I’m phoning it in today. Just knackered. Need rest.

There are some really great supplements out there for which ever system you play.

My favourite ones are campaign settings like Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, and Guildmasters of Ravnica, Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk to name a handful.

I love how they combine lore, character options, new monsters, themes and genres to fuel the imagination for your own campaigns.

There are also a rather lot of great supplements online by independent designers in places such as DriveThruRPG and The DMGuild. Think of a subject and you will probably find some-one has done it on one of those platforms. Tables to roll against, lore, new classes, new monsters, the list goes on. And the standard of the supplements produced is usually very high as well.

Let’s hope tomorrow is a better day.

And yes I’m still doing this hashtag.

So shut up, stop complaining and go and do something a lot more entertaining like watching grass grow.

Oh if that’s too much excitement for you here is today’s post.

I was looking at some of my newer RPG books such as the Alien RPG, Cyberpunk Red, Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 A.D. and they show that the older D&D DMG isn’t the only core rulebook that doesn’t include advice about running a session zero and in particular using safety tools (although the Alien core rulebook does give some questions to ask the players about their party and characters at a “session zero”). Which is kinda disappointing.

It wasn’t until Tasha’s came out that we got a couple of pages from WotC about running a session zero, social contracts and soft/hard limits. Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft added to this with talking about content with the players. Which it should do as it is a book about running horror campaigns in D&D.

I really like how Alice is Missing handles providing information to players before and at the start of the session. An example is below.

“Just a heads up, this game inherently deals with a missing teenage girl in a small town, and all of the topics that can arise when that happens. Our characters will be the people closest to her attempting to unravel the mystery behind her disappearance. Because of this, themes like tense family dynamics, grief, death, violence, jealousy, and helplessness can and often do come up during the game.

If this sounds like something you might be sensitive to or triggered
by, please don’t hesitate to let me know—even if this is something you only realize during play —your safety and well-being are always more important than the game.” Alice is Missing manual

It doubles down on this warning and discusses the use of X cards as part of the games setup. Alice is Missing goes even further on all the above by telling players to have a debrief after finishing the adventure to ensure players are ok after dealing with such difficult subjects.

Personally I’d like publishers to follow the Alice is Missing example and have CONTENT & TRIGGER WARNINGS at the start of each published adventure for DM/GMs to reference. This I feel would be a great help in that session zero for DM/GMs to discuss with the players. But also in aiding the selection of which adventure to play.

Sly Flourish has a great two pages (“Session Zero Checklist” and “RPG Safety Tools”) in his Uncovered Secrets document on his Patreon, that are great references to use as a starting off point.

The safety tool that a group uses should be something that everyone agrees on during the session zero as part of the whole discussion about the content and triggers. Everyone should be comfortable with what’s being put in place, and know how to use it during a session.

I think it’s great that these safety tools are being discussed and used more. But no matter how good these tools are they don’t fully protect you from a DM/GM who is just a massive dick (as one or two high profile examples over recent years have shown). To stop that one you need experience to spot the warning signs (which hindsight is great at) and the confidence to walk away from the table (much harder to do) when they deliberately do things they know will trigger players.

However the majority of DM/GMs are not massive dicks and want everyone to feel welcome, included, and have fun. There will be odd occasions when they stumble onto something that causes a player to feel uncomfortable, but that’s not deliberate, and the reason the safety tools are there. They take that final bit of the Alice is Missing quote above “…even if this is something you only realize during play —your safety and well-being are always more important than the game.” very seriously.

Be safe and have fun.

Unlucky for some, and definitely those that read this blog. I’m back with my 13th post for this hashtag.

Let’s get the pain over with…

Three floods come to mind.

The first is from the D&D Starter Set adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver. After surviving the initial goblin ambush on the Triboar Trail our party stumbled upon the Cragmaw Hideout. If I remember correctly the goblins did manage to trigger the flooding of the main passage catching a couple members of the party. The majority of us were safely on higher ground.

The second flood that comes to mind is the flooded gladiator arena for a historical recreation of an infamous halfling battle that my players took part in, in our campaign.

This encounter was based on the Adventure League adventure called Shackles of Blood (DDEX3-2). I share some notes on it in my session planning notes here and how it went here.

The third and final flood I thought of was one for a setting for the Genesys RPG Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk to be used in a one shot/campaign.

The setting takes place after the events detailed in the Android novella Monster Slayer by Daniel Lovat Clark.

I thought having the campaign/one shot take place after the tsunami hitting New Angeles would be a good way to explain how the party all ended up meeting (assuming the characters did not know each other before hand) and why they only had the equipment/gear that they had with them.

And there we have it, three floods that come to mind fir today’s theme.

We are fastly approaching the mid point of this hashtag stuff. There have been more than one or two that I’ve struggled with, and it’s shown.

But hey we are here now. So let’s look at today’s theme.

“Think (think)
Think (think)
Think (think)
Think (think)
You think (think)
Think (think)
Think about it (think)” Aretha Franklin/Ted White

Obviously with today’s theme, apart from the rather excellent song sung by Aretha Franklin in the bloody amazing cult classic The Blues Brothers now an ear worm for the rest of the day. I associate the theme with problem solving and puzzles.

I haven’t run a puzzle in my homebrew campaign yet. I like the idea of them, but have run shy of actually doing one.

With the Matt Colville intro adventure The Delian Tomb from his now very well known web series on being a DM, there is a simple riddle/puzzle. Which would qualify as the only puzzle I have used as a DM.

In the D&D Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything we are given some puzzles that can be dropped into any campaign on the fly. However that chapter of the book starts with a bit of great advice.

Which mirrors a DM tip I got off Twitter last year I think. It was definitely before Tasha’s came out.

Which takes a bit of the pressure off the DM, especially during prep.

The puzzle with no solution could be an obstacle of some sort to overcome like having to cross a river or chasm. It could be a locked door. Your imagination is the limit.

I also have a small, and I mean small bank of puzzles I can utilise for a game such as the Gygax Ingenious Door Puzzle.

There are also more than a few third party puzzle books on DriveThruRPG or the DMGuild, especially from older editions that still can be used.

More tomorrow, see you then.

After yesterday’s train wreck for this hashtag thingy we are back for more. It’s just hard to turn away. We’ve got to see where this thing is going. No matter how ugly it gets.

So let’s get on with this mess…

Once our group starts up our campaign again after it’s 18 month plus hiatus due to world events shutting it down. After what I’m sure will be an over long catch up with each other, and finally a strong restart (step 4 of the way of the lazy DM) to the campaign, the party will have to navigate a wilderness to find a lost Dwarven mine.

I haven’t settled on a way to handle wilderness travel that I’m happy with yet.

In the DMG there are a couple of suggestions for handling it. Those being the travel montage or hour by hour. Neither grabs me.

So far I’ve tried a version of wilderness travel that is based on how it is handled in The One Ring. Which was fine but a bit of work is required in prep before hand.

I adapted what is basically a hex crawl from the WotC D&D published campaign The Tomb of Annihilation for sea travel. Which is basically wilderness but with lots of water. And that was ok too. But again I was not entirely happy with it.

I have two options I want to try for wilderness travel next.

The first is treating wilderness travel as a skill challenge. The idea for this came from a D&D Beyond scenario they did as part of the Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus series called Encounter of the Week: Detour Past Dragonspear.

The other approach I want to try is Pointcrawls. Which I first found out about from the legend that is Sly Flourish who talked about it in his Icewind Dale prep videos. Which then got it’s own video and blog post discussing in more detail what they were and how to create them.

Although the rules in the Dungeon Master’s Screen Wilderness Kit for journeys and chases look worth a try as well. I’m particularly drawn to the chase rules that look very combat like. I want to run a chase at some point (story allowing).

I’m not convinced I will ever find a way to handle wilderness travel that I’m entirely happy with. I’ll probably end up choosing one of the methods from above during the prep for a session, never doing the same one twice in a row. Although that list may be whittled down based on feedback from the group. After all they may not like one or more of the approaches.

Here we are with more free time on ours hands than we know what to do with.

What shall we do?

I know, read my latest ramblings on the latest theme for a hashtag thing.

Today’s theme can easily be linked with one of the later themes. But I will save that discussion for the later post.

Instead I’m going to briefly talk about what my players can trust me to do.

They can trust me to:

• Do my best to help them have a fun experience whilst at the table.
• Make sure they are in a safe supportive environment.
• Use their characters backstory to influence events in the campaign.
• Surprise them.
• That I have no clue where the campaign is going and I’m making it up as I go along.

Another day, another post for this hashtag.

Let’s do it…

Oh boy today’s a toughie. Mind you I haven’t found the last few themes that easy.

However today’s theme had me opening up Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft (VRGtR) and looking at one of the new backgrounds it introduces.

The backgrounds introduced in VRGtR are aimed at characters being used in horror adventures. But when I’m being a DM (hopefully soon) if a player said they wanted to use one of these new backgrounds despite our campaign not being horror themed I’d say “sure why not?“ Plus I wouldn’t rule out using some horror influences at some point in the campaign.

The new background that came to mind for this theme was Spirit Medium (chapter 1, page 31). So you can see where I went with the theme of medium.

I like the idea of a character that communes with the dead. Although the official background description says the players character had a fateful experience to cause them to believe that they are “aligned with spirits and can serve as a conduit for their insights and goals.” I also like the idea of this being something that is passed on from one generation to another. Plus that fateful experience could also apply and be the thing that triggers it in the players character so that they carry on the family tradition.

For inspiration I’d watch some of the shows and films in the collage below. (They are ones that came to mind first)

They give some interesting takes to use with the character. The out and out believer with powers. Or the unbeliever, possibly ex-medium now intent in debunking others as charlatans.

I particularly like The Deadzone inspiration. It has that fateful experience for explaining this ability. And like the main character as a plot to follow some person in power that they have come in contact with could be intent on unleashing an unspeakable horror of some sort on the world that they have to stop.

I also like that from a DM point of view that the communing with spirits is a great way to feed one or two secrets or adventure hooks to the party.

See ya tomorrow

Taking into account I started a day late, I’ve been doing this for a whole week now!

I’m not claiming to have written compelling content. In fact the last couple of posts have been below par.

Let’s get on with the show…

We are 18 months or so into that world event, which means our D&D campaign has been on hiatus for the duration.

I know that online play took off (probably an under statement) because of those events.

My main computing device is an iPad. Which meant that using established platforms like Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds along side something like Skype/Zoom/Discord to run a game is clunky and barely usable at best. Throw in that home life makes doing stuff online like this a lot harder without interruptions. It was an easy decision for me to just say we would pick up our campaign again in safer times.

Despite this one free online tool did grab my attention called owlbear.rodeo. It seems to have what I would want in something like this. First the price, it’s free. It’s light weight, it basically allows you to share a map and move tokens around on it. And that’s it. You can set up a fog of war on the map to hide sections from players. It’s browser based. So platform independent.

So if I was going to go the online route for playing I’d be using Discord and owlbear.rodeo.

I will say that the only streamed content I watch is the Sky Flourish session prep for his current campaign and his “preshow” D&D discussion/chat where he talks about current events in the world of D&D. Or the odd discussion Sly Flourish puts up with other content creators.

I find these helpful. Especially seeing Sly Flourish applying his way of the Lazy DM to a published campaign.

All I will say about streamed games is that I’m not a fan.

“I don’t know where I’m goin’
But I sure know where I’ve been… Here I go again, here I go again”

With today’s theme I could only think of one thing to do, a collage of my favourite species to play in a fantasy setting, hobbits/halfling/kender.