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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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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City Squares V: Haven's City File

Today I’m going to share with you my city file of Haven. This is what I referred to during my players’ time there. I’ll be using the format I’ve described previously (1. District, I. Location, A. Contacts, i. Information, a. Leads). As of now the heroes have left the port city with no plans to return. Just in case my player’s do check this out, I’m going to leave the portions of the city they didn’t investigate whited out so highlight for spoilers. Feel free to drop Haven in your game and tweak it to fit your campaign.

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Multi-Square Megadungeon II

My journey in dungeoncraft has finally led me back to crafting that megadungeon. Except this time it’s for my Glorious Bastards campaign instead my first and still ongoing Pirates of the Aegean game. Turns out my pirate players decided to sail west and leave Haven behind. I find the player’s of my Glorious Bastards game in the sewers underneath Kwythellar, one of Erebus’ largest metropolises. Since the it’s one of the largest cities, I think the sewer system should be large and labyrinthine as well.

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A Pirate’s Life V: Ships of the Line

We’re back to the high seas! Today I have around twenty ship stat blocks for you from the Age of Sail. Starting with the stat blocks from Sid Meier’s Pirates! and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, I tinkered with the statistics to come up with a meaningful manner of integrating ships into the Naval Travel & Combat system put together so far. First, let me walk you through the DMG’s ship stats, where it’s lacking and what’s needed to fix it.

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City Squares IV: The Sixth Rule of Dungeoncraft

Today I’m gonna go through making a lead and how I use it to provide my players with clues pointing towards a secret. These are going into my game. Feel free to use them for yours or as examples for making your own. We’ll connect the leads and determine which of those treasure-boxes-disguised-as-NPCs-filled-with-info (which is the treasure) is the most interesting. After finding the best ones that simply scream, “Investigate me!” we’ll drop the Sixth Rule of Dungeoncraft on it to make the lead not only a PC magnet but something that will immediately propel the players to adventure.

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A Pirate's Life IV: Ship's Surgeon

In the last part of this series we explored a mini-game for a player to manage crew morale on a ship during a naval battle. Today I’d like to shine the light on what happens to a crew not mentally but physically during combat, and a player role for managing this. We’ll go over the role of a ship’s Surgeon, how many crew get injured or killed, and how the Surgeon goes about reducing this number. After quite a bit of thought, and discarding a few working theories of how things might play out I eventually settled on a system informed by enemy damage dice.

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A Pirate’s Life III: Non-Combat Roles

Let’s get right to it. We have a bunch of PCs on a single ship. One player is the pilot. The rest are gunners. The choice is pilot or gunner, and the player with the best skill bonus is the pilot. Not much of a choice. We need other options, preferably non-combat options that give some diversity to the choice. Many ships had positions whose focus was to manage the crew’s morale, from this we’ll extrapolate a few ideas from 5e’s Bardic Inspiration mechanic. Further, we need to look at another basic role that is a pillar of D&D: the healer. First we’ll start with the morale manager.

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A Pirate's Life II: Naval Combat

Last time we went through a game structure for ship movement during naval combat. It wasn’t super simple, but the result was (hopefully) something intuitive with strategic depth. Let’s do the same for the combat itself. The limitation of the ruleset is that it only keeps one player occupied at the table unless each player is commanding a different ship. So we need things for the other players to do that are also intuitive and have strategic depth, while not creating anything already covered in the rules.

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A Pirate’s Life: Naval Movement & Travel

My PCs are planning to leave Haven after just one quest. It’s not because they didn’t like it, but the party’s Captain is playing a cleric of Tali. As such he doesn’t like staying in one place for too long. After putting a lot of work into Haven, I’m having strong urges to railroad them back there but I’m going to channel this into expanding the sandbox to the high seas. Let’s go sailing.

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