SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
At the moment the party are pretty battered. They need a long rest. But first they need to get out of the sewers. I think Tantalos Whitetail will have to give the party a parting gift of restoring some of their HP. After all there are shriekers, a gelatinous cube, and maybe some other unnamed creatures still in the sewers.
I have the Mot the Sporeling mini from MCDM (but needs to be cut and glued) that is a Sporeling Companion. I’m very tempted to introduce Mot to the party. An even bigger temptation is to run the gelatinous cube as a companion. I need to read the MCDM rules on companions first. Some light reading for the weekend.
When the party finally make it to Adel’s Emporium of Magical Relics the party need a new job from Adel after they have rested. I’ve got time to rewatch some Warehouse 13 episodes for inspiration. Failing that I do have the Lazy DM Companion Hunt for the Relic page, plus the City of Arches adventure generator pages to fall back on for inspiration.
Well that’s my brainstorming so far. Maybe I’ll get more inspired whilst at work!
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Looks like I need to get back to the library earlier than planned to print out the new stuff from the update to the City of Arches I need in my DM folder to aid in the prep for the next session and the subsequent ones.
What’s new in the City of Arches pdf
Obviously the two pages that make up the adventure generator will be printed. This is a version of the Core Adventure Generator from the Lazy DM Companion geared towards the City of Arches.
The new side map is a must. To give you an idea what this looks like I’ve put a snippet below. I will need to create a relevant snippet for Mark to aid in his characters knowledge of the city.
Finally the new location descriptions will need to be printed out.
I’m glad this update has been released. It will be very helpful in preparing the next session.
After tying up the two Children of Ibraxus cult members that they had captured to the alter in the crypt entryway. Our party of adventurers headed off to find a safer place to have a short rest.
The party decided to rest by the arch in the Sunset Grove.
At the end of the break Quintus Harrowtoes disappeared through a door in the base of the arch.
The party followed after him, descending into the sewers below the City of Arches.
Quintus was moving too fast for them. All they heard as he disappeared was “this way”.
Jeb shouted very loudly to try and get Quintus to come back to them. But it was to no avail. Although it did seem to alert the inhabitants of the sewer to their presence down there.
Whilst looking for Quintus the party came across a web column dotted with cocoons in the middle of the central chamber that lead down to the lower level.
As the party descended down the spiral stairs Babs was attacked by a Giant Spider. Battle ensued, and the eventual defeat of the Giant Spider.
On the lower level the party ignored the fleeing swarm of rats to stumble upon the liar of a Giant Crocodile.
It was here they discovered the torso of Quintus amongst the remains of other prey moments before being attacked by said Giant Crocodile.
Things weren’t looking good for the party. They were most certainly looking at a very brief future. That is until the timely appearance of the wizard Tantalos Whitetail. Who sent the Giant Crocodile back to slumber in the depths of its lair.
After introductions and a brief admonishment about waking up the Giant Crocodile, Tantalos gave the party directions on how to find their way out of the sewers into the Lower Reaches.
And that’s where we left our party.
Post Mortem
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.
I’d like to say I was writing my session notes this morning whilst drinking my usual hot mug of caffeinated liquid. But I wasn’t. I was writing my session notes whilst my coffee sat next to me forgotten. It was so cold by the time I’d remembered.
My DM Notes
Once again my morning before the session sees me at the library printing stuff out. This time it was the following:
Sewer Lair map from Lazy DM Workbook A3 x 2
Location descriptions for Sewer Lair map from Lazy DM Workbook A4 2 pages
Secrets and Clues page from Lazy DM Companion A4
Points Crawl page from Lazy DM Companion A4
Annotated map of City of Arches A4
I’d printed a copy of the city map for Mark. His character grew up in the City of Arches. So they should know their way around. I also said Mark’s character should also know one area of the city really well. Mark was told not to share this map with the others.
I did two copies of the Sewer Lair because I wanted to annotate one with the notes for the session, and have the other to use whenever.
Being early to the session gave me time to finish off my notes for the session whilst sitting outside in the sunny but cool breeze weather. Which was basically coming up with the secrets and clues. Then when our venue was open I was able to get our play area set up.
My DM Prep
As you can see above the warning cards giving valuable advice to the players are back. They should be there every session. However that can only happen if you remember to take the index card box with them in to the session.
Today there was no nice A3 printed map for the players. No 3D terrain or battle map. Instead I was drawing sections of the map on small dry erase boards (see photo below). This seems to have worked ok.
Map drawn on dry erase boards
I could have killed the party today, it was very close. The Giant Crocodile was way too over powered for the party. Made more deadly I think because they were not recovered from the run in with the Giant Spider. Maybe I should have used a regular crocodile or two instead.
As you may have guessed from the rather dull dramatic retelling of the sessions story. I did indeed intervene to save the party by having an NPC turn up and rescue them.
I did try and warn the party that there was something dangerous ahead with the fleeing swarm of rats. But as you gathered that subtle warning was ignored.
Although the Giant Crocodile made story sense. At CR5 it was way way over powered for these none rested or healed level 2 characters.
The Party of Adventurers
I did hand out an inspiration token today. But not really as a reward for good roleplay etc. More to help counter none optimal decisions.
The Creature and NPC, and Monster cards really do work well for me. Having just what I need for the session plus some “favourites” that are campaign related to call upon does cut down on what I have to carry with me to a session. I’d love something like these for the Tomb of Beasts 2.
Right now to start working out how to get the party out of the sewer alive!
You know it’s the law that I have to say the following.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
It only clicked yesterday that the players characters haven’t healed or had a long rest yet. So when levelling up they should not be increasing their current hit points to match their new maximum. So I reminded them of this today. Better late than never.
I think I’ve also settled on how session two will start. As the party are escorting the two cultist prisoners to the business establishment of their patron, they will be ambushed by other members of the Children of Ibraxus cult.
It will be a “you are are surrounded and out numbered. Handover your prisoners.”
From there who knows what will happen!
I’m leaning towards the party having to go into the sewers to locate a relic. The old urban legend about crocodiles/alligators living in the sewers of L.A. I feel like making that a real thing in the sewers of the City of Arches. Others creatures I’d like to use possibly are a swarm of rot grubs, and definitely a swarm of rats. I’m also feeling pulled towards using some oozes, maybe a cube of some sort.
I had the Creature and NPC Cards by Gale Force Nine arrive today. I have the cards they do that cover the Monster Manual. Which I like. They are handy to just have the relevant monster cards for the sessions encounters to hand without having to carry the Monster Manual with you. So now I can do the same with the creatures and NPCs.
As the bottom photo above shows the way I store them for use at a session is with some Ultra Pro 9 Pocket folder pages. Obviously these go in my DM folder with all my other notes.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
As soon as a session finishes the clock resets and the countdown begins once more until the next session.
I did cave at the end of the first session and let the players level up their characters. Naturally I’m waiting for the new stats to be sent to me. I’ll probably send a gentle reminder at the weekend.
Although I suspect I’ll be running The Delian Tomb next session or a variant. I might stick to goblins. Plus maybe add one or two other surprises, such as a slime or two.
I think my main prep will be to come up with more “jobs” for the party to do for their patron.
This campaign could easily turn into a D&D version of Warehouse 13. I don’t mind having them retrieve the artifact of the week so to speak. But like Warehouse 13 I need that story arc, a big bad for them to lock horns with.
For this I think the “Hunt For The Relic” adventure generator in the Lazy DM Companion might be very handy for generating the artifacts for them to go after.
The nice thing is some of these artifacts can be keys to opening one of the many arches that give the City of Arches it’s name.
There is also with the arches the opportunity to have the “alien” of the week mashup like episodes with them arriving at the city through an arch. This could be very Star Trek/Stargate like. Or there is even the chance for them to visit other realms via the arches and the relics they retrieve. Once again very Stargate or The Time Tunnel influenced.
I think that’s enough brainstorming for this post. Catch you in the next one.
Our intrepid adventurers found them self at a doorway to one of the many crypts lining the Cliffs of the Dead above the City of Arches.
They had been hired by their patron, Adel Rosethorn, to enter the crypts, find her lost adventurer Quintus Harrowtoes, and locate a lost artefact the obsidian skull.
The adventurers freed Quintus from two members of the Children of Ibraxus cult in the Crypts entryway. Who had been aggressively asking him questions. After administering some first aid to Quintus, he guided the party deeper into the crypt looking for the obsidian skull.
After avoiding a booby trap in the Collapsing Catacombs they came across more members of the Children of Ibraxus cult. Who were led by Irvana Blackstar who is performing a ritual with the obsidian skull to open a portal to the abyssal plane of the Choul in the chamber’s gilded arch.
More violence ensued. Two badly injured cult members survived. Although during the enthusiastic questioning of the party they wouldn’t reveal details of their cult, they did try and barter for freedom with information about a recently discovered tomb that possibly contained a magical sword.
The party were left outside the crypts ready to return to the shop of relics, and Adel Rosethorn.
Post Mortem
You know I have to say this, just in case.
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.
“If they are having fun, then you are doing it right.”
I can’t remember who said the above quote, most likely Mike Shae aka Sly Flourish or Jim Murphy. But it does seem to sum up this first session with the new group.
The session lasted between an hour and a half and two hours. I thought it might have lasted a little longer. Because of that I was very tempted to throw a surprise encounter at them on the way out. But I couldn’t justify story wise having a skeleton, stirge or shrieker attacking them. It just didn’t make sense of them suddenly appearing.
In the session zero I had said I would not roll for initiative but use cards instead. Guess who forgot to take the cards with him? So we had to roll for initiative. I did speed it up by pre-rolling some d20s and recording their values to use during the session for the monsters initiative.
I thought the meeples, A3 map, and the use of index cards to hide bits of the map, worked well. Especially because it was a small map that came out at a usable size at A3.
The aid spell helped avoid a tpk during the climatic fight with the cultists doing the ritual. So that was a good call. The party have levelled up at the end of this short adventure. So no more Mr Nice Guy. Although they do have three healing potions that they found. That was a deliberate decision I made. One less than the number in the party. It forces them to make decisions of who gets them when they are needed.
As for running a published adventure. This short two pager was a pleasant experience. I did like the way Mike Shae wrote it. I only needed to dig the stats out for the cultist fanatic and cultists. Although stats for the npc Quintus Harrowtoes would have been nice.
Next session is in 2 weeks. I’m looking forward to it.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Tomorrow (Saturday, well today when this gets posted) is session 1 of the group 2 campaign.
I was going to use the Core Adventure Generator from The Lazy DM’S Companion. However as I was looking through the City of Arches pdf there was a two page adventure at the end called The Obsidian Skull.
It is described as “…a two-hour adventure for two to five 1st level characters set in the City of Arches. The characters reach 2nd level when completing this adventure.” City of Arches pdf
This sounded perfect. I haven’t run a “published” adventure before. The nearest I’ve come is the Delian Tomb adventure by Matt Colville for first time DM’s. But that was very bare bones, basically an annotated map!
I need to change a couple of things to suit our campaign, such as the patron and the reason the adventurers are there. But they are minor changes to make.
Today involved visiting the library to print some bits off ready for tomorrow.
Ok the first two aren’t actually needed. Well might be. I might not advance the party to level 2 at the end of this first adventure. I’ll make that decision at the end of the session.
The two A3 maps are player handouts for the session. Although the city map will be used for multiple sessions.
Oh before I forget here is how the party are made up.
The Group 2 Characters
I still have some Secrets and Clues to do. But these I’ll do tomorrow morning. I like one or two prompts from the Lazy DM Companion Creating Secrets and Clues page. Such as “What family history might be revealed?”, “What dungeon entrance just became revealed?” or “What monsters recently appeared in the realm?”
I get the feeling that the party may not be leaving the catacombs of the Cliffs of the Dead anytime soon.
Right see you next time with the post mortem of the session.
Last week Free League announced a partnership with Titan Books (an off shoot of Forbidden Planet if memory serves me correctly).
In the official announcement this partnership has been described as “a collaboration to publish a unified storyline set within the ALIEN Universe. For 2022 and into 2023, the editorial and writing teams will share assets and coordinate plotlines to form a cohesive narrative across three original novels and the multiple award-winning ALIEN RPG.”
In the next year Titan Books will be publishing three new Alien novels.
Alien: Colony War by David Barnett (April 2022)
Alien: Inferno’s Fall by Phillipa Ballantine and Clara Carija (July 2022)
Alien: Enemy of My Enemy by Mary SanGiovanni (February 2023)
The first two can be pre-ordered on Amazon already. Which funnily enough but hardly a surprise I have pre-ordered.
If unsure which version of the books to pre-order, as there are three versions, audible, kindle and good old physical?
You first need to be aware of the following snippet of information about these novels. “ALIEN RPG lead setting writer Andrew E.C. Gaska will develop three unique RPG scenarios which will appear as bonus features in the books, one per novel.”
I seriously doubt these scenarios will be in the audible version (which I did spend a credit on to pre-order). But I’m not sure that the kindle version will have them either. The only edition I would bet money on that definitely will have them is the physical (hence why I pre-ordered it).
However Titan Books aren’t the first to do this sort of thing.
Back in 2017/8 FFG did something similar when they released four novellas set in the Android universe that had in the physical versions exclusive content for the Genesys RPG Shadow of the Beanstalk source book. Such as “a 16-page color insert detailing the treacherous Los Scorpiones gang …”
That exclusive bit was annoying as it was very challenging to get the actual physical edition, especially here in the UK. I did manage to get them all. But I don’t think the print run was very big.
This shouldn’t be an issue with the much more popular Alien franchise.
In other Free League Alien RPG news (yes they have been very busy it seems) a new cinematic adventure called Heart of Darkness has just gone on pre-order.
Heart of Darkness is “written by sci-fi novelist Andrew E.C. Gaska. It is a stand-alone adventure, but also serves as a conclusion to the Draconis Strain Saga begun in the cinematic scenario Chariot of the Gods and continued in Destroyer of Worlds. The scenario is designed for 3–5 players plus the Game Mother, and is a spiraling descent into soul-crushing madness.”
What does your money get you?
Basically the following:
The main Heart of Darkness scenario book.
A huge double-sided map (format 864x558mm) of the Erebos plasma trawling space station.
Seven pre-generated characters to choose from.
Custom cards for secret messages and personal agendas.
Player maps and handouts.
Plus when you pre-order you get early access to the PDF’s. The actual physical version will not be out until sometime in the Summer I believe.
There is a VTT bundle for this as well.
I do like that buying from Free League also gets you the PDF version. Other publishers do this as well, such as EN Publishing. It’s a nice incentive to buy direct from them. But I am a bit conflicted on this. Pre-ordering and early access I’m happy with. But for those that can wait, and want to support and buy from their FLGS, surely Free League and other publishers can come up with a way for those to get the PDF as well as part of their purchase.
Anyway I’m an impatient so and so, so come payday Heart of Darkness will be added to a virtual shopping cart.
I’ve used the following with the other session planning posts. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m using it here as well.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Next Saturday is the first session of actual play for the new group.
So far I have only had one character sheet sent to me. I was going to summarise the party here. But at mo until I get the others I see little point in doing so.
However with the campaign being set in and around the City of Arches. The arches/portals do allow for a variety of adventure opportunities whether visitors to the city from other realms, or with a key the chance to visit other realms.
Earlier in the week Seth Skorkowsky posted a review of the classic D&D adventure Isle of Dread.
Which reminded me I had the Goodman Original Adventures Reincarnated #2: The Isle of Dread version of the original. Which reprints in a single hefty volume the 1e edition of the adventure, a 5e conversion and an expansion. I think there might be more than one version of the 1e edition included.
It also got me thinking I could run this with both D&D groups.
In the video review Seth recommends running The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh adventure first, as that gives the party the chance to get a boat at the end of it. This adventure was updated by WotC in The Ghosts of Saltmarsh adventure book.
However that isn’t an issue for this new campaign as I can have the party getting to the island via an arch. Plus the other group have a boat already.
I did order The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh from DriveThruRPG as it is a much cheaper than eBay way to get a physical copy of the original 1e version of the adventure. Sadly that isn’t an option for The Isle of Dread (it’s digital only for some reason). So I had to pay the eBay rate for a copy.
But running this with the new group is a few sessions off in the future.
I know in a recent YouTube video Mike Shea said he had been working on a version of the core adventure generator from the Lazy DM Companion for the City of Arches. But I don’t think that will be ready for me by Wednesday when I start prepping for Saturday. So it looks like I’ll be using the core adventure generator to inspire ideas for our first session.
One of the characters only has 3 hit points! Life is going to be very hard for that character or very short! So I need to probably use the advice from Mike Shea in this post Building First Level Encounters and cast aid on the party. I like the idea of giving them a single use relic that their patron could give them as part of doing some task for them.
Right I’m off to re-read the guide to the City of Arches.
Saturday started off with a visit to the library to print off some stuff needed for the later session zero.
I printed off the two pages from the Lazy DM Companion to do with safety tools, and running a session zero. But that wasn’t the only material by Sly Flourish I printed out. I also printed out the one page player guide he wrote for the City of Arches. Plus some spare D&D character sheets.
Nearly forgot I made a copy of the first 7 pages of chapter 4 Horror Adventures from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. These cover running a horror adventure, but more importantly a session zero. There is some great advice here. I think it goes well with the Sly Flourish stuff.
Then after paying the small kings ransom (although still cheaper than printer ink) to get my printing done I made off in my bat mobile to our new hosts.
Naturally I arrived early so that I was there to welcome the new members of the new group. Oh and make some last minute notes.
After the initial introductions we started off discussing whether they wanted a published adventure or were happy with home-brew stuff. No preference was expressed, so I decided home-brew.
Setting, genre, theme. They were easy. Had no preference.
So I handed them the City of Arches Player’s Guide and asked if that interested them. It did. So even with player character options opening up to include any official D&D book, the group stuck to Players Guide and Xanathar’s.
As the group created their characters we discussed what subjects any of them wanted to avoid. Especially if we had a session or two that were horror themed. The list of sensitive topics from the Lazy DM’s Companion is a great starting point to hand round.
The group said they were pretty relaxed, chilled with all the stuff with the exception of self mutilation. That’s good to know. Not sure I’d do anything that involves that anyway.
I also spoke about requiring a players consent for any adverse actions. I’ve been on the receiving end of the “steal another character’s stuff” and it wasn’t fun. I’ve also watched a planned “attack on another character” by another player, sanctioned by the DM, it wasn’t big or clever.
Overall player experience of D&D with the new group is little to some experience. Which is cool. It’s not as if I’m overly experienced as a DM or player.
The outcome of our session zero is that we will be starting off the home-brew campaign in the City of Arches. Which will be located somewhere in the Sword Mountains (not decided exactly where, but probably between Phandalin and Triboar). So we are definitely on the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms.
The party is made up of two gnomes, an elf, and a half elf. Three are able to use magic. But I’ll flesh out more details once I get a copy of the character sheets.
The group did chose a patron:
“Adel Rosethorn – Lower Reach Adventurer Adel, a smiling halfling, runs a shop of relics and curios in the city’s Lower Reaches. She hires adventurers to hunt down mysterious artifacts of previous ages buried in the city’s vast and hidden chambers. Whispered rumors say Adel has a loose connection to the Black Hand.” Patrons of the City of Arches from the City of Arches Player’s Guide, Mike Shea
When I read which one they chose I was instantly reminded of Deborah Ann Woll and the Relics & Rarities adventures she ran. But now on reflection I’m also thinking Warehouse 13, The Librarians.
We will be swapping back and forward between genres through out the campaign. But the overall theme I need to come up with. And that might see me borrowing one from one of the series I just mentioned.
Although the campaign will be reacting a lot to what the players do. It will also make use of the characters back stories. I see story arcs lasting two or three sessions. I like the flexibility this gives us. And the choices made have started sparking the imagination.
Overall I think the session went well. Three of the group already knew each other. But I think it seems like a relaxed, friendly group. I just hope they have fun and I don’t disappoint.
Now that video by Sly Flourish I shared on here last week is even more important. Must rewatch it.
Next task print out the City of Arches pdf, and an A3 map of the city.
