kindle app and iBooks. DrivethruRpg is a great source of RPG books and their digital format of choice is the watermarked pdf. I use iBooks mainly for pdfs. For me it’s the better experience for the consumption of a pdf than the Kindle app.

    The advantage of the digital version of a book is it’s easier for me to create my own custom cheat sheets. I can copy and paste the information I need. Plus I find it’s easier to print a page from the ebook than photocopy a page from the physical book.

    This is why PDF Expert is included here. It enables me to manipulate and extract information from a pdf. It also allows me to select pages from the original and create a separate pdf with the pertinent pages for printing, and keeping for future reference.

    I’m a big fan of brainstorming apps. That’s why iThoughts (mindmaps), Outliner (outlines) and GoodNotes (general note taking with an Apple Pencil) are here. These are the apps I capture ideas and plan.

    Scrivener is a writing app. It is focused on writing, but it’s a very flexible app that works round projects, which can have research notes within the project. This is where the adventure gets written. The research functionality is amazing, and being able to include or not include sections is really handy.

    I’ve included MS Word here, but it could also be Pages. This is the app I use for creating my custom cheat sheets.

    Finally I’ve included Pixelmator for any image manipulation that’s needed. This really is one of my favourite apps. It makes it look like a can create graphics.

    I have recently found a couple of apps for creating dungeon maps randomly which I need to play with. Once I have I’ll talk about them here. I know my friend Edmund, and the GM for the D&D 5e campaign I’m playing in uses his autodesk expertise to create the maps we get to use in our sessions (which are rather good). So I’ve downloaded the iPad version of it to play with.

    Finally before we get onto the dramatic retelling of last nights shenanigans FFG are looking at character creation with in Shadow of the Beanstalk (the Genesys source book for the Android universe) this week along with the taster scenario. People that pre-ordered directly from FFG are starting to receive their copies. Although not shown on this weeks sheet for new releases that Asmodee UK, one or two are saying it’s available tomorrow (Thursday). But I tend to think more likely that it will drop next week. However this wouldn’t be the first time something gets released that is not on the sheet. So basically Shadow of the Beanstalk due out any day now.

    And now we rejoin Dram and the rag tag team he is currently having adventures with…

    Feeling magically spent. Dram really felt like he could do with a long rest to recoup.

    But considering there was still unknown threats in the rest of the unexplored castle the likely hood of that happening were very remote.

    He’d have to push on through the exhaustion and use his cantrips as much as he can to back up the others. They’d just have to accept that is all he had left at the moment. No big theatrical spells to save the rests butts for the time being.

    After a very brief discussion the party started to move through the rest of the castle room by room. Ace would first check any closed door, and listen for any signs of danger the other side of the door.

    This started off well, Dram was hanging back, Ace was taking the risks.

    Ace disappeared into one room that turned out to be a chapel only to be ambushed by three goblins. Dram in his exhausted state was happy to let the others rush in and help Ace out and nullify the goblin threat.

    Once the sounds of battle stopped Dram joined the rest in the chapel. The group made their way to the far end of the chapel and the unblocked door.

    Ace again repeated the drill of checking the door. Despite the gnome having already checked it. Ace could be heard mumbling under his breathe something about being better at it than the short arse.

    The party piled into a small hallway. As Dram was examining a curtain over what looked like a door way. A scream of immense agony could be heard coming from the chapel. It was Nick. He had been attacked.

    The others once again rushed into the chapel to help Nick. Before doing the same Dram peaked behind the curtain to make sure there would be no surprises coming from that direction.

    Dram joined the fray. Surrounded by the party in the middle was a grey stone coloured serpent like creature with four tentacles surrounding its beak. It was a Grick. A Grick caught in the mouth of a dire wolf. Nick had gone all canine on it. Dram used Grull as cover as he tried to use his cantrip shocking grasp on the Grick. His hand sparked blue and just as quickly faded away. The cantrip failed to connect.

    Before Dram had another chance to try again with the shocking grasp the Grick was dispatched by the rest of the party.

    Back in the hall way Ace checked another door and heard voices the other side of it.

    Unusual for Ace he stepped back and prepared himself to attack anything that appeared from behind the door.

    Dram pushed open the door and stood back out of the way.

    Suddenly a hobgoblin appeared in the door way. There was a sudden flash of metal as Ace swung in and killed it.

    A whoosh of air could be heard as Sarmyar let lose an arrow through the open door into the room. Closely followed by the javelin of Grull.

    The party rushed into the room, jumping over the hobgoblin corpse. In the room was a fat goblin and a seriously wounded hobgoblin. The hobgoblin was quickly killed by adventurers. But the fat goblin was sneakier than expected and disappeared off behind a curtain door. Ace gave chase. Throwing caution to the wind, not waiting for back up.

    Back up (minus Nick would had decided to stay behind in the room with the hobgoblin corpses) finally caught up with Ace in a small hallway. Just as he disappeared into a room. The whelps of a wolf could be heard from the room.

    As the back up bundled in to back up Ace, they were greeted with the scene of Ace standing over a badly wounded wolf, a disgruntled bugbear, the fat goblin and a seriously injured dwarf laying on the floor.

    Sarmyar’ s panther attacked the fat goblin, while Grull and the gnome took on the bugbear. Once again Dram used Grull as a shield as he used his Ray of Frost cantrip to attack the badly wounded wolf.

    In all the confusion that is combat, another enemy used that confusion to it’s advantage to attack the party from its hiding place. It was a female Drow.

    As the wolf was killed by a particularly effective bolt of ice from Dram’s cantrip, Ace was knocked to the ground badly injured by the Drow. Before the bugbear followed its pet wolf to the next world, it took the gnome out.

    It was at this point that the Drow decided to make a run for it. She grabbed a parchment off a small table in front of Dram and made for the door. However her escape was blocked off by Nick and Sarmyar. The Drow was soon surrounded by the party. Sarmyar grabbed the parchment off her, while a ropey Ace, blade to her throat tried to interrogate her. With no answers forthcoming Ace took revenge on the Drow by slitting her throat.

    While this was going on Dram administered a healing potion to the downed gnome that had been given to him by Ace.

    And that is where we leave our adventurers for another week.