Nerds! Assistance please…

Home team now consists of a skeleton wizard, a dwarf cleric, and a high elf sorcerer. I have an open seat or two that hopefully I can fill soon. We had a fun session tonight. Embarked on a new quest to steal a secret magic scroll. Everything went well and we had a good time. Right up until the end, which can be summed up in a meme:

They knew of a secret passage. The scroll is supposed to be in the secret catacombs beneath a temple. The switch that opened the secret stairs was hidden, as is traditional. In the temple are statues of the four main deity in this world. One is essentially the god of death. The secret switch to get to where the dead things are was hidden on the god of death. I didn't think it was that hard. We stopped there because late. So many spell slots expended. There's a tough fight at the bottom of those stairs. Maybe tough. There will be a wand of wonder involved. I love chaotic magic. I'm excited. 

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

I was going to say that I'm normally not a fan of puzzles, because they usually feel forced and don't make sense in context...

...but "the lever to open the door to the catacombs is hidden in the statue of the god of death," isn't much of a "puzzle".

Our session the other night was fun.

We had a moment of, "berkeley it. Let's attune to the magical artifact just to see what happens..."
Followed immediately by, "Oh god! This is the worst possible outcome..."
Then, "No wait... this is the BEST possible outcome."

Playing Descent into Avernus. The adventure line is very 'meh'. Super linear railroad of fetch quests. Whatever, we're making the game casual and fun and not pretending it's anything other than what it is.

So, we have to free someone from a pact with a devil to get them to do us a favor. To free them, they have to drink the blood of a titan. Whole string of "go to points A, B, C, D, and back to A" to get the Titan blood.

Well, we take this artifact that we're supposed to trade for... blah blah blah. One character attunes to it and the DM rolls up the bad things that happen when you do that. First it start messing with the mind of the PC attuning to it so whe won't want to give it up...

...And then it summons a Titan to try to steal the artifact away. So we poke it, get a bit of it's blood, it takes the orb (we're powerless to stop it), and we run away. The Titan stealing it frees the PC.

We laugh and end the session having circumvented a bunch of BS through like 4/1000 random chance.

In reply to Beer Baron :

I've learned not to make my puzzles very tricky. Most of the time they end up quite silly or include the impossibly simple solution. Still. They'll find a way to either break something or over-complicate it. 

We stopped with them having entered a dark spiral staircase, at the bottom is an undead gladiator. His overly ornate shield has a wand of wonder imbedded it it. A failed attack "hits only the shield" and causes the wand to go off. Should be entertaining. Possibly fatal. Especially with most of the spell slots used up. 

Barefootcyborg...

Dunno if you're familiar with Sly Flourish's "Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master". Best GM prep book ever. Apparently he recently released a "Lazy DM's Workbook" and "Lazy DM's Companion". I'm probably going to pick those up for myself and my DM.

https://shop.slyflourish.com/

In reply to Beer Baron :

I am not familiar, but with that price and that title, I soon will be. Thanks!

I recently bought Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. If you can only buy one book, you need a players manual, but if you can buy two, buy Tasha's. It's got such cool stuff. 
 

Anyway. Halloween. The home team is on the return leg of a fetch quest, and have just been joined by a new player (half-elf rogue assassin) played by a fellow from church who hasn't played in my lifetime. So, in the spirit of the season, I used a storm to chase them into a haunted mansion filled with puzzle doors and trap rugs and cursed beds. Oh, and hellhounds and constructs. That they've discovered so far. There isn't really a plot critical purpose, other than just keeping things interesting during a rather boring stretch of road on a long journey. 
The dice were not in it tonight. The rolls were poor. I was worried because I really dislike fudging my rolls and I didn't want to kill a new player, but I didn't have to. Half the session was a single battle, after which the party noticed they were now bathed in an otherworldly green light, and we ended on a cliffhanger. The light will turn out to be coming from a ghost of the landlord, but I won't force the fight. I may have pounded them hard enough for them to cut and run even with the storm raging. We'll find out in a couple weeks. 
 

The away team managed to bust out of jail, evade capture, and set sail as fugitives of the city they were in. But not before the bard seduced the captain of the guard, and then openly mocking the night guard of the jail they escaped. These players have a habit of making themselves unwelcome. What worries me is just the players themselves. Everyone gets along, but the last two sessions have been a chore for me just trying to keep everyone together. One keeps trying to split the party, one just wants to play dialog, one is a murder hobo, and the fourth constantly looks for ways to start a scuffle. Add in the scheduling difficulties and I'm afraid the group may fizzle. Time will tell. 

Yesterday was a rather successful session with the away team. They managed to evade capture and set sail. The only real hiccup was not bringing any food. Tried fishing, no dice. So they did what any reasonable person would in that situation. Put blood in the water and fish for sharks instead. Then the bard magically paralyzed the shark, looks at me and says, "do you know what happens when a shark can't move or swim? It suffocated and dies." And I thought, damn that's cold. And gave him a point of inspiration. They then managed to net another shark and pull it aboard for dissection. Because funny, I let them discover the shark was expecting. Warlock asks if unborn shark bits may have any magical properties for potions or whatnot, and I ended the session there. Gotta see what I can do with that question before the next session. We had a lot of fun and laughs. Good session. 
 

Tonight was a home team game. They had found themselves seeking shelter from the storm in a decrepit mansion that only appears under a full moon. So of course the place is haunted and booby trapped. They narrowly fended off a couple animated suits and two hellhounds. This was last session. Tonight they found the ghostly master of the house and promised to try and help free him of the mansion. So they'll be seeking out a swamp witch and attempting  to get her to lift the curse. Other than that, they've been asked to seek out an ancient red dragon in hiding. The goal is information, but the complications are plentiful, and the road there is long and dangerous. So we have options and goals. The new party member is having fun and seems to be a good fit. Going forward we'll likely need to spend a session planning and preparing for the tasks ahead. And I'll have to flesh out the lore and history a bit more. Pyr, the dragon has been in hiding for millennia, deep beneath a dwarven stronghold. In this world, dragons and dwarves are old enemies. While the party would be welcomed as travelers in the dwarf kingdoms, any hints of their true purpose would be disastrous, and a misstep with the dragon could mean TPK. 
They've gotten real hints at the long game here and the story I want to tell. Hopefully they decide to take the quest at some point. I do have to remind myself that I'm trying to be a good game master and not a train conductor. The world is mine, the lore is mine. And I'm very proud of both. But the story is theirs. 
 

Home game tonight. The party has decided to seek out the ancient red dragon in hiding. They are not making a beeline though, instead taking a meandering route towards another smaller quest mostly on the way. The side quest is seeking the it a swamp witch in an effort to lift a curse. It's a fair journey there and so far they've made decent progress and the only event has been to follow the sound of screams off the road and into the hills. Turns out, the screams were from a harmless mushroom called a shrieker, as they were being eaten by some deer. They didn't scare off the deer, but the wolves did. So they fought a wolf pack and finally leveled up to 6.

Another few days journey will take them further from the mountains and into the lowland plains towards a place called Grasswater, where on the outskirts lives a swamp witch. 
 

Of note. They have been advised to find something that can be offered as tribute to the dragon they're looking for. The idea was floated of trying to capture the witch and offering her as tribute. They quickly dismissed the idea, but if that isn't a perfect example of the kind of unexpected shenanigans this game brings out, I can't think of a better one. They also came into possession of a bag of devouring. So that may come in handy if they can keep it. 
 

I gave them all a fair amount of gold for completing the last fetch quest, and they actually used some of it to prepare for winter traveling. So that was mature. They'll likely level up again before they make it to their goal in the southern mountains.

This is a good group. 4 players that work well together and have similar goals and expectations from the game. The newest player is the hardest to schedule, but still not bad. Twice a month is pretty reasonable. 

Holy E36 M3. Have you heard all the dustup that's going on surrounding the leak of the new Open Games License from WOTC?

In reply to Beer Baron :

I've seen headlines but haven't really delved into it. Seems like it shouldn't bother me too much as I run a pretty loose home brew game. Idk. I'll have to read up on it. 

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

Lots of people seem to be in a fury. It certainly wouldn't affect me, especially since I've shifted to Cypher.

I'm listening to analysis of what was shared to get a sense of what it might mean for online creators whose 3rd party content I enjoy. It's intellectually intriguing as a case study of IP law.

Mostly I'm observing with a sense of Schadenfreude watching everyone turn against Hasbro for wanting to try to suck all the money out of people who have done the grassroots work of making their product popular and keeping it culturally relevant.

Nearing the end of a side quest. The home team has found the swamp witch, if they realize it. Last session ended with the monk knocking on the door of a building they found in a swamp where magic is unpredictable and the compass doesn't work. They were met with a very friendly "Just in time for lunch!" I'm going to try to play it off as a small restaurant and brush off questions about the specific quest as long as I can. I don't expect the ruse to last that long. 

The witch is a somewhat important NPC, and if it comes to blows the party will likely find themselves on another plane courtesy of "Gilda" a lvl 20 sorcerer. They're pretty good at sensing trouble and avoiding unnecessary fights. We'll see. 
While we're playing restaurant though I have crafted a menu. There's 8 items, three of which will force con saves against various effects. So that might be fun. 
Their immediate goal is to relieve a curse and let a ghost they know as "the Marshall" move on, but I have a twist prepared. They may end up with a sweet magical manor, or they may get drunk and end up transported hundreds of miles away for saying the wrong thing. 
The manor is a bit of fun, but comes at a cost. They'll be required to perform occasional maintenance and will be given dangerous quests on special occasions. 
 

We may see a new player tomorrow, I'm not hugely optimistic that this guy will work out, but if nothing else he should be able to play well into tomorrows game. Gaming on a school night, I know better... hopefully I don't lose the time and run too late. 

New guy has apparently decided to take a rain check on joining the game for now. Apparently he has a lot going on. Anyway, onward. 
 

When I first started crafting this world, I made a map. Continent sized. The first town I decided to design is a little village on a lake called Grasswater. A couple inns, a blacksmith and farrier, a couple shops, pretty standard stuff. On the other side of the lake lives a swamp witch. One of the very first NPCs I ever created. Not even enough to have a name or much of a story, just the swamp witch east of grasswater. 

It's funny how things progress. I had one party start in this world early on. We made it three sessions. I had a very different vision of the "witch" my current party call Gilda. My players have had a big hand in shaping the world. I didn't force them to seek Gilda, but they found a clue and took that path. They've made choices and surprised me at almost every session that give me fuel and ideas and more often given me ways to fit things together than I've come up with on my own. Part of it is just time, ideas change, flaws present themselves, things like that. More often though it seems like the players unknowingly give me ideas on what might fit better or be more interesting. A friend made or an enemy. A chance encounter, a point of interest. Often I'll plant clues and they'll miss completely, or they'll force me to flesh out an avenue I hadn't considered. It's a lot of fun. 
 

Anyway, if you're still with me, tonight's recap. They were quite careful with their words, quite nervous and cautious. To their benefit. They managed enough persuasion to get a couple hints at the true nature of their host Gilda. Fake name, fake appearance. They were offered a rather large gift and were wise enough to see the strings attached, and so refused. Politely. 
My world lore is based around dragons. Essentially, there are 4 draconic lords, each having dominion over certain aspects of life/magic, life/death/fire/ice, respectively. Serving the 4 are 10 immortals, only 5 of which have identities, and only two of those are known to my party. The simplest version is one of the 10 (Arcor, sometimes called Arcor the ambitious or Arcor the Augmentor) decided to try and overthrow the 4, throwing the world out of balance and causing the rest of the immortals to go into hiding. Millennia go by and the world has all but forgotten. Now my players are discovering the lore and hunting down clues. I don't have the "main" characters all figured out yet, just a rough outline. Anyway. Turns out, "Gilda" is one of the 10 though my party isn't aware. A pretty far cry from the secretive potion maker I initially envisioned. Funny how things work out. 

Situational awareness is key. 
 

We started with an escape room. I gave them two letters from their host, one basically a verbal map and the other was the key, written in verse. I like linguistic games. I always worry about making puzzles too hard, but this group actually did very well working as a team, and solving all the riddles I'd worked in. The first was a clue to the actual key out of the room, the second was a warning veiled in a threat about what was waiting for them downstairs, though they didn't really heed the warning and just ran in, guns blazing so to speak. To face a stone giant. This is where the situational awareness comes in. Our wizard rolled low on initiative, but when it became his turn he basically won the fight. Enlarge/Reduce, to double the size of the giant in an enclosed space, confining it and bestowing advantage on all attacks made by the party. Very smart. Then it devolved into standard D&D shenanigans. The giant raged and busted through the ceiling, exposing his bits to anyone who looked up, thus becoming a dangling unshaven target. I don't care how big you are, you ain't gonna last long under that kind of sustained fire. Literally. Scorching ray. And a two handed swing of a great hammer, and the astral-armed monk with the slapping of nuts. What a scene. 
We ended with a dramatic exit of the building, a decent send off of the fallen, and a level up. Fun stuff. 
 

In other news, I've been invited to play with another group, so that should start this Wednesday. Level 5, I'm thinking wild magic sorcerer, probably gnomish. Should be fun. 

Haha. Fun stuff. I'm imagine the monk working him like a speed bag.

Starting a new group. We had Session 0 yesterday. I'm very excited.

Could use ideas for an opening scenario to run in 2 weeks.

I've started the habit of building the campaign framework and world with the group together, rather than dictating it to them. Less work for me, and players are more engaged and invested. Of course we start by floating a couple ideas in Discord, then sit down and go a COMPLETELY different direction.

So, we're doing a post-apocalyptic fantasy game.

Technologically advanced Empire Grew (using sort of magi-tech a la Piltover from Arcane). Got into a big fight with another power (more pure magic based). Both got wiped out along with most of the population. Major cities were abandoned.

We are now far enough out that no one remembers how the old tech worked. Grand parents or great grand parents were children when everything fell.

They are living in a small farming community just on the outskirts of what used to be a major city. Only brigands and hermits actually live in the old city, because you can't really grow crops there. And people are reduced to worrying about feeding themselves, not building tech and trading.

Current Issue: There are raiders using the city as a base to launch attacks on their farming community and other towns like them in the surrounding farmland.

Impending Issue: There is some sort of sinister group a ways away that is learning to unlock the old capabilities of lost magic or technology and spreading their influence. They are starting to see refugees fleeing this threat who have been experimented on and altered.

Ideas on opening scenarios?

In reply to Beer Baron :

Seems like a classic scene. Some mutated victim hobbles into town and collapses, uttering a few words before dying. Something about "need to stop them before they get too powerful" Maybe make the victim someone prominent or a beloved relative of whoever leads the villagers... As long as the group doesn't need too much prodding to follow a lead.

Seems like a really cool world setting. Mine is similar, minus the tech aspect. The old overlords disappeared, but it's been so long that nobody but scholars even remember they existed. And a few notable villains trying to find a way to claim the power/position that used to be wielded by said overlords.  
If you like world/lore building, a "golden age" fallen to history is a great way to build your thing, while at the same time giving your players a way to have actual influence in shaping their stories. 
 

If you don't mind posting the minutes here, I'd love to follow along and see how it plays out. 

barefootcyborg5000 said:

If you don't mind posting the minutes here, I'd love to follow along and see how it plays out. 

Sure thing.

I can't take much credit. Mostly, I let the players come up with the ideas and just tweaked what they suggested a bit to make things a bit to leave more options and room of things for me to play with.

Like - we established there were raiders in the old city. Then someone said there should be a shady group turning on lights and activating devices in the city. I said we should move the impending threat to the wilds, so that it was coming from a different place than the raiders.

Give me your thoughts and feedback on a couple things.

Figuring out background lore and Bad Guy Schemes

The Catacylsm that formed the apocalypse ~80 years ago. I know was a battle of "technology vs. magic". I'm picturing that the big Empire that used to be where the PC's live now was in the "tech" side. Probably a roughly 19th century type culture that disovered a mystical source of energy that let them fuel magitech. Very much thinking like the show Arcane (League of Legends).

The Magic side could have been another empire, but I'm leaning that they opened up something extra-planar, and strange creatures came through and started wrecking stuff.

How that echoes back to modern baddies

The Raiders make sense to be more tech minded. Perhaps even religiously so. They live in the city scavenging tech, after all.

The Encroaching Cult I want to then have more magic or biological bent. Trying to figure out what the nature of their magic is.

I'm thinking giving them an insectoid theme. I want to have dragons or dragon-analog type monsters. I'm also thinking Thulsa Doom and "flesh is stronger than steel". Give them a philosophy of, "human society had their chance and failed. It's time for men to fall and give rise to a new era of [something]." I'm thinking "insects" would be an appropriately creepy and logical thing. Easy enough to understand and not as commonly done.

Outline for opening adventure:

Start in the PC's home village and a sense of going about normal business.

There is an earthquake. Causes a cave in and causes general destruction including busting the spars on the mill, letting the millstone roll away and cause more damage and mayhem. PC's have to go into action to control damages, put out fires, and save lives.

NPC tasks heroes to escort a wagon to a nearby village to get a replacement spar for the mill and various other repair materials.

I need a small encounter/challenge along the way. I'm thinking a bridge over a blasted crevasse (scar from the Great War) was damaged or collapsed completely in the earthquake. Strange dark things in the crevasse.

As they approach their target village, there is a horrendously loud roaring sound. It's an out of control airship which potentially wrecks or upends their cart and then crashes. They will naturally want to investigate.

Trouble is, they are closer to the walls of the Old City where the raiders live than any other settlement. They have a limited time before raiders show up to secure this prize. They have to hurry to gather what they can and get away, or be faced with an overwhelming fight. (If they stand and fight, they will lose. They would be captured, not killed though.)

Inside the airship, they find one or two families who have fled the Sinister Magic Cult that had been experimenting on them. They are all various levels of injured from the crash. They also find a metal spike with a gem and a bunch of wiring or circuitry. It contains a consciousness (effectively a magitech AI) and had been controlling the airship. It can not speak, but has limited telepathic powers.

The spike is clearly valuable, but they will have no clue of what it is or what it can do yet.

For the airship, I think I want to make it biological or biomechanical since it came from the Encroaching Cult. With the idea of them being insect or arthropod themed, a giant bug seems appropriate. It would also be alien and creepy.

My only thoughts:

Tech baddies: do they know much about the cataclysm? Are they gathering/studying/rebuilding just to be in power? Or do they remember the "something" coming through from other dimensions and are trying to build defenses against that? Could be a good twist (in the future) on hey these guys are doing not so nice things but they have noble reasoning and are actually doing the best they know to help humanity. 
 

Magic baddies: possibly hostile "other-dimension" invaders (this world is ours now, just need to squash the resistance and build our new society) or maybe a human-bug hybrid (we're better and stronger, we'll take over this world and build power to travel back and take that world too). 

As for actual introduction and gameplay, I don't have any input, what you've outlined should be engaging and a lot of fun. 

Just spitballing here, so take it for what it's worth. It sounds like tons of great possibilities for widely varied adventures. And a great world to build. Plenty of plot stuff for possible double agents or "these people aren't what we thought" where the former enemies need to become partners (enemy of my enemy). I like it. 

I actually got to play last night. Joined into a level 5 party in some 5e module I can't remember. I've never played a sorcerer before and my spell list is actually really helpful in the setting (ice caves/fortress, and I have a 2d10 fire cantrip and fireball!) and the group is fun. Veteran players and DM so things operate smoothly within the typeset and I'm clearly the most uninformed so all I can do is learn. We had a couple fights so I got to practice those mechanics.. and we're apparently going to try to kill a white dragon which should be a good challenge. 

barefootcyborg5000 said:

Tech baddies: do they know much about the cataclysm? Are they gathering/studying/rebuilding just to be in power? Or do they remember the "something" coming through from other dimensions and are trying to build defenses against that? Could be a good twist (in the future) on hey these guys are doing not so nice things but they have noble reasoning and are actually doing the best they know to help humanity. 
 

Magic baddies: possibly hostile "other-dimension" invaders (this world is ours now, just need to squash the resistance and build our new society) or maybe a human-bug hybrid (we're better and stronger, we'll take over this world and build power to travel back and take that world too). 

Those are all possibilities. I haven't decided, and stuff I'm putting on the backburner because it's not critical yet.

Do need to know what the airship looks like and what sort of transportation the raiders ride. Considered mechanical steeds. Thinking like steam-powered motorcycles. Probably with studded metal wheels like old tractors because rubber would have mostly rotted away after 80 years of neglect.

The raiders I think are pretty simple thugs preying on others to survive. They maybe have a revered cult leader directing them who has a sense of what happened in the past that is trying to figure things out and prepare, but who figured out it's easiest to just couch things in simple religious terms. Or maybe... the person who *taught* the current spiritual leader knew, but things have become more myth.

I expect to eventually build things to a point where the bug cult overruns the valley and forces everyone to take refuge in the city, with the raiders who they've been at odds with previously.

In reply to Beer Baron :

First.
Rough size of the ship? Are we talking firefly, big enough to haul things and for a small group to inhabit, or more star destroyer with a whole city inside? By airship I'm assuming a blimp of some form? Could give an couple options for exposed outer areas, sort of scaffolding, and inner areas for controls and "engineering"

Second. Who's ship is it? Not hugely important, but it'll determine the flavor of threat, ie. who is coming to recover the ship, as well as the technology that built it.
Or do you plan more along the lines of some floating sanctuary, a remnant of the old world that either malfunctioned or was attacked/sabotaged?

As for the raiders, some flavor of steampunk motorbikes or chariots seems appropriate. Maybe gliders? 

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

I'm saying "air ship" but really an aircraft of... some sort. I want it to be relatively fast moving. Not jet airplane, but not blimp. Probably 50-200mph.

Smaller. Serenity is a good size. Maybe a bit smaller, like the drop ship from Aliens. Something the size of Serenity might be good for being a bit strange to crawl inside of and have to take time to explore.

Ship was the magical bug cult. It was stolen by people who they had captured with the plans of experimenting on. I'm thinking this is a good way to introduce the threat that group represents, without fully introducing them yet. It was damaged escaping, which is why it eventually crashed. I'm picturing like a giant grasshopper with jets in the butt.

Funny you mentioned chariots. I was totally thinking something like that. With one driving and a gunner on the back. They might have gliders as well. I think the leader might have a hovering vehicle. They'll send out a couple scouts ahead of the main group.