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.