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.

You know when you get something like an ear worm or an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about?

That’s how it’s been for me the last couple of days over the distances my players will be travelling in session 1. Just how long will it take for them to sail from Saltmarsh and the Angrath’s pirate island base?

I kept thinking that it would take about 14 days or more. Once I remembered that the map had a scale on it. Yeah I know I’m slow and old. I dug out my physical copy of the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide turned to the area map and roughly measured the distance. They were closer than I thought. I estimated 350 – 400 miles.

Referring to the Ghosts of Saltmarsh appendix A the stats block for a keelboat says it travels at 3mph or 72 miles per day.

With some quick simple maths I put the travel time to 5-6 days. Considerably quicker than I had initially thought.

I then looked at Mintarn and the islands around it, which is where session 2 and potentially session 3 are taking place. It looks like a days travel at most from Mintarn to any of the islands (that isn’t the northern 2 islands the players ended up on, they are about a day and a half away).

The upshot now is that when I look at the map I can make a rough estimate of the distance between places.

I started listening to Rising Tide by Mel Odom, which is the first volume in the The Threat From the Sea trilogy. It’s got me thinking that the party will be bumping in to sahuagin early on.

I have one or two options or adventure ideas. The first is a D&D Beyond Encounter Of The Week. Which is “a combat encounter in which the characters must prove themselves as worthy gladiators to escape the clutches of a ruthless sahuagin baron.” This encounter acts as a follow up to the encounter I’m borrowing for my session 1, the group skill challenge. However this could be dropped anywhere in the campaign.

I also like the idea of the sahuagin attacking the party while at sea. Similar to the attack described in Rising Tide. This would see the sahuagin using a manta. Which is an oblong barge made up from wood salvaged from shipwrecks. This would be a ship to ship combat. In fact this idea could lead into that encounter of the week.

I also like the idea of malenti. Which are mutated sahuagin that look like sea elves. The malenti are often used to spy on said sea elves. I want the party to have dealings with sea elves, and having them stumble upon a malenti spy, and a sahuagin plot of some sort would be a cool thing to explore.

The idea of having the sahuagin, or a group of them terrorising towns and communities along a stretch of coast line, and having the party sort it out also seems a good idea.

Also inspired by Rising Tide and the attack on Waterdeep the party might feel the wrath of a dragon turtle.

Which once again could lead into the encounter of the week. Or have different repercussions for the party. Seeing the party shipwrecked and leading into another adventure idea, say The Jurassic Park/Ixalan based island.

In the photo above I decided to recreate the opening of the campaign and session 1. Naturally the miniatures will be different. But it gives an idea.

I pre-calculated the passive perception for my players, and with the exception of one, the values are either 11 or 12. I just have the image of the party wandering around oblivious to what’s going on around them. While that one player with a value of 16 is saying “did you see that?” Or “how did you miss that?”

I’m so glad I brain dump in these posts. It might be boring for everyone else. Plus maybe some-one might find it interesting.

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.

So I have painted the well that was printed off for me. I had run out of primer which put a stop on doing the boat tiles themselves.

But once finished I decided to knock up another part of the dungeon. Which is the photo below.

I did eventually get my hands on more primer (probably not nearly enough) and have sprayed an initial batch of boat tiles.

It was annoying me that I had enough pirate figures, or ones that can be used as pirates, but they needed trimming and gluing. So I finally caved and ordered a cheap model builders kit off Amazon that got me the needed clippers. It also got me a mini self healing mat for cutting stuff on, a scalpel with spare blades and a file.

So Saturday evening I spent clipping and gluing to make the pirates/vikings. This really is my least favourite part of the hobby. How anyone gets enjoyment from this I don’t know.

However Sunday was spent painting the miniatures. I only finished 2 completely because they were the least complicated. The others are in various stages of painting.

I had decided early on whilst I was painting I would concentrate on the models I needed for the first session, and leave the ones that appear much later to last. However as I painted the models in the stages, ie applied the Viking blue to all those that were going to have that colour, or apply the barbarian flesh colour to the models all of a sudden apart from some hair Angrath is almost complete and just needs washes and dry brushing.

It appears that the players have a date for our first session now. Boy has that been like extracting teeth. I’m glad I put the onus on them to make the decision. It was painful to watch them discussing it. I would have been infuriated if I had been trying to arrange it. The whole “I’m thinking of a number, can you guess it?” part of the process I find so frustrating.

I have shared a copy of an excel spreadsheet with the players that summarises the players characters stats.

I have asked them to check the information and let me know of any corrections. One or two of them the hand writing is hard to decipher.

While I was in excel I decided to start to populate the encounters with creatures. I just need to copy the stats across, pre-roll the initiative (to speed combat up a little) and work out the passive perception.

I’ve also been doing minor updates to the other planning notes, like finally setting a DC level for the locked doors. I added a couple of items to the treasure room, one of which is cursed!

I’m also getting inspiration for one or two of the adventure hooks. There was a recent Encounter of the Week on D&D Beyond that uses a skill challenge to navigate successfully through a wilderness. This would be a great way for the party to navigate through the wood covered part (which is most of it) of Mintarn to locate the secret cave of the Ironstar Dwarves.

On the model front I will try and get some viking villagers, put an order in with my guy for the 3D stuff for some 3D trees, and some viking huts. I might try and get some generic figures that can be used as ship crew and townsfolk.

That’s the thing about this part of the Forgotten Realm. There is two real distinct groups of humans. One is viking influenced, whilst the other is more medieval European. There are definitely elven and dwarven communities as well in the area. And they will break down into at least a couple of sub races, like sea elves for example.

Other races will be present but as enclaves within the major settlements.

So when it comes to models to get, I know that I have a focus on the prominent races of the area.

That’s the progress I’ve made on planning and prep since the last update.

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.

Last night I picked up the tiles that will allow me to recreate the decks of boats.

Once I was home I immediately primed the well ready for painting in the near future. I need to research painting stone walls first. Which I’ve started to do.

Naturally this morning I quickly knocked up a couple of boat layouts that I will use in the opening sessions.

The first to be put together is a small row boat (bottom boat in the photo above). Which scale wise is 10ft wide by 25ft long! So slightly bigger than a regular row boat!Assuming each square is 5ft. But I suppose I could say that the squares are 2ft.

The next boat to be put together was a version of the keelboat. I use the door to imply a wall at the end of the boat where the cabin is. The beds are a little on the large side. 10ft in length, nice roomy beds! But I’m really happy with the way it works.

Naturally I will use the inter locking clips to put these together before hand. It will make using them a lot easier.

I will need to get more tiles when I move away from single deck boats like long ships, row boats and keelboats. But that’s way down the line (for now).

One thing I would like to find are some small model boats of the ones mentioned above, plus say pirate ships that can go on a battle map to show at a larger scale the positions of boats in relation to each other. Kind of like a sea version of x-wing.

While picking up the tiles the news about our regular gaming haunt for the club and it’s ongoing refit wasn’t good. It looks like the seated area will not be completed until after the summer. Which means we will have to look at a plan b for a place to play. Which we have now. So I’ve put it back into the hands of the players to work out a date and time for our first session. I hate the whole guessing game of trying to find a date and time that works for everyone. It’s a real headache. So I’ve put the onus on them to work it out and come back to me. I’m usually free most of the time. I have no life.

On the planning front I now also have some hooks for session 2. I’ve come up with four, one I hope is sign posted enough that if they go for it will result in a tpk most likely. But you’d expect that if they took on a red dragon! One of the hooks even ties in with a couple of the players back stories. I’m feeling proud of that one.

But it does mean I can’t really plan session 3 until I know which hook the players want to follow. So once session 2 has finished I have a bit of work ahead of me before session 3 starts.

In the meantime I have a lot of brown paint to slap on some tiles.

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.

Spent the morning researching Mintarn for the campaign. As you can see from the scribbled on map below my party will be ending up on a couple of the islands that make up a nine island archipelago that Mintarn is also part of.

Initial thoughts had been free the adventures had somehow got a “lift” from the fisherman they would be taken to Kythyss. Where they would take part in the big festival etc.

But after some pondering and looking at the map. It seemed more logical that the fisherman would want rid of the adventurers as quick as possible, and they would more likely also to be heading for Mintarn anyway.

So the fisherman are going to be dropping the party off at the smaller of the two settlements on Mintarn, Queen’s Cove.

There is a great Dungeon magazine supplement I found that although not Forgotten Realms specific, had a section in it that allows you to set it in the realm. As luck would have it the guidance given puts it straight on Mintarn. That’s where I got the info about the two settlements on the island. And that there is a single road connecting the two. Also the island is covered in trees. Picking up the town map for Mintarn should be easy as the above supplement mentions that the map used for the adventure in Dungeon 131 is for a town called Alhaster and is used for the city map for Mintarn. I’ve just to come up with a small basic town map for Queen’s Cove. And that is going to be much quicker and easier than doing Mintarn itself.

Over on the Forgotten Realms wiki for Mintarn there is a nice legend that can be used whilst the adventurers are on Mintarn.

So I’m going to use that as an adventure hook, along with planting ones for the 3 other islands in the archipelago. I’m not sure what those hooks are at the moment. There will be a fifth hook as well. That hook will be for the island Skadaurak, and it’s occupant Hoondarrh the red dragon. Although that hook will be very well sign posted that taking on Hoondarrh is way beyond them at the moment.

As you can see I’ve also given Vraska and her pirates an island base now. Although it’s a while before the adventurers will meet her.

I look at the map for that area of the Forgotten Realms which is basically the Moonshae Isles, and there is sooo much to do, explore etc. That’s not taking into account any of my ideas.

A good source of background info and ideas is the Adventurers League Rising Shadows : Moonshae Isles Regional Guide. There are also 3 adventures that go along with this that you can also buy.

With all those islands there are plenty of homes for my ideas. Such as a Jurassic Park/Ixalan inspired island, lost/forgotten tribes/races, Greek myth inspired. Plus under sea adventures on top of that.

I’m hoping that overtime we will get to scratch more than just the surface of the possibilities this part of the Forgotten Realms offers. It’s such a rich part of the world to explore.

As the above new comic book series by IDW Comics A Darkened Wish will show. The bottom half of the cover is how I imagine our party to be at the start of their adventure. Except that jetty is in Saltmarsh, and they are about to get onto a keelboat and head off into the unknown.

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.

This morning I attempted to do layers on the battle crab model.

The colours went from Flat Red to Pure Red to Lava Orange. Which I then used a Red tone wash with to blend the layers together. Or attempt to.

I did dry brush some of the Lava Orange after I applied the wash. And applied some Blood Splatter paint to the tips of the metal spikes and the blade on the tiny claw.

Naturally I can only see the mistakes. Like the odd hard to reach bit that I failed to get to. Luckily that stuff has to be examined up close. On the table this looks pretty good.

The initial Flat Red layer could have been thinner, allowing a wider Pure Red layer. With the wash it now looks a more slightly gradient red. Not the intended look I was initially envisioning. In some spots the wash is awful.

There are other mistakes but I won’t bore you with them.

Now what stats to use? The Storm King’s Thunder campaign book has stats for a Hulking Crab.

While the Monster Manual has a Giant Crab.

What I think I need is something in the middle. This is meant to be for level 1 characters. So I’m feeling an AC of 16 (Natural Armour) with an HP between 20 – 30. I think it should have multi attack, but more the Giant Crab stats for Claw, and not the Hulking Crab Claw stats.

I think that should do it.

Really stoked to see the players face if they get to see 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.

This is more a prep update than a planning update.

Thought I’d take some photos of the painted cave tiles. Sadly the bright sunlight doesn’t do the tiles much justice.

I also took delivery of the final part of the stuff my friend was printing for me this evening. Not shown in the photo below are the 5 4×4 tiles. But as soon as I got home I was priming everything ready for base coats tomorrow.

I can’t wait to start using this stuff in our first session.

Plus with the lid of the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated I can do split level!

My next 3D project is the 3D tiles for ships that I came across. But I’m going to talk about options for boats in another post.

This post is aimed at my players for our campaign when it starts.

In this post I want to propose that these are our house rules for the game. By that I mean rules that are not in the Players Guide, Dungeon Masters Guide, Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, and The Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

The first item I proposed I came across whilst flicking through the pages of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. I’m not sure we will ever use this, but if we do I think it could add some dramatic tension.

(Extract above taken without permission from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything)

Ok the next proposed rule or thing I plan to do is for me the DM to roll stealth checks! WTF?! I bet my players are saying as they read that. With coffee or some other beverage being spat across the room and hitting the sleeping cat or a kid. We know dogs are stupid like kids and cats to sleep in the firing range of spat out drinks.

Anyway instead of me trying to justify/defend this, why don’t I hand things over to the amazing and inspiring Matt Colville (well I’ve not mentioned him in a few posts, so,it’s long over due) to explain things.

The DM Screen episode (and the inspiration for the video above) also covers it.

Ok this next one is also a biggy.

We hadn’t talked about advancement in our session zero. But I think at the time, before I had read this in the appendix of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (XGE) I was leaning towards the story advancement method of gaining XP over XP tracking. Now I’m very much in favour of this. For the record this is from Xanathar’s but they got it from the Adventurers League, which is like D&D organised play for want of a simple way to explain it.

I’d already nicked the Adventurers League rule for our session zero for creating characters Players Guide plus one other source book. Which I said was the Swordcoast Adventurers Guide. The reason for this is that it’s to keep costs down for the DM and the players. They don’t want people having to spend lots of money just to play the game. It puts people of playing. And that’s why for our first campaign I did the same.

The rules side is another thing. Whether I use the trap rules for generating them from the DMG or XGE is neither here or there. It’s invisible to the players. For the record I like the method in XGE. Just as the rules used for ships etc coming from GoS. The players don’t need to know the specifics.

We will be using skill challenges in the campaign. Which technically are not in the 5e rules. But as I pointed out kinda in a post yesterday (WHICH MY PLAYERS SHOULD NOT READ – IT HAS SPOILERS) by way of a link, it’s possible to run skill challenges in 5e.

So players either leave comments below or discuss in our messenger group. Everyone else I hope you are finding posts like this of interest.

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.

Technically this post is not just an update on planning, but also some research notes for the campaign in general.

It was whilst doing this research that I stumbled across a D&D Beyond Encounter of the week that is exactly what I am planning on doing in part of the first adventure. This is going to save me a lot of work in researching nautical terms and what they mean when it comes to doing stuff on the boat to prepare for the storm. The post has a nice table (illegally copied below) you can print out and hand to players. But more importantly it’s a skill challenge. Which is something I wanted to have in this opening adventure.

Table source: D&D Beyond Encounter of the Week: Sharkfin Shipwreck
(There is also a follow up adventure they did, which I can also use. I hadn’t planned anything for the planned skill challenge and if they failed. But this makes an interesting alternative to my planned adventure. D&D Beyond Encounter of the Week: Coral Colosseum)

One of the things I’m struggling to get my head round is the whole breathing underwater thing.Which is the driving factor behind the research that inspired this post.

On the D&D Beyond forums I found this snippet that’s related to my quest for information. I like this suggestion, anything that can add variety so I’m not using the same old tropes over and over again.

Post source: D&D Beyond Underwater Combat and Drowning

There is also a very nice quote by C.S. Lewis on another discussion thread, once again on D&D Beyond. This makes great advice for when it comes to planning underwater adventures.

Post source: D&D Beyond Help with Underwater Campaign

But still no answer to my question about breathing underwater. I can’t remember which source book it is (probably GoS) that has tables for damage to equipment due to water pressure etc. Which implies that equipment of some can be used.

Then as I was writing this post I thought “there must be a magic spell that allows players to breathe underwater?” And there is. Why I didn’t think of this to start with?

It gets worse. I found this post on a forum giving some suggestions for magical items that can also be used.

Post source: an online forum

Now I’ve found this out, it all seems so obvious. I really should read the resources I have. Or at least not skip sections.

But now I no longer live in bewilderment and confusion. I feel like I have enough info now at hand to drop an underwater encounter into an adventure anytime I like. I have ideas for magical equipment that the party can maybe purchase or find.

On a post (forgot to keep the link) about underwater adventures there was a recommendation to read Mel Odom’s Threat from the Sea.

Luckily the trilogy is available as audio books on Audible. I happen to have 3 unused credits, so I have something new to listen to on my way to UKGE this coming week.

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.

First up the cliffs are about 3/4 painted. They have had the base coat, followed by the “highlighting” and a slightly lighter “strong tone” wash applied (previous I used a dark tone on the cave piece).

Once the wash has dried I’m going to try and apply some flock so that it looks like clumps of grass are growing on the cliff face.

My GoodNotes file is expanding. I’ve been building a bestiary from the Monster Manual and other places of the monsters that will be encountered through out the campaign. As you have already read in previous posts last week, I have created two pirate leaders/bosses Angrath the Minotaur pirate and Vraska the gorgon pirate.

I’m also keeping in the notes any specific rules/mechanics that I will be using that are not in the Players Handbook or Dungeon Masters Guide, such as Skill Challenges (from D&D 4e).

As you can see in the image above I’ve blocked out the flow of the adventure.

The entrance and first level of the pirate base are mapped and filled. I now need to plan the second level which is where the majority of the pirates will be. After all the second level is the living quarters etc. The third level is basically similar to the first level but smaller that then leads to the derelict tomb.

I have minis for some pirates, however some need assembling. Which I don’t want to do. Will have to see if I can find a friend to do that for me.

• A Minotaur (which will be Angrath)
• Orc pirate berserker
• Orc pirate with twin swords
• Finaela the half elf pirate (will be Angrath’s lieutenant)
• Barnabus Frost pirate captain
• Mad Dog Morgan dwarf pirate
• 4 pirates
• A pagan priest (that will act as a pirate mage/druid)
• 5 vikings
• 4 berserker vikings

Ok couldn’t resist doing a pano of the cliffs to show the vision I have for them. Not finished but dry. But imagine that on the table.

Naturally once I’ve finished my notes for the adventure I’ll share them with the world for anyone that is likely to be interested.