Escalation

Had a great time DMing last night. However, there was one frustrating encounter where the players were surprised by a Remhorhaz. The wizard's response was hold monster, and that was pretty much the end of the encounter. The monster was not proficient in any saving throws whatsoever, meaning it needed a natural 18 or higher in the die to break free. My challenging battle had become a game of teeball. What was the real problem here? Was it that the monster had no proficient saves? Or was the real problem spellcasting itself?

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Board Game Campaigns

Got to play the Forbidden Stars Board Game the past two weekends. It's got a bit of a learning curve, but once you get past it your in for an exciting game. My first time with it was basically a throw away since we were all getting used to the rules. There are layers upon layers of strategic depth here. That's why I'm just going to go over a few of the finer points of the second game, and how it ties into using board game / campaign mashups.

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Building A Game Table VI

I'm edging ever closer to completion! This weekend got the curves for top level of the table completed. Since these are going to be open both sides need to be finished. The radius was off a little bit so it took painstaking corrections to get them fitting correctly by adding thin strips of veneer. There was a lot of going back and forth to cut off minute shaving of the ends as well. With it being a curved piece, got this jig put together to make it easier to cut.

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Building a Game Table V

 

This time we're working on the top tier. Both table halves are all sanded and ready to go. Naturally, the next step was to flip 'em over and clamp 'em.

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Building a Game Table IV

Progress moves ever onward! Today got the curved corners glued up to the veneers and then attached them to the table. Notice all the clamps? If you're gluing then you need clamps, because clamps are a woodworker's best friend.

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Building a Game Table III

The work on this project has continued, despite not being able to do so as often as I'd like. Last weekend was a shopping expedition to get some of necessities, like stains, varnish, clasps, etc. Below are images of of the stain I picked out, General Finishes "Georgian Cherry" . Here it is on the red oak.

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A New World

Recently, my Glorious Bastards campaign wrapped up and now I’m preparing for the next one with many lessons learned. First lesson, don’t invite players until the campaign is completely prepared. In ‘Bastards, the city was fleshed out as were a few locations outside the city. I intended for the campaign to take almost entirely in the city. The one thing I never saw coming was when one of the players made an interesting character choice. Whenever his character had a bad experience somewhere, he vowed to never set foot in that place again, and the rest of the group usually followed suit.

The rest of the campaign was spent trying to find ways to use lost material as the party would have one close call and book it from whatever adventure they were in. Towards the tail end I even had to railroad them (very very gently). Nearly every NPC they met or revisited starting pointing them towards the material I had left to use. Many sessions were spent winging it, which I can pull off but prefer not to do. If nothing else, I gained experience at improvisation and learned about a new problem to prepare for. My mistake was having too much empty space on the map. In retrospect, it would have been better to frame their choices as staying in the frying pan or going into the fire. Meaning leaving one encounter has the PCs running into another. I guess one of my weaknesses is being surprised.

For this next campaign I want to try an Open Game Table set in a squarecrawl. The Alexandrian wrote a bunch of great essays on this topic and I plan to utilize them all. Turning to Ray Winninger’s old essays, a new campaign needs a well defined home base. Ludus Ludorum has some great articles about Medieval villages, towns, and cities. Between these three sources there’s plenty of gristle for the idea mill.

I love the Fall from Heaven setting. If I were to utilize FfH again, this time instead of the game taking place a couple of hundred years into the Age of Rebirth, I’d start with the very end of the Age of Ice. Mulcarn has been slain. The endless winter is just giving way to spring for the first time in several hundred years. Communities of survivors are slowly realizing it’s safe to resettle the surface as most have spent the Age of Ice hiding deep underground.

Already I’ve been tossing around ideas to develop a lonely medieval village called Gondaga, which has only been around for twenty years or so. The melting tundra is fraught with roving bands of marauders, barbarians, and dangerous wildlife. The peasantry of Gondaga eke out an existence on the surface to reclaim their rightful place on Erebus, yet survival is still a struggle. They farm, fish, and shepherd. However, all swear allegiance to the lord of the manor who has sworn to protect the village in exchange for their labor.

Perhaps early myths tell of a pale skinned man named Cassiel, larger than life, who found the villagers stumbling about in the wilderness, and re-taught them how to farm and build. His quest is to bring civilization back to mankind, one village at a time. He said there were others, but no one in the village has met or found any other civilized folk. His last words to them were, “The gods are dead.” Cassiel told them, “Live for yourselves, not the gods.” Meanwhile, the villagers are ever vigilant to safeguard themselves from the barbarians. An order was formed by the lord of the manor to explore the countryside and find other survivors, as people are far more valuable a resource than land.

The idea of an advanced being coming to edify mankind has lots of roots harkening to ancient mythology across many cultures. For instance, Prometheus bringing fire to man, the Grigori teaching mankind technology, the white bearded men bring civilization to the Mayans (some Mayan gods were described to have white skin and long beards), or Ioannes and the Sumerians.

Whenever I find myself worldbuilding, I like to mirror the themes of from mythology. There’s so much depth to find below the surface. Honestly, pick a myth, any myth, and you’ll find themes just begging to be explored. One of the reasons I’m such a fan of FfH is that it’s writer, Derek “Kael” Paxton, imported so many of these myths from differing cultures into a seamless universe. Maybe this time I’ll venture out and create my own.

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Building a Game Table II

 

For the next installment in this series, here's what happened on days two and three of the build. Since our machine was a 3 axis, it wasn't able to cut the rounded corners in the way I thought.

Which meant some assembly was required.



This is the rounded corners cleaned and glued up. Left these to dry until the next day.



This here is a jig, for those not in the know its a device - often custom made - to aid in shaping wood. This jig was for gluing red oak veneer to the plywood corners. I didn't have a steam box to bend the wood so this was the way to go. On my to do list: build a steam box. Also, making veneer is a pain.



Smile!



Part III

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Building a Game Table

This is it! Cutting has begun. This picture above is of a really cool machine called a CNC router. Got all the pieces cut on this thing. Here's how it works.

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Game Table Ideas V

Here's a quick update today.

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Game Table Ideas IV

The next iteration of this table led me to consider how to make the best use of empty space. While going about solving the problem of expanding the table length, I found another fantastic solution on the internet.

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Game Table Ideas III

Here’s the next iteration of my game table. Found some truly ingenious ideas from websites like instructables.com and videos posted by makers. There’s so many awesome features I want to add, but first thing’s first. This table needs a skeleton, which needs to be done before adding on all the extra bells and whistles (like making it glow!).

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Game Table Ideas II

The holiday season is coming up and guess what Santa, I want a game table! Well, maybe this one is too big for the fat man in red to deliver, so this’ll be a gift from me to me. I went back to the drawing board and came up with two new designs. Let’s dive in.

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Erebus Player's Guide

Hi folks! It's been a few of weeks. RL got a little too hectic, but now I'm back! Got some really cool content for you today and in the coming weeks. I'll be going back and concluding a few posts that were left as cliffhangers, like the Ultimate Bard, my Gaming Table, and most recently World Spells. Today's post has a Player's Guide for the World of Erebus with 50+ pages of lore and info for creating characters. I've also edited it to omit some of the larger world secrets so that your players can enjoy Erebus' epic twists and turns. These omitted sections are included in italics in the full version of the guide, so you Dungeon Masters can give you're players the regular version and keep the world secrets to yourselves (until you're ready for the epic reveals). If you're already a fan, this pdf will shed a little insight on what kind of D&D 5e characters roam this campaign world, along with ideal starting locations among other things. Enjoy!

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World Spells

The Civ IV mod Fall from Heaven II introduces a new feature to the base game: magic. But this ain't your uncle's spellbook. These spells affect entire cities. Then there's this really cool feature each civilization has called World Spells. They are literally spells which affect the whole of the game world. As far as I can tell there isn't any kind of spell system for 5e that covers magic on such a large scale. It's a really cool idea so I'm going to try my hand at whipping something up (+1 for mixed metaphors!).

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Journey's Quest II

After obtaining some additional information about the temple and what was there, the crew set out into the desert to find the Celestial Compass that was in the hands of the Yuan-ti. A full day of travel later the crew reached their destination. Andargo rushed ahead (as usual) and was quickly attacked by the snakes warriors guarding the entrance. With a swift victory, the crew ventured inside. The entrance was, surprise, more warriors, but one escaped and raised the alarm. Further inwards tougher Yuan-Ti with pet snakes greeted the heroes. It was tough fight. However, the crew were able to defeat their foes and toss the leader of the pack, a Yuan-Ti Abomination, into a pit at the center of the room. Cleared of all danger, the crew faced a choice. Which door would lead to the Celestial Compass?

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Journey's Quest

Last session Journey, a player in my Pirates of the Aegean campaign, wrapped up his quest. It gave me a nice break to recharge from all the Dungeon Mastering I’ve been doing this year. It was a ton of fun to see him take the reigns and deliver up an epic tale. I also got a little munchkining out of my system by playing a Tiefling Weretiger. Here’s how it went.

After the crew of the Ever Valiant landed at the Malakim port town of Baldurham they discovered a city under siege by an army of dark elves lead by Vorn’s brother Torn. They decided to leave the city and head south towards Andargo’s home town of Bourne.

On the way they encountered a small force of Malakim soldiers preparing to engage the enemy. They were determined to take back the port town of Baldurham even if it was a suicide mission. Andargo managed to convince the general leading the soldiers to wait, and head south to Bourne where the heroes could muster an army large enough to liberate Baldurham. The general agreed, but only if the crew would complete a test of faith, to survive the desert with only what they could carry.

After completing their test, the general agreed to turn south. Capt. Dagfinn and his officers Quimby, Trystem, Vorn, and Andargo set off once again to Bourne, and encountering on the way a sprite riding a tiger. The sprite was hunting for Journey, a former member of the Captain’s crew. The sprite claimed Journey was responsible for the butchering of his clan. The Captain & Co. had their own score to settle with the mad tiefling. The crew agreed to follow the sprite to find Journey’s camp and exact revenge, while Trystrem the Lady Killer lead the Malakim soldiers the rest of the way to Bourne.

The crew followed the sprite as it rode the tiger into the desert, coming across an old man being savaged by dust devils. The crew attacked at once, but were unfortunately unable to save the old man. Before the stranger succumbed to his wounds, the crew managed to learn Journey’s last known location, a large encampment deep in the desert. Quimby took the man’s body, hoping to return him to his family.

When the crew came upon Journey’s camp, they were surprised to see not a rag-tag group barely surviving, but a large tent city. It was filled with people of all nations living alongside the Journey’s army of flesh golems. The laughter of children could be heard in the street as they played under the watchful eyes of lumbering behemoths. Quimby was able to find the man’s home, returning the body back to his granddaughter. She was glad that to recover her grandfather, comforted by the knowledge his flesh would become one of the ‘awakened,’ and travel with her to Journey’s promised land.

After some searching, the crew found Journey’s tent, the largest one in the city. Inside they were greeted by their old comrade Journey, sitting upon a throne of flesh, blood and sand.

Journey was ecstatic to see his former crewmates, reminiscing about old times while the rest of the heroes get a watchful eye on the ever present flesh golems. Despite this, the sprite’s tiger, Battle Cat leapt at Journey and mauled him. It was then that Battle Cat revealed he was actually a tiefling cursed with lycanthropy, his tribe wiped out by flesh golems. The mighty Andargo jumped forward and wrestled the weretiger to the ground. Journey sympathized with the lonely creature, despite the attack, having found his own clan slaughtered in the desert. He submitted to a magical test of truth telling. Battle Cat accepted Journey and his golems had nothing to do with the deaths of Battle Cat’s family. The weretiger then pledged himself to his fellow tiefling.

Journey was then able to explain to Captain Dagfinn why he stole the Salty Lass, and all that had happened since. He asked the captain for his forgiveness and his help in retrieving an ancient artifact from a temple deep in the desert. In return, if Dagfinn & Co returned within four days, Journey promised the captain a force of golems to use against the Svartalfar (dark elves). The captain agreed and led his officers deeper into the desert...

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Gritty Realism

Short rest = 8 hours

Long rest = 7 days

Ever since I read the passage on Gritty Realism in the Dungeon Master’s Guide I’ve wanted to try this. Imagine a game where going to sleep doesn’t heal every wound. Imagine a game where getting hit by an ogre with a greatclub matters. I think it’d be pretty cool. My players, on the other hand, had different opinions.

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The Travels of Alistair

Ten years passed. Alistair lost count of the souls he’d sent to rest eternal. Like his youth spent chased through the wilderness, it was all blurring together. No matter where he followed the ill winds, nor how many cultists of Entropis he reaped, Alistair was no closer to finding the source of the ethereal storm.

It was like chasing a hurricane. Whenever he seemed to get close, the winds would change direction. Sometimes they’d disperse as if nothing were there. Yet every day the souls of the departed rose from their graves to cross over, only to be buffeted about and ensconced in a never ending typhoon.

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The Secret NPC: Ephenia, Cursed Druidess

Here’s an NPC I thought up last year. The idea came to me as a question. What if a Warlock used Voice of the Chain Master to portray themselves as their familiar? It was my first quest in 5e where I introduced her as a witch living on a lonely island. She presented herself to the heroes as the pseudodragon, but was actually nearby and invisible. Originally, I thought it’d be interesting to have the pseudodragon occasionally turn up while the heroes were sailing around (this is the Pirates of the Aegean campaign), all the while the NPC was actually a member of the crew who went by the name of Swabs. This is what the players know about her from the campaign website:

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