Category Archives: RPG

A pleasant surprise

Dragonbane, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, new arrivals, RPG

This morning I got an unexpected delivery. I had zero knowledge about it. So I was curious to find out what was in the box.

Back at the start of the year during the whole WotC OGL fiasco Free League were taking post Kickstarter preorders on their Dragonbane box set.

Feeling a bit miffed at WotC at the time I took a look at it and decided to throw my money in its direction. And then promptly forgot about it.

Then around April time Free League sent a remind to people on their mailing list announcing the closing of preorders. I couldn’t remember if I’d preordered or not. I couldn’t find an email confirmation and there was no response from Free League when I contacted them to see if I had.

So I assumed I had not gone through with the preorder for whatever reason at the time. And thought nothing more of it.

Jump forward to UKGE. Before the show I had a plan to pick up some of the Free League bits I wanted like stuff for Vaesen, The One Ring, and Twilight 2000. And yes Dragonbane if it was there was on the list.

But the Amen-Re deluxe edition, and the luxury poker chips killed off that plan.

So I was very pleasantly surprised when I opened the package this morning to find a copy of Dragonbane inside.

It more than holds up to the high standard of the other box sets that Free League puts out.

You can get a free QuickStart on DriveThruRPG.

Tomorrow will see the arrival hopefully of a new living card game I’ve decided to get into to. No I hear you I don’t play Marvel Champions regularly enough. So why am I getting into another?

The whole LoTR MtG set, and the War of the Ring the card game got me yearning more LoTR.

So I investigated the LoTR card game by FFG. I knew there had been a revised edition released a couple years back. Which meant you didn’t need two core sets to play up to four players. Plus they were reprinting sets under the new model of a character box and a campaign box. Plus some of the more harder to get and out of print sets were getting this treatment.

So I caved and ordered the new revised core set, two of the four starter sets (dwarf and elf), plus the mission pack.

That should be enough to get Nathan and me started.

Who knows I might find the odd player at home too.

Next steps after free D&D

D&D, DM/GM Tips, RPG

You have played a game or two of D&D using the free resources and decided you like the game and want to get deeper into the WotC 5th Edition rabbit hole.

The obvious place to go next is to get one of the two starter sets or the essentials kit. But which?

You have to decide you want to create my own characters or not? If the answer is yes then the you go for the essentials kit. Otherwise you need to decide which starter set to choose.

Old starter set
New starter set
The two Starter sets

Both of the Starter sets are good. Both have similar contents (basic rules, set of dice, pregen characters, adventure book). So it’s down to the adventure and availability.

Obviously the older of the two sets will be (eventually) the harder to get. However the included adventure Lost Mines of Phandelver is pretty good, and later this year WotC are publishing an adventure book that follows on from it.

The new starter set also has a pretty good adventure called Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. The advantage of this set is it’s a bit more DM friendly.

If you went with the essentials kit you get basic rules that cover creating rules, set of dice, DM screen, blank character sheets, condition cards, map, sidekick cards, item cards, combat reference cards, and the adventure Dragon of icespire peak.

After you have finished whichever of the kits you chose you will need the D&D 5e holy trinity of the Players Handbook (PHB), Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG), and Monster Manual (MM).

After the holy trinity your options are unlimited. You can run published adventures official or third party. Or create your own.

However I would recommend the Lazy DM series as a supplement to the DMG. I look on these books as the stuff the DMG forgot to tell you.

I’d start with the Return of the Lazy DM. This introduces you to a way of prepping your session that I really like. It does cut down on the amount of time required to prep. You can read about the steps in the Lazy GM’s Resource Document (which is a great resource).

The Lazy DM Workbook is a great book to have to hand whilst running a session. It’s full of useful tables, and ten generic maps.

The Lazy DM Companion has great advice in it for running D&D, plus pages of adventure generators, and maps. This is an amazing resource for planning your session.

Finally Forge of Foes is all about monsters. It’s only pre-order at the mo, with physical and pdf available later this year. Kickstarter backers have early access to the pdf. Not sure if a pre-order also gets it. But this allows you to create your own monsters, improvise monsters at the table, has advice about running monsters. It’s the missing sections from the MM.

All four have sample pdfs available that are useful without needing the rest of the book. Mike Shae has demonstrated this on his YouTube channel.

Also the resource document I linked to above has some of the content from the books too.

#RPGaDAY Returns For 2023

#RPGaDAY2023, RPG

The post title says it all really.

I think it’s the tenth anniversary as well of this annual rpg event. Which I’ve been doing for four years now. Not always at the time the event was running because I missed it running.

Naturally I’ll be participating in this years celebration of all things rpg when it kicks off at the start of August.

It’s been a busy week

D&D, life, the universe, and everything, new arrivals, RPG, still alive

It’s been a busy and tiring week at work. Which has left me too tired to try and arrange any midweek gaming.

My attempt to get some gaming in last night failed. No one was free or interested in playing some roll and writes. And I had to turn down an invite to learn Marrakesh as it would have meant finishing too late.

So it looks like June is on course for being a slow month of gaming, and I don’t have a car issue as an excuse this time.

Work wise I’ve stepped up the job search as the clock counts down to the end of my temp contract. Apparently there is a full time contract, they are timetabling as if I’m there next year. However I’ve not seen anything yet to sign.

At the start of the week the latest promo packs and solo mode for Rolling Realms arrived. It’s getting to the point now that an alternate storage solution needs to be found for the game. I think with the Encounters promo pack that comes out at the same time as when the game does that’s it. The limit for everything in the original game box has been reached.

So yesterday out of the blue my pre-order of Tome of Beasts 3 by Kobold Press arrived.

I am a big fan of the Kobold press pocket editions of their books. I love the format. It’s so handy. Goes nicely in a bag to read on public transport or in bed. I just love it compared to the larger books like the Monster Manual.

I currently have two other of their creature books, Tome of Beasts 2, and Creature Codex. With the updated Tome of Beasts pre-ordered (out next month if memory doesn’t fail me).

For me I actually prefer these Kobold Press offerings to the official WotC equivalents. They feel fresh and fire the imagination more. The art is amazing. Which helps fire that imagination.

There is also the benefit that unless your players also have purchased the books that they are unlikely to have come across the creatures in them. So when they encounter one it’s a surprise and refreshing to them also.

I’m looking forward to flicking through the pages of this latest volume and seeing what grabs me.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #15

D&D, D&D Grp2, post mortem, 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. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else. Just say no to metagaming!

Our fifteenth session. How did that happen?

We were on player down this session due to life events.

The “Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook: A Complete Guide to Harvesting and Crafting in D&D 5e” was used a couple of times to harvest from fallen opponents. I thought they worked well from a DM’s point of view. I do need to get some player feedback on them at some point. But they do make a lot of sense both mechanically and thematically. I’ll definitely be purchasing the two remaining pdfs that cover the other two official monster books. I’d love it if they covered the Tome of Beasts series of books also. But sadly they don’t. Hopefully my work-in-progress will help on that front.

Most of the session was a combat encounter between an orc, four thugs, and two gnomes.

I don’t like fudging dice rolls. So it is very very annoying that I roll high on initiative for the monsters, but mainly low on combat rolls.

In the combat I did split the party using a portcullis that provided an extra challenge to the situation. But see the previous paragraph for why this just delayed things instead of making the situation more dangerous.

I did have the monsters walk into the trap that the adventurers set, not to just reward the party for thinking of it, but it also felt like something the monsters would do.

Our session was cut short when one of the group had life call them up and call them back to base. We could have continued however having just finished the combat we were at a natural break point.

Playing D&D 5e for FREE (2023 edition)

D&D, DM/GM Tips, RPG

I thought it was about time to update the links etc for how to play D&D 5e for free.

The only outlay you need to make is for some dice, pen/pencil and paper. Oh and for printing out some character sheets. Otherwise using an electronic device of some kind you can use everything else digitally.

First up you need the rules. Luckily WotC released the core rules to Creative Commons earlier in the year. Sadly it’s not all the classes, spells and monsters. But it’s a good chunk. So you need to get the D&D 5e SRD .

In a couple of weeks time Mike Shea aka Sly Flourish will be putting some of his Lazy DM stuff out under a Creative Commons license. And as Mike said on his live steam/podcast this week once out this could almost be considered the DM Guide for with the SRD.

However while you wait you can get the samples from one or two of the full products for free (which may have some over lap with the stuff that gets released under the Creative Commons).

So you can get a really useful sample of the Lazy DM companion, and Forge of Foes for free.

Using bits of these you can create your own adventures and monsters and never need to buy a thing. Yes really! Mike has videos on his YouTube channel where he shows these two documents in use. Well worth watching.

But if you are creating your own adventures you might need a map. Dyson Logos is the only place you need to go. He has hundreds of maps you can use in your own games for free. Plus if you watched one of those Mike Shea ol’ YouTube videos I mentioned earlier he uses a Dyson Logos map for the adventure he created using the extracts, and you get to see how to populate the dungeon.

But maybe you want some free monsters, etc to drop in your adventures made by a publisher. You know cut down on the work you have to do. Well Kobold Press have your back.

Kobold Press have a lot of their stuff under the OGL, which you can get here. I personally prefer the Kobold Press monsters to the WotC stuff.

A great free first adventure to try is the The Delian Tomb by Matt Colville.

You can get free blank character sheets here. The link also has some pregenerated characters to.

Now Mr Shea also has some free adventures and pregenerated character sheets that are samples of his various books, Fantastic Locations, Fantastic Adventures, Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot, and Fantastic Lairs. You’ll find the download links on pages I link to.

I hope folks find this useful, and get to try D&D 5e for free (if they have the dice already).

Out of the Shadowdark #1

one shot, post mortem, RPG, Shadowdark

Last night was my first ever time running a Shadowdark rpg session.

As I have said in the session planning posts we were using the adventure that comes with the free Quick Start Kit, The Scarlet Minotaur. Which meant naturally we were also using the rules that come in that kit. Sadly the full rules are in Backerkit limbo at the moment.

I had hoped I would have access to the pdf version of the full rule set by the time we played. But I knew it would be cutting it close.

Not having the full rule set did not stop us having fun.

Anyway like my D&D post mortems I will be looking at what worked, what didn’t during the session.

First off I have to say I love the mechanic for torches, where they last one hour real time. It does force the players to be a bit more focused in their discussions about what to do.

Related to that I think the always on initiative order also helped and made sure everyone got to do something and had their moment.

I did think I was going to have a tpk with the very first encounter with the party. One of the party made a loud noise in the very first room that when I rolled to see if an encounter occurred, it did. Then I rolled to see what the encounter was and it was a massive centipede. Although I did give the party 2 xp at the end of the combat, as I thought they had earnt it defeating a level 4 monster.

Luckily my rolls as the GM were not good, although I did get a couple of hits in. It was getting close for one of them.

And after that first encounter roll, I never rolled another encounter all evening!

It took a while for the wizard to get used to how spell casting worked. They felt they should be doing more than just casting magic missile. But as we discussed at the end of the session there is that push your luck element to casting magic. Where if you fail the casting check you lose the spell until you have rested. Plus there is the whole issue of the natural 1 and the negative things that can happen.

If you compare the GM area for the session to the one I have for D&D I’ve never played with so little gear. But it also means the rolls, etc were in the open.

It did help having a print out of the annotated level map to refer to, whilst I had an A3 copy of the map on the table for the players.

For me the jury is still out for the movement in combat. The close,near, and far. It kinda worked for me. I think it flowed better.

My cheat sheet was useful. I did find myself referring to it more than once. But thats not a surprise whilst using a new system and still getting to grips with it.

I would like a Shadowdark version of the monster and spell cards that Kelsey did for D&D 5e. I like these as a quick reference that way I’m not forever flicking between pages.

Overall we had fun, and another session to continue further into the dungeon is on the books.

Venturing into the Shadowdark #3

one shot, RPG, session planning, Shadowdark

In less than three hours (as I write this) I will be setting up and playing Shadowdark.

My current workload (marking assignments) has made me regret planning a mid week session. But we live and learn and I’m pretty sure I’ll repeat the mistake again and again.

Waiting for me at home will be a printout of the fourth and final monster sheet that Kelsey did for the Kickstarter. That arrived earlier in the day along with a load of other printing I had done.

I did finish a preliminary GM cheat sheet for Shadowdark last night. Which I’m hoping will be useful this evening. I’ll go more into that during the post mortem.

I’ve also printed out the annotated dungeon map from the Quick Start Kits GM guide for the adventure we are playing tonight. Which will be handy. Just a shame it’s not available as a single A3 image.

As I was grabbing my stuff together for this evening first thing (so I can just get home grab everything and shoot back out) it struck me just how minimalist this session will be.

There will be a photo (shared via Instagram) this evening. But this is going to be shocking. I’ll definitely make sure the photo is in the post mortem.

I did download last night the YouTube videos from the previous post so I can listen to them in the car on the drive to and from work. It’s a shame this stuff isn’t available as a podcast. But this is the next best thing. Just a little inconvenient getting it onto the phone.

I am about as ready as I can be. A tad nervous. But as long as we have fun.

D&D Grp 2 Session 15 Planning #1

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

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

It’s that time again to start thinking, planning, and plotting for the next session.

I finally got my hands on a wooden box to home a certain infamous deck. I think this will make an intriguing prop for the players.

I want a bag for the deck of illusions. However I’ve not found one I like yet.

Another arrival as a quality of life thing as a DM is a card quiver. This is now the home of my npc, dungeon map, quest, taroka, condition, and encounter decks.

As the photo shows I’ve added one or two stickers to the case.

A Three-Dragon Ante deck also turned up. I think this will be an interesting prop for one or two sessions. I want to make taverns more interesting.

I need to finish my harvesting sheet (it’s two pages) for use at the next session. I’m sure they will want to harvest the basilisk, and the “Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook: A Complete Guide to Harvesting and Crafting in D&D 5e” has some great rules for doing this.

After that I need to look at crafting.

This next session the party will finally meet Rullus and his minions. I’ve not decided how it will play out. I still need to stat him out. Although his minions will be thugs.

Right time to end this post and play a little Doom for that mega series of hot air.

Grp2: When last we left our heroes… #14

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

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one. Don’t give in to temptation go read something else. Just say no to metagaming!

Over the course of this campaign we’ve had one founding player leave (personal reasons). Plus two new players join. With one of those briefly with us before our schedule got back on track and clashed with other stuff.

So we had space at the table for a new player.

Graham is a friend of Shane’s who he plays in another group with.

He’s playing a cleric sent to look after Jeb.

I think the session went well with Graham and looking forward to adventuring with him.

The session itself was once again wandering around the endless warrens looking for Rullus Hobb and his hostages.

The party awoke from their long rest to lizard folk holding the hostage Luke’s character Drenol and Grahams. This was the best I could come up with of introducing a new character to the game mid dungeon.

I think this could have been better. Especially if I’d made the game of Life or Death best of three for the freedom of the hostages.

I’ve tried not having this dungeon crawl be one where the players are fighting for every foot they explore. However I think the players are not enjoying the exploring side based on comments like “not more tunnels and doors”.

Despite that major drawback. I think using the Caves of Chaos map, alongside the dungeon encounters deck has worked well from a DM make it up as you go way.

The dungeon encounter cards have been interesting especially in seeing how the players react or interpret the cards encounter. Sometimes they read too much into the encounter and I’ve just rolled with it.

The big combat encounter at the end was a “swarm” of skeletons. However with the rogue character using psychic blades from a distance I decided to introduce a second threat (a basilisk) coming in behind the rogue.

The reason I went basilisk was because one of the encounter cards had one on, I had the 2D standee handy too.

I think it went ok. The basilisk did some damage. The rogue learnt hiding and throwing psychic blades is not always going to be safe.

Right I’ve got some prep to do for the next session.