With Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft that came out earlier in the year it’s never been “easier” to create a horror adventure in D&D for this most commercial of occasions.
However you may want some further advice in a more concise format like say talking pictures.
A couple of days ago Kelsey of The Arcane Library posted a new YouTube video on how to write horror for D&D. Not only do we get some great advice but there is also a free adventure The Night Hunter for a party of level 1 adventurers to use this all hallows eve (or any other time) she wrote along with a walk through of running the adventure.
You can download the free adventure mentioned by Kelsey (and also linked on the YouTube video) here.
One year I’ll be organised enough to run a spooktacular scary one shot to participate in this yearly commercialized faux celebration. Until then “need more brains, uuuuurgh!”
Two weeks has just flown by. Last night saw another club night of gaming on a Friday evening at our fantastic hosts The Luxe Cinema.
Once again the evening was well attended. And that’s despite life forcing two attendees to stay away until they are clean again! So instead of 10 attending we had 8.
I’d spent the afternoon combining the Oceania expansion for Wingspan into my copy of the game, in the hope it might get to the table in the evening.
However I’d forgotten Gavin had wanted to try Dune Imperium which I also had with me. So that once more hit the table. I’m not complaining I love the game. I got to try another leader Helena Richese, which was forced on me because Julie took Duke Leto this time. I do think the next couple of club nights I’ll be leaving the game at home, unless someone asks me to bring it along.
You can see below who played what in this game.
Who played what in Dune Imperium
I really liked Helena and her on going ability as it changed drastically how I played the game. Basically I didn’t have to worry about those spaces unless I wanted the mentat. It took the pressure off taking them before anyone else. The signet ring ability was also pretty cool. For me I was pretty restrained in using it to hate remove a card to deny the others. I only did that once to remove a card that when purchased pushed the player up one spot on all the influence tracks.
Like our game of Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, Gavin’s deck hated him! Which tainted his experience a little I think. It’s fair to say that Gavin didn’t enjoy Dune Imperium. Part of that was having to play cards with the relevant symbol on to go to a space. Often there would be a space he’d want to go to but not have the card to do it. I don’t see that as an issue. I’ve experienced it. I had it in the previous games, and I had it in this one. However I looked at what I could do, and tried to use those to set up a big future turn.
I was pretty chuffed that I got both Jessica cards and got to play them together. They combo nicely.
This game went to the last conflict round. Up for grabs were two influence track positions for the winner. This was crucial to my plan. Diego and I were neck and neck. I’d got two intrigue cards that would get me victory points. However I failed on one of them because I was short by 1 persuasion to buy one of the spice must flow cards. That would have nabbed me 2 victory points if I’d had enough!
Dune Imperium
I did have enough spice to buy the other victory point though.
The crucial part of my plan? Oh that was to win the combat, jump up two spaces on the Fremen influence track and take the Fremen alliance from Diego. Basically forcing a 2 point swing. Diego would lose a point and I’d gain one. That’s how things unfolded. My forces stormed to victory on the combat phase. And the victory was even more sweet having pulled off this point steal.
Final scores
Whilst basking in the glow of victory we decided to play For Sale.
I hadn’t played For Sale before. So after a quick run through of the rules from Gavin, bidding commenced.
There really isn’t much to the game.
However I enjoyed the bidding round. I like the choices you have to make. Like when to drop out, or do you try and force the price up to drain your opponents of money? I did deliberately start the bidding high on one occasion to drain the others of money. I think that worked this game as I was able to pick up the two highest value cards.
For Sale
The purchase round was also fun. I liked the playing of cards blind then all revealing at the same time. I think it was easy for me to get the two highest value cards. All I had to do was save the two highest cards for those rounds. I also through away my lowest cards when there was no 0 cost card to get.
Obviously this time these tactics worked for me as I won.
Final scores
I liked the game. It’s relatively quick to play and teach. Has some decision making to make. It’s fun. A nice filler game.
I finish this post about a great evening gaming (any evening when I win the games I play is great) with a picture of the other table and some photos taken by Jonathan. I’m sure Jonathan will be kind to us and leave a comment sharing which games they played.
Recently (in the last month) there have been two great videos put out on YouTube that show creating ideas for adventures using random tables.
I like these type of videos as they basically act as “how to” videos, and also give a sneak peak in to the creative process of those doing the video.
Plus we all know how I feel about using random tables to generate ideas. So I’m bound to be biased and love these videos.
The first video is by Kelsey aka The Arcane Library, and the tables used are from the pretty amazing book Tome of Adventure Design.
Kelsey has talked about this before in her adhoc enewsletter and I followed those steps in a previous post (there was a second post too).
I’m looking forward to when Kelsey does part two.
The second video is by Mike aka Sly Flourish who did this video as part of his current Kickstarter for the Lazy DM’s Companion.
The Companion is the third book in the Lazy DM series, and is chock full of guidelines and adventure generators (read themed tables) to inspire you.
It’s those adventure generators that Mike uses in these videos, in particular the ones from the free sample pdf on the Kickstarter (you don’t even have to be a backer to get it!)
What I like about the generators aka tables in the Companion is that they are themed. Otherwise they most definitely scratch my random generation itch that I get. Maybe I should follow in Mike’s foot steps and do a post using the generators (although I’ll use the pdf of them from the Patreon instead of the freebie sample). I mean I have done posts following Kelsey’s steps previously. Only right I should do the way of the Lazy DM too.
UPDATE 22/10/22: Last night Mike aka Sly Flourish did another twitch stream as part of his Kickstarter that is part two to his Let’s Make an Adventure video. It’s now on YouTube (embedded below). In this one Mike goes into how to fill out a dungeon. Well worth a watch.
UPDATE 18/11/21: A couple of days ago (it might be 3 or 4, dats are blurring into each other these days) Kelsey live-streamed the second part to her video I embedded above. Just like that one I’ve embedded it below so everything is in one nice handy place.
I’m also embedding a recent video from Sly Flourish about building lazy magic items. It fits in with the whole theme of this post and using tables to inspire and create content.
Earlier in the week a friend and club member (you never leave Fenland Gamers!) who had moved out of the area for life reasons, enquired if anyone was free Friday evening for some gaming because they were back for the day. Naturally I was as was Jonathan. So plans were made.
Last night saw the fruition of those plans.
At the appointed time Charlie, Jonathan and myself met up at The Luxe to catch up over a game or two (time allowing).
Our game for the evening was Wingspan plus both expansions (European and Oceania, although technically we had a third with the swift-start expansion also mixed in). We were using Jonathan’s copy of the game because he had everything already mixed together.
This was the first time since the start of world events oh so long ago now that I’ve played Wingspan in real life, and the second expansion Oceania. Which I was keen to do. It was also a first for Charlie who had never played the game before.
So after a rules run through from both Jonathan and myself for Charlie we started attracting birds to our reservations. Even with the expansions and particularly the nectar side I still think Wingspan is not too much to teach to new players. By the time they have taken a couple of turns they have the basics grasped. After that it’s getting to grips with building that engine and evaluating cards. You can’t teach that, just give advice.
Early on I got a nice resource engine going that meant every time I collected resources I was getting four instead of two, plus tucking a bird or two. I also had a cool end of round ability in place that allowed me to discard up to 5 food to tuck cards from the deck up to the same number of discarded food. That was a nice little synergy.
Charlie also had a nice little extra value set up on the food as well. I think Jonathan was the only one who wasn’t getting extra resources when doing a food run.
So what did I think of the Oceania expansion? I liked the nectar. Having a wild resource that is basically use it or lose it, is nice. But throw in the majority end of game scoring for who used the most nectar in each of the three habitats does add a nice additional tactic and battleground during play.
The end of game ability was a new addition if I remember correctly. I nearly played a card with one that would have given me three/four additional points at the end. But that card got tucked. However I like the idea.
I do like the new player mats and the changes to them. I’ve already mentioned the nectar. But now some of the spaces allow you to discard a card or resource to reset the bird feeder or the bird trade row before doing the action on that space. Plus similarly you can on some discard either to get that extra card, egg or food. I love this change. That increased flexibility makes things easier and doesn’t favour one engine type over another.
Wingspan plus expansions
As for the other additions of more birds, more bonuses, more end of round stuff. The more the better.
There has definitely been an effort with the expansions to make the eggs tactic a less viable route to victory. Which is a welcome design choice. Having various paths to victory keeps the game fresh. With all the cards from all three expansions mixed in the odds of getting that raven combo in the opening hand is greatly reduced. Which isn’t a bad thing either.
I think I was the only one of us to get something from their bonus card. And as you can see from the end of round scoring I cleaned up there too.
As you can see from the final scoring I ran away with the victory. Sadly fell short of the 100 point barrier.
Charlie had to hit the road after the game finished. So after saying our farewells I showed Jonathan Rolling Realms. I’m so impressed by the component quality.
I’ve said this before, but I don’t care what you think of the games by Stonemaier Games, the one thing you can’t take away from them is the amazing production quality of the games. They go above and beyond setting the standard others are judged by.
I love the large chunky d6 dice that come with Rolling Realms. Card used for the dry erase boards is a nice thickness. You get dry erase pens, little clothes to clean them with. Plus that amazing tough textured paper (first introduced with Wingspan) for the rule books.
There aren’t many components in a roll and write but this knocks it out of the park.
We ended up having a game of Rolling Realms.
Now I liked Rolling Realms. I like the puzzle element of it. I love the variability.
Even though each round has 9 turns they pass pretty quickly. Before you realise it you are on that final turn wishing you had one or two more turns left.
Naturally for us playing the game for the first time we were learning the realms for the first time also. One or two were a little confusing at first. The actual general rules are pretty quick and easy to pick up.
Rolling Realms
As a roll and write Rolling Realms is pretty solid. There is no player interaction. Which makes it perfect for playing remotely using a webcam. It’s great for large group play because of this, and supports an unlimited number of players. Which is pretty unique. Naturally you need enough copies of the game to support the number of players or use the print and play.
As you can see the game was pretty close, it basically came down to me having 3 more resources than Jonathan.
I had a great evening, it was great to catch up with Charlie. And the icing on the cake I beat Jonathan (twice).
I finish this post with a couple of photos taken by Jonathan of the evening.
Last night saw the first monthly meet up since global stuff kicked off.
It was looking like the trend set by the fortnightly Friday sessions of being well attended was going to continue. However we ended up with half the numbers expected turning up. Life changes plans, and the assumption was it had indeed changed the plans of those unable to attend.
However it can not be said we did not give a socially suitable amount of time for them to arrive before starting to play Dune Imperium.
I know it’s hitting the table a lot at the moment. However Marcin (a new member) had wanted to try the game as it was on his list of games to get. And who am I to disappoint?
So after a run through of the rules, the battle for Arrakis commenced.
Once again I played Duke Leto. I like the powers of the character, that discount makes a big difference. It allowed me on round three to get the extra agent and the seat on the high council. Jonathan likes playing Paul.
In this game despite having the solari to get the extra agent and on the high council in the first round I didn’t get the cards to do either in the second round. So that round ended up being a setup round.
I was also pretty slow in getting started on the score track. However I made up for that and soon caught up.
I did manage to get some good extra card draw going during the game. So I was pleased with that.
In one of the stage 3 conflict rounds near the end I did play an intrigue card to help Jonathan win the conflict against Marcin, and get me third place. It didn’t matter at that point if Jonathan got two victory points. But it did if Marcin got them as he would have been a point away from victory.
Our game nearly had me winning in round 9 but I couldn’t scrape out that extra victory point to do so. Which meant for the majority of the last round there was a three way tie for first place until Marcin bought a Spice Must Flow Card in his reveal stage to get the winning point.
In that final round I managed to avoid Jonathan stealing a victory point from me, and failed to return the favour. Which felt good to deny him that. Would have been better to have flipped his plan on him and to have won. That would have been a sweet sweet victory. But sadly in this reality it never happened.
Final scores
It was another fun evening of gaming. Looking forward to the next club night. And a big big thank you to our hosts for the evening The Luxe cinema.
Yesterday WotC announced the first D&D book to hit the shelves both virtual and physical next year (if we don’t count the gift set that lands in January), Call of the Netherdeep. Which will be its second book in collaboration with the Critical Role folks, and due to arrive in March.
For me the announcement is a bit of a dud. Which is fine. I’m not a Critical Role fan. It’s not aimed at me. Not everything WotC release for D&D has to be.
Just like out of the three books that make up the last third of this year, only one has me excited and will see me parting with scarce pennies. A big hint to which is dragons.
Am I complaining about the ones I’m not interested in? Nope. Although I would have preferred WotC chosen a different MtG plane to do than Strixhaven. But I appreciate there are some misguided folks out there that like it!
Which reminds me that given Mark Rosenberg has said WotC see Ixalan as a major failure recently. I’m very unlikely to see a return to Ixalan both in MtG and D&D. So if I want to play in Ixalan I’ll have to make do with the Plane Shift pdf that was done, and the art book.
Also announced by WotC in the last week was that Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons has had its release put back by about a week. Which is a nothing delay in this day of shipping chaos. I can wait until I throw money at them for it. Oh wait I just told you which book I’m excited about.
Last night saw the (for now) fortnightly Friday Evening gaming for Fenland Gamers at our regular hosts The Luxe cinema.
As usually I got there early to set up the tables. Some-one has to do it. It saves time and means some-one is there to welcome folks as they arrive.
Last nights session was one of our best attended, if not the best, with eight members turning up for gaming plus one member of the general public who joined us.
We split into two groups for gaming, of four and five. Although thinking about it we could have gone to three groups of three.
However we did what we did, which saw Jeff, Jonas, Rachel and myself battle over the planet Arakas in Dune Imperium. Whilst the other group played Istanbul, followed by Saboteur.
This was the first time I’d played Imperium with the full player count. Whilst the others were new to the game and chose from the one pip player boards, I went with Duke Leto Atreides a two pip player board.
I got the extra agent/worker pretty early on. What I found interesting was in the previous two plays with the lower player counts I didn’t think the extra worker made much of a difference, gave very little advantage. However in this full player count game I think it made a big difference.
Intrigue cards also proved to be very impactful in this game too. Plus we were seeing more cards in the trade row, and got to see some cards that required you to move down a space on an influence track as a payment. I hadn’t seen them come out before.
In this game apart from the opening water you get at setup, I never had water after that all game. I did get much spice either. I was all about the solari (money).
I think Jeff is correct and we played the Alliance rule incorrectly. Which needs double checking before the next game. So that kind of puts a big asterisk next to this win.
However even with the cloud over the victory I won. And I’ll take that. Imperium still pips Lost Ruins for me.
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’s been a long long time since the previous session planning post for our campaigns next session. And we all know why that is. But we have a date now for the resumption of the campaign. Which means I need to refresh my memory (using these great notes I have on here) and also actually finalising the ideas and thoughts I’ve had in the intervening time.
I recently got hold of a copy of the Tome of Beasts 2 Pocket Edition (it’s cheaper than the regular version). Sly Flourish mentions this all the time.
I got a chance to browse the pages of this “alternate monster manual” this morning whilst waiting for Mum to get some blood samples taken. Within the first 5 or 6 pages I hit a creature that would be ideal for the campaign.
That creature is an Akhlut.
Akhlut (taken off a Google image search)
The Akhlut has the body, head and tail of a killer whale, and the legs of a large wolf. A true “seawolf”! But it looks sooo cool. The Akhlut has a challenge rating of 6. Might be a tad high for the party if more than one attacked at once. But that’s something I can tinker with at the table.
I just think the Akhlut has so much potential for my campaign. I like that they can also be used as a steed. So while I have the Sahuagin using sharks. I’m thinking that maybe merfolk or another aquatic life form could use the Akhlut or even a more Northern based tribe of Sahuagin. I think even some of the northern human tribes could use them as well.
I had a strong start all planned. Well at least in my head. It’s been bouncing around up there for a while.
The plan was to have pirates come rushing out of the tree line attacking the party who are camping on the beach. They would be unable to return to their ship because row boats would be coming towards the shore. Pirate ships anchored off shore.
However now I know about the Akhlut I think this is going to change. I think the fish the party have been cooking/preserving have attracted a pod of Akhlut. The look of surprise on the parties faces as they go from wonder at the majestic sea beasts swimming to “OMG! They are coming out of the water towards us!”
Back to having a date to aim for I also need to spend some time finishing off painting the 3D scatter terrain that Duncan did for me nearly a year ago. This will mainly be for the lost Ironstar dwarf mine the party are trying to find.
I don’t get all this fascination with halloween here in the UK.
When I was a wee nipper it was penny for the guy, and fire works night. Halloween was not a thing.
Like proms, halloween some how got bought over from the US, and caught on. I blame corporations for this. They needed another way to exploit money out of folks.
In the later post that I link to are links to D&D Beyond posts about running Curse of Strahd as a one shot.
However these are not the only resources out there for doing this.
The first ones to look at are from one of my usual sources that I keep mentioning on here Sly Flourish. Mike wrote the following post “Running Ravenloft / Curse of Strahd in a Single Session”. This is also backed up with a YouTube video (embedded below for those that would prefer to watch instead of read!).
Run Ravenloft / Curse of Strahd as a One-Shot Single-Session Halloween D&D Game
Another YouTuber/Author I like is Seth Skorkowsky. I particularly like his in-depth reviews that also contain advice on running the adventure being reviewed.
AD&D Review: Ravenloft
Although Seth’s review is for the 1e Ravenloft adventure it’s still worth considering. As Seth points out in the video you can pick this up on DriveThruRPG as a pdf only or as a print on demand physical copy. It’s very cheap considering. A lot cheaper than trying to get an original copy off eBay. And I may or may not have gone this route!
Another good YouTube video to look at is from the Dungeon Craft YouTube channel.
How to Run Ravenloft in One Night (Episode #162)
Don’t forget you can always come up with your own one shot set in the Ravenloft universe. You can use the Curse of Strahd as your source book or this years Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.
You can find some “inspiration” for your own one shot here.
Friday I was feeling I needed some game time. So on the clubs discord server I put out the call to see who was free for some gaming Saturday afternoon.
Luckily with a slight adjustment to the initial suggested start time two others could make it.
The initial games I had suggested playing were Lost Ruins of Arnak, Tapestry or Funkoverse (if there were only 2 of us). But during Saturday morning I had been tempted to take Dune Imperium. Even Wingspan for a fleeting moment was considered. It was a close call because which ever of the games I took I’d have to teach it because the game would be new to at least one person.
In the end I went with putting Lost Ruins of Arnak and Love Letter 2nd edition in the bag.
As usual I went a little early to start getting set up. I like to maximise the game time for the others playing.
I was still setting up when Jeff arrived, and almost finished when Julie turned up. Which meant I could start teaching the game to our noob to the game Julie.
Lost Ruins of Arnak
I like Lost Ruins but I think this second play cements my preference for Imperium. Well for the time being. The expansion may change that. After all the expansion does add one of the things I like better about Imperium the asynchronous player boards.
There is also a nagging feeling that in both plays we are not discovering enough new dig sites and focusing too much on the research track. It seems the game is more about racing up the research track than anything else. Although the margin between Jeff’s final score and mine was the two sites he discovered and defeating their guardians.
I did like how the blocking of some of the second spaces on the base camp spots in the three player game is random.
I did get some cool extra card draw going on, and at times despite there being fewer rounds than Imperium felt that I was doing more on my turns.
Jeff asked if the deck building side was more important in Imperium than Lost Ruins. And I think it is. Or more like it has a bigger emphasis. Although I do like how new cards in Lost Ruins are added to the bottom of your deck, so they come into play quicker.
The scores were much closer this time with Jeff still winning and starting his undefeated run with the game. Sadly I still managed to come last with a slightly better score than the first play.
Final score for Lost Ruins of Arnak
We finished off the afternoon with a game of Love Letter 2nd edition. Which was another new game to Julie. But this is soooo much quicker to teach.
The second edition is an update by Asmodee after taking over Love Letter from AEG. It increases the max player count from 4 to 6 players. The tokens have been upgraded from wooden cubes to plastic disks, and new art. Plus to accommodate the extra player count there are more cards, from 16 to 21. Which also sees some new characters/cards.
Firstly the number of guards has increased from 5 copies to 6. Two copies of new card The Spy (value 0) wins you a point if you were the only player to play or discard a spy during the round. Which is a pretty cool additional way to win that extra point each round. Finally there are two copies of the Chancellor (value 6) allows you to draw two new cards, add those to your hand, then place two cards of your choice on the bottom of the deck. It’s an interesting card. Great for burying a card and finding one you want.
Love Letter 2nd Edition
At the end of the day it’s still Love Letter and still great fun. Although this version will replace the first edition, especially when we want to make use of the higher player count. It doesn’t come close to knocking Love Letter: Batman off its perch as my favourite version of Love Letter.
Final scores for Love Letter 2nd Edition
As you can see Julie won, and once again I came last.
Despite coming last in both games I had a good time. It was exactly what I needed. However the heavy rain as we were leaving wasn’t! A big thank you to Jeff and Julie for taking the time out of busy weekend schedules to play some board games.
