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.

Today’s post was going to be some recent tips that Sly Flourish had shared on twitter over the last couple of days and my thoughts on them.

However inspiration hit me whilst I was in bed this morning. And I just had to record those thoughts before I forgot them. So you will have to wait for those tips and my take on them until tomorrow.

I can’t remember what sparked the train of thought off. The iPad was playing a podcast and I was semi conscious at the time. Drifting in and out of various states of sleep. Not quiet asleep but not fully awake.

But it came to me to use diaries scattered around the lost Ironstar mine to fill the players in on the backstory of the Ironstar clan. A standard video game tool in games like Bioshock.

From there my mind made the connection with probably my favourite book of all time Lord of the Rings.

I could use the diary and it’s discovery just like Tolkien had to act as a warning of something bad.

If the players recognise this borrowed scene from the book or movie then this will help ramp up the tension, especially if they think that I’m following the scene exactly.

Which I might then follow suit and have the group attacked. But there will be no balrog.

I get in my inbox on a “regular” basis an email from Johnn Four Playing Tips with usually a pretty interesting GM tip. There was one recently called ‘Back Pocket Encounter Idea: Planar Rifts’. Which basically involves opening planar rifts up for the players to encounter.

And that is the idea I’m going with instead of a balrog or some other big nasty creature from the under dark. While the Ironstar dwarves were alive they opened up a 1 foot square planar rift that bought about their demise.

I think the players will also jump to conclusions when they encounter the planar shift and think they are off to Avernus. Particularly after the conversation we had at the start of the previous session. I’m happy to have that bit of misdirection. More tension.

The one thing I’m concerned about at the moment is the mine big enough? The one I plan to use (see previous session planning post) is something I think could be completed in a single session, two at most depending on duration of the session. I’m leaning now to repurposing the lost mine from the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign that is included in the Starter Kit.

Right I’ve captured the idea. What do you think?