Nearing the halfway mark with these posts. Today’s theme is…

I thought that this was going to stump me.

Today’s word for me is inspiration for an adventure hook.

Back in 2011 there was a movie called The Eagle, starring Channing Tatum.

The basic plot summary is that it tells the story of a young Roman officer attempting to recover the lost eagle standard of his father’s legion.

The eagle standard of the Roman legions were their version of a banner. Banners in one form or another have been used by military regiments for centuries.

I think there are a couple of ways to use the basic plot of The Eagle.

The first is with a brand new party, the members of the party are all serving in the army of some kind, same unit, went through training together etc. Or they are ex-military and had served together. Which ever is chosen, it gives the party a common bond and a reason why they will be trying to recover the lost banner.

The banner they are trying to recover is from the regiment they are currently in or were serving in depending on the option they went with above.

The other way to hook them in during an existing campaign is to have them hired to recover the banner. Or they come across the site of a battle with corpses all over the place. They discover a soldier on their final breathes, who gets the party to promise to recover the banner and return it to the survivors/rest of their regiment.

Which ever of the above options is used. The party will have to infiltrate enemy territory , locate the banner, capture it and escape.

There is definitely several sessions of adventuring here.

Today’s big theme for this better late than never #RPGaDAY2020athon is…

Rest within an RPG is a period of time spent recovering, healing, sleeping, eating, reading, etc. Basically the mundane stuff that isn’t the fun stuff like fighting, looting, engaging in mental warfare in social situations.

It’s also time between adventures spent researching, building, crafting, recruiting. Activities that take many days to complete.

How these are handled by the different RPG systems out there may be varied but they all have the same purpose. To heal, replenish, and improve.

There has only been a couple of times in my paused campaign when there was any real rest for the party. Looking back at them, they were ok. The sessions that they occurred in were basically shopping trips. They could have been better.

I want to work on improving them. I think these two videos from the D&D sage Matt Colville need rewatching to help fuel my inspiration for improvement.

How do you handle rests, especially the longer multi day ones?

Cue the drum roll, the build up of suspense, for today’s “sure is late mister”, #RPGaDAY2020 topic…

“I’ll send an SOS to the world
I’ll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my
I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle, yeah
Message in a bottle, yeah”

Ok now that’s out of the system, and I’ve hopefully planted an ear worm, let’s get on with the real post.

For me I think a message is another way to deliver a secret or clue to the party. Whether it is something scrawled on a wall in paint or giving it a more sinister tone blood, to a messenger person running up and handing over a scroll. Although the messenger person could be replaced by a pigeon/owl/bat etc.

But to steal, sorry be inspired by something from Greek legend and movies like Jason and the Argonauts statues could come alive and have the Gods talk to a chosen one. Or like the famous seen from the Bible have a flaming bush.

Which ever way the message is delivered to the party, it will be something that may or may not help them with their current adventure, maybe even send them off in a new direction distracting them from their current task.

Once our campaign starts back up again. I have a message from the past that the party will discover in the form of a journal at a long lost dwarven mine. The plan is to have two copies of the text to give to the players. If one of the party discovers it that does not know dwarven then they get the dwarven rune version of the text. Which will just appear as jibber is to them. However if a dwarf or some-one who can read dwarven discovers it, they get the English version of the journal, with instructions that they need to paraphrase the contents of the journal to the rest of the party (if they wish to share it with them).

The journal will warn the party of the perils they will be facing if they choose to progress deeper into the mine. I borrowed the idea from Tolkien and Lord of the Rings when the Fellowship of the Ring come across The Book of Mazarbul. I hope that the players get and like this little Easter egg.

See you in tomorrows post.

The latest word of inspiration for #RPGaDAY2020 arriving late is…

Below I present to you my outstanding stack of RPG books to read.

You can see why a delay between the US getting Tasha and the UK isn’t raising my blood pressure. I have a nice stack to get through.

Is it day ten or two?

Depends on the number base you are using I suppose.

The inspiring word for this tenth day of waffle for my #RPGaDAY2020 is…

Sadly I’m taking this post very materialistically and treating this as my RPG wants. Or basically wish list.

Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes has been on my wish list for yonks. But I’ve never pulled the trigger and purchased it. It has really cool chapters giving more in-depth cultural backgrounds for halflings, gnomes etc. Plus even more monster stats to use.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is out at the start of December in the UK (from the 17th November in the US). It’s joined by the wilderness DM screen which is also on my wish list.

Cyberpunk Red is out soon. But I’m looking forward to getting this. I love the theme, the starter set looks good (although not got to the table yet). So getting the full rule set is a no brainier.

The chase cards for the Pathfinder RPG are not on the list any more. They were yesterday when I did the above image. But then I caved and ordered them!

Also not shown but on the list are the Wizkids dinosaur miniatures, their sea creature miniatures, and I want some Stirge miniatures. Skeletons and zombies of various creatures are always on the list to build up the undead horde. Plus any scatter terrain that can be re-used with other systems, not just D&D.

The ultimate item on the wish list is a 3D printer. But that’s a dream purchase.

This wasn’t a great post (but then neither have the previous ones) hopefully things will improve.

With the real world recreating the celebrations at the end of Return of the Jedi or after the house fell on the wicked witch of the East. It’s time to once more pour cold water on all that joy and happiness with another one of my blog posts.

Today’s delayed due to leaves on the track #RPGaDAY2020 pause for thought and reflection is…

Going with the blindingly obvious first thing that came to mind the “light at the end of the tunnel” that is full of hope and optimism. I usually then follow it up with the pessimist part of “is usually a train or oncoming lorry”.

But I’m going to take the quick and obvious approach for today’s theme and present the D&D 5e cantrip Light. This cantrip can be cast by Bards, Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards.

Dram my Halfling wizard had Light as one of his cantrips. Not having dark vision meant he needed something to help him see in the dark. It meant I saw this as more a utility spell.

“A cantrip is a spell that can be cast at will, without using a spell slot and without being prepared in advance. Repeated practice has fixed the spell in the caster’s mind and infused the caster with the magic needed to produce the effect over and over. A cantrip’s spell level is 0.”

That description of what a cantrip is from the Players Handbook makes it sound like a utility spell. It’s certainly something Dram would have to use a lot.

As the world waits in anticipation for a winner to be declared in the US Presidential race and the ensuing chaos.

It’s once again time to marvel at my ramblings and that anyone could find them of interest.

Today’s better late than never #RPGaDAY2020 word of invocation is…

It was bound to happen at some point during this series of posts that one (if not more) of the days themes would stump me.

Today is one of those days.

It’s come earlier than I thought it would but now it’s happened.

I looked at the Monster Manual, Volo’s and Mordenkainen’s writings. Nada.

I tried cheating by seeing what others had written. Apparently the is a creature/monster called a shade. But it’s a homebrew.

I miss remembered the Styes in Ghosts of Saltmarsh as the Shades. My memory mixing it with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and a part of Ankh-Morpork known as the Shades.

Although the Shades would make a brilliant inspiration for a town or part of a city in any campaign independent of the setting.

The Shades is a poor part of Ankh-Morpork that if it was described as rough and dangerous would make it sound like a safe place to visit!

So populating these slums with “colourful” NPCs. People that are struggling to survive day to day, that would kill you for the shoes you are standing in, and the shirt on your back. A place where the police walk around in gangs for safety.

Having a party stumble into The Shades thinking they had reached safety after some sort of encounter such as being chased by a gang or horde of some sort. It’s almost like a horror movie. The ‘final girl’ runs screaming from the woods having survived the killer’s attempts to kill her, to the house with lights on. She bangs on the door. There is no answer. She bangs some more,louder more frantic. Expecting the killer to appear any moment. The door opens. Standing there is a friendly, safe face. But we the audience know that the girl has just gone from the frying pan into the fire. Somehow this person is related to the killer and will try their best to kill the girl.

That’s the best I could do. Add an ‘s’ and talk briefly about a fictional slums from an amazing series of books. Hopefully I can do better tomorrow.

Wow my commitment to doing this belated #RPGaDAY2020 is amazing me. Surely I’ll get bored with it soon, or skip one because it’s too hard!

Today’s word to inspire is…

This is a post of few words. It’s a photo post. Each photo is entitled “A couple of …”

And I’m back.

Bored yet?

Today’s belated #RPGaDAY2020 themed post is…

Forests are everywhere in RPGs and the tales that inspire them. From Hansel and Gretal, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood to Robin Hood.

The first combat encounter from the D&D Starter Set adventure Lost Mines of Phandelver that new players have is an ambush in woods on the way to Phandalin. A woods is a type of forest!

However for a long time I was flummoxed with a way to have trees on the battle map.

I looked at stuff for war gamers and the options were way out of my budget. Three trees on a base were twenty or thirty pounds or more. And I would need several. The cost soon shot up.

I tried using these “mini” trees (above right). They were cheap but just not the right scale. They looked too small.

I had some 3D models that looked ok in the photos from the various free 3D model websites. But my source of getting stuff printed had moved away.

Luckily I eventually stumbled across these plaster tree stumps (above left). They were affordable (I forget the actual cost, I think they came out less than thirty). Plus to the right scale.

What I like about these is that they show where the trees are, but don’t block what is going on the battle map. The canopy is implied.

Plus they are generic enough that I can use them with the Last Days skirmish game as well, plus any RPG that needs trees.

If I need to have a mini in the canopy of the tree, then I can (and need to get some) use those platforms that are used to show a mini is flying/swimming.

For me these partial tree stumps are a great solution for the RPG session.

This isn’t the greatest post of all time it’s only a…

Ok I apologise for that.

If it helps I do feel a little sleazy and dirty having typed it.

Today’s belated inspiration reminds me of the campaign I am running (and currently on hold, well you know why).

In my campaign which is set around the Moonshae Islands and the Sea of Swords, while reading the section of the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide about the Island Kingdoms, in the Mintarn section there was mention of the red dragon Hoondarrh aka the Red Rage to Mintarn. It spoke of how the people of Mintarn paid a tribute to the dragon to gain it’s mercy. I ran with that idea as an adventure hook for the campaign.

The following are basically the notes I wrote in my post mortem posts summarising what happened during the three or four sessions story wise when the players picked up on that adventure hook.

The party of adventurers had ended up on the island of Mintarn via the fishing town Queen’s Cove.

The party was hired to escort the towns contribution to the islands tribute to the Red Rage to Mintarn. Their journey started off eventfully with Sahuagin attacking just before dawn. They also had to clear the road from a fallen tree, and discovered an abandoned guard tower. At Mintarn they were rewarded handsomely for their efforts, and got a chance to spend their reward in a bustling market.

In Mintarn they joined up with a ships captain who had fallen on hard times and his dwarf ships wizard to help them gain a new boat. After defeating some pirates, raiding the warehouse, the party and their ‘new friends’ stole the boat. After hiding the boat the party returned to the tavern. Oh the boat belonged to Angrath the minotaur pirate.

That little helpful deed gave them a boat and two new members to the party.

With a taste for blood and the prospect of winning money the party took part in a historical recreation of an infamous halfling battle at the Mintarn arena as part of a celebration organised by the Tyrant of Mintarn. Which was gatecrashed by the red dragon Hoondarrh, demanding that their tribute is delivered early. Afterwards the Tyrant recruits our party to deliver the tribute to Hoondarrh.

After having a hearty breakfast our ” heroes” were escorted by the City Watch to their newly acquired ship. Waiting for them onboard was Hoondarrh’s tribute, complete with two knights guarding it.

Before setting sail the party were informed Valdor had been kidnapped, and that the Tyrant was in the process of finding out by whom and where he had been taken.

Our party set sail, and after a slight detour during the night, the ship was attacked by sahuagin.

The battle was long and bloody. Eventually our “heroes” won through.

The sahuagins “boat” was searched to no avail. So it was set on fire!

After that it was pretty uneventful as the party delivered the tribute and returned to Mintarn.