This is why my gaming group no longer trusts my wife with making the map.
Oct17
by "Jester" David on October 17, 2017

Mapping Skills

I’ve only had one D&D game where a player was tasked with making a map and keeping track of the group’s position in the dungeon. This was in a very unconventional 4e game in early 2012 and it was a heck of a lot of fun. And stress. I can see why it’s rare, but there’s something fun in trusting the players to keep track of their position amid dark, twisting corridors of an underground labyrinth.

I wonder if there’s a way to still do this while still having miniatures & battlemaps or having to track every turn and foot. Maybe treating the dungeon map more like a flowchart? That might be interesting.

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Oct13
by "Jester" David on October 13, 2017
Posted In: Gaming Blogs

Borderlands: Session Seventeen

My last session was probably a textbook example of poorly executed Dungeon Mastering. My players jumped through a super obvious adventure hook, but a couple sessions before I thought they were going to. I responded with a staggering lack of imagination and stingy treasure. I need to do much, much better this week.

Rest and Recovery

Attempting to bounce back from the above gives me a few really big goals to accomplish this session:

  1. Think of a *real* treasure of the ages that would be found in a gnomish vault
  2. Establish how it was missed the first time round
  3. Get the players to realize they might have missed said treasure
  4. Prompt the players to return

I have a couple ideas for Step #2. Given the Vault was created by gnomes, illusions are the easy solution. Secret doors were searched for but no one disbelieved or thought to check for magic. The real treasure could be behind an illusionary wall that is hiding an entire chamber or wing of the Vault. And since the party was quickly exploring, I can put on my “hardass DM” voice and remind them that they never looked for illusions or thoroughly checked for secret doors.

This makes Step #3 easy as well: the players are in a gnome crypt. If I introduce two or three significant illusions it will remind them that gnomes are known for trickery. And this encourages me to be tricksy with the crypt, having illusion-based traps or hidden chambers.

The harder part is the “Treasure of the Ages”. More money works, but this feels cheap, especially as my party already has more gold than they can spend. That feels like taking the easy way out. This is especially true since the world follows post-apocalypse tropes. The treasure could be a wealth of lore. The lost gnomish library. Alternatively, I have some magical MacGuffin gemstones in the world (called Nexus Crystals) that are used to power golems and magical devices, and the “Treasure” could be a storehouse of those.

I have another idea. I have warforged in my campaign setting, and have established in the campaign document that the secret of creating more warforged is lost/ unknown. Forgotten during the “Great Catastrophe” that made things all post-apocalypsey. The “Treasure of the Ages” could be a creation forge: a way to create a small army of warforged or golems. Enough to defend and rebuild a town or create a loyal and undying army. Or create a lasting future for the warforged already in the world.

Crypt Keeper

Where the story left off, the party had reached the crypt suspected of being source of the undead plague causing so much suffering to the Sharpshooter’s hometown. Delving through the crypt should occupy a good chunk of the session. Maybe as much as half. I don’t want to make the crypt so large that it takes a full session to explore, let alone multiple sessions of dungeon crawling. It’s not that important, and I’d like to move onto other stories as quick as the plot allows.

As a functional crypt there needs to be numerous alcoves for storing or intering bodies. There might also be some mass graves for the human and dwarven workers/ slaves that built the crypts. I’ll probably have their section decorated with skulls like the Parisian catacombs.

In addition to zombies, I’ll populate the crypt with other assorted undead. Whatever strikes my fancy. Likely some skeletons and wights plus whatever is in Tome of Beasts that’s roughly around the right CR. A bone swarm will likely be too high a Challenge, but I’m tempted to throw one in anyway. See how my players react and work around such a beast. Drain some resources.

During a recent Paizo sale I purchased a few assorted prepainted plastic minis. I always like grabbing critters I don’t have during such sales. Whatever is different and cheap. This time I snagged a boneclaw: a monster from 3rd Edition (Monster Manual III) that also ended up being a filler monster in the 4e Monster Manual. Its shtick is that it has really long claws and mega-reach (and literally nothing else). It was a dick/ gotcha monster in 3e, which pretty much took advantage of how opportunity attacks and reach on large creatures worked in that edition. Spiked chains: the Monster. But I need something simple at the end, and it’s unexpected/ unfamiliar. So it might end up in the dungeon as a nasty surprise.

I’ll also need to consider what’s going on with the undead. Why they’re rising and what started the undead plague that’s currently befalling the small mountain town of Norall. A necromancer? Some kind of demon or freed unnatural force? Whatever it is, it will largely be a MacGuffin that’s just a justification for the problem and should be reasonably easily solved. I don’t want this to become a major part of the campaign.

Post-Game Report

The dungeon ate up more of the session than I anticipated. Mostly because of some bad luck and party dynamics.

I placed the bone swarm in a sub-level of the dungeon, accessible via an illusory pit trap. A couple characters fell in and engaged the monster, but one remained up top, dealing with a couple skeletons with bows. (I positioned them on the far side of the pit behind cover, to draw adventurers into the trap. Which worked nicely as the Swashbuckler charged forward and into the pit.) The Grippli Rogue proceeded to unleash the wand of wonder instead of attacking the swarm, allowing it to spend a couple rounds shredding the Swashbuckler and Red Mage (and then grabbing the Red Mage to use as a body shield against the Swashbuckler).

The wand of wonder continues to be the entertainment MVP, first covering the bone swarm with honey and then filling the trapped pit area with a dozen cows, which are then promptly shredded by the swarm filling the area with meat 7.5 cubic meters of meat. It then made the Grippli Rogue perpetually invisible. Which is going to be interesting…

On a whim I had a wraith in the final fight with the bone claw, to add some variety to the physical undead. This definitely changed the battle when it ghosted through the wall and crit the Sharpshooter, reducing them to 0 hit points. Dead. The next turn the wraith raised them as a specter and sent them after the Red Mage (who was still heavily injured after the bone swarm). Meanwhile, the Swashbuckler had been separated and was solo-in the bone claw and a trio of zombies. There was certainly some tension… In the end, the Red Mage cast revivify on the corpse of the Sharpshooter, which caused a micro rules questioning: that spell doesn’t specify if it affects undead or not. This was semi-answered in a rules question on Twitter but that answer applies if the raised specter was killed. In my case, the specter was still alive. I ruled the specter was “slain” as its essence discorporated when the animated life force/ soul. But I’ll probably have some additional complications arise from the Sharpshooter being near-undead: using that to give the character a small “boon” reflecting the completion their story arc.

I decided the cause of the undead plague was an evil book. Which I settled on because I had an evil book-and-stand miniature. Minis are a great tie breaker or inspiration. I had the book sealed by magic, and its circle was broken, allowing necromantic energies loose. I figured the party would either re-seal it or it’d become a future plot hook. But my players found an interesting alternative, and brought it to the guardian sphinx they met earlier in the campaign.

Now the party is happily on its way to a nearby faerie forest to find a unicorn for the Red Mage’s personal subquest. This means a travel session next followed by some wilderness encounters and the like. Maybe a smaller quest encountered en route.

Bonus Monster

Boney claw

Large undead, chaotic evil

Armour Class 15 (natural armour)
Hit Points 97 (13d10 + 26)
Speed 30 ft.

Str 12 (+1) Dex 17 (+3) Con 15 (+2)
Int 10 (+0) Wis 8 (-1) Cha 12 (+1)

Skills Perception +2, Stealth +6
Damage Vulnerabilities bludgeoning from magical sources
Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical sources
Damage Immunities necrotic, poison
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, poisoned
Senses darkvision 60 feet., passive Perception 12
Languages Common
Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Reaching Claws. The first time in a turn a creature moves within its reach, the boney claw can make a claws attack.

Actions

Multiattack. The boney claw makes two claws attacks.

Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 15 ft., one creature. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) slashing damage.

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Oct01
by "Jester" David on October 1, 2017
Posted In: Gaming Blogs

Borderlands: Session Sixteen

My homegame is finally resuming after four or so months of hiatus. One of my players took over the table for a mini-campaign that ran for five or six sessions, but was heavily delayed due to busy schedules. This delay has made planning the session tricky: I’ve grown used to not spending a couple weeks planning a session, balancing encounters, or generally thinking ahead to the game. And because the game is a sandbox, I’ve actively avoided spending several those months plotting out the next part of the campaign.

Planned Reminder

After the big climactic end of the “season” I’m skipping ahead a year. A full year because this amount of downtime grants the opportunity to train, learn a new tool proficiency or language, and the like. Perhaps even do some magic item shopping or crafting.

The time jump is strategic: skipping ahead means the player’s fuzzy memories of the last thing that happened will mirror the character’s. I don’t need to worry about who was poisoned, how much damage was retained, what abilities were used, etc. Time has passed, small adventures were had, and the group is reuniting.

To get everyone thinking about the game, at the very end of the previous session, I handed out small little quarter-page sheets describing what the characters had been up during the intervening year. At the very end, I had asked the players to send me their ideas for activities and ran with those when possible.

I also used that as an opportunity to seed a few adventure hooks and potential revised character motives for the players. Some reason they sought out their old allies of two or three months after a solid year apart. And I could do fun things like have one character go missing for a couple months and return a few years older with no memories of the intervening time. Another character is having strange dreams that could be sent from their god.

Rapid Travel

I plan on starting at the fortress claimed by player from a small army of hobgoblins. Which has been cleaned up and fixed for the past year. Somewhat. I don’t want too many repairs to have been done so I can still use “gathering resources” and “finding craftsmen” to be a potential quest.

Once everyone has gathered together, I can ask them their next step. Which I had asked about earlier, so I could do some planning. This is more to roleplay the reuniting and accepting of the quest hook/ plot. As such, I already know they plan on heading south to the hometown of one of the adventurers, hoping to repel an undead plague and finish rebuilding the town.

As the party is fairly high level now (Level seven? Damn, I should check.) I don’t require many random encounters on a road they have travelled five-ish times before. I can handwave and montage the trip, describing some random bandits or goblins that are effortlessly dispatched or scared off with a casual display of magic. They can pretty much just quick travel between points at this level.

I should have them encounter someone on the road. Perhaps an explorer making maps of the remade world? Something to remind them that the world is dangerous and savage for common folk, and reinforce their place and big damn heroes. There should also be some small random fight to get everyone used to combat and remind the players how to handle their characters before life-and-death stakes are introduced.

I’m not sure where I’ll have these encounters. I’m testing out a magic item called a portal stone (found in my Artificer document on the DMsGuild). The item basically lets you cast teleportation circle once a day. However, the item doesn’t create the circle, but instead activates and existing circle letting you travel between known locations. The Red Mage in the group knows the sigils for the city of Brighthome (the effective starting zone of the game and hometown to a couple PCs) and their fortress. Plus a circle in the buried yuan-ti ziggurat (not very useful) one on a map gained from a roll on the trinket table at the start of the game. The map is an old adventure seed of a gnome vault conveniently located by the destination hometown, and a potential future adventure location. I’m uncertain if the party will teleport right to Brighthome and walk two or three days to the half-ruined town, or just decide to hoof it the entire way to razed Norall. So it’s safer to just leave the location of the travel encounters fluid.

 

Seasonal Arc

The player who ran the minicampaign re-caught the DM bug with his arc, and would like to run a sequel. Which is cool, but does mean this next leg of my campaign is finite. I need to think ahead for what I want to do this time, and plan more of an arc. Or at least something more structure than previous.

Or not.

One of the ways I’ve been thinking of this campaign is that it’s not a “story” but rather a few important events in the lives of a band of heroes. The events going on as they adventure. Their story rather than mine. But that doesn’t have a good place to “end” to signal when it’s time to switch campaigns for a break.

Perhaps, instead, I need to think of things from a character perspective. Let each character have a goal so this leg of the campaign end when each player fulfils their major story arc. Which means I just need one solid plotline for each character, and to establish those early on. Or, given the sandbox nature of the campaign, seed a couple different hooks for arcs and let the players decide where to go.

Post-Game Report

I try to keep this blog rated PG. So all I’ll say is bleepity bleep bleep.

The one thing I hadn’t considered the PCs doing was just teleporting directly to the gnome vault. “Hey, let’s just teleport to this unknown location and just hope there’s air and space for us all and a way to get out.” It was super tempting to just have them appear in a collapsed room and suffocate. But I didn’t because that was my bad. I should have freakin’ known. Especially when the map is labelled “treasure of the ages”. You can’t hand your players a loaded gun and then whine when they shoot you in the foot.

So, I had to improvise a dungeon on the fly.

I cheated horribly. I decided all the gnomes were dead and then created the reason. In this case a plague. And then had the party wander around the creepy abandoned city. I quickly grabbed monsters I thought were cool, pulling golems and undead that seemed about the right CR that haven’t been fought yet. I also grabbed minis that haven’t seen use in some time, and found monsters that matched, because that was quick and have an instant effect on the table. A cool mini is a rapid crutch for an encounter when the monster is random and the encounter area is unremarkable. The party wandered until they found the hoard of treasure, for which I rolled randomly. This turned out to be far, far from a “treasure of the ages”. There were a couple small encounters and the possibility of infection, and then the party escaped the Vault of the Dead and decided to continue with their mission of clearing the undead from the crypts of Norall.

I’m set for next time. Right off the bat we have a dungeon crawl through an ancient gnome & dwarven crypt filled with undead. AND I need to think of a better treasure for the gnome vault as well as a damn good reason it was missed during the first pass. AND then return to a PC’s hometowne followed by seeding of at least two more hooks.

I already know the loose plot of the Red Mage. His magic is fading, and he needs to reinvigorate it, and has heard tell of the location of a unicorn that can be used to empower him.

And the Swashbuckler wants to be the finest swordsman in the land. The player still has the 3e/Pathfinder mentality that the best way to improve your character is magic items and the mechanics in the books. So, they assume the best/only way to do so is a very particular item. So their plotline should do the reverse and have the character doing the in-world way of improving their skill rather than the in-game way. I need to direct them to a famed sword-master that can teach them new techniques, which should be entirely unrelated to magic items and gear. The character just gets a special boon, or new feature related to swordplay.

This adds a balance issue to the game. If I’m thinking about giving one character a boon then everyone probably needs something cool. That means when the sorcerer gets empowered, they get some other neat perk. And I need to consider boons and perks for the other characters at the table.

So this past session was a gong show, but I’m ready and have a great foundation for the next few sessions.

 

Shameless Plug

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