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Soulbound – Warhammer Age of Sigmar TTRPG

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Hi all and welcome to a Saturday writeup where it was triggered by a message coming through this morning. Like most Saturday mornings I was greeted by the bombardment of notifications informing me that thee was another post in the Warhammer group that I am a member of and I was greeted by a welcome surprise.

Soulbound – the TTRPG that was released by Cubical7 in conjunction with games workshop had a humblebundle where you could get 24 books, yup, 24 books for the TTRPG for the the low price of around $25au. Now my love for TTRPGs as well as my love for Warhammer merged into one low priced bundle that supports charity – how can I say no?

To be truthful I had been looking at soulbound for some time now, not that I have grown out of love with Dungeons & Dragons or OpenLegendRPG but as a way that I can explore another format, another set of rules and broaden my understanding of what’s out there while I try and work out the best system for me when I try to create a RPG system of my own – but more on that another time when I hopefully have it more fleshed out.

So the long and short of Soulbound is really you take command of a hero from one of the forces of order, death or destruction and you take your character and fight your way through Goblins, Orruks (Orcs), zombies, ghouls, Skaven (my favourite little critters) and a whole bunch of other chaos warped things to sink and axe, hammer or arrow into.

Your hero will have a set of Skills, Attributes and talents that generate more dice for the pools which you can use to achieve actions by meeting a difficulty number (DN) and generating the required number of successes based on the requirement the GM put on the check.

In Dungeons & Dragons and many other d20 systems you have a few dice, modifiers or items that enable you to meet and beet a Difficulty Class (DC) which determines the success or fail of the action. With Soulbound you have a pool of dice that you would roll to try and beat the difficulty number with each dice. So each dice you roll has the potential to cause you to succeed and what’s more – its only a d6 (not a d20) so if you needed to roll a 4 (DN4:1) and the check, to jump a fence or barricade for example, required you roll succeed only once. Then if you roll a 3 dice on average you should be fine. This style of mechanics means the more dice you roll the more likely you are to succeed and I do have a fondness for rolling lots of dice.

Now I have only spent a hour or so skimming over the character creation guide (from the core rulebook) but the concept is looking at adding your base ability (Body- Physical prowess, Mind-mental aptitude, and Soul-Spiritual presence.. I guess) to the skills you are trained in to establish what your Melee, Accuracy (Ranged) and Defence rating is from Poor to Exceptional. The higher number your skills and attributes the higher quality your rating is and the higher rung in “The ladder” you are in.

This Ladder is used primarily to determine the difference in quality between the attackers skill and the defenders defence. This determines the Difficulty number on the attack roll to deal damage to try and defeat your opponent. This is a bit complex but once the maths is over then the system is quite.. simple from what it looks like.

I will look at this a bit more over the coming week and hopefully I may try and have a Soulbound Saturday where I post some Soulbound content where I play the game with my fellow warhammer players – well that’s the idea.

While the bundle is cheap on Humble-bundle I would suggest going to have a look at it and see if its something for you. Saving (I think) a bit over 90% of the total cost of the books that are in the bundle for this amount of content is pretty incredible.

Don’t forget tomorrow is the final writeup for the week where we take the party into the temple and confront a bunch of snakes, and their abyssal lord.

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

The Crew

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Welcome one and all to a Tuesday night here at Brazen Wolfe Tabletop. Tonight is generally reserved for NPCs, people or creatures that people run into during the weeks adventure and tonight is no different – except tonight instead of a single NPC I have a few options in play for us this week.

The idea behind tonight’s post is to look at a few frameworks that we can apply to a character, or several for the party to interact with while avoiding fleshing out thorough and compelling backstories for each person.

The Red Fleets crew

211TuRFC

How to use the below. Roll once on each table to establish a brief backstory on the person, or people, for who the party is interacting with. Assign Gender and appearance based on the portrait selected but the other characteristics can be chosen or rolled from the table to make it a quick NPC generator *(except the name.. I am poor with names..).

Visual characteristic

d6 resultCharacteristic
1The person walks with a slight limp, seeming to favour their right leg as they walk across the ship. Despite the obvious impairment they are still quick to move across the deck
2The person is exceptionally timid and will shy out of the way from all other crew members, passengers, the party and especially the captain. When the captain is around they seem to stutter, mumble and rush off to do what ever order is backed at the first chance that’s presented to them.
3The person is nimble, unnaturally so. They swing from one side of the ship to the other and climb ropes with effortless ease.
4The person is broad and strong. Able to move almost any crate, barrel, person or piece of cargo by themselves the other crew mates seem to rely on them to do the heavy lifting.
5The person is lazy. Plain and simple. They can be found laying down when the captain is not around napping or ignoring their duties. Despite being lazy they are extremely adept at the ship life and are first to fix something if there is trouble.
6There is nothing too obvious about this person, except their broken common. They barely speak and when they do its fractured sentences and very few words

Background before joining the ship

d6 resultBackground
1They are a third generation sailor and have spent most of their life on the waves.
2Joined the crew at the last port, they are very green to this type of life.
3Used to be a soldier back home but gave that up for a simpler life on the waves.
4Family member of the captain – seems to be treated the same if not more harshly than the other crew members.
5Farmer who is now seeking their fortune.
6Not much is revealed, they wont tell any one but they are jumping from ship to ship to avoid being sent to prison for a crime they committed.

Role

d6 resultRole
1Helmsman
2Deck hand
3Cook
4Medical officer
5First Mate
6Chief engineer

Otherwise notable thing

d6 resultNotable thing
1Has a tattoo of a wingless dragon curling up their shoulder onto their neck.
2Singles sea shanties almost any time they are working (or whistles/ hums if they don’t otherwise talk)
3During downtime they whittle wood with a small knife they keep at their belt. A small statue of a child (their son/daughter) can be seen on a string around their neck.
4Missing a hand of foot – a crude tool/replacement has been fashioned for them that they use deftly as if they have had the foreign appendage most of their life.
5Barely wears any clothes (just enough to be modest) – can be found praying to a deity and chanting prayers during their downtime.
6Nothing stands out in particular.

After the quick-rolls are made from the above pick a portrait from below (or any) to help describe the NPC to your party.

And that’s it, using the above and picking the more-blonde women from above we could have a NPC such as..

Visual-3-Strong, background-5-Strong, Role-2-Deckhand, Otherwise Notable – 4- Missing a Hand/Foot.

Kim

Kim is an impressive specimen, broad, strong and tall and able to carry and shift things around the boat with ease. The rest of the crew can be heard calling out her name when something is too heavy or bulky for regular people and she rushes over to help her crew. What makes it even more extraordinary is that she is missing her left hand and a set of short spikes are on a metal plate where her hand used to be. She uses these metal spiked nubs to help grip onto wood and other cargo and to also fend of those who are daft enough to want to brawl with her.

She hasn’t always been a sailor but when she lost her hand in her families farm she decided to try her luck elsewhere, the sea – using the first pouch of gold she earnt to pay for her spiky replacement she now considers the ship her home and being a deckhand her true calling.

I am relatively happy with how that panned out, I am a fan of random generators as a way of driving, steering or even assisting me in coming up with a new something for the table top and I find that, in a pinch, they are especially handy. Now all that is left to do is come up with a name….

Don’t forget to come back each day this week for the ship bound adventure, tomorrow we look at twists and turns that may affect our party out at sea (an obvious writeup this week I might add). If you do use the random tables above let me know how it goes! If you like what you create don’t forget to let me know in the comments below and I will look at creating a few more quick tables for NPC generation down the track.

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

Island escape

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Hi all welcome to a Saturday special where tonight I tried my hand at.. well hand drawing an isometric map now that I have isometric graph paper on hand supplied by worksheetworks.com.

This is just the first iteration of the small little temple/dungeon that I came up with whilst fighting my brain in ignoring the desire to draw a ship in isometric style, which was not working out for me – not at my current experience of this hand-drawn style.

So hope you like the format, scanned in pdf format and I hope to expand a little bit more on it in the future when and if I decide to use it for the party at some stage!

Temple to the serpent

210SaTttS

The temple is located on an island a day or two off the coast of Daye heading due east. The Island itself contains the last readily available fresh water and fruit (which is plentiful) before the gruelling two week journey across the sea and as such as become a stop over point for the Red Fleet.

The island itself has a single large mountain that has a supply of freshwater that trickles down into pools at its base, naturally filtered by the porous rock and minerals that make up the mountain itself. Though citrus fruit and some vegetables can be found across the island in groups those who visit the island rarely sleep or stay on the island after sunset as many sailor or adventurer has gone missing in the darkness beyond the safety of their boats and ships. Those who have explored the island report statues covered in vegetable matter depicting great serpents coiled around a hand that is always found to be reaching upwards from the ground. Ruins and archways litter the island and those who have ventured towards the lowest point of the mountain have reported that there is a great archway there where the stone of it has been carved into giant snakes coiled around bound humans forming a large archway that leads to a large stone building a few hundred feet further into the mountains, carved into the rock itself. No one who has ventured towards the building has returned.

Temple to the SerpentDownload

The temple itself seems to be long forgotten, large cracks spread across the floor itself as you enter the first chamber and a large stone snake statue sits against the far wall where a dank breeze can be felt flowing from its back. The statue itself is twenty feet tall where the coils of the snake seem to have had steps carved into it approaching its face where two perfectly white fangs carved from a hard stone have been set into the mottled grey stone of the body.

The snake itself seems to be too heavy and too hard to move or damage and attempts to break the stone or chip away at the snake seem to only damage the weapons or tools of those foolhardy enough to try. The astute investigators or those perceptive and clever enough would notice a slow trickle of green ichor dripping from the white fangs and the ancient stains of blood have tarnished the white stone when viewed from up close.

Beyond the hidden doorway behind the “Subjugation to the serpent” test lies a simple temple that descends deeper into the mountain itself. Many rooms were constructed and the deeper the warmer and more humid the temple becomes, a perfect breeding grounds for the creatures the temple worships. Traps and some treasure can be found within its halls and the constant scrape of scales on stone can be heard for any who dare bare an arm to the snake god and descent into its temples moist depths…

Hope you liked the content tonight – a small glimpse and foreshadowing preview of a temple/dungeon that the party may have to encounter and test their resolve in hopes to earn themselves knowledge and treasure.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the end of month write up, and as always don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

30 minute challenge – Caravan

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Hello all, welcome to Saturday nights writeup where this week we are looking at another 30 minute adventure with a randomly generated word.

Just like last week I will have the same except for one additional set of restrictions or rules to make it a challenge for me – well attempt to.

  • Single word randomly generated
  • 30 minute timer, start time recorded.
  • Must be a playable adventure
  • Must have at least one driver (antagonist/protagonist)
  • Must be D&D centric and attempt to be of the fantasy variety.
  • Can finish the sentence I am writing when timer goes off (I dislike half-written sentences)

And that’s the rules, deciding to remove the first two thoughts that came/come into my mind should make it a bit more challenging. So the clocks set, the word is Caravan provided by https://www.shortstoryideas.co.uk/random.htm

Right lets get on with it,.

Time: 9:32:13

Caravan – Precious Cargo

Initial thoughts – Caravan is an interesting one, relatively easy and not too hard to implement a three stage approach. You have departure, conflict (mid way) and then the Coast (what happens at the end – the coast into town). So this was probably an easy one to write through tonight so let’s see how we go!

Ok tonight is inspired by the one of the first novels I read when I was probably eight or nine (will touch on it in the closing thoughts). The party has been approached by a well respected caravan company to help beef up their protection of a caravan train that is leaving two days from now. The man seems to be skittish and paranoid as if reaching out to bigger mercenary companies or even posting the job at the normal job boards would draw too much attention and the party seems to be just the right mixture of unknown but capable.

What the caravan owner doesn’t reveal to the party is that the luggage is a princess who has been put under an enchanted sleep as a method of getting her out of her home city without drawing attention or raising suspicion. The other caravans in the train, the more impressive ones, are filled with spices, silks and goods that will fetch a good price regardless of where they are sold.

The princess, err, Claire, is the last heir to the throne for the kingdom of Wellhurst, once a prominent family which has had a string of bad lack with keeping their heirs alive whether it was illness, accidents or assassinations and despite the kings best efforts in hiring the caravan (people that he would never associate with normally – people smugglers, illicit traders etc.) and hiring a mage to sedate his daughter the caravan still has still been marked and those who would wish the princess ill are close behind.

The Caravan is currently settled in a small town called Hensroost, a small town that is normally known for its agriculture and the mines to the north which supply them with a supply of wealth its lately been seeing roaming bands of gnolls on the horizon which has kept the city on high alert and as made the caravan owner anxious to get going.

The Princesses family, the uncle in fact, made a pact with a devil to wrest power from his older brother allowing the devil to take what ever price it deemed equal. When the deal was done the price was called, the uncles children (Princess Claire’s cousins) were found dead within a day and the curse spread to make it so the uncle, although currently the ruler, would be the last of the line to rule the city. Despite his greed he couldn’t watch more of is family die due to his curse so he abjugated to his younger brother (Claire’s father) and revealed the curse.

The Devil itself cares not for the power of the kingdom but doesn’t like being cheated out of a deal and to make a statement he is sending some of those who also owe him a debt to retrieve the princess alive.

The gnoll’s are also drawn to the curse but because their demon lord – Yeenoghu – holds a special hatred for the devil who seeks the princess and wants to cause the devil as much grief and upset as possible without a direct confrontation.

The party will need to manage vehicle movement (caravans), travel by horses as well as fatigue on the animals if they are to get to the safer city where a Cleric of Tyr will look at breaking the deal by exploiting how it was written and signed.

Part 1 – Flight

As they leave the city on their four day journey all is well, the horses are pushed but not over worked. The party would notice though on the dawn of the second day that there are horses approaching quickly from the city. They can either stand and fight or flee.

If they stand and fight 7 ‘bandits’ and 1 ‘bandit captain’ attack them targeting the fancy caravans and managing to torch 2 of the 3 decoy caravans and ripping open the caravans to search them while they burn – announcing loudly that “SHES NOT HERE”. Any party member near by would hear this with ease, the Princesses caravan takes off as soon as the bandit attacks leaving the burning wreckage and the decoy takes off after them.

If they flee instead of fight then they have to try and outpace the bandits, which wont happen, and will end up fighting on horse back – at which point the bandits wont set the caravans on fire but will try and board overpower the driver and guards to get in.

Part 2 – Contact! Gnolls!

After escaping the raiders they may find out that the real purpose is the Princess – this would take the form of the main caravan wheel breaking and having to move the princess to a new caravan. The horses would have a level of exhaustion and would be getting fatigued by now.

Sounds like a great time for a dusk ambush by gnolls on day 3 – 1 day out from the city but the horses pulling the caravans may not make the ride in with how fatigued they are. Which means they would need to carry the unconscious princess on horseback!

A pack of gnolls and hyenas, maybe one giant one -a hyenadon) would be enough. Just enough to make it feel urgent to leave quickly but not enough to stop them there dead in their tracks.

Part 3 – Betrayal in the Caravan

So as they reach viewing distance of the walled city they would have what ever caravaners (not the main guy) turn on them – demanding the princess be handed to them so they can claim a bounty on her head. The party, since she will likely be on one of their horses, can take off for the city or stand and fight – I’d have about 8 “guards” as the statistics.

Once into the city the party make it to the cleric who removes the enchantment and begins to research into how to remove the curse. The Cleric produces a chest of gold (1000gp) as payment from the king and thanks them – the wards of the church to Tyr, and the sheer volume of knights and paladins in the vicinity should be enough to protect her until the deal can be broken.

Time: _10:03:30_

Closing Thoughts

Close! ran out of time and I finished the sentence I was writing when my alarm went off. A few moments I was pausing to make sure that I was happy with the direction I was going but overall I am happy with what was here. I even managed to get a few stat blocks called out in the adventure to hopefully help with the encounter.

Now higher level parties are easy to adjust – instead of hired thugs (bandits) chasing them you could have lower level devils such as imps or spined devils attacking the caravan, Volo’s guide to monsters and mordenkainans tome of foes both being excellent sources for alternative fiends as well as some great options for gnolls for that second encounter.

Really that’s about it – I tried to not follow the story line of Master Wolf (The third book in the Greyhawk series by Rose Estes but there are a are few elements through most of my campaign that are inspired by this series – being the first novels I read (then I went onto such books as Deltora quest etc.)

Thanks – I hope you enjoyed tonight’s writeup!

Come back tomorrow for the end of week write-up and don’t forget to let me know what you thought of tonight’s adventure challenge so I can keep creating more Brazen Wolfe Tabletop content that you want to read.

And finally, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

On borrowed time

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Hi all and welcome to Friday where we look at everything to do with the creatures, environment, obstacles and play through of the encounter for this week.

Tonight we use last nights creature template to create a few different stat blocks that we can use in this weekends adventure as well as the creature that starts it all, The Shadow Mist Creeper.

Mist that creeps through the shadows

209FrSCreeps

First on our list is the originating factor – the shadow Mist Creeper this creature is something that originates across the waves but has found its way over as only the incorporeal can.

The Shadow inside the puppet

The Shadow-mist creeper is a creature born from souls taken too early in life when was to young to make peace with what had happened to them. Commonly these are children who have not lived long enough and who truly believe that they have not had their due just yet. These spirits are generally playful and use their new undead misty form to create mischief and chaos rather than outright malevolence and death. However those who are created as a Shadow-mist creeper but who are old enough to understand the gravity of their situation but held on with their malice and hatred are truly terrifying when it comes to their anger and white hot hatred for life.

Regardless of the original creature that spawned a Shadow-mist creeper all of them share a few common features.

All shadow-mist creepers don’t have physical form or the power to interact with the physical world for long. Those who do so will need a dead body, or one close to death to inhabit until they can find a source of life energy to be able to leave the body they reside in.

Like Ghast’s they have a hierarchy, the most powerful malevolent spirits take take control of the actions of the others in the group and through force of will they can command the other generally mischievous spirits into a terrifying horde of malicious malevolent spiteful creatures.

This creature can inhabit the dead body and the creature functions as a zombie – however creatures killed by a Shadow-mist creeper become a Shadow Stitched skin – a body corrupted by the undead nature of the shadow-mist creeper and more suitable than just any other dead body. These creatures are faster, stronger but share the same aversion to the sun (despite not being as terrifying as they have a fresh new body suit to protect them!)

The Fell

Dead creatures killed then inhabited by a Shadow-mist creeper become known as the fell, but their true names are Shadow Stitched Skins.

These creatures are weak, relatively fast (when compared to a zombie) but highly intelligent as they seek out sources of life to restore their energy so they can continue to exist.

Occasionally many Shadow Stitched creatures act as one living organism to try and overpower any resistances they encounter. This phenomena is almost always as the behest of a particularly strong Shadow stitched and are seldom recorded by those who the heaving, twitching mass of shadow and recently killed flesh have targeted as their prey.

The encounter can take place any where and should be a mixture of Guards, Mastiffs and cats (more animals than not) who rush at the party from random directions, not enough to pose a real threat (1d4+1). Every two rounds (12 seconds) another wave should come and on the fourth wave replace one mastiff or cat with the ogre – the ogre being the particularly strong Shadow-mist creeper. Once the ogre is killed then any remaining creatures will have the mist escape and float into the sky slowly evaporating their energy and focus (being directed by the ogre) gone.

If the creatures are killed and the Ogre remains as the last creature then it will leave its big fleshy body (Roll 1d4 and pick a direction, if there is a character there they need to make a Dex saving throw DC14 or they end up under the ogre) and will try to escape in its Shadow-mist creeper form.

Thanks for joining me tonight to explore and test out the template. I think for me the biggest issue wasn’t using Tetra cube (which made it easy!) it was me remembering to update all the little details (I think I missed out on some of the penalties to damage.. apologies!)

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow and this post is the last one to nominate a word if you want to see a Random word 30 minute challenge this weekend!

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

Shadow Stitched

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Hi all and welcome to Thursday where we look at the additional content such as maps, stats, plots, hooks, and generally anything in between that makes the adventure that little bit more adventure-y.

Tonight I wanted to make it a shorter night so I will post one half of tomorrows Fight-Night encounter as a sampler as this week is pretty straight forward. So lets roll into it!

Shadow Stitched Skin

209ThSSS

Shadow stitched skin (5e Template)

Shadow Stitched Skin

Shadow stitched Skins, or “The Fell ones” as they have been called are a terrifying sight to see. Generally taking the form of animals, children or sometimes humanoids these creatures appear to be normal at first but when they move in for the kill they move with a sickly fast puppetry that betrays the creature controlling the Fell ones body. Occasionally a particularly strong stitched one will appear where the process of their creation was orchestrated by a group, rather than the individual – these are generally a creature that was full of life or had a strong connection to the powers that governed, created and controlled life force. 

Prerequisite: Any aberration, beast, dragon, fey, giant, humanoid or monstrosity

Statistics:

  • AC. -2 from base creature, accounting for their modified Dexterity score.
  • HP. 1 Dice lower than base creature, accounting for their modified Constitution score.
  • Abilities.
    • The Shadow Stitched Skin’s Strength score is decreased by 6 (to a minimum of 6),
    • its Constitution and Dexterity score is decreased by 2 (to a Minimum of 8),
    • and its Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores become 13, 8, and 5, respectively (unless the base creature’s Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores are lower).

Senses. The Shadow Stitched Skin gains darkvision out to a range of 60 feet, unless the base creature had superior darkvision.

Damage Immunities. The Shadow Stitched Skin is immune to poison damage.

Damage Resistance. The Shadow Stitched Skin is resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons

Damage Vulnerability. The The Shadow Stitched Skin is vulnerable to Radiant damage 

Condition Immunities. The Shadow Stitched Skin is immune to the poisoned condition.

Saving Throws. The Shadow Stitched Skin loses all saving throw proficiencies. 

Speed. The Shadow Stitched Skin’s speed is decreased by 5 feet.

Languages. The Shadow Stitched Skin understands common, but can’t speak.

Skills. The Shadow Stitched Skin loses all its skill proficiencies.

Alignment. The Shadow Stitched Skin’s alignment changes to neutral evil.

Traits:

  • Hunger for life. While in dim light or darkness, the Shadow Stitched Skin can take the Dash action as a bonus action.
  • Sunlight Weakness: While in sunlight, the Shadow Stitched Skin has disadvantage on attack rolls. It also becomes vulnerable to non-magical weapons as if exposed to radiant energy. 

Other Traits. The Shadow Stitched Skin loses any trait, such as Amphibious, that assumes a living physiology. The Shadow Stitched Skin cannot cast spells and loses all spell slots. At the GM’s discretion, traits that would be harmful to undead no longer affect undead.

Undead Nature. A Shadow Stitched Skin doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep.

Thanks for joining tonight and taking some time out of your busy days, I hope the Shadow stitched skin gives a good prelude to what’s coming tomorrow.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the next part of this write up and also don’t forget that if you’d like to submit a single word for the weekend challenge feel free to do so! Otherwise it may be a nice easy going weekend for me!

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

Bracken Hollow

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Hi all and welcome to the last instalment of our February adventure series.

Tonight we will look back at the parties visit to Bracken Hollow, their discovery of Katya and their efforts to free the village from the corruption that spreads from her family home – as well as how it’s not easy dealing with a undisciplined beacon of life magic.

So, first time trying this format (which coupled with the effort from the previous weeks should make it a lot easier – but let’s see about that).

Pages 1, 2 and 3 are content pages, the description, flow, random tables, etc. and such that you’ve previously seen.

Page 4 contains all NPCs and portraits to help the DM describe them and a bit about them to help play them out.

Page 5 will be stat blocks and map(s) – all that D&D encounter goodness that you want.

Now I will jump the gun and say thanks. Thanks for reading this – I have expanded, added and corrected a few things to make sure the adventure flew, well nice enough. If you do like this format do let me know, if you don’t also let me know so I can see what I can tweak for next time. this probably was just about as much effort as writing it all from scratch the first time around but this way I think it makes sense.


Don’t forget to come back next week and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Part 1 – The road Bracken hollow – 205BrHo1

The high priestess of Chauntea in Daye, Sister Lizbet, impressed with the party and what they had accomplished, rumoured to or not, requested that they go to Bracken Hollow, a town a few days travel to the north east of Daye in Amn and to search for another priestess of Chauntea who was rumoured to be more powerful than she and to bring her to Daye. During the travels into Bracken Hollow the party met with a few travellers who warned them of Bracken Hollow and its general dislike to strangers – particularly from the family who lived in an old manor atop a hill towards the north of the village, and warned the party to not outstay their welcome how ever long it is.

Walking upwards into the sleepy village of Daye the party are greeted by farmsteads overlooking paddocks filled with crops or beasts, two the north east as dense forest could be seen in the distance as the road crept steadily upwards.

Entering the town there was very little. A small stable with may hitching posts lay at the centre of the village, a large water trough and nearby well the only visible water source for horses and people alike. To the left (west of the stable) lay a tavern, The Broken Tankard, which in the dwindling light provided by the setting sun looked like the only place of warmth and hospitality. To the north, about mile away on a hill was a pinpoint of light and smoke amongst a sea of tall, slender pines who had shed their needles already – unusual for the season.

Areas and places of note

The Stables – A small set of covered areas in the centre of the town. Big enough to house about eight horses if some are hitched just outside of the small roof that provides cover from the elements. There is no stable boy but there is clean fresh water at least if sans-food for the beasts that would be spending the night there.

The Broken Tavern – A brightly lit two room, double storied building that boasts three rooms for rent, two singles and a double room. The meals are hearty and of the land but cost a bit more than what the party is used to ranging from 1 silver for basics to 10 silver for something that is likely to fill you up for half a day or more. Despite the price the quality cant be doubted and the three dwarven owners, Milly, Billy and Ned are ferociously proud of the food and drink they serve in their tavern.

The Bracken Hollow woods – rumoured to be the gathering place for fey and other creatures from the fey wild the Bracken Hollow woods are relatively small in size but deep with a few cave systems within its twisted roots and sudden drops. Those who adventure within will need to be on their toes as its not just the environment within that could kill a man.

Environment and running the adventure

As the party enter the village an unusual cold change in weather has swept through the village, many blame the fey that reportedly live in the forest to the East but there is growing whispers, hushed or otherwise, that the family who live on top of the hill are responsible.

This cold snap brings about changes in the weather conditions. When the party arrive it is cold, but not extremely so and they are offered a change of clothes (for 5 gold pieces each) if they are wearing clothes not suited to the cold climates. The following morning you should determine the weather affect in place (d6 roll on the below random table) and for each 1d4+3 hours after that roll the dice again. On a 3-6 the weather gets worse and on a 1 or 2 the weather lessens.

The party should attend the Tavern, the only place to stay for the night. Upon entering the tavern they are treated poorly by the villagers within, looked upon as if they were bandits until Milly, the Matron of the tavern comes and pretends to rough them up a bit. Afterwards the villagers get back to their jovial nature. The party find themselves at a large table with Colin and Paul when the doors open again and this time a crazed man walks in. The music from Carline changes from a merry jig to something that is brash, abrasive and seems to openly mock the newcomer who asks Milly for a bottle of wine to go. The man then seems very interested in the party and tries to pry all information from them about their reasons for visiting Bracken Hollow. Paul steps in and fumbles, revealing what the party has told them that they are here for but Colin tries to cover for his brother and the party explaining that they are heading through the town and staying for a night or two. After the man leaves with his wine the party hear about the strange weather patterns that are happening and the two reason that they believe its occurring. The strange man called “Father” and his family or the fey in the woods are upset about something and have turned spiteful.

If the party go into the woods then the weather should be snowing (stage 5). They find a cave after some while which looks like it was lived in recently, there are some dead strange looking deer within that have a fey-like quality. The weather begins to get worse. If the party stay in the cave they find themselves unwelcome visitors to an half-ogre and his pet brown bear (stats below).

On the way out of the woods they are ambushed by giant snow owls (see stat blocks below) as the wind begins to pickup (blizzard begins). After the fight they travel for a few hours – the blizzard making it rough to move through and as the wind dies down (still extremely cold but no snow) they see a half-ogre and brown bear (If they didn’t encounter them in the cave that is) has followed them and then they are in combat.

After getting back to the village they find that Paul has gone missing when going to help “Father” with a problem with his fences.

Random table

Weather table.

ResultWeather affect
1Cold but not extremely so
1-2It’s begun to rain hard and its still cold, but nothing an additional coat can’t fix.
3-4It’s now dropped in temperature dangerously, its extremely cold and still raining.
5It’s now snowing and extremely cold.
6Blizzard (Extreme wind, snow and cold)
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

A Candid approach

thebrazenwolfeLeave a comment

Hello all, welcome to the ‘Saturday special’ where this week we are looking at another 30 minute adventure challenge with the supplied word (thanks reader!).

Now true to word I haven’t started writing or thinking on what I could do with this adventure, well, thinking about it is hard to reign in but I will do my best to handicap myself by throwing away the instant thoughts I had on this – but more on that in a moment – you will just have to trust that I am telling the truth on this one.

Just like last week I will have the same, mostly, set of restrictions to make it a challenge for me – well attempt to.

  • Single word randomly provided
    • Initial first and second thoughts are to be ignored – To make my imagination actually work for it for a change.
  • 30 minute timer, start time recorded.
  • Must be a playable adventure
  • Must have at least one driver (antagonist/protagonist)
  • Must be D&D centric and attempt to be of the fantasy variety.

And that’s the rules, deciding to remove the first two thoughts that came/come into my mind should make it a bit more challenging. So the clocks set, the word Candour (Candor) provided last week – thanks for the suggestion!

Right lets get on with it,.

Time: 8:52:15

A Candid approach

Well the first idea that came into my head was a King who is normally open, honest and truthful with everyone he works with being cursed to only lie, but the enchantment makes other spells and attempts to work out his situation come back with the resounding truth. He believes what he is saying. The story would go on how he knows he is cursed and he is trying to cry for help by wearing a red leather glove and openly declaring that its blue.. But – that may be for another time, who knows.

The second thought was just a stone throw away really – A crime boss has suddenly started telling the truth and he abducts the players. Any spell or affect will determine he is 100% telling the truth on anything he says. He believes that some of his own subordinates has betrayed him (note the words used) and he implores the party to do their best to flush out the culprits so he can revert the enchantment. There are no spells cast upon him but he is candid to a fault including his multiple affairs (if questioned in front of his wife) – Well that ones gone too – this one was different – he is just simply telling the truth to flush out the rot in his crew. Its all a farce but because he speaks the truth and speaks with conviction (and is careful with his words) to all that know him or hear him speak he is 100% truthful – ah goodbye Liar Liar spin off.

Ok the real on, third off the rank is a no-name merchant who starts to advertise his truth potion – any one dose will make the consumer hear only truths for the next day. This obviously goes nuts in the small city that they are in (a fringe city that isn’t really known for much other than its large livestock market and export via its very small dock.

Soon accusations of unfaithful ness, business cheats, charlatans and all manor of wrong doers are being exposed and this small time merchant strikes liquid gold – his her truth potion. (changed to a female antagonist). The party are called upon, to help sort out what’s going on here.

So this leaves me with a question – is the potion real or a trickery and I think the only path I want to go down is its real! (makes it harder for me). Now, sorcery or alchemy – my first instinct was sorcery to be frank but with the late addition (as I was typing) of the large livestock market its feasible that something rare, exotic or unusual may have come through there so I will say that it’s Alchemical.

So, a lady alchemist who uses, err, liquid from a creature that was acquired from the local livestock trade to distil a potion that makes the consumer hear only truths.

So how did she know about it, lets make it easier for me as my mind went with squids. Yup. Tentacles, beaks and odd eyes. So a land squid. Yep. That’s weird. Found in a cave to the north that happens to lead down into the underdark. This gives us a few things.

  1. The merchant to sold the squid would be visiting the underdark or paying someone to to bring back the gross critter.
  2. The alchemist would need to know what it is. Either she is Duegar, Drow or spent time amongst them. I tend to stay away with slavery so lets go with.. half drow? – Mother was particularly thorough in her prayers to Lloth and fell pregnant which created a half-elf – she cant even remember the sire. (no hate here – spent a bit of time reading war of the spider queen and it only seems fair that they would partake in these displays of excess…)

So the half-drow, Amalica, was spared because of her gender (extreme matriarchy down in the dark) and spent some time with a lesser family – a relative (cousins)- before she went in search of what lies above the earth.

Ok – so squid’s tentacles and beak secrete a poison that allows the squid to take control over the bitten and use their body as an all terrain vehicle, nice. Because she is half-drow she knows of the squid from her family and her cousins taught her to complete alchemy and limited sorcery that comes with the elven blood.

The created potion when it’s distilled correctly and mixed with certain mushrooms doesn’t open the mind fully for invasion but gives a strong temporary psionic ability to the consumer which enables them to read minds, well surface thoughts and limited ability to manipulate those thoughts to reveal the truth – all subconsciously.

Since her endeavour has taken off she has been searching for another squid but her supplier has gone quiet. Currently she is just keeping up with demands but has made enough gold that her little cart is now upgraded to a large shop front and her neighbours don’t like it so much.

So the party, where… called upon by the businesses near by, a mercantile body of them in fact who govern the commerce in the city – yeah. They are worried about the legitimacy of the potion as well as, if questioned or poked, worried about their own business secrets, deals, plots and ploys being revealed to their competition. The board has all agreed upon pain of ostracisation from the city and all the benefits of working for, as part of and within the city offer.

Part 1 – Finding out.

The party would need to find out how Amalica does it – they could sample the potion, perform their own alchemical wonders, cast spells or such but they all come back with that its not really a spell or enchantment but a drug.

If they break in and look through the store they find only meagre supplies and too many orders for what is there – they find the underdark mushrooms though and if one of them has knowledge of either the underdark (Ranger, drow, duegar, or svirfneblin) or a high survival check they would be able to determine what it is.

Maybe they would notice the merchant dropping off the mushrooms and tail him?

Part 2 – Confrontation?

The party would confront Amalica, the merchant/s etc. to find more info.

Part 3 – Discovery

Either the merchant body, or better yet people who tracked the merchant selling mushrooms find where she is keeping the Squid and kill it – leaving behind a Drow dagger (a spider motif on the handle) – she talks openly with the party and ask about what’s next – she thinks her merchant had found another two of the squids but she worries he was ambushed at his place.

And time…. well being candid it was over by 1 minute over as I didn’t want to finish mid sentence (must add that to the rules for next time…)

Closing thoughts

Hmm – taking the time to get some notes out this time for part 1,2 and 3 helped this time so I could go into those sections and tidy them up. I probably spent too much time on the setting as opposed to the actual content and flow.

I would change part three to a either or. Kill the squid if the Drow, or, if the merchants she becomes a fugitive as the merchants and their guards go after her – accusing her of dark magic. The Towns guard are on her side but its a bit out numbered – the party has a choice to either help her and/or the guard or the merchants.

Part 2 is also, well, merely a thought here – Talking to her, the merchants or the mushroom man to get more info. If confronted directly and approached with empathy and genuine concern (she would drink her own potion and know if they were lying) she would explain to them her background – the abridged version – and then explain that she is an alchemist and found a non-lethal non-malicious way to distil her potion. This is what the party want to be aware of – the other merchants would merely point at her and say that she is behind it (and may reluctantly tell truths of double dealings, black books, illegal trade and the like)

I think next time if I do this again I wouldn’t write the two stricken out entries until after the time is up – as they were thought up and discarded quickly, could have saved around 5 minutes.

The conclusion would be the the half-Drow alive – sorry for those who didn’t want that! but she would be tried for a witch if captured by the merchants and then found innocent, but the merchants would then ostracise her from the merchants network which would make it nearly impossible to keep running her business here – she would then leave.

If the merchants don’t catch her then she would flee and pass a large sum of gold to the party if they were with her when she left – else the mushroom merchant would find them and bring them gold from her if they held back the merchants and guards but didn’t help her personally escape

Thanks – I hope you enjoyed tonight’s writeup! I, honestly, failed tonight – The clock bet me tonight but I will endeavour to try again if its a format that people like!

So – if you’ve got a word for next week feel free to comment below and I will select one that has been provided, if you have some reasonable restrictions, rules, or “at minimum you must have…” then please put them down – I am doing this to, really, train my brain to be better at planning adhoc one shots and be better and creating short adventures on the fly.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for more Brazen Wolfe Tabletop content and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe

Beacon of life

thebrazenwolfeLeave a comment

Hi all and welcome to Friday or as I like to think of it, FightNight!

As promised I couldn’t stay away from a healthy “ambush on the way back to Daye” and I think the theme and logic behind the ambush is quite fitting so let’s roll into it.

Ambush at the Old Oak

208FrAOO

The party have settled down for the night about twenty miles out of Daye, the woods up ahead being too dangerous to travel at night. Katya has been reading from her book all day and the party cant help but notice the constant energy that is being emitted from her like warmth from a fire, and that’s what it is – its warmth, light and the essence of life. But this constant output of energy has taken a toll and Katya looks weakened, not quite feeble but tired and exhausted.

As the party clean up from their meals and organise watch a eerie rattle comes from the roads and plains around them. Those with darkvision or the ability to summon light would instantly see shambling, incoherent parade of the long dead being risen once more. Steeling themselves for battle they notice the first skeletons walk into the light of the fire where Katya’s passive aura of magic appears to be strongest and the dark magic binding their bones together seems to weaken as fingers, hands and even whole limbs fall off the moment they step upon the flower rich grass around the wagon.

Now the approach for this encounter is different and more to tell a story. Under normal circumstances a party of 4 level 3s (which is what I would assume them all to be after their ordeals in Bracken Hollow) the amount of skeletons in the horde is just immeasurable, I’m thinking between 80 and 100. But as this is explaining or showing off how powerful Katya could be (with training) and that her aura of life energy and magic flowing out of her like a radiant sun has the potential to bring new life and bounty to the land – it also can attract the darkness that walks at the edge of the light.

The mechanics!

A 30ft circle centred on Katya (the centre of the wagon) is treated as hallowed ground, The skeletons will have disadvantage on all attack and saving throws IF they are within the circle. The party, at initiative 20, get 1d4+2 Temporary hitpoints for being within the range of the circle.

The Skeletons are broken up into four ‘distinct’ hordes, the front of the wagon, the left flank of it, the back of the wagon and, you guessed it, the right flank of the wagon. Each horde has 20 skeletons on it (adjust to 25 if you’re party are blasting through them too easily) and consider the below.

  1. Each horde has a total of 100hp, yikes, which is 5hp per skeleton – they are weakened due to the magic after all.
    1. Every 5 points of damage dealt by the players (as Paul, Katya and Carline won’t be fighting in this) will destroy another skeleton. So a dagger that manages to deal 7 points of damage which to a horde that has 67/100 hp remaining would kill two Skeletons – make sure to talk up how the party does it with one dagger.
    2. Each saving throw made by the Skeleton is made at disadvantage and assume that the AOE is all skeletons in a horde (or 50% in two hordes, 25% if it targets three hordes). Success is saving 50% of Skeletons, failure saves 10% of skeletons from the effect.
    3. IF the damage form the attack (burning hands) is enough to kill 1 skeleton assume all that failed die and then calculate damage to the horde as normal (burning hands dealt 6 damage, a big fail on on the dice roll, but it manages to kill 10 skeletons outright and then a further 5 due to the them succeeding but the damage being enough to kill another 5.
  2. When the Horde attacks Assume 2 hits the nearest party member to that horde for every 10 Skeletons. If the character has a particularly high AC then only 1 hits.
    1. Don’t roll attack rolls, just assume averages. It’s meant to feel overwhelming but the encounter is designed for the party to survive it.
    2. If two or more Party members are equally close to a horde who is attacking then roll a dice and randomly allocate where it makes logical sense. The 24 AC paladin with shield of faith and who took the dodge action probably wont get hit by skeletons…
    3. Since the Skeletons have a mixture of ranged weapons and melee weapons make sure to describe both – arrows bouncing off plate, rusty swords bending as they strike a exposed gauntlet, arrows finding the gap between pieces of armour or a rusted long sword (that’s now the size of a short sword due to the level of rust…) landing a grazing blow on an exposed forearm.
  3. When the horde thins enough (20%?) I would roll it into another horde.
  4. Have the horde(s) act on Initiative 13 (for flanks) and 10 for front and back.

If you are awarding experience points for your encounters at the end I would award 10% of the skeletons XP – they are nerfed pretty hard in this fight and are there to have a thematic “save the princess” moment for the party.

Thanks for joining me tonight, fighting with hordes can be quite a fun moment for the party – the never ending waves of goblins pouring through the opened great stone doors in Moria being met by desperate axe, sword, arrow and fists is something that I have always wanted to encounter as a player, or run as a DM. The sheer manic fight for ones life and the frenzy that goes into these massive horde battles is something that people will talk about for years to come.

Don’t forget to come back this weekend for more content, tomorrow nights “Adventure in 30 minute” challenge is on and Sunday we look to post the conclusion to this months writeup.

If you do have another word that you want to suggest for these 1 word adventure challenges feel free to comment on this post and I will add it to the potential words for next week!

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

Future-proofing

thebrazenwolfe2 Comments

Hi all and welcome to Brazen Wolfe Tabletop!

Tonight, being Thursday, is generally reserved to the exciting endeavour of ‘something that adds to the adventure’ whether that is maps, additional content, a new stat-block for a creature, a magical item or some lore or information.

Now tonight I had big plans and as soon as I started to put them in to motion they started to degrade into a pile of dust – but not because of what was mentioned the other night but because of what I found to enact my plan!

So tonight I want to give a bit of a spotlight hour to something I hope to really sink my teeth into, wolf-like or not, over the weekend so that I can have something exciting in the coming weeks to present to you for a future Thursday – hence future proofing.

Now..

Homebrew is both a wondrous and painful thing. You can create the most beautiful creatures, magical items, classes, races, spells, feats, skills.. I think you get the point, the D&D world is yours for the taking and yours to manipulate and adjust how you see fit – but a lot of the time the inexperienced will end up shooting themselves in the foot with something too powerful, or, those who are overly cautious (like myself mind you) will create things that are not powerful enough so that when they are put before the heroic adventurer you get a mild “Meh” from those you hoped to impress.

When it comes to the balance, that’s a tricky story and something for another day but for me sometimes its the format and how you present something that can be the selling point.

The tool practically sells itself in its very own webpage too!

Let me introduce to you The Homebrewery!

(less work for me -albeit the quote feature didn’t like cut and paste so I had to type it all out by hand anyway…)

The Homebrewery makes the creation and sharing of authentic looking Fifth-edition homebrews easy. It uses Markdown with a little CSS magic to make your brews come to life.

https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/

Looking at this tool, and having a small amount of experience with markdown from work the concept is simple yet, amazingly beautiful in what it can accomplish.

The format of the tool is simple, you have a text field on the left and a PDF preview on the right which updates as you type.

The markdown and CSS really do take care of the rest. By spending a few minutes you can get something you really want out of this website and really, it was a bit of fun editing it (but I have always loved these things… so maybe it’s just me)

Now The Homebrewery is not a sponsor – it even feels weird having to clarify that, same as the other tools, websites and platforms I use – but I post them up here because I either make good use out of them or intend to and this website has already gone into my BWT bookmarks folder.

I don’t want to spoil too much but this website, this tool that has been created here was just too good to not share and the creator has already decided that it will remain free for ever – but if you, like me, enjoy it and get value from it why not support a fellow content creator out there, just saying.

So hopefully I can sink a few hours into this over the weekend and in the process I hope I can create some truly professional looking homebrew for you all to enjoy.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow, I can’t say no to a good fight-night post so I anticipate uploading some form of random encounter fun times and on the weekend I hope to, in between helping some people move house, take up the challenge laid before me and write another 30 minute adventure using Candour (as was gloriously nominated last week) for this weeks Challenge – not going to lie its been a struggle to not start mapping out some potential notes for the adventure so I am looking forward to Saturday.

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