tag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859What Was I Saying...?Personal Ramblings by The Gneechthe_gneech2018-03-26T15:01:28Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2677767I Need to Stat Up Some of These Monsters2018-03-26T15:01:28Z2018-03-26T15:01:28Znerdypublic0<img src="http://78.media.tumblr.com/9ed44a59c6f990be212a6491b4bf315a/tumblr_inline_p61sw8dQ7Z1rl9zu7_500.png" alt="Spectral Slug" /><br /><br />A <a href="http://aiweirdness.com/post/172170729017/dungeons-and-dragons-creatures-generated-by">post from AI Weirdness</a> has been going around in which the author had a neural network create several monsters based on the bazillion or so created for <em>2E</em> over the decades. Some of them are just funny ("Great Space Pat" is my particular fave), but a lot of them are pretty evocative or at least funky names that I want to remember for the future. So, note to myself...<br /><br />Brain of Fire<br />Spider Horse<br />Undead Lake Man<br />Walfablang<br />Giant Fraithwarp<br />Jabberwont<br />Dome Animal<br />Giant Dwarf<br />Burglestar<br />Pigaloth<br />Desert Beeple<br />Wendless Woll<br />Memeball<br />Marraganralleraith<br />Death Seep Dragon<br />Fumble Unicorn<br />Stone Feast<br />Durp Snake<br /><br />-The Gneech, shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon see if I don't<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2677767" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2677620This One Goes to Twenty (#DnD)2018-03-25T23:04:16Z2018-03-25T23:04:16Zgeekypublic0<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/57/7f/98577f3b6b753683058de1be1c444002.jpg" alt="Fire giants. They're just bad." /><br /><br />It's been a year and a half <a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2593470.html">since the campaign started at the Keep on the Borderlands</a>; the characters have reached 7th level and finally, after much meandering, gotten to the Eye of the All-Father in <em>Storm King's Thunder</em>. If we assume that <em>KotB</em> was the prologue, and snuffing out (so to speak) the fire giants' hopes of reviving the Vonindod was Act One, we are now at the beginning of Act Two.<br /><br /><em>Storm King's Thunder</em> is written in the weird meandery style for the first part, but then once you hit the Eye of the All-Father, it pretty much becomes a straightforward run to the end. There are some branching points, but they all lead to the same destination, somewhere around 10th or 11th level. So it's still a bit away, but we are now at the point where I can see the end of <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> looming on the horizon, and have been thinking about what the campaign would do next.<br /><br />I had the idea of ending the campaign when we reached the end of <em>SKT</em> to start something new; I was particularly looking at doing a <em>Spelljammer</em>(-ish) campaign that brought in a lot of the flavor of the MCU cosmic stuff, inspired by <em>Thor: Ragnarok</em>. And I still like that idea, but as I was thinking about it, I had a very sudden and definite message from the subconscious:<br /><br /><div align="center"><em>No. I want this campaign to go to 20th level.</em></div><br /><br />...Well okay then. O.o<br /><br />There's lots of reasons for this, not the least of which being we've never <em>reached</em> that kind of a level in any of our campaigns, and so it would be something completely new for us. Also, I just like this group of characters, and I'm not ready for their story to be over– and I suspect the players probably feel the same way. Finally, by all accounts (and our own experience so far), <em>5E</em> is the system that, if you're going to go to 20, you want to do it in.<br /><br />(In <em>Pathfinder</em> we'd already be hearing creaks around the edges of the system by now. In <em>5E</em>, at 7th level, the combats are taking a little longer than they did back in the <em>KotB</em> days just by virtue of having more complex characters and tougher opponents, but the action is still fast and furious. Out last session had a chase/combat against a behir in a cave maze (CR 11!) that was done 75% as "theater of the mind" and basically went like this:<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iiRiLSA5O-8?start=60" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><br /><br />For all the chasing around and getting in potshots at the monster (or FROM the monster) it all ran very smooth and quickly and led to a fingernail-biting climax where the barbarian NPC was one round away from being digested in the creature's belly and saved by the players pulling out all the stops to save her. I can't think of another system we've used that would have handled the situation half so well.<br /><br />But having decided that I want the campaign to reach level 20, that leads to the question of what to do for the second half. There are some tweaks written into <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> itself that provide ways it can be expanded on, and I'll happily add those in, but even that isn't likely to take the party past 12th or 13th.<br /><br />So what I've decided to do was to pull out some of my still-unplayed higher level 3.x edition adventures, particularly from Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics line, and tie them together into an "adventure path." Some of them involve giants and make for obvious "sequel" material, particularly if [SPOILER REDACTED] manage to escape rather than suffer Death By PC when their nefarious scheme to [SPOILER ALSO REDACTED] comes to light. I also found another one that could provide a kind of cool "Return to the Keep on the Borderlands" side-trek as a change of pace from fighting giants all the dang time and that could possibly act as setup for <em>Spelljammer</em> later.<br /><br />The ones I've found so far could take the game as far as 16th or 17th. Beyond that... I have no idea. That's probably at least another year and a half away itself anyway, so I have time to work on it, and by then hopefully WotC will have gotten around to some of that "supporting higher-level play" they've been talking about. But it seems to me that once you get into that realm, where even the wizard has 80+ hit points, the barbarian becomes as strong as a giant and can rage indefinitely, and the cleric can literally resurrect people at will, the stories are going to have to look very different.<br /><br />You don't "dungeon crawl" at that kind of level. I don't know what you <em>do</em> do... but you don't dungeon crawl. Really that, more than anything, is going to be the challenge at that point.<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2677620" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2674219Drang and Sturm2018-01-21T17:39:43Z2018-01-21T17:40:40Zgeekypublic0<img src="http://d.facdn.net/art/thegneech/1516555987/1516555987.thegneech_drang_and_sturm_web.jpg" alt="Brother Drang summons lightning against the cave leaper. It's SUPER EFFECTIVE." /><br /><br />An epic moment from last night's D&D session. Wandering around the underdark because reasons, the party was attacked on a long and narrow span by "cave leapers" (a kind of bat-winged flying dire toad thing) and purple worm larvae, in an encounter literally named "The Gorge of Horrible Things."<br /><br />Hantamouse's storm cleric ("Brother Drang") was swallowed whole by a leaper, which then tried to fly off. The barbarian lassoed it, and SirFox's rogue (an anthropomorphic flying squirrel) jumped on it, stabbing the thing with his rapier to make a handle. At this point Hanta, who had already cast summon lightning at the beginning of the fight, decided he had no fucks to give and blasted the thing from the inside out, failing the saving roll against his own spell and taking the full brunt of it as well.<br /><br />Me: "The good news is, you killed the cave leaper! The bad news is, you're now 20 feet in the air trapped inside a dead leaper. You take five more points of damage from the fall."<br /><br />Hanta: "No I don't! I'm at zero already."<br /><br />They won, in the end. ;)<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2674219" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2666107Because the WP Crossposter is Broken For the Moment...2017-10-05T19:17:16Z2017-10-05T19:17:16ZEmerald Rose– Never Split the Partygeekypublic2<a href="http://gneech.com/rpg/dndrpg/dd-overland-travel-encounter-table-template/">D&D Overland Travel Encounter Table Template</a><br /><br />Enjoy. :)<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2666107" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2665634"Yay, I'm a Sheep Again! ...Wait."2017-09-24T14:47:54Z2017-09-24T14:48:18Zchipperpublic2<img src="http://gneech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/kihai_the_grandiose.jpg" alt="Kihai the Grandiose"><br /><br />I was supposed to run <em>D&D</em> last night but for various reasons (mostly related to insomnia) I hadn't had time to finish prepping. My game is at a particularly lore-intensive moment right now, and while monster encounters and action scenes are fairly easy to run off the cuff, getting the world right requires a little thinking ahead.<br /><br />Luckily <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://inkblitz.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://inkblitz.dreamwidth.org/'><b>inkblitz</b></a></span> stepped in with a fun little side-trip adventure for his game. Following <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2665352.html">last week's goblin-and-dragon-hunting jaunt</a>, the party was in Greenfork, flush with cash. Kihai, raised in the desert by his semi-nomadic Tabaxi kinfolk and now a wandering monk, had never had as much as <strong>a hundred and thirty REAL gold pieces</strong> and immediately bought himself a fancy hat, a statue of the Cat Lord (actually just a cat-motif doorstop), and a bunch of other useless junk... most of which his Aunt Graycape immediately forced him to return, although she did insist he keep a platinum earring. (Little did he know that she was using the earring as part of a <em>warding bond</em> spell.)<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2665634.html#cutid1">The otherwise-placid morning was interrupted by...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />It was a fun session! Kihai is such a lovable little doofus that he's just as much fun when he fails at things as when he succeeds, although I still get frustrated at the way the dice tend to hobble things I should be good at. (Kihai has a high Dex and Wis, but rarely rolls higher than 6 or 8 on checks involving those. On the other hand, when asked for Investigation checks, at which he has -1, he rolls 18s. Go fig.) Blitzy has a good eye for a fun scenario, and the group did a little better at working together instead of at cross-purposes this time. The detail of the apprentice recognizing the bear's cloak, which I was just going on about for RP silliness, was a nice touch.<br /><br />So, good game. :) And, as Blitzy has officially set his campaign in Orbis Leonis, it gave me some fodder for next week's session as well. I'll be back in the DM saddle then, by hook or by crook.<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br />[1] Immediately mangled to "Sheepbright," because Kihai seems to have difficulty getting people's names right.<br /><br />[2] "It goes with the hat!"<br /><br />[3] Kihai, being an elemental monk, can create small flame/air/water/earthy effects, but he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to arcana, so he just made up a bunch of nonsensical junk. He's also a very bad bluffer. "I am the Great and Powerful Kihai! Kamazotz! Yakka-maraca!" But they never really expected the deception to last. They made it past the guards and got the door open, and that was a success.<br /><br />[4] Which she actually managed to roll <em>almost</em> the minimum damage on (4d6 for 1, 1, 1, 2), but it was still enough!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2665634" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2662914Take the 'A' Train Down to Mordor2017-08-01T18:15:23Z2017-08-01T18:15:23Znerdypublic0<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MgRClRWz0u8/USyteBYAxkI/AAAAAAAAAHo/_xKEa-c2y98/s1600/wandering+monsters.PNG" alt="Friggin' orcs, man."><br /><em>Friggin' orcs, man.</em><br /><br /><em>Storm King's Thunder</em> involves a lot of overland travel. I mean, a <em>lot</em> of overland travel. One reason I <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2661231.html">created a ginormous continental map</a> for the campaign was to keep track of all the tromping all over everywhere that the adventure calls for (and to have an everywhere to tromp over).<br /><br />The question then becomes, how best to handle these long hikes in-game. There are a few possibilities:<br /><br /><h3>Travel By Montage</h3><br />This is the mode I practiced for many years, and it's not a bad one <em>per se</em>. Essentially I just decide what happens between point A and point B and tell the players. If it's interesting enough, the journey pauses and a session or two is spent dealing with the narrative pitstop, then off they go again.<br /><br />There are some downsides to this. First of all, because they're glossed over, long journeys feel cheap. Telling the players "You leave Argent, ride a boat for six weeks and now you're in Zan-Xadar, what do you want to do?" makes it seem like Argent and Zan-Xadar might as well be right next to each other. The world "feels" smaller because there is no real marker of time or distance.<br /><br />(See also the <em>Fellowship of the Ring</em> movie, when Gandalf leaves Bag End, travels by montage to Gondor, then travels by montage back to Bag End, all in the course of three minutes. Did that trip take a day? A year? No context.)<br /><br />Second, it takes away from the organic nature of the world and puts me back in the place of being the one who decides what the characters do on their trip, both of which are against the spirit of <a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2596279.html">My Gamemastering Credo</a>.<br /><br /><h3>Overland Travel: The Mini-Game</h3><br /><em>The One Ring</em> RPG (or its 5E variant, <a href="http://cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/adventures-in-middle-earth/"><em>Adventures in Middle-earth</em></a>) has a whole subset of rules for overland travel, because let's face it, "walking" is the primary activity of any character in a book by Tolkien.<br /><br />Brief summary: using the player map, the group picks a destination and a planned route and each character is assigned a task (Guide, Scout, Hunter, or Lookout). The GM then determines the overall "peril rating" of the journey based on their own map, which will then be used as a modifier for the rest of the trip. The Guide makes an "embarkation roll" which determines the general mood of the trip, which has results ranging from "The Wearisome Toil of Many Leagues" to "Paths Both Swift and True." The higher the peril rating of the journey, the more likely it is to be a rough slog.<br /><br />Once all this is worked out, you turn to actual encounters along the way. There is a generic table of journey events, but the GM is encouraged to customize it for specific regions or a particular campaign. This part is a fairly standard random encounter table, but built around themes instead of specific events: "Agents of the Enemy" or "The Wonders of Middle-earth" or "A Fine Spot to Camp", etc. Combat and skill checks within the encounters are often modified by the Embarkation Result or the Peril Rating, and so forth.<br /><br />Finally, assuming the party survives the encounters, they get to their destination and roll on the "Arrival Table" to see what kind of shape they're in at the end, ranging from "Weary to the Bones" to "Inspired and Filled with Hope."<br /><br />Essentially, the whole journey becomes "a dungeon," with characters only able to take short rests after each encounter, with something like "A Fine Spot to Camp" providing a rare long rest opportunity. It's a neat system, somewhere between the <a href="http://www.runagame.net/2014/03/the-hex-crawl.html">Hex Crawls of old-school yore</a> and the Travel By Montage method. But it is... crunchy. A long journey with a lot of encounters will certainly take several sessions, and you'll have to keep track of the Peril Rating, Embarkation Result, and rest resources along the way. It's probably not that much more overhead than a dungeon map is, but for some reason, it <em>feels</em> like a lot of work. It might just be a matter of what you're used to.<br /><br /><h3>What I Have Done So Far</h3><br />When the campaign transitioned from <em>Keep On the Borderlands</em> to <em>Storm King's Thunder</em>, that was definite Travel By Montage moment, because the whole nature of the game shifted (and I didn't have a map ready for travel then anyway). But now that the game is up and running, I have largely been treating Orbis Leonis as a giant hexcrawl.<br /><br />In order to not have to rigorously define every bloody hex on the map, I make liberal use of random encounter tables, with a core assumption of one random encounter check every four hours during actual game play, and one check per day between sessions, unless the players are somewhere that is already a keyed encounter.<br /><br />This doesn't mean there's going to be a fight every four hours! "Encounters" in this context aren't necessarily wandering monsters: my tables are also full of things like random terrain bits ("a wooded bog," "an ancient burial mound," "an orphaned castle wall of old"), changes in the weather, or other travelers on the road (which get re-rolled when the characters are in the wild, obviously). There are also "no encounter" slots, which is typically what goes into a slot after that encounter has happened once and becomes the norm when I keep rolling an 8 over and over again. XD<br /><br />Although I was once very sneery about them, I've come to love random encounter tables because they make the world feel alive– there's <em>stuff</em> going on in it and if the players ask for Survival checks to see what sort of things they might run into, I can look at the random encounter table and tell them. I sometimes go as far as to put a whole five-room dungeon on the table, but that's usually more work than it's worth because that will naturally be the roll that never comes up.<br /><br />They're also great for making places feel different from each other. Argent is mostly wooded hills and has things like cleric-eating owlbears running around in it. Hestelland is a grassy plain and so it has herds of wild horses and packs of worgs. The Silver Spires Mountains are lousy with harpies, gargoyles, giant spiders, and the kobold minions of Cagarax the Red. Add to this the overlay of giants, with their frequency based on where the various giant holdings are, and you get a nicely-varied, very organic-feeling world.<br /><br />I'm thinking of adding some of the elements of <em>The One Ring</em>'s Journeys system to my game, without going quite so crunchy– maybe adding "Journey Mood" items to the encounter table for instance, something like "This leg of the journey has been plagued with bad luck. You got mired in a bog, losing an hour, and [random character] slipped on a rock and turned their ankle. Make a Dexterity saving throw to avoid having your movement halved for the next 24 hours."<br /><br /><h3>Giant Eagles, Pls</h3><br />Eventually, <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> has some story items built in to enable characters to travel faster. I'm not going to enumerate them here (because spoilers), but the latter parts of the campaign do require a lot of going from one end of the map to the other, possibly multiple times, and having to play all of those trips out, whether Hex Crawl or Journey Mini-Game style, would get real old after a while. Sorta like the <em>teleporting chain</em> from the original <em>Against the Giants</em> series back in the day, these are plot devices mostly and relatively limited in applicability, so they don't break the rest of the campaign by making long journeys trivial forever.<br /><br />The main challenge with these is deciding when to introduce them, and figuring out just how limited they actually are– because once they're in place, we're back to Traveling By Montage as a plot element. And after putting so much work into building a large, well-populated world, I don't want to apply the fast-forward button just yet.<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2662914" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2662188Tiers of Play, or They're Taking the Hobbits to Mt. Olympus2017-07-30T13:49:28Z2017-07-30T13:54:12Zgeekypublic5<img src="http://clickdamage.com/motivator/motivator_bank/573.jpg" alt="Epic Levels: You're There When the Very Mountains Fight Back"><br /><br />As a followup to <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2662073.html">my post about power inflation</a>, something I'm pondering with <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> is the expected "tiers of play" built into <em>D&D</em>.<br /><br /><em>D&D</em> has always had this, but in most editions it was kinda hidden. Low-level play is generally the stuff of Heroic Fantasy, taking on local bandits or smallish monsters, dungeon crawling and tomb raiding, generally very personal stakes. Mid-level play is more like High Fantasy, taking on legions of orcs, the occasional giant or dragon, saving the kingdom, that sort of thing. Then high-level play gets into the Power Cosmic, dealing with entire hordes, powerful (and generally super-weird) monsters like beholders, mind flayers, Galactus, and who-knows-what-else, and slaying gods.<br /><br />(<em>4E</em> had this specifically called out, with everything but graduation ceremonies between tiers. It was designed to make the implicit, explicit, and therefore clearer, but in practice it just felt really clunky and artificial. Fortunately <em>5E</em> went back to being subtle about it.)<br /><br />There was a certain sense to that when campaigns lasted for years or decades. But these days? I dunno. <em>5E</em> fast-forwards you through levels 1-3 (or just skips over them all together), and a typical "Adventure Path" style campaign in the modern mold is generally designed to cover 10+ levels over the course of about a year of play.<br /><br />There are good meta reasons for this, of course. Very few RPG campaigns last longer than a year, and even staying around that long can be considered an achievement, so 1/2 to 2/3 of the game's actual content rarely sees actual use. What's the point of even <em>having</em> pit fiends and demiliches, if no player ever actually sees one?<br /><br />But at the same time, to have a character go from scraping copper pieces together at 1st level, to drinking tea with ancient dragons just a year later, makes every campaign feel like That Escalated Quickly. It also wreaks havoc on gameworlds. Faerûn keeps getting blown up over and over again, as Tiamat becomes an epic threat, then the cults of elemental evil, then Demogorgon, then the giants... At least Middle-earth <em>stayed</em> saved.<br /><br />MMOs, on the other hand, have the opposite problem. They are generally designed to emulate <em>one</em> tier of play and stay there forever.<br /><br /><img src="https://pics.me.me/level-1-mmo-characters-level-ymmo-characters-800-level-1-7454784.png" alt="Reddit knows the score."><br /><br />I've been playing LotRO for ten years. (That kind of amazes me.) My little hobbitey warden has defeated thousands of orcs, hundreds of trolls and giants, the last king of Arnor turned into a wraith, spiders the size of a house, a dracolich, the Watcher in the Water, one of the nine Nazgûl, and a freakin' balrog.<br /><br />What is he doing ten years later? Still fighting orcs, mostly. XD The occasional 100th level sickle-fly. I think, if this was a tabletop campaign, I might find that a little odd.<br /><br />What I'm looking for, I guess, is a sweet spot somewhere between these two extremes. <em>5E</em> purposefully levels out the XP curve to stretch the mid-level range longer than the low and high ends to keep characters in that zone as long as possible, but I'm not sure even that's enough. (On top of which, if they're shrugging at hill giants now, what will they be like at 8th level? 10th?)<br /><br />I'm kinda curious and would actually like to hear from people. If your only choice were one of the two, which would you prefer: a focused campaign with a clear-cut beginning, middle, and end ("Throw the ring into Mount Doom!"), or the "continuing saga" of a group of characters that goes on indefinitely, with new stories popping up as old stories resolve, taking you all over the world and possibly beyond?<br /><br />As an addon to that, how do you feel about the progression of tiers? Is there one you prefer to the others? Do you want to find one and stick with it, even if it meant an XP cap (or at least being cut back to a trickle)? Is the standard progression fine? Too slow? Too fast?<br /><br />Enquiring Gneeches want to know!<br /><br />-An Enquiring Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2662188" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2662073A Million Bazillion Orcs, and Other Nuisances2017-07-28T17:30:37Z2017-07-28T17:30:37Znerdypublic2<img src="https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11120/111201466/4633262-1937599979-vlcsn.png" alt="Pictured: An Easy-to-Moderate Encounter"><br /><em>Pictured: An Easy-to-Moderate Encounter</em><br /><br />One issue I've encountered with the <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> game is power inflation. It was already an issue during the <em>Keep On the Borderlands</em> phase, but it has reached new heights. We've got a party of six fifth-level characters, who are off-and-on supported by a (CR 7) stone giant NPC, plus any other NPCs who happen to be along for the ride (Lord Alden and Harold, in the current scenario, are both effectively CR 1).<br /><br />This is a party that punches well above its weight. My best guess, based on running the "encounter difficulty by XP budget" math, is that they are roughly on-par with a 10th level "typical" party. The problem with that, however, is that CR 10+ creatures have abilities and defenses that lower-level characters, even these powerhouses, might not have the resources to overcome.<br /><br />But then again, they might. <em>D&D</em> has never done "boss fights" well, and that's still true of <em>5E</em>. Put this party in a big empty room with a behir (CR 11), and my money would still be on the party unless the behir had access to lair or legendary actions. <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://laurie-robey.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://laurie-robey.dreamwidth.org/'><b>laurie_robey</b></a></span> would probably get swallowed whole at least once, tho.<br /><br />(In some ways, this is a feature, not a bug. If you put a giant boss at the bottom of a dungeon, where the PCs have had to fight their way to get to it and are down on resources, the fact that the boss is gimped by the party's number advantage is a hidden way to make the fight winnable while still feeling epic.)<br /><br />The current thought on encounter design for <em>D&D</em> is that in any given encounter you should have at least three monsters against a regular party, plus one monster for each party member beyond four. So against a party of six, at least five monsters. Against a party of nine(!), at least eight monsters.<br /><br />This is rapidly becoming a very crowded 30' x 50' dungeon room. ¬.¬<br /><br />The good news is, <em>5E</em> is so much faster than the past three editions that there's not that much overhead from having all these mass combats. "These two attack Rina. These four attack Togar. The ones attacking Rina need 10 or better, the ones attacking Togar need 16 or better." (Dice clatter.) The <em>DMG</em> has a chart for mob attacks that boils even that down to "If they need a 15, every fourth monster hits," but we have not (yet) had a fight so large that I felt it was worth looking it up.<br /><br />Just taking the average damage from each mook attack, something I was dubious of at first, really makes this go even smoother. "You're hit twice, take ten points of damage." Easy peasy. The +/- 3 points of damage either way from rolling dice every time is not missed, although I still roll the damage individually for monster criticals, adding just that touch of spice roughly once or twice per game session.<br /><br />The other issue, though, is <em>5E</em>'s strange fixation on not having monsters over CR 3 if at all possible. In the last session, Sheala took out a dozen enemies with a single <em>fireball</em> because they couldn't survive half damage even if they made their saves. You can start stacking your monster ranks with reskinned knights, veterans, gladiators, and bandit captains to buff them up a bit, or create <em>3.5</em>-style "mob" versions of lower level foes, and there are some <a href="http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/171463/DD-5e-Monster-Expansion">third party supplements</a> for the purpose. But the players might rightfully wonder why the orcs last week couldn't withstand a <em>fireball</em> and the ones this week can, unless you introduce a story element of Bigger, Badder Orcs (say, a new strain bred by an evil wizard wearing shimmering rainbow robes).<br /><br />There is an upside to having a party that can take a licking and keep on ticking– I can just put whatever I want and makes sense into the scenario and not be worried that they can't handle it. But the real problem is things that should be dangerous becoming trivial. The "svartjaw" in the last session was a reskinned wyvern, a CR 6 brute, and they just melted it like butter before a blowtorch. Players love and want to win, but if they don't feel like they had to at least work for it a little, it feels cheap, and will become boring fast.<br /><br /><em>5E</em>'s much-touted Bounded Accuracy is meant to address this very issue, but when you pile on a huge party like this, you flip the script. Suddenly the carefully-balanced math and action economy that is supposed to allow monsters to remain a threat across wider levels, is exactly what enables the party to just stomp all over everything.<br /><br />There is also the Monty Haul problem, where the party's ability to take on outsized challenges leads to them racking up high level treasure and XP, which in turn enables them to level up even faster in a geometric spiral. Dividing the encounter XP by six, seven, or nine as appropriate helps here, and I have complete control over how much wealth the party has access to simply by decided what's out there, but it is still something I need to watch.<br /><br />(As a side note, I do love that <em>5E</em> is built on the assumption of class/race abilities only, decoupling magic items from character progression. I have always looked askance at "numerical progression" items from the first time I saw a <em>+1 sword</em> in my Moldvay Boxed Set with chits instead of dice. My completely perfect world would mostly leave out treasure too– when did you ever see Frodo and Sam count gold pieces? But I fear that would force a little too much of my own preferred playstyle onto the rest of the group, and certainly "local duke offers 500 gp for bandit slaying" is a handy wrench in the narrative toolbox.)<br /><br />None of these challenges are insurmountable, and compared to the "I hate my life!" slog of prepping higher-level <em>3.x/PF</em> these are perfectly-acceptable problems to have. They're just things I'm noticing about how the current game is going. Every campaign is different!<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2662073" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2661470A Grassy, Wind-Swept Sandbox Full of Giants, Part Seven2017-07-24T14:03:18Z2017-07-24T14:03:18Znerdypublic0<img src="http://gneech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/harold_and_alden.jpg" alt="Harold of Acholt worries about his father, the Thane"><br /><em>Harold of Acholt worries about his father, the Thane</em><br /><br />When you prep for the players to zig, they <strong>always</strong> zag. <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2661231.html">Continuing from part six...</a><br /><br />We're finally caught up to the most recent game session! With game world firmly built out and chock-a-block with adventure hooks and sidequests, a firm campaign direction ("Escort Xerlo to the Eye of the All-Father"), and brain-eating enthusiasm infinitely better than the floundering avoidance I started with, I was excited for the characters to head into <strike>Rohan</strike> Hestelland. It was a four-day hike from Tyvalich to Hierandal, the capital of the realm, which was summarized in a paragraph because it mostly consisted of staring at grass for hours on end.<br /><br />The first order of business on arriving in Hierandal was looking up Piotr Zymorven to ask him about his father's sword. <span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2661470.html#cutid1">They found him in a tavern...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />Well my dear readers, reskinned wyverns are still CR 6. A party of six 5th-level PCs and their CR 7 stone giant ally piledrived Svartjaw so fast that Lord Alden and his son didn't even get a chance to draw their swords. Lord Alden was quite upset by this apparent anticlimax to what he had expected to be an epic last hunt that would be sung of by the bards and so on... until Rina pointed out that the tracks they'd been following had a very distinctive tread missing three toes on one foot– and that the monster they had killed did not.<br /><br />Svartjaw, it seemed, was not the only one of his kind.<br /><br />Furthermore, examination of the bear revealed that like the displacer beasts in the previous session, Svartjaw was <em>also</em> wearing a collar with a token on it, in this case an emblem of Nerull the Reaper, a dark god of death and murder from eastern lands. There was still hunting to be done before dawn. The session ended with Lord Alden giving the order to mount up to continue the hunt, darkness and the forest be damned.<br /><br />And with that, the campaign summary is up to date! The next session will begin with the PCs attempting to find Svartjaw's lair and confront the source of its evil. Will Lord Alden survive his last hunt? Time alone can tell.<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2661470" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2661231A Grassy, Wind-Swept Sandbox Full of Giants, Part Six2017-07-21T14:41:52Z2017-07-21T14:41:52Zaccomplishedpublic0<img src="http://gneech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/orbis_leonis_3point0.jpg" alt="The Grand, Unified Map of Gneech's Campaign World"><br /><br />Then, the world changed. <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2661044.html">Continuing from part five...</a><br /><br />I was going to finish the recaps with the discussion of last weekend's session here, but I got to talking about the map (as one does) and realized the last recap would have to wait for one more post.<br /><br />Once I realized that <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> was a "build your own campaign" framework and not a straightforward adventure module and embraced it, that meant that I had to build out the world in order to make room for it all. I went through the module from front to back and placed every location important to the campaign <em>somewhere</em>, and then set myself to the task of filling in as much of the blank space around that as possible.<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2661231.html#cutid1">I discovered that the Silver Coast was waaaaay too small...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />It took several days and the project pretty much ate my brain the whole time, but now that it's done I'm really happy with the result. This is a game world that I can see going pretty well forever, with enough detail and history to feel "lived in" while still having plenty of room for expansion as needed (I tried to leave myself lots of open spots). It's not suitable for publication or any such thing– it's got chunks of Greyhawk, chunks of Faerûn, bits of Lovecraft's Dreamlands, and of course the Middle-earth nations of Rohan, Arnor, and Angmar with the serial numbers shaved off. But it is a cool place for me and six friends to visit every Saturday night.<br /><br />It also taught me a lot about world-building in general, which <em>is</em> valuable for creating original works. I will probably use a very similar process to build out Calypsitania and the <em>Fortress of Tears</em> world for writing novels in next.<br /><br />Next time, part seven, in which we finally catch up to the campaign!<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2661231" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2661044A Grassy, Wind-Swept Sandbox Full of Giants, Part Five2017-07-20T14:43:55Z2017-07-20T14:43:55Zworkingpublic0<a href="http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Lem"><img src="http://pathfinderwiki.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/9/96/This_round%27s_on_Lem.jpg/520px-This_round%27s_on_Lem.jpg" alt="This Round's On Lem, from the Pathfinder Wiki"><br />This Round's on Lem, from the Pathfinder Wiki</a><br /><br />He spews lightning. He crashes into everything he gets near and knocks trees over onto himself. And yet he's still kinda adorable. <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660769.html">Continuing from part four...</a><br /><br />The first town on the road north was Tyvalich, a major trading town at the mouth of a pass up into the richest silver mountains in the world. Before they got there, however, the party was confronted by <a href="http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/wn/20030129a">Felgolos, the Flying Misfortune</a>, a young-ish adult bronze dragon who came swooping in, blasted a line of lightning between the party and the road, and proclaimed that he was the protector of the north and they would go no further. And then had to duck from the lightning-blasted tree that almost fell on his head.<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2661044.html#cutid1">Seeing Xerlo in their company had apparently...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />They headed back to town to collect their reward, stopping briefly to aid and comfort the same band of Calladganger hunters they had met before, who had been tracking a herd of aurochs through the mountains and gotten the snot pounded out of them by a bunch of hill giants. Still convinced that Nikki is some kind of nature spirit, they turned down his offer of "eagle" (actually bloodhawk) meat, because eagles were sacred to them and this was obviously some kind of spiritual test Nikki was putting them through to make sure they followed the old ways or some such. Nikki informed them that there was a nicely large, vacant Calladganger-style homestead in a box canyon just a ways up the mountain that they could safely camp and recuperate in, as long as they didn't mind the smell of burning dead monster. Their leader promised they would ritually sanctify the house and that anyone who settled there would be named the People of the Squirrel in gratitude for this beneficence.<br /><br />"Right. You do that."<br /><br />(For the record, the Calladganger leader is not whimsically eccentric, even if I do refer to him as "Kronk." He's a perfectly normal big dumb amiable lug.)<br /><br />After a night of rest, it was time for the four day hike to Hierandal, which will come in part five.<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2661044" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2660769A Grassy, Wind-Swept Sandbox Full of Giants, Part Four2017-07-19T12:42:08Z2017-07-20T14:44:26Zgoodpublic0<a href="http://thatdman.deviantart.com/art/Drow-Assassin-477219511"><img src="http://pre14.deviantart.net/b06a/th/pre/f/2014/233/2/6/drow_assassin_by_thatdman-d7w4gxj.jpg" alt="Drow Assassin by thatDMan"><br />Drow Assassin by thatDMan</a><br /><br />You knew a prophecy had to show up eventually. <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660465.html">Continuing from part three...</a><br /><br />Upon arriving back in town, the party headed for Lord-Protector Shendrel's offices only to find an unruly mob of farmers complaining about Xerlo, the stone giant, who apparently defended an outlying farm from attack by throwing the farmer's silo at a bunch of hill giants who were stealing all the livestock they could get ahold of while chanting "Food for Guh! Food for Guh!" They said they'd have a talk to him.<br /><br />While they were in town, <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://inkblitz.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://inkblitz.dreamwidth.org/'><b>inkblitz</b></a></span> headed off to the Golden Compass Society for Exploration, Acquisition, and Monster Dispatch (a.k.a. the Adventurers Guild), while Sirfox headed for the Brotherhood of the Spider (a.k.a. the Thieves Guild). <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=jamesbarrett'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=jamesbarrett'><b>jamesbarrett</b></a></span> went off to the temple and the garrison to boost morale, aid the refugees of the volcano still clogging up the town, and presumably chop wood or something paladiney like that.<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660769.html#cutid1">Investigation at the Adventurers Guild revealed...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />They were not expecting the dragon attack that <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/">comes in part five...</a><br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br />PS: Quit creeping on that drow, guildmaster! Don't you know that's <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/tag/obsidian">Obsidian's mother</a>?<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2660769" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2660465A Grassy, Wind-Swept Sandbox Full of Giants, Part Three2017-07-18T15:20:20Z2017-07-19T12:43:41Zawakepublic0<img src="http://gneech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/the-avengers-angry-hulk-smash-loki.gif" alt="Ghost paladin possessing a troll SMASH!"><br /><br />Kolstaag Albrek never knew what hit him. <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660305.html">Continuing from part two...</a><br /><br />It has always been true, but it is especially true of <em>5E</em> that rolling low on initiative kills bosses dead. Between being blasted by the party's wizard and cleric, sneak-attacked by the rogue, and having a ghost-possessed troll flip a desk on him then pick him up and go all TROLL SMASH, Kolstaag Albrek didn't even get a spell off before the party had wrought their revenge. The pair of drow he was meeting with decided that was their cue to call it a day, and the wizard's vicious gargoyle pets were quickly dispatched. The only other occupant of the house was a cranky old coot named Xzyyzx, the wizard's housekeeper, whose opinion was that the wizard's death meant it was his house now.<br /><br />The party were not inclined to debate the legalities of property ownership in Three Roads, but instead reclaimed their gear (<span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=jamesbarrett'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=jamesbarrett'><b>jamesbarrett</b></a></span> was quite jazzed to discover that Togar was the owner of a suit of adamantine plate), read Kolstaag's mail, and headed back to town. Kolstaag, it turned out, was working for a drow by the name of Nezannar, which triggered <em>deja vu</em> in players from <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/tag/silver+coast">my previous Silver Coast game</a>.<br /><br />(Since that game is actually set 50 years in the future relative to the current one, the events of <em>that</em> game are history repeating itself, even though it got played first. Wibbly-wobbly campaigney-wampaigney.)<br /><br />They also fetched Xerlo the stone giant out of the basement. He was quite surprised they were no longer in their cells, but on being informed that his former employer was dead, he adopted a very <em>c'est la vie</em> attitude on the subject. The party invited him to come along back to Three Roads with them, with the plan of setting him up as an 18' tall Lurch-like guardian angel.<br /><br />Lord-Protector Shendrel of Three Roads was a bit taken aback by having the party come back two days later from the opposite direction the fire giants had gone, with a troll and stone giant in tow. However, when shown the evidence of Kolstaag's shenanigans, took them at their word. (Having a paladin in the party really does wonders for the group's trustability.) She installed Xerlo in a barn outside of town, but took pains to point out that the job she'd hired them for– make sure the fire giants don't come back– was still not done.<br /><br />So they set off north, tracking the fire giants. Even two days cold, the trail was fairly easy to follow for most of the way. They ran into some Calladganger hunters from the Clan of the Eagle, who seemed to think that Nikki was a nature spirit, but eventually found a cave complex populated by orcs herding axe beaks.<br /><br />Their attempt at scouting the caves was thwarted when Rina botched a Stealth check. The orcs thought she was just a random wood elf in the forest and were going to bully her for fun, but the rest of the party came swooping in and disabused them of that notion quickly. A general alarm was raised and it turned into a huge furball with orcs, maddened axe beaks, fire giants, and their fire elemental pets/familiars/adds/whatever they were.<br /><br />In 30+ years of playing <em>Dungeons & Dragons</em>, I would have never guessed I would see opposed Animal Handling checks be a factor in combat. Achievement unlocked.<br /><br />Hathas, his time "bonding" with the troll seeming to rub off on him, waded into the fray with more bloodlust than one generally expects from a paladin, even a fallen one. The fire elementals damaged the troll so badly that Hathas abandoned it and joined the fray in ghost form instead. While the troll retreated to a cave in the back where it could munch on dead orc and regenerate, Hathas attempted to terrorize a fire giant (not unlike the librarian in the prologue of <em>Ghostbusters</em>). The fire giant was not terrorized... but members of the party were. Nice jorb, Hathas.<br /><br />The odd thing about ghosts in <em>D&D</em> is... they have hit points. They resist nonmagical damage, but in order to interact with the world they must manifest on the physical plane. Fire giants do an average of 28 points of damage with a single hit and their attack bonus alone equals a ghost's AC. The fire giant made short work of Hathas, much to everyone's surprise (including Hathas).<br /><br />The fight was a tough one, but the party rose to the challenge. Brother Drang finally got to use the <em>call lightning</em> he'd been itching for, and Togar entered a new phase of his career by being the tankiest ever but <em>not</em> getting one-punched in the first round. When the dust settled, the party was battered and bruised but victorious. They retrieved the giants' <em>rod of the vonindid</em>, a kind of dowsing rod for adamantine golem parts, and also discovered that these giants had found the vonindid's entire left hand. They rather hastily buried this where it was, as it was way too big to haul anywhere, and headed back to town.<br /><br />The troll survived.<br /><br />It turned out there were developments with their new stone giant friend, which will be <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660769.html">revealed in part four</a>!<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2660465" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2660305A Grassy, Wind-Swept Sandbox Full of Giants, Part Two2017-07-17T13:09:58Z2017-07-18T15:20:55Zgoodpublic0<a href="http://spiralmagus.deviantart.com/art/Ghost-Martyr-Paladin-476330151"><br /><img src="http://orig06.deviantart.net/22a0/f/2014/229/e/9/ghost_martyr_paladin_by_spiralmagus-d7vlep3.jpg" alt="Ghost Martyr Paladin by SpiralMagus"><br /><em>Ghost Martyr Paladin</em></a> by SpiralMagus<br /><br />"So there we were, locked in a dungeon with a stone giant." <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660091.html">Carrying on from Part One...</a><br /><br />The new phase of the campaign really began with the first session down in Kolstaag Albrek's dungeon. <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://inkblitz.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://inkblitz.dreamwidth.org/'><b>inkblitz</b></a></span>'s new character was introduced to the rest of the party ("A talking griffon? Neat. I'm a five foot tall flying squirrel!"), as was their erstwhile guard, Xerlo the stone giant, whose first line was a straightforward, "If you try to escape, I will kill you," but who seemed more interested in scribbling on the floor than anything.<br /><br />But he was willing to chat, assuming you could parse his mode of speech. Riffing on the idea that stone giants are sort of the hippie-dippie mystics of giantkind, I decided that Xerlo didn't care about things like "good" or "evil," but was only interested in what was "true" or "untrue," and that he was on a vision quest to find out what was really going on with the breaking of the Ordning– because he didn't believe that the stone giant thane's interpretation ("We must destroy every town, city, or building of the little folk!") was correct. I chose a stone giant particularly because, being inherently neutral, he could be a wild card. The players could recruit him or fight him, but it would be their choice and an impactful one.<br /><br />They decided at first, once they'd gotten the gist of what he was about, to basically leave him alone, and that was probably a good call. They also worked out that while he was completely serious that he would kill them if they tried to go out the front door, there was also a back door that he apparently couldn't see and wasn't aware of.<br /><br />So, being the mighty heroes they were, they slipped out the back, and again, that was a good call. They managed to scrounge up some sharp bits of broken metal or rusted bars from the cell doors to make crude weapons, and plunged into the depths. They found an old series of vaults that either Kolstaag didn't know about or wasn't interested in, origin and purpose unknown, populated by orcs, whom they avoided, but who were also between them and the exit.<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660305.html#cutid1">They also caught glimpses of a ghostly figure in the darkness...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />They will <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660465.html">confront the wizard in part three</a>!<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2660305" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2660091A Grassy, Wind-Swept Sandbox Full of Giants, Part One2017-07-16T16:04:35Z2017-07-17T13:11:41Zchipperpublic0<img src="http://gneech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/silver_coast_recap_map.jpg" alt="The Silver Coast Map, Revisited"><br /><br />So there have been some pretty big changes in my <em>D&D</em> game since <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2608473.html">the last time I posted about it</a>. I want to bring my chronicle of the game up to date, but there's a lot of ground to cover so it's going to require several posts. So here's part one!<br /><br />The party did in fact defeat The Yellow Lady, mad priestess of Hastur behind the evil brewing in the Caves of Chaos, only to discover that she had in fact been the missing daughter of Duke Blakewell all along. Oops. >.> A tragic and somewhat downer ending to the scenario, but also completely in line with the kind of crap that happens when Hastur gets involved.<br /><br />The players all wanted to continue, and after presenting them with the various options I was weighing the group voted for <em>Storm King's Thunder</em>. So I said that with everything at the Keep being so awkward ("Sorry, m'lord, we kinda killed your daughter... but in our defense she tried to kill us first!") the party decided to move on to greener pastures. They heard that Mt. Thunderdelve, over on <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/tag/silver+coast">the Silver Coast</a>, had erupted, and decided to head over there to see what they could do to help, and maybe find some gainful employment on the way.<br /><br />Unfortunately, here I hit a bit of burnout, and floundered for a time. Far from being something I could easily pick up and run more-or-less off the shelf as <em>Red Hand of Doom</em> was, I discovered that <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> is an immense, sprawling, hot mess of an "adventure." It's not like a traditional module, so much as an enormous sandboxey "Build Your Own Campaign!" kit. Which is cool if that's what you're looking for, but at the time, that was so totally not what I was looking for.<br /><br /><em>Storm King's Thunder</em> as written covers pretty much all of northern Faerûn, and the Silver Coast wasn't anywhere near that developed. I didn't realize it then, but the monumental task of actually sifting through <em>SKT</em> from front to back and building a world that could accommodate all 256 pages of it while still being a world I liked and wanted to run adventures in, was really biting off more than I was prepared to chew. And because of the way the book is structured, it isn't really something where it's easy to just toss the tracks down in front of the train as it goes.<br /><br />So, I kinda bobbled a bit at first. I spent several weeks grinding my gears on the problem and not really getting anywhere. But I knew if I let it sit too long, the campaign would pass its expiration date. So I transposed Triboar in the Forgotten Realms to Three Roads, its Silver Coast analog, and ran the giants' assault on the town pretty much as written in the book just to get the game moving again. After a big hairy fight against orcs riding axe-beaks and a lot of what-the-helling at fire giants pulling an enormous adamantine staple out of the ground under the town fountain, the players decided to go visit a local wizard named Kolstaag Albrek to see if he could give them any insights before they chased the giants down– only to have Albrek knock them all out and toss them into a dungeon, the jerk.<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">( </b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660091.html#cutid1">Somewhere in here, two things happened...</a></b><b class="cut-close"> )</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />These two seeds turned out to be the defining factors of the game. Once I embraced the idea that <em>SKT</em> was a campaign kit and not an off-the-shelf adventure, thirty years of DMing instincts took hold and I was suddenly on fire! But how the party escaped the dungeon and what they did next, will have to wait for <a href="http://the-gneech.dreamwidth.org/2660305.html">the next installment</a>.<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2660091" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2659825The Halfling Lass From Appletop2017-07-15T19:33:59Z2017-07-15T19:33:59Zpublic0<p><object width="450" height="618"><param name="movie" value="http://backend.deviantart.com/embed/view.swf?1"><param name="flashvars" value="id=674990737&width=1337"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain"><embed src="http://backend.deviantart.com/embed/view.swf?1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="618" flashvars="id=674990737&width=1337" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://dunlaoch.deviantart.com/art/Berelandine-the-Halfling-Serving-Wench-674990737">Berelandine the Halfling Serving Wench</a> by <span class="username-with-symbol u"><a class="u regular username" href="http://dunlaoch.deviantart.com/">Dunlaoch</a><span class="user-symbol regular" data-quicktip-text="" data-show-tooltip="" data-gruser-type="regular"></span></span> on <a href="http://www.deviantart.com">DeviantArt</a></p><br /><p>A popular barracks/meadhall song in Orbis Leonis, sung to the tune of <a href="https://youtu.be/SfvrrSOkJ3o">“The Mademoiselle From Armentiers.”</a></p><br /><blockquote><p><br /><em>[call]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop is a tavern maid.<br /><br /><em>[return]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop is a tavern maid!</p><br /><p>The halfling lass is a tavern maid.<br /><br />In gold or kisses she gets paid!</p><br /><p><em>[chorus]</em><br /><br />Will you have another round, me lord?</p><br /><p><em>[call]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop is three foot high.<br /><br /><em>[return]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop is three foot high!</p><br /><p>The halfling lass is three foot high.<br /><br />She looks your codpiece in the eye!</p><br /><p><em>[chorus]</em><br /><br />Will you have another round, me lord?</p><br /><p><em>[call]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop is a lovely girl.<br /><br /><em>[return]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop is a lovely girl!</p><br /><p>The halfling lass is a lovely girl.<br /><br />She’ll take your stallion for a whirl!</p><br /><p><em>[chorus]</em><br /><br />Will you have another round, me lord?</p><br /><p><em>[call]</em><br /><br />I asked the lass from Appletop to be my bride.<br /><br /><em>[return]</em><br /><br />He asked the lass from Appletop to be his bride!</p><br /><p>I asked the lass to be my bride,<br /><br />and spend a lifetime at my side!</p><br /><p><em>[chorus]</em><br /><br />Will you have another round, me lord?</p><br /><p><em>[call]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop said “Nay, sir, nay.”<br /><br /><em>[return]</em><br /><br />The halfling lass from Appletop said “Nay, sir, nay!”</p><br /><p>The halfling lass said “Nay, sir, nay!<br /><br />Not until your tab you pay!”</p><br /><p><em>[chorus]</em><br /><br />Will you have another round, me lord?<br /></p></blockquote><br /><p>Put that in your weed-pipe and smoke it. 😉</p><br /><p>-The Gneech</p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2659825" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-01-02:1873859:2659243The Elves of Orbis Leonis2017-06-26T15:58:33Z2017-06-26T15:58:33ZLotRO Soundtrack– "East of the Sea"busypublic1Writing this as part of my World Map Project for the <em>Storm King's Thunder</em> campaign. Chunks of it will go into the gazetteer handout for the players, but I'm also posting it here for my elfy players (lookin' at you, Plotline and <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://laurie-robey.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://laurie-robey.dreamwidth.org/'><b>laurie_robey</b></a></span>).<br /><br />Elves are always a joy, and always a problem. Every campaign, and every edition, has treated them differently, to the point where it’s become a giant blurry mess. So for Orbis Leonis, my “grand unified D&D setting,” here is the definitive word on elves.<br /><br /><h3>Earliest Days</h3><br />In prehistoric times, the elves were a single people. They have a variety of creation legends, but they are largely biased and contradictory. What is known is that there was once a wide-ranging high elven civilization throughout the region now known as the Marches, ruled from the great spiraled tower Elfspire. Before the foundation of Elfspire, even the elvish histories are lost, other than that the elves fled from some calamity across a seemingly-endless plain– a plain that would have to be where the Gulf of Irul Kinthé is now– only to stop in despair upon sighting the eastern reaches of the great desert of Xadar. The Elfspire was created, the story goes, when the Maimed King, Iearendir, prayed to Corellian Larethian, who appeared before them and commanded a unicorn to touch its horn to the ground. From that spot sprung a well of miraculous healing powers, and around it grew the Elfspire in “an echo” of the unicorn’s horn. This happened, according to the elves, “hundreds of centuries ago.”<br /><br />For an indeterminate (but presumably very long) time, the elves ruled the region. How the elvish realm interacted with other ancient kingdoms is open for speculation. However, roughly 30,000 years ago, according to what elven records still exist, there was a bitter internal conflict among the elven gods, which was in turn echoed by enclaves of elves in the mortal realm. This conflict led to a massive event the elves call the Sundering, that splintered the elves into the eladrin, high elves, wood elves, and drow that the world knows today. (Some scholars point to this as also being the origin of the orcs. Orcs deny this. Often via manslaughter.) This event also ended the elvish dominance of the region and seems to have led the decline of the entire elvish race.<br /><br />Note that this story seems to conflict with the giants’ tradition that there were no civilizations of note on the surface other than Ostoria during its heyday. Either the elvish record is incorrect, or the giants’ idea of what is a “civilization of note” is disputable. Which of those may be true is left as an exercise for the reader.<br /><br /><h3>High and Wood Elves</h3><br />Of the elven kindreds, high elves and wood elves are closest to each other, with their differences being purely cultural. A high elf raised by wood elves, is a wood elf, and vice versa. They are called "high" elves because they prefer to live on the surface, or even better, in trees or tall spires, but also because they did not follow Lolth into the Underdark. Although the stereotypical high/wood elf is of fair complexion, with very fine, straight hair, there is more variation than people generally think. In the Sea Kingdoms and realms further south particularly, elvish complexion ranges to a copper or deep brown color.<br /><br /><h3>Eladrin</h3><br />Eladrin ("noble elves" in their own language) are the most powerful of the high elves, with the strongest attunement to the realm of Faerie, to the point where they are infused with its magic. They are closer to elemental spirits to mortal beings, being tied to the passage of the seasons and the movement of the sun, stars, and planets. Although physically similar to their more terrestrial kin, Eladrin are readily discernible because their eyes are solid orbs of color with no visible pupils, and their bodies often radiate a visible aura. Tales say they can speak any language, and step between the mortal world and Faerie/Feywild at will, and while this may certainly be true of individual eladrin, it may not be true of all of them.<br /><br /><h3>Drow</h3><br />Drow, the "dark elves," followed their goddess into the Underdark. Before the Sundering, the elf goddess Araushnee was a patron of the stars, destiny, and craftsmanship, whose emblem of the spider represented her weaving of the fates. Her favored followers, although still high elves, would undergo a ritual transformation that altered their skin to an intensely dark blue and their hair to a shining white or silver as a mark of their devotion. During the great conflict that caused the Sundering, Araushnee forsook the light of the stars and fled the realms of light (or was banished, or simply left, depending on who you ask), taking her followers with her into the Underdark. From that small pool of common ancestors came the modern drow.<br /><br />(Note: Araushnee's daughter Eilistraee, a high-spirited goddess of moonlight and dancing, shares her mother's appearance, and what few drow who have forsaken the worship of Lolth for its wickedness and cruelty, have generally turned to her as their new patron. A small cabal of drow worshippers of Eilistraee can be found in Myth Talminden, and it is something of a "promised land" for discontent drow of the Underdark who would flee their dark mistress.)<br /><br /><h3>Orcs and Elves</h3><br />How do the orcs fit in? The truth is that mortals don't know and the gods aren't telling, but there are clear signs of some sort of connection. First, is their shared mythology: the story of the battle between the orc god Gruumsh and the elf god Corellan Larethian, allowing some variance for which side you are rooting for, is remarkably similar in both cultures, and always highlights the famous cutting out of Gruumsh's eye. It is also worth noting that elves and orcs are both interfertile with humans and each other, unlike any of the other demi-human races. (It is rare in the extreme that an orc and an elf would have a child, but such a child would essentially be either a half-elf or a half-orc depending upon which parent they favored.)<br /><br /><h3>Elvish Homelands</h3><br />There are two major elf holdings in Orbis Leonis. First, and oldest, is the Elfspire, in the southeastern portion of Thessalaine near the Gulf of Irul Kinthé. This consists of a massive, spiral conical tower formed out of a unique mineral reminiscent of mother of pearl, a dizzying fifty stories in height and crowned with an ever-burning beacon. The mountainside below the spire is also populated by houses and fortifications in the high elven style.<br /><br />The second largest is the western seaside realm of Myth Talminden ("Silver Lighthouse" in Elvish), a fair and green country on the westernmost point of the mainland. The city of Myth Talminden proper consists of several large stone towers inlaid with silver from Argent, in a curving spiral style that echoes the Elfspire, but on a much smaller scale (the tallest reaching only seven stories). The towers are connected by a dizzying network of narrow, gracefully-arcing catwalks that not only provide walking access from one spire to the next, but also reinforce the overall structure like a lattice.<br /><br />There are many smaller settlements across the land, usually referred to as "havens." These include the wood elf settlement of Starsong Hill in Elsir Vale, Mother Oak of the Westdeep, or Dimhaven and Mistvale in Thessalaine. Of course, the drow have their own cities in the Underdark, but the names and locations of these are not generally known to surface dwellers.<br /><br />-The Gneech<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=the_gneech&ditemid=2659243" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments