00-Roll with Advantage

Whilst not centered on creating elements of an adventure these posts are still part of my process.

Lay of the land

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Happy Saturday everyone! Instead of having a full day of writing or working on a side project I decided that I had procrastinated long enough, got out my cheap hot wire cutter board and decided to get started on making a table of terrain for an upcoming small warhammer competition that I am looking forward to participate in around mid December. The issue being that there isn’t nearly enough terrain for the tables and most of it isn’t that impactful in a game. I hope that the new set I am making will change that.

So what do I mean by impactful? What is terrain and why is it important for tabletop war games like Warhammer? I thought that this blog was mainly about Dungeon and Dragons or other TTRPGs?

Well let’s explore that.

Warhammer

So firstly, Warhammer, particularly the later variants is shifting the mentality from large open fields where the knights of Bretonia charge headlong a wall of chaos warriors who brace for a charge with their halberds. Instead today we are seeing a unit consisting of small handful of models holding a key objective that will ultimately win that player the game. Why can just a handful of models win a game, well the easy answer is that the main fight is happening elsewhere but it could be because of the terrain and not just any terrain, impactful terrain.

Many fantastical spells, invocations to dark gods or benign deities or the mundane lead shot of a volley of hand-gunners generally require two things.

  1. To be within range
  2. To be able to see what you are targeting.

Now range is something that you can’t really change, except for a cheeky redeploy if your opponent makes a whoopsie, but that issue about line of sight can make a big difference.

Now, pardon the incomplete nature of the terrain (only just cut and glued them down today…) but the following two pieces of terrain could easily block line of sight.

Defensible terrain
Impassable terrain
Potentially Impassable or Line of sight blocking terrain

Now as you can see by my little witch aelf here these pieces of terrain are quire tall and wide. It would not be a hard feat to get a unit of these ladies into, behind or around one of these pieces of terrain and what’s more important is, these would block line of sight from most things as long as the opponents units/models are on the other side of of the terrain which effectively means that your opponent can’t target the unit.

The other thing that terrain can grant you is Cover. This is provided to your unit if all the models are wholly on or in the terrain piece. As you can see the pillars of (yellow XPS for now) stone could house a unit of infantry comfortably to provide them with a bonus to their defensive capabilities by the means of Cover.

The jagged eruption of spikes is not something that could could have models in or on it, I would rule it as “Impassable”. Having something that is impassable can greatly change the outcome of a game. Playing cat and mouse around an impassable terrain piece could prevent your opponent from charging and killing your wizard or other support foot hero that is crucial for your game strategy.

You cannon move models over this terrain feature unless the model can fly, and you cannot set up or move a model onto this terrain feature (even if it can fly).

-Age of Sigmar scenery rules

Defensible terrain. When we talk about defensible terrain it is something that is new (ish) to Age of Sigmar 3.0. This is where units, or several units that add up to a total limit on model count, can effectively take up defensive positions in or on a piece of terrain. This grants a penalty to your opponents to hit your models whilst they cower bravely in the ruined building, the hut or the pillars of stone and also the benefit of cover (+1 to your armour save rolls).

Defensible terrain

Coupled with the scenery rules that can be given to to terrain pieces scenery can have a big impact to the game especially if they form choke points, block line of sight from your artillery to your opponents key units, or block a charge from your cavalry to your opponents archer because of impassable terrain.

Now to tie it back in with the question, impactful terrain is more than a few grave stones, a lone tree, a fence or a hill. It is terrain that changes your strategy, changes your deployment or changes where you position your troops. It is terrain that changes how you play.

Now D&D.

Table Top Role Playing Games

TTRPGs traditionally take place in the theatre of the mind, most of the games from my childhood of Dungeons & Dragons, OpenLegendRPG, Gamma World and so on all took place in my imagination.

Nowadays we have things like roll20, Tabletop Simulator, Foundryvtt, GMForge and the list goes on. Now I am quite familiar with Roll20 (its free 😉 ) and Tabletop Simulator (used for online warhammer games) and have used terrain available on these platforms to enrich my gaming sessions, however since I am a wargamer as well as a DM/GM I have access to the tools and a growing catalogue of experiences and techniques that I can use to hopefully create some really useful terrain for not only Wargaming but also RPGs for the table top.

Once off for my “Banshee woods” adventure
1st iteration of 1″ grid terrain board
Terrain board with modular cavern walls
Some of the terrain I have created for DnD and used in Age of Sigmar too.

Its not the fanciest, there is a bunch of terrain crafters out there who are, simply put, masters of sorcery when it comes to how they can turn popsicle sticks, foam, modelling clay and bits of fake grass/sponge/leaves/bricks etc., into amazing buildings, awesome cliff faces or full on terrain boards for wargaming or RPGs.

There is something very special and empowering when you (in my case) turn on the camera pointed at the table covered in terrain and miniatures and your party just go silent with awe. The excitement in their voices, the requests to zoom in, pan, spin, rotate not only led me to invest in a turntable/rotating tray for my gaming sessions where I plan to have terrain and minis on the table but also led me to want to craft more for my players so that I can keep their wonderment and excitement cranked up as often as possible.

The birth and update of the 3D printer has made terrain much more accessible to nearly everyone. You don’t need to have 6 meters of xps foam stashed under your table any more… I’m fine with it, really… a hot wire cutter, sharp knives, multiple types of glue and several other niche tools available to make terrain but can simply print it with a few searches on thingiverse and a message sent to your printer.

Whether you are a Wargamer, a role player or someone who just loves to craft miniature things I would encourage adding some terrain to your digital or tabletop games that impact how your players (or opponents…) interact with the game.

That’s all we have for tonight. I hope that you consider terrain as more than just something that is eye candy but look at the impacts it can have for your players and yourself in your future games.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the end of week writeup where we look at what happens at the docks and potentially get a glimpse of things yet to come, and things that have come to pass.

As always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Too Easy/Too hard…

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It’s the weekend and I am already behind in my weekend plans. Today was meant to be the day I did my end of week write-up but I got sidetracked by a game of warhammer and a visit from an inlaw.

So instead I want to touch on something that is present in every weeks write-ups, difficulty setting.

Now there is a fine line to toe between a creator of challenging adventures and being labelled a Party Killer. I am proud to be a DM that hasn’t had to deal with a TPK, yet, let alone a player death in recent memory. But there has been moments where the fight has been that challenging that the party only manage to barely scrape by. To make this possible I look at encounter balancing as both a science and art.

The science behind it is relatively simple for dnd.

Each character has as XP threshold on which they can comfortably handle that much combat in one day. A party of adventurers have a daily party xp threshold base on number of players and the character levels.

Typically this is 3 deadly encounters a day, 4 hard encounters, 6 medium encounters or 12 easy encounters.

The theory is that the party would spend some of their spell slots, or one per long rest class features in one or each of the fights during the day so by the time that they reach the final encounter they are running on fumes or bare basics. This method makes for a volley of low intensity, low risk encounters still can make for an entertaining day.

For example look at the below three xp thresholds for a party of 4 )evel 1, 2 or 3 characters. As always my favourite tool is featured. Kobold+ fight club

Inversely what I call the art approach is picking a selection of creatures that you believe the party would enjoy fighting and what you believe your party would be able to fight. This is only really effective if you know your party.

Knowing my party I know a single creature would not create an enjoyable encounter. The general format I have for my encounters is several weak (significantly so) creatures to attack the party head on, one or two to flank and try and get around the armoured beef cakes up front then something stronger and menacing to join the fight after one or two rounds.

This is so everyone in the party gets to fight, use their class features or magical items and feel as though they have made an impact in the battle.

The true method I use is a hybrid, xp thresholds (bordering on high hard/deadly) with things for all players. Any one of my players characters could take a 108 hp dragon from full hp to 0 in two to three rounds. The paladins reliably dish out 30/50 damage a turn, the sorcerer probably the same if not more in an area and the Cleric can deal between 3d8 + 6d8 damage over two rounds with healing and buffing thrown into the mix.

Knowing your party and what they are capable lets you balance on that cusp of “wow, I thought we were gone there. That was so cool how you hit those 12 ghouls with thst lightning bolt” and “well. Thats it. We’re dead. Again…”.

For me the enjoyment of the risk vs reward thrill of combat for my players is what I seek every session and what drives me to think of new ways to test their resolve, their strategy and their ability to think outside the box.

Thanks for jumping on for the weekend ramble. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow with the adventure writeup and close of the weekend.

Let me know what you do for your players or what you think your DM does for you. Do you calculate every encounter on some formular or do you have a go and adjust based on prior encounters with your party.

As always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,

The Brazen Wolfe

For the love of the game…

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Saturday is here and for me that means going a smidge off script. As some of my posts in the past have indicated D&D, well TTRPGs, isn’t the only gaming system or genre I have in my life. Yes, I am in a relationship with something that isn’t normally thought of when you say that you are a Dungeon or Game master. I adore Warhammer.

Not the sci-fi goodness with the pew-pa-pew lazers and such, but the fantasy heavy version complete with dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins, undead, and of course, humans.

For me though it isn’t just a nail biting 30+ minute game of tactics and strategy involving the movement between 5 and 200 miniatures, but for me it’s the sparks of inspiration that come from them.

Currently I have a sizeable force of Nighthaunt; tormented specters that haunt the mortal realms, a burgeoning force of Slaanesh; the worshipers of chaos and all things in excess, a small swarm of Skaven; my beloved crazy rat-men, and enough Flesh eater courts for a few people to have full armies from just my collection alone.

The reason for the choice in these armies isn’t really tied to their effectiveness on the battlefield, most of them currently are predicted to see a podium spot in tournaments at the moment, but for an aspect of the army that just brought me in.

For Nighthaunt it’s the grim-dark nature of the army. A endless procession of tormented spirits bound to the great necromancer Nagash, cursed for forever do his bidding as a vindictive punishment against those who lived their mortal lives so frivolously. Their ghostly forms ‘floating’ across the battlements of the game table brings back that feeling when (spoiler ale… no if you haven’t seen Lord of the Rings, return of the king by now it’s your own fault) the hundreds of cursed warriors, now horrible specters swept from their pirated ship and lay waste to the armies sieging Minas Tirith. The armies of evil including Orcs, monstrous elephants and other worshipers of Sauron fell to the ghostly men their incorporeal blades cutting through the flesh and armor of their enemies easier than they would have in life. For this one feeling alone I would collect hundreds of miniatures to bring to the table, but the models are not only used for warhammer but used for D&D as well. The battles, such as one last weekend where the swarms of spirits marched to meet an army of mortals and daemons of Khorne, the chaos god of blood, war and murder, met me in the middle of a battlefield where my ghosts swarmed, pined down and dragged the chaos worshipping zealots to their graves. The ghostly form of my army, and luck from the dice gods, saw key bottlenecks holding firmly with my army of specters until only the dead was left on the table.

These battles give me the desire and inspiration for not only writing stories of these wars, battles and characters but also for encounters – such as the banshee in the woods from a few weeks back (what calls from the woods) as well as a few other sessions yet to come, if the party ever escape from the ghoul nest they are currently calling ‘base camp…’

This leads me to ghouls. Now I love flesh eater courts – not for the sheer amount of gore that the army is normally portrayed to be involved in, or the grisly nature of the army but because of the creation story, and the lore behind them.

Let me set a scene.

Sir Reginald Fauxhammer stood with his brothers and the hundreds of men at arms in front of him. Patting his white mare trying to calm its nerves as the barbaric creatures looted a village just ahead he rode in front of his men.

“Today we teach these invaders that this is our land, our people and that we will not take this any longer. For too long have we allowed these creatures to trespass onto our land and slay our people – almost content enough to leave villages and towns filled with the corpses of men, women and children. To this I say today is your last day, we take the battle to you and then you shall have a war! King Krull in his heroic bravery has announced that he will lead the charge, fear not Percy – he is on Snapjaw, his dragon. None shall slay our king. Not if we, the Nights of Hallowmourne have anything to do with that.” He laughed at this, his men laughed to. For many battles their king was never seen without his knights and today would be no different.

A shriek and a blast of fire could be seen in the diming light, the smell of battle on the wind.

“I do believe, the king calls for us! ride forth brothers. To the king!” Sir Reginald kicked his mount into a gallop, so in tuned with his steed he could feel his own legs pumping in time with the beasts.

– Across the field –

Thomas has just put his daughter to bed, his wife, Chrissy was washing up the dishes in the sink. The pale light from the sun setting over the forest to the west made it difficult to see the sprint colours across the meadow – but today the setting sun caused strange shadows to seem to dance across the pastures and flowers. Giving his wife a kiss and closing the door behind him he set off to take first watch at the edge of the town – rumors’ of late had spread of a dark shadow spreading through the land. Probably just a messengers tale, they had not received one for quite a few days and they were now sorely overdue. News from the capital had said that crusades into Shyish were going well, that the cannibals and nightmares that called that unholy place home were meeting blessed steel and that even Sigmars chosen, the Stormcast eternals, had been seen entering cities and towns as of late – brought down from Azyr in blinding bolts of lightning.

A whistling in the wind gave warning to the beast before the smell did. A corpse, a rotting mass of bones and flesh fell from the skies just in front of him. Large nightmarish wings spread out wide and the Zombie dragon belched forth a plume of rot that killed a dozen people instantly in front of him. Throwing himself against the wall of a nearby building the zombie dragon strode forward, barreling down the city streets and into a crowd of people who were too stunned to move. The figure on its back, large pointed ears, fingernails nearly as long as the dragons teeth and the blood, it was covered in blood. Body parts, taken from its victims seemed to adorn the creature like a mantle, a crown of fingers seemed to almost be sewn into the creatures head as its mount bounced, like a massive killer puppy, into the crowd of people. As the Dragon bounced and ate the creature howled and screeched into the setting sun.

That’s when Thomas heard it. The thundering of feet. Turning to look at the now visible tree-line what he thought were shadows were figures, hundreds of figures darting forward naked apart from the gore that covered this pale forms. Larger beasts seem to barrel past then, their large powerful legs seeming to gallop across the ground, at the head of the pack a particularly wicked looking monstrous figure ran, snarling at the others, the sun causing its white skin to glow in the failing light.

Oh Sigmar save us, the flesh eater courts had arrived…

To themselves the Flesh Eater courts are noblemen and women. They fight for their kings and have grand feasts in their lieges honor. To everyone else they are a raving mass of mad cannibals. Driven insane by delusions of grandeur that stem from their ghoul kings (so delusional that their very presence brings insanity to normal man) these ghouls, the small ‘serf’ or larger ‘knights’ of the courts don’t see themselves eating piles of dead corpses – they see magnificent feasts piled high.

For me these armies, inspiration for the ghoul pit my party currently find themselves in, are another source of inspiration, miniatures for the table and fun which gives me the recharge time I need so that I can write more, or come up with newer and more exciting adventures for my party.

Thanks for jumping on today, getting a brief introduction to another source of inspiration for my games and maybe walking away wanting to investigate warhammer yourself.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the final writeup of this weeks adventure, and as usual don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Not quite lethal…

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Welcome to the weekend! Traditionally games night take place for me on the weekend but with lockdowns here in Australia lifting decided to get a cheeky Warhammer game in today instead of D&D.

So let’s have a look at something that will be encountered tomorrow with the publication of the adventure for this week.

How and what can we do to deal with not- quite lethal encounters such as the Cockatrice.

Well first of letters look at the little nightmare-chicken.

Cockatrice by Dan Scott

Petrification, turning flesh into stone, is a d&d staple and will invoke fear into the player. But let’s look at why.

Let’s look at petrification first and dnd beyond has a great entry for this status condition.

Now perhaps the fear comes from turning to stone, semi-permanent where they are now a incapacitated, and effectively dead to the world unless restored by powerful magic. Or could it be the loss of control where they can’t do anything to save themselves. This is their character who they have invested dozens or hundreds of hours into is now a glorified garden gnome who is at the mercy of the creature who did this to them who could early break their body apart and the character would just cease.

The Cockatrice is an interesting encounter as everyone would know of it, knows it can petrify but it’s only for 24 hours.

As a DM 24 hours is a long time. As the effect states any non-magical items are also turned to stone. Maybe a party beiny petrified by a nightmare-chicken gives us a chance to add in a twist or additional layer to the plot. Maybe a den of thieves use cockatrice’s as a way to capture and rob adventurers of their more valuable gear and equipment or they move the Steve-come-statue you their lair and wait a day until they revert back to flesh before robbing them.

The time condition on the Cockatrice bite makes it an interesting yet lower risk encounter that could prepare them for harder quests in the future.

Well that’s the ramblings if a ragged DM on a Saturday night. If you comet back tomorrow we will investigate the Cockatrice den and how it ties into the Adventure story.

As always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,

The Brazen Wolfe

Weekend bonus

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The weekend is here and that should mean lots of free time for all. That being said I have a warhammer game to get onto (and a writeup to try and jot down before I forget the points / key moments in the game) and a few things I want to post on today.

First this I will talk about a bit is a tool I have used on and off over the last few years to generate ideas – not really for its content but for its potential.

The second thing I want to try and get out tonight (shortly) is the promised map from Wednesday (will update Wednesdays post as well) as there was some odd technical issues when uploading that one.. strange..

But without too much chit chat let’s have a look at Azgaar’s map builder!

Azgaars Map builder

Quite a robust, intuitive and smart tool that allows you to create a few views, with different focus points, of a contintal or world map.

The options to generate, manipulate and really make the map generate something that you can call your own is massive. I will cover just the very tip of the iceberg and explain why I use this of ideas rather than as a map generator.

Having an idea of the potential politcal nature of the world around city states can lead to adventures in their own right. Maybe the people of Warland and the Grand Duchy of Sudhurstia have formed an alliance to overthrow their old aggressors the Kingdom of Baringdonia. The king of Baringonia has issues invitations to his daughters ball too all lords, ladies, and royalty to come and celebrate her coming of age – but the two allies have plotted her assassination – just as the party arrive and are confused for royalty due to their unmistakable likeness to the late King and Queen of Dundia.

Or maybe the Grand Dutchy of Sudhurstia have an issue with bandits and have requeted aid from the party to investigate the forest in the north to locate the bandits hideout.

This tool does so much more than just what I have mentioned above but its a great addition to our DMs Toolkit. Find it and have a look here (Azgaar Fantasy Map Generator)

Starfall

The promised map created in Inkarnate for your viewing pleasure. A ruined house with a large ‘boulder’ is seen on the other side of the wall with large areas of grass stripped down just above the ground. On the other side of a wall lies a well worn road with aone of the many houses situated on it with a small side-road going to it. There is not much in this house but a few beds, presumably for a larger family and a table with four chairs.

You can find a copy to clone from Inkarnate here under my week 7 folder.

Well there we have it – I will focus on Azgaar’s map generator in a future post but for me this is where I sign out and go to run a bunch of skaven across the battlefield at my man-thing opponent.

Come back tomorrow for this weeks write up and as always don’t forget to roll with advantage!
The Brazen Wolfe

Traps…

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Now I tend to not use traps in my dungeons or my adventures and the reason is simple.

They either slow down the game with players checking every room or corridor for one or more traps or, the players start to suspect me of trying to kill them by including traps.

I will explain why I love traps but also why I fail to use them often in a simple write-up of a ‘random’ encounter I had with my current party.

The human Paladin, Tiefling Ranger and ‘Treefolk’ (homebrew race) Blood Hunter were escorting a caravan carrying an unholy relic from Eruva Osto; the great walled city, to Cthlaxiis where an order of knights would destroy the artefact and aid in preventing the second coming of a undead deity.

As the caravan and it’s escort made its way under the shadowed canopy of oak and pine trees they approached a fallen tree about 60 feet away. Next to this tree a familiar form of a mushroom loving Kobold they met the other day could be seen picking up some mushrooms. The Blood Hunter approached the Kobold, narrowing avoiding fine silken thread that had been placed at several places along the road. As the Treefolk questioned the Kobold a caravan guard stepped forward and was shot with poisoned darts, he began to hallucinate as several kobolds let off yipping battle cries and rushed towards the larger humanoids with the element of surprise in their favour. A few rounds of combat saw all the PCs unconcious and robbed, the strings of silk and threat of traps hampering their fighting prowess. As a npc guard ran forward to stabilise the fallen party members he accidentally set off a log trap that turned him to jelly when it pulverised him against a tree laden with hidden spikes.

From that adventure onwards they remembered Barry the guard and have a fear of kobolds. But more importantly it demonstrated how the puny kobold or semi-intelligent monster could work with traps and boost themselves from mere fodder and a way to wet the blades of your party, but to become something which the players remember forever.

I liked this encounter. The traps where very low difficulty and threat level which suited the three level 2 pcs but it challenged them to think out side of the hack and slash box.

What I didn’t like was the snowball affect that lands me with two or three players rolling perception and investigation checks every new room they walk into. Even when it’s very clear that there isn’t anything here they still love to check for traps. This paranoia means that for me utilising traps is a moot point, which I and drive with. But what it does do is slow down the game a bit.

When you have 80% of the party being working parents and your game time limited to Saturday night from 8pm til 11:45pm (we don’t play past 12am due to an effect we call the happening.. stuff gets weird after midnight) any delay in game time can really impact the enjoyment that the party get out of the session.

But with this week’s adventure having a dungeon full of traps I think it’s time to address that tool in the DMs toolbelt and see what this adventure can bring.

Start safe, play hard and don’t forget to roll with advantage,

The Brazen Wolfe

Weeks wrapup

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This week was a busy one. A final push for work before going on a short break during my daughter’s school holidays and a break from normal work to focus and jumpstart a few projects I’m working on.

This week we used art breeder a lot. From npc images to inspiration for encounters artbreeder was there.

We also used a lot or Kobold fight club, tetra-cube and hero muster to generate the encounters for the party and used the most common form of inspiration for me, sensations, imagery, and emotions felt during my childhood.

This weeks encounter is based on something that both my younger brother and I swear happened.

We both grew up, predominantly on a small farm about 20 minutes from city on about 16 acres (approx 6.5 hectares). The house was at the front/ top of a hill where I remember planting around 3000 trees with my family early when we moved there. As time went on we became more bold to venture amongst the budding forest and especially at night.

Towards the back of the property there was two paddocks of creek flats, where the creek that ran through the farm would overflow and so only tall bushes of grass and trees along the creek bank. One such night when my brother and I were in our teens we were out the back paddock amongst the creek flats. I distinctly remember looking at the tangled maze of branches that framed the waters edge with unease that night, and to be perfectly honest every night since. We were just discussing how to best cross the creek, I believe it was late spring or early autumn as the night was warm but the ground was damp and loamy. As a cloud move across the bright moon a mind shaking sound resonates from our neighbours paddock (who shared the same hauntingly still tree line and creek). A howl. Cliche I know, but hear me out.

As I wondered if I was hearing things my brother asked me ‘Did you bear that howl…?’ a genuine nervousness in his voice. It wasn’t just my hyper active imagination playing tricks on me, like when you see shadows moving through the backyard or a room (more on that another time) but it felt real and I wasn’t alone in hearing it.

Well we didn’t cross the creek at night next to that foreboding treeline and as we jumped three fences to put as much between us and the source of the howl we always worked in pairs to make sure that one person always watched the treeline.

Walking up past the trees, that forest we were so proud of planting, ever few steps felt like s minute had passed, that feeling of dread and unease didn’t leave us until we bad passed through another 5 gates and was in our backyard again.T

The feeling of that night, not the source of the sound, is what I wanted to capture this week. Dread, foreboding, unease to the point of nausea and then most importantly, Relief. Knowing it was over.

Well, this week was really fun. The exploration of old memories and feelings and applying a framework or story around what could happen or be the cause of something is what made this week a bit.. more.

As always, a big thanks to everyone who read the material this week, it gives me no small amount of joy to see people visiting to see what I have written this week. Feel free to comment if like or didn’t like something as that’s the only way to hone a craft, practice and criticism.

As always, don’t forget to roll with advantage

The Brazen Wolfe

Weekend update

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Well the weekend is here and hopefully my scheduled dnd game goes ahead tonight as I have my party surrounded by a horde of ghouls after the party slew their Elder Ghast ‘king’.

So today’s post is really two fold. A snapshot of whats been put together this week as well as a small discussion for Dungeon Masters out there.

Snap shot

Yes, I finally managed to get my stationary order in. May explain the change of colours for the weeks items.

I find this process of mapping out a few scenarios and spending time fleshing out my musings is very beneficial. At the end of the week I attach the materials I didn’t use to the back of the A4 sheet and put it into storage.

For D&D I normally conjure up to he adventure mentally an hour before the dnd session. After so long, and having quite a few players who took pride in detailing my carefully laid out adventures I had to get very good at improvisation and thinking on my feet. So I developed what I call my Rome approach, which I am sure many many other DMs and GMs already do, which has served me well these past few years. I hope to write it up later so I can share this approach with as many DMs as I can.

The second thing I want to talk about today is something I’ve had to experience three times (too many) in my current campaign.

A player throwing in the towel and leaving the group.

It sucks, let’s be blunt here.

The first was due to different expectations around long running campaigns and the desire to change character’s every few sessions. Not a bad thing for the series of one shots I was running but when it starts to impact the games flow and the experience for the other players you’ve got to draw a line in the sand and say no to the third reroll (without a party member death that is).

The second was weirdest. They just stopped showing up and never responded to messages. It was weird because they were almost the most passionate player who loved ever session and had a ball every game.

The last one was understandable and recent (last week). Simply put, COVID and dealing with added responsibilities meant something had to give and sadly dnd was it. Having young kids also made it hard.

Dealing with party members leaving isn’t new, but the same familiar feelings do return. Self doubt is the big one.

Despite knowing that their leaving wasn’t due to my story, the relationships built during the game or what I brought to the table it still impacted my motivation and made me doubt the campaign that I’d be working on for over 3 years.

Motivation is hard to fix, especially when it’s felt across across the entire party and it’s been the death of many a adventuring party. The only way forward is to try and rekindle that spark, and get your party excited for it too and thats part of the reason I have started this adventure a week personal challenge. To motivate myself and get that Spark going again but share the process with others.

Thats enough rambling I think, I’ve got a ghoul keep to prepare.

Have a good weekend and don’t forget to roll with advantage,

The Brazen Wolfe

Some weekend musings

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Happy weekend all!

Just a few quick thoughts today.
Let’s look at openlegendrpg.com as I am very excited to be looking back at this system as I hope to have an upcoming campaign using this system.
The campaign is a well loved setting for myself and my players which we truly get a lot of enjoyment out of over the past few years. Modern-Apocalypse with sci-fi elements inspired by the video game Hellgate London.

I have tried to run it with a system like Dungeons and Dragons and although still fun, the flexibility and choice of customisation is what makes OpenLegendRPG a great system for this setting.

Gone is a lengthy skill tree as you now have an attribute system that you use inside and outside combat that isn’t flat modifiers, it’s Extra dice to roll.

Also a class-less system makes creating your character exactly how you want a breeze.

I could go on and on about this RPG system but for now I’ll just leave this here for those who want to dip a toe in and have a look-see.

OpenLegendsRpg introduction

That’s all for now, don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the writeup of this week’s adventure and as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

End of Week 1

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“Weekend” – what a week, in reflection there could be a couple sessions of adventures created out of the content created this week. If you want to you can take all the plot hooks (quests) and adjust them slightly. Looking at the map I created there is a little village south(?) of the town of Manford which could be the house of the person making the potions that Gil wants you to retrieve. Or make it another merchant – there should be flexibility in any adventure as to give players creative freedom to explore their creative side and bring life into their characters.

Just some end of week musings.

Todays a “day off”, well apart from coming up with an adventure from the content worked on this week, it’s still something that I don’t really have something planned to upload today.

So today I will be looking through the things I used, all of which I’m not affiliated with… yet.. (a man can dream though hey?), and I will provide links where possible to what was used so you can experiment as you please.

I also want to talk about the process in future weeks for the weekend creation process and how the readers of this blog can get involved.

Tools used

Before we have a look at them in order I want to give a list of the tools I used.

Monday, plot inspiration.

Not really tools but it’s a “process” that has served me well for a number of years.

This week the concepts for the plots came from an photo I took of a ‘local’ rainforest – about 2 hours drive from where I live. It’s beautiful, wet, abundant in wildlife and houses some amazing animals – one of which (well two – but that’s a surprise for the adventure) is the inspiration for the Yooligo Worm. I find that real world places, things seen, experiences, err… experienced and heard can help solidify what the adventure is about and bring it from “high fantasy” into “plausible” adventures.

The forest and healing spring were inspired from the forest as well – a natural waterfall with steep embankments that house glowworms (Yooligo worms) was what triggered this week’s inspiration.

Other inspirations for campaigns or adventures comes from music, books, tabletop games (for example warhammer – age of sigmar) or aspects of cinema

Tuesdsay, NPCs

Who

Leading from the plot the NPCs were easy to think of.

  • Who would live in the woods?
  • Who would want to go to the woods?
    • Why would they want to go to the woods?
    • What stops them from going themselves?

Once that was established it was easy enough to go through imagining the reasons of the NPCs approaching the party.

In Xanathar’s guide to everything (DnD product) there is a handy NPC name list… My players will confirm that coming up with names on the fly is.. not my strength.. so having a list is great.

Images.

Hero forge. Yup, creating a 3d miniature and then taking a screenshot when happy with the pose , weapon etc is easy enough. They offer a premium service for what I have done, but I’m not super bad with the next tool I used.

Gimp. Using Gimp was pretty easy. I will have a future walkthrough on the process but through multiple layers to get the desired background effect, and desired effect onto the created NPC portrait is great. The other thing that hero forge could do for us is give a top down view to make tokens.. perhaps I will consider this for a future project.

Wednesday – Twists

Twists didn’t really use any tools this time around. D&D Beyond was used for the stat blocks and thinking of how to implement them for a D&D adventure but otherwise I thought of what could be exciting character revelations or changes that could enrich the experience for the players. For that is why I do what I do. To give the players a fun and memorable experience.

Thursday – Maps

Map night, maps I used 1 program and hand drew some concepts on post-its (I will show my board later.. ) but primarily I used just one tool

Inkarnate – I find this was great. Easy to use and intuitive. I only had access to the free version (will experiment with other map making tools in the future to find one that I really love) but this one was good. You can also sign in and store your maps (and link them) so that you can download them later, or someone else can

Friday – Fightnight

Fight night I used a few tools or information sources.

Imagery

Gimp – plain, simple and free! Gimp. Tracing images found under creative commons (creative commons) and then blending colour using a few tools and the pipet tool made this a… long but enjoyable? process. I probably used 4 images, the paintbrush, airbrush, pipet and clone/heal tool in gimp as well as a few renders.

Info

Kobold fight club – I use this tool quite a lot to balance out encounters and calculate adjusted XP if I use XP in that campaign.

D&D Beyond – If you have access to the digital content, like I do, there is a lot on here for which is (dare I say it..?) essential to running games.

Weekend – bringing it together

I normally do all of this in my mind – but for the sake of blogging and creating a content rich week here is my attempt at sorting out my brain.

A “quick” fix for my ancient white board (the rulers are magnetised and I don’t trust anything but post-it notes for the moment on the white board.. as I spent an hour cleaning the last group of separating tape from it.

From the above you can I have tried to colour coordinate my whiteboard and days so I can visualise what the process is in my head. Generally I do this.. on the fly / automatically but it’s been a great process in actually sitting down and forcing myself to map it out piece by piece.

I take the best bits from the week and move them over to the weekend tile, leftover red 120gsm paper from a previous craft project, and tada! my adventure.. right there and easy to see.

Let’s address the elephant in the room.. the colour palette.

I live in Australia and simply couldn’t go buy the post-it’s I wanted to use for this process as we are in lockdown due to COVID outbreaks and our post service is in such high load at the moment they have actually announced massive delays on shipments. So for now these are the colour post-its I have and I wanted to match the info blocks (without the color offending peoples eyes and causing mass blindness) to have traceability from whiteboard to blog posts.

Moving ahead

Process in the future.

What I want to have from blogging multiple options, maps, encounters, twists etc. is I want to move towards the community actually getting involved and voting/nominating what their favourite bits are during the week and for me to either use those favourite bits in creating the end result for the adventure.

I think to get this to work the adventure created from the content produced during the week there would be 1 week delay between the individual posts and the end product. This week, being the first week, will be an exception as we are just getting started here.

Thanks for joining me on this ‘special’ weekend post. Hopefully the above helps you to create your own adventures in the future, or help write that next short story / novel / whatever your creative outlet is.

Oh, and don’t forget to roll with advantage!
The Brazen Wolfe