The Best D&D Modules for Halloween

It's that time of the year, my favorite holiday; the night of spooks, goblins and ghastly things. Each year my group does a one-shot Halloween themed adventure and I figured I would give my opinion on what I consider the best Halloween adventures. Like everything on this blog, this is my opinion and I try to only evaluate modules I own and have run previously, so take it for what it is, but enjoy all of the amazing Stephen Fabian art incoming.

Ravenloft (I6): the original module from the Hickman / Weis team where we are first introduced to villain Strahd, a vampire with a tragic story. If running this one as a one-shot, skip all of the background and just run Castle Ravenloft itself. One of the greatest modules created is perfect for a Halloween scenario.

 

The Haunting of Harrowstone: Part of 1 of the Carrion Crown adventure path for the Pathfinder Roleplaying game. This adventure sees the characters come to a small village that is quickly becoming plagued by the spirits of an abandoned prison on the outskirts of town. Well those ghosts aren't going to go away on their own, the characters will need to venture into the haunted ruins and save the town.

Death Frost Doom: From Lamentations of the Flame Princess, you can likely expect things to go wrong for the players, and you would be correct in that assumption. An exploration of an out of the way cabin in a frigid country-side turns into the revelation of an apocalyptic cult and it's undead leaders being unleashed. Good thing we're just running a one-shot here, this campaign is ending sooner than expected! Really great and atmospheric module, highly recommend.

Night of the Walking Dead: Back to the domains of Ravenloft for this one. Themes are centered around a Bayou like village about to experience a night of terror. This adventure is clearly an homage to the pulp culture movie, Night of the Walking Dead with a Dungeons and Dragons spin. Props for not having the domain lord involved in this adventure, as the night goes on the threat increases unless the characters address the root of the issue driving the dead to march on the small village. This is a very underrated module and probably one of the best for the 2nd edition Ravenloft line.

Castle Xyntillan: This one may be a bit too whimsical and gonzo at times for some, but there is no better module to represent a romp through a haunted castle than this one. This is everything Tegel Manor should have been. A cursed family with dark secrets still plaguing the castle where riches are abundant for the brave and foolhardy to explore. This is one of the best modules ever produced for the OSR. The faction dynamics of dealing with the various and numerous family members presents a complicated mess for the players to weed through, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. This adventure is like being on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney expect you may not survive.

Does the hobby need gatekeeping? And, is it too late?

This has been a hot-button topic of late in the D&D community of late, where the new-guard (5E players and WoTC in particular) have turned aggressive to the old-school and long time player. It is no secret that WoTC injects their beliefs and political ideology into all of their products, often at the expense of making good content. Now it has turned to more aggressive attacks, in reference the NPC character Thaco (a clear stab at the OSR) that guard a tent in their recent module the Wild Beyond Witchlight. I recently reviewed this module and was generally a pretty big fan of them taking a different approach, but that one little jab sort of sat sour with me.

This has been followed-on by several bloggers and YouTubers coming out with the notion that you are either with us or against us in regards to playing 5E, and that playing any other system is actively harming the hobby. I chuckle at the absurdity of this, but really I'm not shocked given the insanity of the left's political stances at times, this should be no surprise either. For the past few years you've seen panels at conventions and hires at some of the bigger publishers targeting inclusivity as opposed to actual interest in the hobby and game, now the lid is off and maybe the future of the hobby is in question all together. Honestly, I don't think these people give two squats about D&D, they are just in it to push an agenda and make others bow to their beliefs. They are a disease, a cancer to society.

So...what to do? For one, I'm taking a personal stance to no longer buy any WoTC published material from here on out. I've run 5E games for nearly seven years, but I'm also dropping it from the rotation. Currently running my group in games using Pathfinder (1E) and Old-school Essentials in another game. Lastly, no more reviews or overviews of their product, they've made it clear they don't want people like me (and someone with much disposable income) to play their games, so returning the favor and not playing them.

It really is quite sad with all of the division and in-fighting in our country in numerous issues, that now our hobbies have been infiltrated by these activists, who in all likelihood could care less for the hobby, they are just hear to push an agenda. All myself, and many others wanted was to be left alone and enjoy the escape that D&D can bring, come together despite our various stances in real life and enjoy our time together, but that is not good enough for the purple hairs in Seattle. The bad news for them, is that many others will take a stand against this. The hobby won't die, even though, that may be their goal, but it will certainly shift. I've collected years of books and products from the various editions and off-spin games to last me several life times at this point, but the OSR will certainly be my new home for the games I run and enjoy going forward.

 

Make your VTT games better!

 

My group and I have been playing online RPG tabletop games now for several years now following a few of the members moving out of state. At first, I hated it, I missed the in person interaction, having the attention of the players while I DM'd, being able to see their expressions and reactions fueled some incredible roleplay and drama in our games. We moved our games to Roll20, so much of the below will apply to that specific application, but honestly this advice will help with any system you are using for your games.

The move to virtual tabletop was clunky at first, but over time, I've worked to refine and become much more proficient in the use of the virtual tabletop to make our games just as good as they were in person. Here are few tips to help your games:

1) Practice and learn the system you're using. Much like the DM should know the rules of the RPG system, so should they also know the workings of the virtual tabletop application. I cannot count how many times we've had games break or pause with questions on how to make rolls or use tokens or fix the visibility. Even knowing the application well won't prevent these issues, but it will hasten the correction to get back to the game.

2) Visuals Visuals Visuals!: I can't stress this enough. Art and imagery is an important part of the game. DM's can describe items until they are blue in the face, but a simple piece of art showing the object or character says more than anything I could describe in most cases. It helps with the immersion and setting of the game you are trying to portray to players. Google is your friend here, even when comes to tokens, maps and general handouts. There are many talented individuals in our hobby who have done the hard work to illustrate, use them!

3) To piggyback on imagery for your game, sound is just as important to set the mood. My group uses Discord for our audio and I've been lucky to find several Discord apps that let you play music / sound through the voice channel. Set the mood with a dark ambience as they venture into the dungeon or play that epic battle track from Conan the Barbarian when a fight erupts. It keeps the players engaged and immersed which can be a struggle at times online.

4) Fix the player tokens. Just like in person when the players would bring a miniature to the table, make their online tokens fancy with the image they want to use along with any system settings: such as vision, aura's, quick reference information like hit points and armor class. For Roll20, all of this can be preset by the DM and saved, so once established, you never have to touch it again. Make their life easier and it will makes yours easy too.

5)  Lastly, use the available resources and prebuilt modules / rules tomes. WoTC not including digital content with the purchase of the physical book is a whole other issue and a big one at that, but having the content preloaded from maps, tokens, handout, dynamic lighting; all of the heavy lifting work done for you is priceless when using a VTT. Save your prep time for what matters as a DM: making your players lives difficult haha, knowing the encounters and NPC's, not for drawing lighting on a map or custom loading monster sheets. Both Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds (especially Fantasy Grounds) have a plethora of modules and system rule books right at your fingers for purchase. Many will balk at essentially buying the book twice, if you own the physical book, but what you're really paying for is the labor to put all of that into a VTT for use, trust me it is worth it.

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (Thoughts, is it good?)

 

So let me preface this before I even dive in. I don't like to review modules that I have not run. Reading them is great, but you don't know how they play until you play it. Also, I give WoTC a lot of crap...most of it pretty justified, plus most of the employees there would toss me into a gulag based on my political views if given the chance...but is a totally impartial impression of my first quick read through on "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight".

There will be some minor spoilers here, so proceed with caution.....this is your warning players....seriously.....don't read this if you intend to play in this adventure, your DM will thank you and some of the spoilers are worth finding through play.

OK....all clear....here we go. This is a level 1-8 adventure for 5th edition D&D, published by Wizards of the Coast, this is their annual marquee adventure release. The book is available in both a standard and collectors edition copy with alternate art. The guts of the book remain the same through both copies. The setting is agnostic and can be placed in any game setting with little difficulty, this is a welcome change and I'm glad to see it. The Sword Coast has been beaten to death at this point.

Two new character races are presented: the fairy and the harengon. The summaries are brief, no real background or roleplay nuggets. The fairy starts with flying...yikes....and the harengon is anthropomorphic rabbit person. A few character background and trinket options specific to the adventure are presented and then it is onto the adventure itself. There the standard appendix goodies of new monster stats, NPC stats, magical items along with a NPC card section which is a new feature highlighting the personality and ambitions of many of the notable NPC's found throughout the adventure. I wish this on the same page as of the adventure where said NPC was encountered as opposed to a appendix area, but step in the right direction. Lastly there a few organizational charts provided to jot down the interactions of the players throughout the adventure as choices as consequences and possible rewards, I really freaking love this despite it being a lot of DM work....just note, please for the love god, don't write in your actual book....just photo copy or print this out haha.

To start the adventure there are a couple of lead hooks presented for use. One is magical man can't magic, hires players to go fix....blah....the other is more interesting, the players having previously encountered / visited the carnival lost something of note and have returned to seek it back. Go this route, there are fun roleplay criteria addons applied with having lost this "thing" and is certainly a more unique approach to kick things. The Witchlight carnival is detailed fully in chapter 1 of the adventure, presenting games, encounters, timeline of events and mood meter that the players impact by their choices and play. Really great stuff here, the games are unique and fun and I can imagine the players venturing every which way to try their hands in all that is presented here. I'll make a quick note that the maps in the adventure are beautifully illustrated, but it is definitely a tone shift from the standard grid/hex maps of previous adventures. Be ready to do lots of theatre of the mind as you run this module.

As things unfold and are revealed at the carnival, the players are presented the option to venture into the Feywild to further their search for their missing items. Chapters 2,3 and 4 detail the area of the Feywild called Presmire which is been broken up into three sections, each ruled by a different NPC, the areas are Hither, Thither, and Yon. I'll really keep the spoilers here low, but each section is unique in atmosphere and environment, presenting the journey through the realm to the eventual encounter with that realms lord. For the players to set things right, they must venture to all three domains and encounter the said lord. The domains themselves are very sandboxy in presentation, but there is still the driving plot which the players can follow as needed, encountering numerous flavorful NPC's and monsters throughout. There is an enchanted and fairy tale vibe in many of these which I adore....a bullywug kingdom ripe with political intrigue, a "lost boy" settlement living atop their treehouse on a roaming treant, and a heroic dandelion chasing his beautiful bee lover...flavorful, intriguing and memorable. Side quests can derail the players as they seek allies and items to aid their quest, but all funnel back to the end goal of seeking the lord of the domain. 

The last chapter of the book covers what I could call the more dungeon crawling part of the adventure: The Palace of Heart's Desire. Here the players must venture to finally free the true queen of the realm and return the Feywild to its "normal" state. Break out your 80's action figures because the League of Malevolence is back, albeit randomly. Warduke and Kelek are up to no good as usual...the players must venture through the enchanted gardens and castle, tackling difficult puzzles and avoiding a legit scary for a 7th level character Jabberwock that haunts the castle. With luck and some careful planning the characters may even get a great Easter Egg reveal of who the queen of Presmire actually is.

Overall, wow, I'm a huge fan of this one. This may be the best 5E adventure to date and I'm shocked honestly, I has such low expectations here, but I seriously want to run this one. It has been noted by many others, that the book presents alternative means to success outside of "hitting it with the axe" on every encounter and this is true. You could in theory do a full passive play through here with good roleplay and wits....to me, this seems unlikely, but I bet a number of groups will go this route or try....I would note that you certainly want to do a session 0 with the players to go over the feel and style of adventure you will be undertaking here, this isn't your standard heroes of violence scenario. As noted before, DM's will need to be heavy note takers as actions early on affect many as the adventure progresses all the way up to the end. 

I will eat my words here, great work WoTC for a change, more of this please...at least before they push the new edition changes onto us haha!!!

Rappan Athuk: The end of things

The group I recently finished up our campaign of Rappan Athuk, albeit a condensed version. In total the campaign spanned nearly two years of monthly games, each session about 5 hours in length. That is a lot of content regardless of how you look at it.

So how did it finish up....well quite easy for players, surprisingly err....maybe not that surprising given the 5E system. When we left off from the last session, the group faced a choice: live with the fact that the land was tainted with evil or open the portal to the abyss and face Orcus at the peril of their souls. Of course the heroes faced danger like they should! 

The characters decided to take the three keys back down the well to the portal that was discovered and discussed with the ancient wraith wizard Zelkor. Opening the portal they were drawn as if by gravity into far layers of the abyss, the layer of Orcus! The level is somewhat of a let down for the culmination of such a massive megadungeon and book, essentially a huge maze with the chance for random encounters. My group and I are playing through Roll20 and I really did not want to subject them to picking their way through a maze, so I set up a skill challenge with high DC's where failure prompted an encounter or bad event. This actually worked out pretty well, meeting the success push them closer to the exit while the failures gradually weakened them.

Ok before I go on let touch on where my players were at from a level perspective. All five of the characters had just reached level 12, this level of the dungeon as written assumes the players to be 18+. A long time ago in this campaign I had tossed out any notion trying to balance, because the players had a number of magical items at this point, including some of the custom / quested magic items I had created for them to pursue in their travels through Rappan Athuk. Let me be blunt here: magic items break 5E in a sense that players, which are already extremely powerful in 5E, become virtually invincible.

Exiting the maze, the group encountered a pair of CR 16 maralith demons sent to test the group. These were dispatched of without much fuss, onto the big guy himself. The final layer of Orcus is filled with undead (no CR undead sadly as written by FGG....this is something they do a lot...A LOT). Orcus greets and offers the group to join him like any other evil deity would do, sadly no takers and the fight was on. This was a crazy, many combat, very worth of a final boss fight, but I really don't feel as if the players were really challenged that badly, they were just so powerful at this point and this further reassured me of the need to go ahead and wrap up the campaign.

There were a lot of moving pieces and much fun was had (see above picture from the game that night), I really can't thank the group of guys I have as players enough, they are just amazing and I'm blessed to run games and play games with them. In the end Orcus was defeated, the portal out of the Abyss started to lose it's power but I presented one last moral decision before the group, the aspect of Death appeared and advised that one of them must now sit upon the throne of bone or all the dead in the world would revolt. The halfling druid Remus, thinking quickly took the Rod of Orcus, ran back towards the maze and in one final act of sacrifice he ignited his flaming heart (custom magic item) into a massive explosion blowing the rod apart, the group escaped just in time as he did. The final scene of the campaign though, was the dead hand of Remus twitching...perhaps the new Orcus!

In the end, I'm happy to be done with Rappan Athuk, the more we played through it, the more I wish we had not started on it (see my review in another blog post), but the group had a blast, so I must of been doing something right in the end. So onto something new: I kicked around a few ideas as to what to run for the next campaign, but I opted to take a break from 5E for a bit....so.....we just ran our first session of Age of Worms, converted for Pathfinder (1E) last week. Look for a review of that epic adventure and session highlights to come on the blog soon!

 

The greatest D&D adventure path, was the first one.

 

Dungeons and Dragons modules have come a long way for good or for ill, preferences may vary, from the days of B1 and B2. Side note, B2: Keep on the Borderlands is a near perfect module and any perspective DM should cut their teeth on that one. Back where we were: today's adventures look much different than those of the early days of D&D. Gone for the most part are the sandboxes, with intentionally left blank sections for the DM to input and create for his own devices. Today's adventure module is almost always going to have a story with a defined resolution. Some of these are contained with a single adventure, while others can span multiple different adventures across an entire region of said fantasy world, the adventure path. 

Companies like Wizards of the Coast and Paizo have made their bank accounts swell on the backs of numerous adventure paths over the years. Paizo in particular has a host of these which have helped shaped and define the setting for the Pathfinder RPG. Almost all of them start with the heroes dealing with a localized threat to a town or village, eventually expanding out to unravel in some cases a global threat which must be put down or doom to all who should live to see such days. I am fan of numerous of these adventure paths, having run and played in several and if you're curious, I previously published a ranking (at that time) of the 5E adventures which should be considered adventure paths for this discussion.

But what if I told you the greatest of all of these, was the very first one written primarily by the founder of the D&D game itself, Gary Gygax. Some call it the Greyhawk Adventure Path, the modules were all produced independently of each other, but weaved together they form perhaps the greatest D&D story and adventure ever told. For those unfamiliar these adventures are ordered as such: Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-4) >> Slavers series (A1-4) >> Against the Giants (G1-3) >> Descent into the Depths / Drow (D1-3) >> Queen of the Demon Web  Pits (Q1).

This series of adventures sees the lowly bunch of cutthroats and ne'ed-do-wells arrive in the Village of Hommlet looking for easy coin, but what they find is a dark cult thought put down, now on the fringes of escaping again. Surviving the epic Temple of Elemental Evil is no small task, but should they overcome, next they must unravel and get to the core of a rotten slave business plaguing the coast of the lands of Oerth, it won't be easy and they well find themselves slaves themselves if not careful. With renown such as they have earned by this point, only a rare few would be called upon to stop the march of the giants in the lands of Keoland. Is there anything that can stop these massive creatures and who is bringing them together on the small folk? Finally, the real threat is revealed, an ancient race who plagues the dark tunnels of the underworld beneath the surface of the world. Our heroes must pursue the culprits to their ancient and wicked city and stop the menace at its root.

This is the elevator pitch, but the plots interlaced into these modules is barely touched upon by Gygax, but with a bit of work and imagination, a good DM can easily expand the story that is occurring here which is epic in proportions. If you have not played or run this series, I can't recommend them enough, this is the original adventure path and in my opinion, the best.

Wrapping up Rappan Athuk

 

I'm way past due to update how my Rappan Athuk campaign is going....umm....well really just way past due to even provide a new blog post. I'm finally past my kid's dance and gymnastic competition season, so hopefully more time to post this summer...no promises though to whichever poor soul is actually reading these blog posts.

My group and I are roughly over 20 sessions into our Rappan Athuk game that has been running for the past couple of year online. If you remember from a previous post, I had taken the reigns a bit of the campaign, which was quickly turning into a homebrew affair, and an imminent battle was about to take place at their newly reconstructed castle just west of the small town of Zelkor's Ferry. I had played around and brainstormed a few options on how to accomplish the whole mass combat session for this 5E game. I borrowed bits from the Stronghold's and Followers source book, letting my players role up troops and followers whom had come to their cause and in support of their claim to the region. These turned out to be not used as much in the battle, but more on that later. Each player also was able to randomly roll for an NPC support character that had come to the castle as well (blacksmith, sage, diplomatic aid, etc.). For the battle itself, I ran this as a chain of encounters, starting with the landing at the docks in Zelkor's Ferry, moving to the skirmishes in the countryside and concluding with the siege and final showdown of the arch-mage leader of the elves. The players had the option to spend their troop resources in these encounters for advantage and/or a means to reduce the creatures encountered.

My planning for the balancing of this assumed the group would be stretched pretty thin by the end of this string of encounters which included a showdown with a young silver dragon, multiple grey elves (reskinned drow for this campaign), and the culmination battle with the arch-mage and his escort of troops. Sadly, my group, now full of magic items which continue to break the balance big time in 5E cake walked it mostly, with some brief close calls in the final battle. The 200+ HP dragon went down in under two rounds, after being stunned locked by the monk in the opening round....sigh....I hope they had fun with it at least.

With the battle won, I set forth the shift to get the group back into the megadungeon and pursuing putting an end to Orcus and minions that populate the depths below. To accomplish this, I had the undead army muster up and help drive off the grey elves who were sieging the castle, presenting them as "allies" to the group, with the vampire leader of these forces stating that one of the players had sworn allegiance to Orcus....was this a lie to my players or did someone in the group really betray the others?.....regardless, it set off some amazing roleplay between the players as they tried to determine the validity of these claims amongst themselves. The other piece of direction, was providing information that beneath their very own castle was a portal to the dark layers of Rappan Athuk.

With a new level up, the group decided to find this portal and without much prodding...surprisingly...They stepped on through. I had this portal send them to level 4 of the megadungeon, the First Chapel of Orcus. Per the book and I quote: "This encounter should fully test the players. Don't hold back, you should except several deaths, but the players will feel great accomplishment for overcoming this major obstacle of the dungeon." Well....I'm sure that was the case for this encounter when originally published for 3rd edition, not so much now in the 5E days of player invincibility. Again, my players stomped everything I throw at them, saves continually made and monsters felled one after the other. This is one of my complaints with Rappan Athuk, at least as presented for the 5E version, the amount of low-powered / minion type creatures in these encounters serves no purpose and just feels like lazy design....I digress.

With no where left to go but down at this point, the group collected their loot and set off towards the 5th level and layer of the mad doctor Banth. By this point in the campaign I had learned my lesson and manually adjusted the monsters for the planned encounters on this level and it helped greatly. The highlight of this level of the megadungeon is certainly the laboratory of the mad doctor Banth, who is essentially a high level wizard / transmuter. I had worked part of a story arc for one of the players here, who was a captive of the mad doctor. The culmination encounter with Banth was really great, a good mix of adversaries are mixed and pop-up throughout the encounter, including the captive who gets tossed into the melee after being transformed back to a human from a mouse previously....it is pretty wild, you'll just have to read it yourself....some close calls, but the party pulls through in the end. 

This gets us caught up to present, the group has found a passage back to the surface and I provided a rumor / clue directing towards the lair of Zelkor, "the don't go down the well guy". When I started running Rappan Athuk, I never intended to hit every level and encounter, but before we wrap up this campaign, I'd like to at least hit some of the fun and more memorable all the while tying this massive sandbox into a fitting story end for my group. Having now run Rappan Athuk for a good part of two years and up to player level 12, I'm less a fan of it than I was going in. There are great encounters and adventures to be had, but man is it a lot of work to tie together and work your way through the fluff and bloat of this book. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading again, we'll be back soon for will likely be the conclusion of the Rappan Athuk campaign and onto more great adventures in the D&D universe.

Rise of the Runelords: A player's perspective

I've mentioned previously how I am a player in a Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords campaign with our group of friends. We recently finished up the final chapter in the six part adventure path which we played over 4 years. The games were scheduled monthly over this time period. We started the campaign with in person play, but due to some members of the group moving due to job related reason, we have been playing online for the last 2+ years of this campaign.

Some preface here on a couple of things. First, I had previously DM'd a good chunk of Rise of the Runelords for a separate group several years back. That group only lasted up through book 3, but I was pretty familiar with some of the encounters and story based on this, I had to reserve much of that meta knowledge during the course of this campaign and did a fairly good job of that. Second, Pathfinder is certainly not my favorite D&D system, but I do enjoy facets of it, especially as a player. My biggest complaints are the need for constant rule referencing and interpretation that is required, sometimes this can really pause the game action as it devolves into arguments, which sadly were a bit common place at times, the DM of this system has be very heavy handed and resolve things quickly or it can really get out of hand. The late game play somewhat boils down to going nova on an encounter, retreating back via magical means (teleport) and then returning once refreshed and doing the next encounter. I'll touch on this a bit more further down the read.

I'll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but there are probably many who have played this iconic adventure path at this point, so....read on at your own risk.

The adventure opens in the scenic coastal town of Sandpoint during a festival. The PC's have just arrived in town for various reasons and can participate in games and get to know the local NPC's presented here during the course of said festival. Of all of the chapters we played through, I felt like Sandpoint gave us the best opportunity for roleplay and verisimilitude in the setting, it was probably my favorite home base we played through. As the festival draws to a close, goblins emerge and assault the populace raising general havoc and the adventure officially gets kicked. The PC's will then investigate and take on tasks to put the pieces into place as to why and how this happened. The characters will eventually learn that a disgraced former member of the town is organizing the goblins and using them towards a more nefarious purpose. To stop this the players must venture to a large goblin fortress, and the dangerous dungeon below it, clear it out and save Sandpoint from this particular menace. 

Book one of this adventure is probably my favorite. I'm biased towards low level D&D play, but Sandpoint is really great hub setting and the plot to unravel what exactly is going on here is really well done, even if it is in the standard find the monster, kill the monster, find the note / clear sequence that Paizo is famous for. During this part of the adventure I played a bard, which I had a lot of fun with. Thinking up witty or funny songs to sing to the table with my abilities, likely to their annoyance. I wasn't as useful in combat which I'd hoped, and there is a lot of combat. So when presented with the option to reroll before continuing on book 2, I took it.

Book two of the six part adventure opens back up in Sandpoint after some much needed downtime for our heroes, but all is still not safe for the beleaguered populace in this sleepy town. A series of murders, with rumors of a serial killer start emerge. The victims foreheads inscribed with a now familiar symbol, linking them to the fabled runelords which were hinted at in book one. Of course only the players can solve this issue....with some investigative work and uncovering what turns out to be the work of ghouls, the players follow the trail of clues to an isolated manor, enjoy a fun romp through a haunted mansion diving into the depths to confront the serial killer. As the onion of mystery peels back further, it turns out he was merely a puppet for a larger cult operating in the neighboring much larger city of Magnimar. The players venture into the larger populace though not nearly as fleshed out and believable as Sandpoint to confront the cult and eventually meet its leader, who happens to be a naga wizard. This final encounter of book two was certainly one of the hardest of the adventure path, in fact, the one we encountered in our campaign managed to escape to plague us later on down the line. For this part and the rest of the campaign I played a down on his luck rogue / thief / trap-fixer guy named Kyrill Four-Finger. I really enjoyed the rogue and wish I would have started out on this character, but poor Kyrill had a rough go of it throughout the campaign as we get further into it.

As we move along into book three, the expanse of the "cult" the party has been chasing seems to be much larger than originally feared. The symbology of the Runelords, ancient powerful wizards of old, is tied into everything we are finding and the breadcrumbs now lead us north towards wilderness border town of Fort Rannick. Our DM for this campaign mostly hand-waved much of the overland travel, preferring to get us to the destination and more of the written story elements of the campaign. I don't mind this, but it does break the immersion a bit if you feel as if your character jumping place to place in what would otherwise be a very large area to explore. Again, we encounter another small village, this one again missing the hooks that Sandpoint had from book one. Questioning townsfolk turned up a few leads, one of which is a side jaunt to the lake that surrounds much of the town. Turns out to be a red herring, but it did result in my first character death in the jaws of giant gar. The group was able to scrap together enough of our loot to get me raised, thanks high magic setting! Right around this level of progression, many Pathfinder characters are coming into their own and starting to really push the power curve. I regrettably did not follow an optimization guide for this character and was mostly picking abilities and feats based upon flavor or roleplay elements, this would bite more and more as the campaign progressed. I digress, but eventually he take the bait to explore a garrison that was recently overrun in the area, the work of ogres and giantkin. Turns out this group of oversized humanoids were working towards breaking the dam north of town and flooding out many lives. Some really fun and flavorful encounters through this section of the adventure path and by the skin of our teeth we save the dam and many lives in the process.

 Moving right along here as we enter book four of the adventure path. Unfortunately the last three entries in this adventure path weren't up to the level of the first few, but we made it fun none the less. With the area around Fort Rannick safe and secure, we return back to Sandpoint as rumors of war and other giantkin start to threaten what I would consider our adopted home. This certainly gave us more push and inspiration to see to the defenses and aid of the good people here. I wish the adventure kept the focus more regionally focused around Sandpoint, as I felt more immersed in the dealings there. Arriving just in time to mobilize some defenses for the town as stone giants emerge on the horizon, along with a dragon. I believe the original adventure intends for this be a red dragon, but the group prior to me joining had play through the introductory boxed set which included an encounter with a black dragon. Our DM subbed this in as rightfully he should. The battle within the town feels like it is building towards this epic and powerful encounter against the giants who are being swayed by the influence of the Runelord, but....it never really manages this epic feel. A series of encounters that we mostly trounced, closing with the fight against the dragon in which our party cleric basically one shot with a spell and Sandpoint is saved once again....the characters should drink for free here for life at this point. We follow our story leads and decide to strike back at the giants and specifically their leader who is continuing to marshal his forces in the mountain range north of Sandpoint. Another long overland travel that we hopped through culminates in the characters finding a large fortress and a growing army. I did enjoy this part here that included more subterfuge as we obviously could not take on the entire army, but we had to slip into the fortress and confront the leader. Another dungeon dive and a multiple series of encounters against the Stone Giant leader reveals that a Runelord was indeed guiding the actions here and now we have a name, Karzoug!

Who likes dungeons? I like dungeons!!! Book five a series of dungeon crawls as we first look for where to find Runelord enemy, followed by a series of dungeons that help to unlock a means to better to defeat this all powerful wizard of yore. The Runelords magical aptitude is in line with the seven deadly sins: greed, lust, gluttony, etc. Some clues are found in and within Sandpoint, which apparently sits upon an ancient dungeon, who know? Followed by trek into the wilderlands in search for the Runevault of these Runelords. The most memorable encounter by far of this book is an engagement with a white dragon that is the guardian to the entrance to the vault. We managed to drive it off, but it was very touch and go, including having to fly through the air to catch our cleric before he fell to his death. The vault of the runelords are segmented mini dungeons that can be explored at the party's leisure and we ventured into most of these before finally revealing a means to empower our weapons against our foe Karzoug. I had my second death of the campaign in the midst of these dungeons, the unlucky result of a save or die phantasmal killer spell....good thing we have a cleric.

Finally we've made it....book six. We have a general heading, a lost city in the mountains, so off we go...The lead in encounters as we explore the mountain prove to be quite dangerous, a haunted mining cabin and wendigo...it was no joke. In fact...I died again from the death explosion of an ice worm in this area....make the reflex save....no, no I don't think I will...sigh. This book can be a real slog, specifically once at the lost city of Xin-Shalast. The encounters are very fun and challenging, but they sort of feel like a treadmill to get to the BBEG at times. Another couple of deaths, one to another save or die spell from a trap in Karzoug's tower....I'm telling you the dice were a vice this go around for me, but I do appreciate the save or die aspect carrying over from my beloved B/X, you listening 5E? A lot of the encounters here were met by a fully rested and charged party, our sorcerer with access to teleport, was able to taxi us back and forth at this point to basically go nova in fights and then recover, go back, rinse and repeat. Is this gaming the system?...hmmm.....maybe, but the more I read into it, this seems to be an accepted and expected part of late game 3rd edition gameplay with its set piece encounter focus. I do love some of the challenges of these combat encounters, some of which would eat up our entire 4-5 hour sessions of play....that's one encounter.....4 hours....Pathfinder guys haha. The final encounter is quite epic and I won't spoil it, but Karzoug is certainly very powerful and without some fluke missed saves on his part and lucky saves on ours we may not have won out....two other party members did fall in this final encounter and by the skin of our teeth we've saved the world. Upon exit I thematically let my poor old rogue gracefully slump against a wall, trailing last words, as a heart attack finally takes him onto the great dungeon in the sky.

So final thoughts on Rise of the Runelords...it certainly is a very epic and very good adventure path. Some may complain it is sort of vanilla D&D, but you get a wide variety of adventure locals and adversaries....giants, dragons, undead and the evil wizard at the end. It harkens back to those childhood games between my friends around my mom's dinner table...and at the end of the day you feel heroic. The Pathfinder adventure paths can be treadmilly at times, bread crumbs of clues and info to get you to point A to B, but in doing so they tell a really great story if you can keep up with all of the lore. In my games I try to have the players create the story, but I'm not opposed to taking part in the story that is presented as a player. If you have not played or run this game, I do highly recommend it, if nothing else use the Sandpoint setting and town in your games for an excellent starting local. Thanks again to my DM for seeing us through this four year campaign, it was an amazing time.

D&D: Let's plan our next campaign

 

If there is one positive from the past year, and there may only be one, it is that I've had plenty of time to read, prep, and plan D&D content. As I type this January, year of lord 2021, outside of the two campaigns I'm running I have 4 other full campaigns worth of content prepped into Roll20. I have this bad habit where I just want to run my players through everything, yet can never settle on what is that "perfect" module. I say, why not all, but that is a discussion for another day.

I finally settled on the one I want to run next, but it required a tab bit of work to get it to the point I was happy with. So, lets go through that process. There will be a bit of spoilers below for the module Red Hand of Doom. If you're a player, skip onto the next article please.

Red Hand of Doom is an adventure module released for the 3.5 edition of the game back in 2006. James Jacobs and Richard Baker (a Hokie!) are the authors. The elevator pitch is that there is a massive allied force of humanoid monsters who have formed under one banner beset on conquering...err....destroying the neighboring human towns and cities, because they can I suppose. It is a really good module, drawing obvious inspiration from the Lord of the Rings books where the forces of Mordor assemble and assault the fabled city of Gondor. The players are tossed into the mix at the start of these events and through their actions or inaction are able to narrowly secure victory or be caught up in the destruction as the Red Hand armies crush all in their sight.

Sounds fun right?....An unstoppable army that must be stopped all culminating into an epic siege as the heroes marshal the last line of defense before their doom conquers them. Their are a couple of issues though, the biggest being that the module kicks off at level 5 per 3.5 rules. This limits the players ties to the region unless they come up with some fabulous background tie ins...but we all know your players and especially mine aren't going to do that. I will be lucky to get a visual description of their character haha.

Checking around forum and reddit posts, it seems as if some others start with the Lost Mines of Phandelver, that's a good choice, but all of my players have played through that one at this point. Another option is Sunless Citadel into Forge of Fury...again another fine option, but I've personally run this group through Sunless Citadel before so no dice there as well. Another option was to just start play at 5th level as the module directs, because apparently some 5E players don't like early level play because it is dangerous....what is wrong with these people seriously? Ok, definitely not an option....time to home brew us something that will work then. Side note, this is something I really love about older modules, they force to think, update and adapt to the game you want to run.

So here is what I worked up, feel free to share use or ridicule as you deem worthy. The goal here is to establish the players in the setting of the Elsir Vale and specifically in the small town of Drellin's Ferry. The area should feel fairly safe / free of monsters, as these were only problems of the area's past, which will make the kickoff to the module official all the more intense and shocking. The campaign will start at level 1, no safe space in my campaigns. *insert maniacal laughter*

• Kickoff session 1 with an immediate encounter: The players are running guard duty and/or traveling with the Silverstandard Trading Company. "A crossbow bolt against the side of the caravan startles you out of your daydream, roll for initiative". I love starting campaigns like this, no introductions or tavern talk, just jump into it and let the players describe their characters in the mix of the combat scene. This encounter set the notion that some form of human bandits are working the area.
• Players arrive in Drellin's Ferry: the town is quaint, quiet and safe. Guards are lacks on their patrol. Kids playing, taverns are comfortable and inviting. There is a notice board in town with reward for subduing the local bandit gang, town wizard needs help with a supply run, and the general goods store owner as a vague request for help (spoiler: she is actually a serial killing worshipper of Orcus).
• As part of my session 0 I plan to have some tie-ins for my players within Drellin's Ferry that will assist here. One of the players awaiting a deed claim to the local abandoned and possibly haunted Vraath Keep. If I have a player playing an arcane (wizard or sorcerer) class, there is a wizard locally accepting apprentices they have come seeking. Or perhaps the character is just from Drellin's Ferry.
• The players now have several options to explore and assist the good people of Drellin's Ferry. This in turn helps introduce some of the key NPC's that will play part in much bigger developments. 
• The first night in which ever tavern the players choose to stay in. A grieving mother is there, perhaps overly dramatic, she is mourning her child who has been taken from her. If the PC's take the bait this will lead them to another encounter option.
• So to summarize here are the available options once the PC's are in town:
• Find the taken child / witch of the woods encounter
• Deliver supplies to a wizard tower outside of town. (Spoilers: the tower is a mini-dungeon)
• Go after the local bandit gang. Another mini-dungeon and perhaps a recurring villain introduced.
• Take the job from the general good merchant in town. This side quest will take the players outside of town to explore and loot a forgotten tomb...traps and undead.
• With the short cycled XP of 5th edition, the players should be pushing close to if not at 5th level by the time they take on these jobs presented here. This should put us in-line to start the module proper. During the course of these side-quest bits, the hope is to allude to a bigger danger growing on the outskirts of town. Reports of humanoid activity, attacks on travelers; the players may guess it is the same bandits they have already dealt with, but the revelation will be that much sweeter. 

So that is my plan. As we get into the campaign, I will likely modify and add in a bit more once I see what catches my players interest. The most important aspect for me is to make them take some ownership in the town prior to the events of Red Hand of Doom. Fleshing out the NPC's in town that the players will continue to work for and deal with as the plot develops will be a great spark for those key roleplay elements that will emerge later as well. Let me know what you think, how would you start a module if given the option to insert anything at the intro levels?

D&D: Let's design a castle siege!

 

So my group of players who are working their way through Rappan Athuk are about 2-3 sessions from a mass combat battle at their precious castle they've been working on throughout the campaign. Did I mention how much of this campaign has turned into a homebrew hodge-podge? Anyways, I need to work up a system for the likely castle siege that is coming. I do have access to the Strongholds & Followers book released by the Matt Coleville group, so I will be borrowing a lot from that as well as we dive in.

So the first order of business is to give my players, who are all 9th level at this point, some followers and troops that have come in support of their cause and claim to the area here west of the Forest of Hope. The Strongholds & Followers book provides a handy table specific to each class. I may skim or filter this a bit to allow for each of my players to get actual troops where some of the results are merchant and adviser type persons. Based on the amount of money and they have spent upgrading this castle through the campaign I've been tracking the progress, so I'm going to allow each of them 3 rolls on the table. That should give them a fairly healthy roster on top of the 10 guards and captain from Zelkor's Ferry, plus any of the town's citizens get pressed into service of defense of the castle as well. 

Now how should we run the lead up to the actual battle itself? I'm thinking it will take the elvish warships roughly a week to sail down the river channel towards the area surrounding the keep. Once the players resolve some in town encounters and roleplay recruiting local allies to their cause, they should have some time to prep the castle and / or harass those who seek to unseat their rule. To that end, I am going to setup a victory point tally based on the actions, wins and losses incurred during the entirety of the conflict here. 

This is a rough draft, but let us see what that looks like:

• Base Castle >> 5 points
• Castle upgrade 1 >> 5 points
• Castle upgrade 2 >> 5 points
• Castle upgrade 3 >> 10 points
• Scouting the enemy forces >> 5 points
• Disrupt the enemy supplies and camps >> 5 points for each successful attempt
• Additional defenses and planning added to the castle >> 3 points
• Player forces winning a stage of the battle >> 10 points each (planning 3 of these in total)
• Player characters winning a set piece encounter >> 15 points each (planning 3 of these in total)

The player forces are mostly covered in the Stronghold and Followers book, providing base line stats which I will have to draw for the group and the enemy forces. I'm thinking this will be an encounter running parallel to the characters encounters. 

So what gives the characters victory? I'm going to say they need to get to 100 points during the week leading up to and battle itself. They will start with 25 points based on what they spent and upgraded to the castle so far. Not getting to 100 points will not spell defeat, but that would mean a margin of success with conditions. That could include damage to the castle, loss of life to the soldiers, followers and citizens being harbored within the castle. I expect my players to win out, but I want it to feel close, bloody and dangerous. That being said I need to work on what I plan for the set piece encounters for the group....with back to back encounters this could be dicey for them, but that is the fun of it. I'll make another post once we've cleared this part of the campaign and report back on what worked and didn't. For now the players seem excited and I've let them start to meta plan what they hope to do leading up to it.

Coronavirus and TTRPG

 

"It's been a helluva year"....I know a lot of us can say that as we now venture into 2021 fresh, full of hope that will undoubtedly be crushed soon enough. My full-time job has now fully transitioned to working from home as I spend part of time helping my 1st grade daughter with her virtual school lessons. It has been a big adjustment and one that I still struggle with daily at times, and these times have also spilled over into my hobbies as well, namely table-top RPG's or as you folks may know of it as Dungeons and Dragons.

Prior to the events of 2020 my play group had already made the transition over to virtual tabletop play, mostly through the application of Roll20, which has I've become more familiar with the system have grown to enjoy for it's ease of use and accessibility for my players to enjoy as well. There are a couple of drawbacks, but I'll touch on those in a bit. This move to virtual tabletop was mostly spurred by a couple of the members moving further away, but now we can much more easily schedule our game sessions and play in our pajamas if we want to. I do miss the beer and pizza though.

As the lockdowns were set in place, along with travel and just leaving the house in general discouraged. I found my free time open up bit by bit, what was a rotating schedule of my Rappan Athuk game one week followed by Rise of the Runelords (where I'm a player) the next week. Over the last half of the year, I began running a second group through Tomb of Annihilation (5E) along with adding another game where I'm a player in a homebrew 5E campaign. Despite my wife's complaints my TTRPG gaming doubled over the past year. 

Another change was in how I engaged with the RPG content. I have always been a "read the book in my hands" person, but I now strive to pick PDF's of anything I'm using or running in my games as well. For one it makes conversion and setup in Roll20 that much easier and with a multiple monitor setup I can easily reference material as I'm running it using the virtual tabletop. I still love the physical books and my collection is extensive, but pretty soon I'm going to need a bigger hard drive for all of the virtual content now.

As much I love Roll20 and some of the cool features: dynamic lighting, auto math / macro's and the customization with the art and tokens; it is a lot more work for a DM. With my in-person games, most of the times I would think over the session while walking the dog that afternoon and just show it up and run it. Now my setup is fairly intense if the module isn't preset as some of the WoTC modules are in Roll20. For Rappan Athuk, I have to source or purchase copies of the virtual maps, load them, draw the dynamic lighting if needed, custom monsters setup if not accounted for in the SRD, custom part added to tokens and then I start to add in my creative juices. It is quite a bit more work, but when it works, it is certainly great and easy to use in session.

All of that said, the hobby, at least for me is still going great. My friends and I are still having some great game sessions making memories and stories to live on forever. I hope the same is true for many others out there as well.

Rappan Athuk: Campaign Updates, part 2 (5th edition)

 

So it has been a wild few months, hope everyone survived the holidays as we now enter the dystopian days of 2021. My group has been continuing their journey in our Rappan Athuk campaign and we're roughly 15 sessions in as I type this next blog post up. When we left off the group was taking some R&R in the small town of Zelkor's Ferry which has served as their home base throughout the campaign. They have recently funded to have a nearby castle rebuilt and made livable, but the working staff and supplies have not yet arrived to make that possible. 

I had updated the bounty board in town to provide some more choices for the group, one of those for the group to delve further into Rappan Athuk and drive out any Orcus cultist...can't say I didn't try to get them in there. They took the hook to search out a troll lair on the neighboring marshes north of town. Heading into this encounter, I was a bit worried. There was nearly 20 trolls living in the lair and they were leaded by an arcane casting shaman that was CR7 by the 5E standards. I must compliment the group here as they really were organized and strategic, bottlenecking the trolls even as they were slowing encircled. Finally dealing with the shaman as the HP totals for all member were getting dangerously low. I did hold back a bit here, not sending all of the trolls at once and the encounter balance turned out to be just right. Once the shaman had been dealt with, they were able to to intimidate the rest of the remaining trolls into scattering back into the marshes. Nice work team.....also, the conversion for 5E on Rappan Athuk is basically still working with 3rd edition treasure totals and well they definitely got hooked up here. A subject for another day, but I really hate how 5E does treasure and magic items anyways.

Scratch one off the list, next up is a gang of kobolds led by an ogre. The group is all roughly level 7 at this point and this whole encounter was a joke. A few fireballs and some diplomacy and the group was sit to collect some more castle funds. Following this, I had set a few set piece encounters as the agents of Orcus are slowly pushing to the surface as the group continues to ignore the threat there. One of these encounters was quite large and again I underestimated the overall striking power of my players. 5th edition players are super heroes, they are so pushed in this edition I'm really not sure why I continue to play it, but again a subject for another day. 

Some of the kobolds had given a lead on a group of goblins occupying a nearby fortress that just so happens to be one of the many surface entrances into Rappan Athuk. Once the group had driven off the Orcus minions for now, they decided to take on the goblins. A series of encounters as they marched their way through the fortress did not prove to be too taxing. They managed to take one of the goblins prisoner before a few of the others could flee to their city deep within Rappan Athuk setting off a dead fall to block the passage behind them, this though opened a side passage to lvl 3 and the purple worm nesting grounds. The group briefly explored here before getting cold fight and returning back to the fortress. I was sad, as there are some really memorable encounters to be had on this level....but alas....I'll just have to continue to homebrew way to kill my players on the surface.

Between sessions, I gave each of my players some private motivation to further plumb the depths of Rappan Athuk. The groups druid took the bait and ran with it. Seeking a means to expand his growing power (Circle of Fire druid), which is pretty busted already, he started receiving whispers from an unknown beings prisoned on a connecting level to the goblin fortress. This level just happens to be full of lava to go with the fire theme and there is a real nasty monster here that I've tacked on a magic item to drop from should they encounter and defeat it. Much of the lava level is fairly mundane, a trapped bridge and friendly fire giant that just wants to fish for the lava carp that swim nearby, and of course the alien princesses being prisoned. The group finished the last session having just discovered the river of lava flowing through this deep layer and the druid had wandered off, the magmamoid monster surging to his location....will they survive? Probably, because 5E player characters aren't supposed to die apparently...but I'll keep trying, until next we meet!