So I picked up some 5th Ed D&D stuff, and have been churning away at getting a Dragons of Phandelver -a mashup of the Starter and Essential boxes- campaign typed up as a way to keep my mind on things. My hope is too start running my kiddos through it. Fun little tid bit is the cartographer who did the maps for a lot of the early 5th Ed stuff, sells digital copies of the maps for a nice price. I’ve had a copy of Realm Works for ages now and never really used it, so I’ve been putting it through its paces loading maps and location info into it. It’s interesting to see my gaming laptop start locking up from a simple program...

I have actually started playing 5th Ed at a FLGS, and the group is wrapping up Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Once done they’ll be starting Descent into Avernus around the new year. Sadly my shift schedule only allows me to play every other weekend. Which means I’ve not gotten any treasure for the last couple adventures, cause they were finished the following week. Donno if I’ll stay with it or switch to running my campaign, or even a whole other game. There’s talk of starting Shadowrun or Traveller, and I also got a ridiculously good price on a Wrath & Glory Collectors Edition box, so maybe that.


Anyway that’s the state of things right now. Hopefully I can get back into working on my Dragonlance stuff.

*Cross posted from WP

Quickie Update

So my April 18th post never went past a draft, and got forgotten due to a hernia, interstate move and a new job. So if just popped up, no its not your blog reader, its me. Sorry!

In other news, I finally got around to buying the 5th Edition D&D books. Their in my pile of books to go through, right behind a couple other nonfiction and fiction books. I of course immediately went looking for 5E stuff on DTRPG and found modules for 5E styled Dragonlance on Fanatsygrounds, but its been scrubbed to fit into Forgotten Realms. It requires the actual DL modules to use, so the author isn't stepping on toes, but FR?!? Kinda takes the fun out of the setting.

While not a fan of FR -loved the Drizzt books (minus the last couple series)- I'm kinda interested in seeing what hes done. But right now I have to other priorities.

Still Working at This

Pardon my absence, I was trying to find a job in a whole other state then the one I currently live in. Having done that, I am now waiting on a background check. So more free time, yay...

Anyways, I did find a little time to gather some notes on the mega adventure for Dragonlance. This will be a straight comparison of the DLs, DLCs, 15th Anniversary book, and the 3E books, encounter for encounter. Paths that deviate from the original three books, will be also be complied as a just in case measure.

 Having read DL1 to prep, I’m trying to find the railroad most people talk about. Other then  the initial encounter and a little bit of “keep the meta plot moving” rules, the module is a straight up wilderness hexcrawl. If they even make it to Solace, they still have to go to the bar, mingle a bit, and engage the old man telling stories. Skip any of that and no quest. Additionally Xak Tsaroth is just a two part dungeon crawl. If anything, people should be grumbling about the GM map and the Player map not matching up like they should. There are two different maps (style wise), and every single peak labeled on one, is else where on the other. And the GM map is done in black and shades of grey, on white. With white encounter numbers. My vision isn’t all that bad, and I have trouble reading the thing. Can’t imagine someone with worse vision trying.
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Now I will point out that it might be assumed that the players of DL1 are knowledgeable about the plot of the books, and thus their quest. Because outside of the above mentioned NPC with a quest or Goldmoon and Riverwind’s background, there is nothing to serve as a plot hook until they either get to Haven (then directed to Xak Tsaroth) or stumble into Qualinesti/Darkenwood (not only directed to Xak Tsaroth [screw it, XT from now on] but immediately taken there as well).

If some how the characters haven’t gotten a clue or fast traveled to XT, they can wander around the open plains in the Eastern half of the map until the Dragon army takes over everything and kinda pushes them into XT. This might be why people think these are a railroad, but I don’t feel that’s the case. We’ll have to see how the rest of the modules pan out.
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However the characters make it to XT, it turns from a wilderness crawl to a dungeon crawl. And an  extremely deadly one at that. Simply slogging through the swamp -vice walking on the out of water land parts- can result in combat with either a catobelas [Save vs Death gaze attack], a nest of black dragon hatchlings [with three attacks each], a nest of poisonous snakes [damage + poison attacks], or upwards of a dozen level draining wraiths. And then the characters get to fight the black dragon itself. A GM with a “let the dice decide” attitude, would TPK a group in no time, because there is no healing magic in the world yet. Survive that, and you get to head down a level and try not to fall into the bottom of XT.

Making it to the bottom allows characters to take in the sunken city of XT. But any prolonged or noisy combat could net players upwards of 50 draconians or even the black dragon again. The later can only be killed through luck, or the blue crystal staff and its “win button” move of smacking the dragon with the staff.
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Anyway, I’ll finish getting the Dragons of Despair arc written out and post it in a few days.

Why I'm doing this to myself.

No longer having a job -sorta- gives me a bit of free time. Having a few ideas for some adventures/dungeons/campaigns and needing an outlet which would force me to work on them, I started this blog. Doubt I’ll ever truly be finished with having gaming ideas and some might never get past a post or two, but it’ll be fun to get them out of my head. Hell, maybe they’ll inspire someone. Or if I ever get settled into another group, they’ll fear the sesions that I run something from this blog!

And so without further ado:

- Drawing up a dungeon based off the Kowloon Walled City that used to stand near Hong Kong. Most likely this will be setting/system agnostic, because it could be a purposefully built underground city, ala Derinkuyu, or as a sunken city from an ancient culture or post apocalypse culture. I’m going to keep an Asian flavor to the levels, with a few foreign enclaves, and maybe some subterranean footholds in the deeper areas. I’m planning on making the large courtyard into a cenote style lake with several waterfalls coming into it. Maybe make the roads underground rivers or streams.

- A Norse-ish campaign set in a post Ragnarok world where the players are heading out into the wider world in search of adventure and fortune. This would be magic lite, with pretty much no healing magic of any kind. Runes would be used for a mix of fortunetelling and empowering items (to a point). I’ll need to dig up and either whole cloth copy a resource system or modify it so they can set up an outpost away from home. I also kinda also need to pick a system to run this in… I was thinking of and started planning with Pathfinder, but I might go with Fantasy Age now that my sister has introduced me to it. I need to read the rulebook a bit more and see. I could possibly run it in FATE, but I need more practice with the system to make sure it doesn’t go sideways.

- A Star Wars D6 campaign, set right after the Rebel Alliance destroyed the first Death Star. This might be the second most contentious of my campaign ideas, because I’d throw out the prequels/Clone War stories, Stormtroopers would truly be the crack troops their said to be (though to balance things Imperial Army Troops would be rather mediocre), and finally [SPOILERS REDACTED BY ISB]! Turn things on their head a bit, to keep things fresh and interesting. I devoured the old EU books, so I’m going to keep how things ended up in them (I loved TFA, but it’s not how I see the things going) as an idea of how the campaign will evolve. It’ll start in medias res, with barely anyone really knowing one another, a slight Rebel hook, and I’ll just let things go from there for good or bad.

- Getting a good Dungeon Crawl Classic campaign frame work laid out. I’d like to use the existing world and pinpoint where the various DCC modules are at, so as to let the players find adventures themselves while being the little murder hobos most players like to be. I have The Chained Coffin box, so I might start them there and let them branch out into the world. Might be a bit before this one starts; I packed my rulebook into storage in anticipation of the new printing getting to me later in the year. So this can be a good slow burn.

- Also getting a good Metamorphosis Alpha campaign frame work laid out. I’m thinking of making the ISS Warden a couple levels bigger than what is shown in the rulebook. With a few subsection modules for areas that are high risk/danger. They’ll be jettisionable, so bad rolls might just wipe a party out! I’m thinking the players would start as villagers in a mixed normal/mutant village, with a small bit of flawed information about their world. I thinking of setting it up like Megaton from Fallout 3, but the reason for the nuclear device sitting where it’s at is up in the air for now.

- Converting MtG’s Slivers into some nasty little DCC critters. I was reading an old copy of Shadis (only bought for the extra that came with it!) and of course it had old game ads from the late 90’s, which got me all nostalgic and reminiscing. Back in the 90’s I was in high school, where I played ALOT of Magic and had several decks, all of which eventually got traded to friends for Star Wars CCG cards. One of my funner decks, when it worked, was a Sliver deck. The more of them you have out, the more abilities they get. From +1/+1 to Trample to Regeneration to spawning 1/1 Sliver token creatures, they could get annoying quick. So perfect as a DCC creature! I imagine them as a kind of failed interplanar magical/psionic experiment. They’ll be a recurring monster of the week, with maybe a source that can be stopped, leaving rampaging nests all over the world.

And for me, the BIG KAHUNA of them all:

- Making a semi sandbox adventure path out of Dragonlance’s DL 1-10, 12-14! I’ll probably dig out the Dragonlance Classics volumes, the 15^th Anniversary book, and the 3^rd Ed books to see how each area and event is handled differently.

Dragonlance will always have a place on my shelves because it is what got me into Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which got me into roleplaying games in general. Before reading the Legend of Huma, I had really only ever read science fiction. Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Hammer’s Slammers, and anything similar my father handed me. I had only dabbled in fantasy through the Lone Wolf Adventure books. Not finding anymore LW books, my trying-to-be-helpful mom just glanced at a few books on the sci fi/fantasy shelf of the used book store we frequented and pulled The Legend of Huma down*. But it was the hook fantasy needed, and what got me reading the Chronicles Trilogy. And the rest as they say is history.

Now, I’ve read a lot of the criticisms leveled at Dragonlance over the years, Tolkien rip-off & railroady being the most used, and not being a literary critic, I will stick to dealing with the campaign railroad problem.

First off, the players will have to want to play this epic adventure. No sense in forcing it on them.

Second, they are going to be the good guys. Raistlin style antihero maybe, but no outright bad guys.

Finally, all Kender are not like Tasslehoff Burrfoot. He IS off his ADHA medication and I feel rest of the Companions knew this, and as such kept him in check. So PC kender are not going to be sticky fingered children that can do no wrong. Oh hell no! No, everyone knows they aren’t kids, and will treat them like a thief if they act like one.

As for the actual campaign it won’t be a railroad, but more of a boat on a river at the bottom of canyon. Sometimes the canyon is really wide and you can wander a bit on bank or into the bushes past that. Other times it’ll be shear walls. I might cut the extreme side quests off and if possible fit a heavily modified version into the path either earlier or later. Or maybe treat them as one shots. I’ll deal with them when I get to them.

Anyway, I think I’ve prattled on for enough for one night. There are enough ideas here for me to work through for a bit. 

 *I still have that dog-eared copy in my books somewhere. I’ve read it about a dozen times. I might read it again just to get back into the world of Krynn.