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Adventure: The Subtle Art of Dragon Hunting

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After a lowland kingdom is ravaged by a dragon looking to expand its territory the party sets out on a quest worthy of the heroes of old... only to discover that the epic songs recounting the deeds of those old heroes chose to leave out just how much hiking would be involved in such an epic undertaking.

Tracing witness accounts and the path of destruction leads our would be dragonslayers to the Bronscall Mountains, a rugged wilderness of deep valleys and icy peaks, but the trail goes cold before they have any clue to where their quarry might be lairing. This is the sort of adventure where the party needs to take their time, and is best brought to life using an exploration system such as the one I've developed here, or hexcrawling if you'd prefer.

The idea is to have the party fully experiance the Bronscall mountains before facing the dragon: living off the land, learning its secrets, discovering resources they might use or potential ambush sites.

Zones of interest:

The Podrian Foodhills: Groves of flowers and tangled trees that seem intent on capturing any wayward traveller. The region also features a potential base camp for the party in the form of a ruined watchtower, sturdy and fortified, it may become their home away from home before too long.

Lake Whitedog: cold all year from glacial melt, the waters of this lake hold a long sunken secret, and provide great fishing. Perhaps while exploring the party can trace the mystery of the deserted mining village built nearby.

Bron's Stair: An increasingly challenging climb up the foothills of the mountains, home to many monsters and chilling wind. The area is also home to a crotchety old hunter who can teach them the finer points of surviving the cold as they ascend.

The Frigid Peaks: Windstorms, avalanches, occasional aerial attacks by the dragon as they near its territory. It's dangerous to stay more than a few hours in this region, but the beast's lair must be around here somewhere.

Adventure Arc: A Kingdom Washed Away

“ It’s raining, it’s pouring, and the old man is... busy, I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with me if you want to see the sun anytime soon. ” 

Setup: For generations there existed a compact between the sovereigns of the kingdom of Ibryourn and the cloud giant Orlios, one that has now been thrown into a disastrous imbalance.  From his castle among the clouds, Orlios was able to affect the weather across the whole kingdom, ensuring decades of mild winters and timely rains, sparing the kingdom from hunger and drought ,  guaranteeing it a preternatural bounty. In return, the crown of Ibryorn tithed to the giant yearly, making gifts of great riches and wonderous magic in exchange for his cooperation. 

While Orlios would love to claim that this miraculous power to control of the weather was all his own, it was in fact derived from the elder tempest Ilmatarex, imprisoned beneath the foundations of his castle and drawn upon to sculpt the skies to his liking.  This fact was noticed by one of the cloud giant’s elemental servants, who has since usurped his master and now rules in his place, presenting it to all others ( crown and fellow servants included) that Orlios has gone into meditation, and does not wish to be disturbed. 

This servant’s name is Kazka, and high off the success of his coup,  he decided to nip down to the  court of Queen Liandra of Ibryourn in order to rearrange the bargain held between her and his ( now deposed) master . Orlios, he claims, has grown displeased with the yearly tributes, and now demands such a gift at the end of each season in which his magic controls the weather. reticent but understanding her kingdom’s reliance on the giant’s beneficence, Liandra agreed, and for the past two years has been stretching the royal treasury thin acceding to the rogue elemental’s demands. 

Adventure Hooks: 

The trouble begins when a tribute shipment is ambushed in the wilderness, perhaps by monsters, perhaps by bandits who’d identified just what the wagon train was carrying month after month to the base of the mountain. Regardless, Kazka was not thrilled about being denied his bribe money, and decided to touch off a storm or two to show the queen “Orlios’s” displeasure, flooding the kingdom’s lowlands and maybe washing out a bridge or two. The problem is, while Kazka learned how to call upon Ilmatarex in his spying, he never discovered the way Orlios controlled or directed her, meaning that the elder tempest has been turned lose on the world despite her infuriating imprisonment. 

During her long imprisonment, the giant used Ilmatarex’s magic to sculpt the clouds into a glorious realm, an archipelago of floating gardens and temples, arranged to indulge his every architectural whim. As Ilmatar’s wrath grows and the rains worsen, the cloudy foundations of these structures erode, sending them hurtling to the earth like meteoric hail or drifting down on banks of fog.  These structures contain wonders and dangers alien to the terrestrial realm, and the party may just be able to explore a few before they put a stop to the whole “ Sky is falling” problem. 

Queen Liandra has dispatched all resources to reclaim the stolen tribute shipment, promising a grand reward for those who discover it, and outlaw status for any who desire to take it. Coincidently, the party happens to be exploring the foothills when the tribute shipment goes awry, do they win favor with the crown for thier bravery? or Risk becoming Criminals for the sake of a queen’s ransom? 

Intent on maintaining his con for as long as possible, Kazka claims that the rising floodwaters are a continuing sign of Orlios’s displeasure, and hints that ANOTHER tribute might sooth the sting of the first’s late delivery. This is a breaking point for queen Liandra, who calls upon the party to capture Kazka and force him to take them to his master’s palace in order to treat with him.   If that fails, the party may need to rustle up an airship or the aid of some great, winged beast, and fly up into the storm themselves. 

Hope you don’t mind me referencing a few different adventures here, friend, I started out writing a whole thing relating classic fantasy adventure to the westward expansion to the post-empire dissolusion periods of east asia, but it was all getting a bit wordy for a single prompt. 

To put it simply: The setting doesn’t have to change that much, just swap out kings, dukes, and other nobles with corporations, occupying military forces, elected politicians n the like. The wild-west is still a largely feudalistic state, save that the distances are larger and the terrain is generally harsher, necessitating the need for technology like trains and airships.  Also, from a personal perspective, I like using firearms systems that paint blackpowder weapons as no more special than the swords and bows used by most heroes. It may sacrifice “realism” in the name of fun, but fun is the point right? 

ONTO THE ADVENTURES: 

Alkeron’s Riddle: Specifically designed as a western adventure, this story sees the players occupying a frontier town outside the long abandoned ruins of a tremendous wizard’s tower/megadungon, with arcane oddities descending from its heights just as bandits close in from beyond. 

Poison in the Vein: A merchant company of geomantic mages that’d fit seamlessly into the role of cruel minebosses in frontier settlement, with their reckless greed endangering workers and provoking the wrath of underdark horrors. 

Drenmwar on the Water: A port of prospectors and metalsmiths, full of side adventures and haunted by a dark and unseen past. A perfect setting for characters looking to make it big or risk it all as a hired gun. 

Reshmaan Al-Haddad, Frontier Outfitter: Behind every famous gunslinger, there’s a gunsmith dedicated to their craft. This inventive young woman is the descendant of one of the pioneers of blackpowder technology, and innovates upon that legacy frequently and with little regard for safety precautions when doing so. 

Prospective Claims: An entire adventure arc set in an underdark frontier town, featuring a mine that’s become recklessly animated, a marauding orc warband masterminded by a sinister naga, and even an infestation of drakes for your party to clash with. 

Hope that helps friend, if you’d like some advice on creating your own Western adventures, stay tuned for this weekend where I’ll lay it all out in longform. 

Drafting the Adventure: Hunting Quests

Delightful question my friend! I'm always down to start talking about different types of adventure as they help fill out my DM's toolbox. Also it's the very start of Ranger Week over on my blog, so the timing is perfect!

TLDR: What I call "Hunting Quests" are different from traditional Montsterhunts, in that the latter are a showcases of a cool, challenging monster the party faces in direct combat, and the former are more often challenges of their problem solving skills. Hunting quests take the party into the far wilderness, and often feature stakes where actively killing their quarry will count as a loss. This forces the party to think of out of the box solutions as the creature they're tracking will often have odd abilities that prevent its capture. Because these type of adventures are so much more challenging than traditional "find and kill" missions, they also usually have greater rewards, and can serve as foundations for heroic reputations, or rites of devotion to the gods of the wild.

Below the cut I'll detail the thematic origin of these types of adventure, as well as highlight just how to use Hunting Quests as a perfect challenge and storeybeat within your campaigns.

Campaign:  Thieves we Be

When Ol’ Mr.Sratch comes to knock on the door/

We’ll fasn’ the latch and steal five minutes more/ 

He’s come to call due our long tally of debt/ 

though our night’s not through and we’ve sins to sin yet/ 

So scoff the noose, let em’ hang all the rest/ 

I’ll die when I choose and I’ll die like the best/ 

With a glass in hand and my love by my side/

 when I’m old, fat’n grand, rich, and bursting with pride/  

(Chorus) 

Oh We scoundrels and jacks, we who never give back/

Oh we souls all led astray/ 

So who are we? we’re thieves we be/ 

Thieves till our last Thieving day!/

-Excerpt from “Thieves we be” , a popular song among outlaws. 

Everyone loves a good heist, so why not run a campaign centering around that feeling? The planning, the plotting, the delicious twists of fate that make everything go wrong and force the crew to improvise? It all serves as a great central gameplay pillar around which you can build the rest of your adventures, the same way you’d build a story around monster-hunting or cinematic battles. 

Setup: The Drownglory Coast is a land gone wrong, with its many temples and fishing towns ruined by hurricanes and slowly eroding into the sea. As the foundations of their lives crumble, folk migrate to the great trade-city of Lancercost, hoping to earn the patronage of one of the city’s merchant princes or make their living along the canals that carry goods through the countryside like arteries of commerce. 

The region is prime for thieves and smugglers: Life along the coast is hard, and the powerful exploit their every privilege to squeeze the land down to its very last copper. This greed will be their undoing, as hoarding wealth like misers makes it all the more convenient for a clever group of scoundrels to sweep in and take it. 

Are your party clever enough to take/make their fortune, Or will their legend dissolve like sand against the tide? 

Campaign Start: 

Things have gone bad, 

After apprenticing with a legendary thief, the story opens with the party fleeing to the countryside after their last job ended in an ambush. Their contacts are burnt, the rest of the crew is in the wind, and the last of their leadership is doing his best not to bleed out before they reach his safehouse up in the hills. It’s a true underdog start that’ll have the party coming together as a crew, eager to find their first big score and change their fortunes for good. It also coincidentally gives them a disused tavern as a safehouse, which they can refurbish using their ill-gotten gains and focus on running while waiting for the heat from their last job to abate. 

Campaign Start: Windfalls & Wyrmlings

It takes a village to raise a child, lets just hope the village isn’t razed in the process

Setup:  It’s been years since the dragon Zaurigel terrorized the skies over the hinterlands settlement of Colver’s Deep, brought down by a now famous team of hunters who’s names have been sung across the land ever since. 

Our story does not begin with these slayers, instead we follow a band of hardluck sellswords and their tagalong companions who missed out on the dragonhunt altogether, and have only now stumbled into the events that will make them into heroes

Despite the beast’s glorious death, no one was able to find Zaurigel’s lair you see, and the vast horde of wealth that was rumored to be contained within. No one, until one of the party managed to discover a deep cave out in the mountains that bore clawmarks and telltale blue scales deep within its reaches. Assembling a few of their trusted friends together to brave against the dangers of the wilderness ( and help carry all the loot), they set off to make their fortunes.  Traveling to the horde is not all that dangerous. Sure it takes a bit of climbing, and in the dragon’s absence some beasts have moved into the cave…. but the true adventure begins when the party looks out over a cavern full of riches and realize how woefully unprepared they and their community are for such a vast inheritance. 

Adventure Hooks: 

Unlike most underdog adventures, this campaign start is less about grinding to the top meant as a test of what happens when people unprepared for power suddenly handle it. The party should all have financial woes that this wealth could go to alleviate, great ambitious that it could fund…. but walking into town and paying off your family’s debts to the local land baron is likable to raise some eyebrows. They HAVE to be careful with it, or else they’ll end up thrown into a dungeon and tortured by the avaricious until they’re forced to give it away. Whether it be bandits, Colver’s deep’s own corrupt authority figures, or those dragonslayers who catch word of that long deferred lootdrop. 

Perhaps the greatest treasure in the horde is a single mottled, melon sized egg, one that will quickly hatch after the party begins fussing over it and expunge a derpy little wyrmling the party will be forced to adopt on the spot out of sheer cuteness. What better metaphor for unexpected responsibility than becoming unwitting parents to an undersized apex predator that will totally blow their cover if the townsfolk ever catch sight of it. 

 In addition to the valuables contained within the hoard, there are also a plethora of obscure magical objects, that the party will have to spend time discovering. hijinx are guaranteed to ensue, as each of these treasures can become an unexpected adventure hook in their own right. Expect cursed items, sentient items, and things that are just a little too magical to sit still once the opportunity for escape has been presented to them. 

Villain: Captain Barrgo Dyer, head of the Civil Guard 

“The Masters o’ this city have left the task of keepin the peace, an’ I’ll more n happily break yer yapping jaw rather than let any of your caterwauling trouble their ears. Am I understood, gutterskum?“

Setup:  Despite presenting themselves as defenders of law and order, Captain Dyer and his “Civs” are perhaps one of the largest criminal organizations at work in the city today, squeezing the populace for coin with one hand while cracking skulls with the other. 

Originally intended to be a stop-gap measure after a series of disastrous grain shortages led to riots and fires across the city’s wards, the civil guards were made a permanent fixture of city infrastructure almost twenty years ago, replacing the patchwork of neighborhood watch organizations and mutual protection pacts that dealt with crime and disruption since. Where as those groups had been loyal to their communities, the Civs were loyal only to the nobles and guilds who paid into their charter, and had no qualms about enforcing peace at spearpoint. 

Taking eagerly to being a blunt instrument for uncaring overlords, Barrgo ascended up the ranks and secured his place as Captain of the Guard, and has since used his position and the resources granted to him by it to turn the city into one large protection racket.  Every law enforcement agency takes bribes to look the other way on occasion, but Barrgo’s ambitions were larger: squeezing neighborhoods and individual merchants for “donations” while feeding information to his criminal contacts about who was and wasn’t under his force’s protection. He also changed the entire ecosystem of crime within the city, allowing specific illegal enterprises to pay for his lenience, while at the same time sending him after their competitors. Years of this “bidding war” have seen Barrgo become a rich man, and an unofficial kingpin of the city’s underworld, with all but the most minor crime or graft requiring his approval. 

Adventure Hooks: 

The Status Quo suits the Captain just fine, and he vigorously opposes any force or actor that would seek to disrupt it, even if they might have the city’s best interests at heart. Should the party go about warning the populace of a looming threat or even trying to solve a crime on their own, it’s very likely they’ll be getting a visit from a number of armored thugs intending to intimidate them into silence.  This “intimidation” can escalate to full on beatings and abduction if the party crosses one of the nobles or guilds who pays into Barrgo’s charter, making him a great secondary villain alongside aristocratic antagonists to good to do their own dirtywork

While each Civil garrison has its own lockup, real troublemakers get tossed in the Shitpit: the Guard’s clandestine prison operated without the city’s oversight, and converted from an old Cistern. The party is likely to find one or all of their number in the Pit should they offend Barrgo personally, or if they happen to need the services or knowledge of someone who did. 

Defeating Barrgo is easier said than done, as exposing his criminal enterprise or outright killing the man doesn’t stop the system of thuggery and corruption he’s built up around him. If the party truly wishes to abolish the Civil guard, and prevent the rise of a new Captian Dyer, they’ll need to rally the populace and petition the city’s rulers, replacing the Guard with a a system with more oversight and accountability built direclty into it. 

Dungeon: In Memoriam

At the end of it all, we are all just stories

On the edge of the tidelands there is a grand and forgotten estate. Not forgotten in that it is abandoned, but forgotten in that a lapse of memory hangs about it like a fog. Even most who live in the nearby village can recall its existence while looking right at it, and only then a few paltry details about how it has affected their lives or the history of their home.

The source of this amnesia is the work of a shadowcaster by the name of ██████ ██████, who has taken the estate as his own while perfecting the art of stealing stories. Like other shadowcasters, ██████ wields the powers of remnant and entropy inherent to the shadowfell and has a particular fascination with how the memory and narrative surrounding a thing can survive independently of that thing's destruction. Originally presenting himself a medium and exorcist, ██████ was hired by the estate's original owners to deal with a lingering ghost problem, only to discover that there was a rift to the shadowfell in a root filled room in a corner of the greathouse's basements.... a room that no one seemed able to remember.

Taking advantage of such close proximity to the upside down, ██████ began experimenting, eventually creating an umbral ink that would steal away facts and moments of time when placed on the page, allowing him to make ghosts of people and places without even needing them to die. For now ██████ is content to tinker, but it's only so long until stumble upon the conspicuous absence he's shrouded his activities under, or the lives he's disrupted in the process.

Hooks:

Within the party's bag of holding or the pack of their most rougish member the heroes discover a bound together stack of pages, which detail their encounter with a man named ██████ while out on the road earlier in the campaign, described as an innocuous scholar with inkstains on his cuffs, always seeming to be writing in his travel journal. He offered insight on their adventures then seemed to disappear. Should the party destroy or damage the pages, they'll suddenly remember this encounter, them managing to steal these pages, and the fact that the man's shadow more often resembled a tree than that of a human

The party visits a seaside village, and while most things seem normal, there's a woman clearly in distress that the locals are keeping well away from. She claims she's lived in the village all her life but most seem to think she's a stranger, those few who do remember her thought she ran away when she was just a lass (about the age that she started working at the manor). Like many of the servants, ██████ worked some magic to keep her on thinking he was the master of the estate, forgotten by her neighbours, but forgot to fully edit her story to prevent her from visiting her parents grave on the anniversary of their deaths some decades past.

██████'s ink comes from a great unnatural tree that grows up through the foundations of the manor from the shadowfell below. Adapted to eat away at the memories of ghosts, the shadowcaster gorges this tree on the stories of the living, creating an ever deepening wellspring of power and a never ending supply of umbral ink. Drunk on power and the possibilities of playing blackout poetry with people's lives, ██████ does not realize that the tree is literally undermining him, threatening to drag the whole estate down into the land of the dead, erasing whole swaths of the countryside as the manor's library is drowned in amnesiac gloom.

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Ally: The Index

" My oh my you don't belong here, which is to say that I don't think I have a spot for you in the catalog, not that you are unwelcome, oh has anyone told you that you are welcome yet? I'd do it but I'm not sure I'm authorized, then again I'm not sure I've not been authorized to welcome you, in which case I extend to you a conditional welcoming and/or unwelcoming depending on privileges pending. If you could find yourself a seat, I'm five eights of the way through constructing an itemized list of the moths I've found in the library over the past year. It should only take another two days, then I'll fetch you some tea.

Setup: Seeking help from a powerful arcanist, the party is pointed towards the home of one Minerva Motteheaper, an archmage famed among the locals for never turning away anyone with a problem. When the party reaches her manor however, they find the place in shabby disrepair, exterior overgrown with moss and ivy and interior thick with dust. Following some of the only signs of habitation, they are drawn to a haphazardly sorted magical library, governed over by an eidetic but scatterbrained construct that calls itself "The Index". Left in charge of the house and mentally overburdened by the sheer number of things that need "sorting", the party will either need to seek help further afield or make themselves useful in crossing a few things off the construct's hastily scrawled to-do list.

Adventure Hooks:

Other tasks on the to-do list include "deal with greenhouse infestation" which will see the party dealing with a foul-tempered fey and it's giant insectoid pets, and "Check on Pinky, basement?" which involves rescuing The Index's pintsized mechanical sibling form a pile of barrels that've pinned it down in the cellar for months. The More tasks they clear off the list, the more clearheaded The Index becomes, allowing it to field their questions and even propose solutions given enough research time.

One section of the List is " Dust the Garnet landing, 3rd floor, CAUTION". Investigating finds the players infront of a fancy mahogany door that doesne't seem to make sense with the surrounding architecture, a bowl of eternally fresh fruit, and a small placard that translates itself into their native tongue that says " You have stumbled upon a landing of the infinite Staircase, if you wish to return home, enter the door and retrace your steps. If you seek something more precious than home, return to the stair and begin walking in the direction you set out in. Rest here if you must, walking the stair is dangerous, you will tire but you will not be able to sleep." Evidently Archmage Motteheaper's home intersects with some kind of "world between worlds", which may lead the party out into the greater cosmos later on.

After The Index's mind is cleared and Pinky is Recovered, the two will ask the party a favor: Neither of them know where their creator currently is, an their other siblings are scattered all about. If the party could help reunite them, perhaps together they'd be able to figure out where the Archmage has ended up.

Background: Like many powerful arcanists, archmage Minerva Motteheaper juggled many responsibilities, from advising the town elders on matters of state, to defending the region against arcane anomalies, to solving the problems of those who'd come to knock on the door of her stately manor. Eventually it all became too much for one person to handle, so Minerva built a series of constructs to help her with the day to day tasks so that she could focus on the things important to her. Several years ago however, the duty-burdened archmage said "fuck it" and teleported away, leaving her mechanical servitors to keep things up in her absence.

Treasure Hunt: Tomb of the Iron Horse

“Progress charges ever forward, heedless of the losses that came before. Competition is the whip that spurs it onwards, greed is the blinders that keep it from wavering.” 

-Darrow Mueller, founder of the Ironhorse railway company, memoir

Setup: Folk still tell stories about the disappearance of the Iron horse, a train carrying a fortune in gold coins that went missing, engine, crew, and all before reaching its destination.  The treasure it carried was intended to be the warchest for an ambitious land speculation scheme, buying out homesteaders, tribes, and towns alike to pave the way for the railway company’s expansion into the region. In most tellings of the tale of the iron horse, The train-crew realizes what they were carrying and decide to take an early retirement though this version fails to account for how the train itself managed to disappear. Others prefer a more fanciful yarn where a dragon swoops down and collects the train the way an eagle catches a snake, though the more practically minded would tell you that the train never left at all, and that the whole debacle was really a way for the soon to be dissolved Ironhorse company to forestall their creditors. 

What ACTUALLY happened was this: like many of the successive railway companies that had attempted to expand across the frontier, the Ironhorse company made use of rail laid down by a defunct competitor KL Industries, who’s maps and surveys it had bought up when that company exhausted its capital. KL industries like many exciting new startups did not keep very good records, such as the numerous failed “ghost tracks” they ended up pouring investor money into only to run into dead ends caused by poor management and cutrate surveyors. 

A gang of outlaws tried to rob the iron horse but botched their assault and ended up killing the train’s crew, inadvertently setting the engine onto one of these ghost tracks, hurtling into the wilderness with no one aboard who knew how to slow it down. This ghost track happened to lead to an old mining camp that’d been converted into barracks for KL industry rail workers, abandoned after the company dissolved. The runaway Ironhorse flew off its tracks, demolished a few of the condemned buildings, and ended up at the bottom of a canyon too deep for anyone to find it…. for now at least. 

Hooks: 

One of the partymembers has a cousin, great with numbers, bad with people, who’s gone to work as an archival clerk in the big city. Raised on tales of the frontier, they’ve had a pet fascination with the Iron horse since they were a kid, and have slowly been untangling the circumstances behind the train’s disappearance since they were tasked with sorting through the assets of the now dissolved railway company.  Seeing what no one else has seen for decades, they’ve traveled out to give their favorite cousin a lead on what could be a monumental find, provided their more capable kin is willing to take them along on what might be the adventure of a lifetime. 

Like everything else in this story the mining camp, site 6, was the product of capitalist folly, in this instance a mining concern that set up in the middle of nowhere and collapsed soon after What they left behind was an unstable warren of tunnels and an array of barracks and workhouses that failed to even meet the bar of being a company town. These ruins have become the nesting ground for all manner of badlands monster, but will need to be navigated if the party wish to spare themselves an endless series of climb up and down the canyon to bail their treasure out by the bucketload. 

Drafting an Adventure: A death at dawngrace

The rampage of some winged beast has brought you into the service of Syr Volias, an experienced knight errant who has sought you out in hopes of putting an end to its far ranging carnage. It is early spring, and your party follows the thaw up the side of the mountain to an old ruin which surveils the surrounding valley.   So far the ruin, and your quarry, remain beyond sight. 

A new DM asked me if I could walk them through the creation of an introductory adventure; combining not only a solid first questhook but also incorporating my advice on session zero, party formation, and the fundamentals of dm storytelling. This adventure prompt is the result, serving not only as a tutorial for newer players, but a teaching example for new DMs as well. It can easily be run as a oneshot, used as a launching point for a greater story, or (for those of you who have some adventures under your belt) seeded into an ongoing game as a sidequest. The structure of the adventure is fairly simple, so rather than slathering on extraneous detail I’ll be going in depth about WHY each section of the adventure happens the way it does, and what purpose it serves in turning a group of scattered players into an invested adventuring party. 

We begin with the party already gathered and on their way up the side of the mountain, providing everyone (including the DM) with a clear direction for the action. What are we doing? we’re heading towards the ruin, and all we need to worry about at the moment is taking actions that lead us closer to it. Similarly, this adventure provides the players with direction during session zero, as they know vaguely what they’ll be doing on this outing (hunting a beast alongside a knight) and what sort of characters they might be playing: who would sir Volias seek out for aid? What have they done to earn themselves reputation as monster hunters? Why did they say yes? Using these sorts of ideas to guide character creation gives you a cohesive group identity right from the get go without having to bend over backwards to get the party together.

Monsters Reimagined: Fiends

I know I’m not alone in really disliking d&d’s alignment system, but I seldom see anyone talking about how its rigid and arbitrary simplicity really hamstrings the game’s moral mythology. 

Look no farther than the alignment based outsiders: clockwork beings of order, reptilian creatures of chaos, ineffective angels of good ( we’ll get to all of them) and today’s target of contrition: the laughably obtuse servants of evil. 

Today I’m going to explain why the way that demons and devils in d&d are so poorly implemented, then a few different ways they could be changed to enrich your campaign. 

TLDR: The great wheel cosmology is dumb and is holding you back from any nuance in your worldbuilding. There should be no one central hierarchy that all demons and devils fall into, and instead there should be numerous hell dimensions throughout the planes that all operate independently.

If you want to maintain the distinction ( which I could take or leave), demons are the manifestations of various cruelties, evils, and miseries of the world that have festered for too long. Devils should go back to their roots as tempters and punishers of mortals, existing as a counterbalance to angels as the protectors of mortals, and the messengers of the gods.   

(Spewed this onto reddit earlier, figure I'll post it here, too)

Doctor Octopus, the Villain Tribal leader, who is clearly designed to lead a villain tribal commander deck, doesn't have the color identity to run some of the villains he frequently leads in the comics. This is GENUINELY a major negative point for the set to me. There's only two tribes of note here: Spiders and Villains. And Spiders get a 5-color commander (Even if he seems like a lazy one) and villains get someone who can't run Electro, Hobgoblin, Jackal, EITHER VERSION OF KRAVEN, Lizard, Sandman, Rhino, etc. I will point out that Doctor Octopus' ORIGINAL sinister six, the ones in the art of "Behold the Sinister Six," was himself, Vulture, Mysterio, Electro, Sandman, and and Kraven. And he can't even run the Unstable villains because They're all Rakdos. Maybe in the Avengers set will get a five-color Baron Zemo or something and I'll get The Masters of Evil, but Cosmic Spider-Man shows they CLEARLY knew people would want a 5-color Spider-Commander, and yet they DIDN'T LET US MAKE A SINISTER SIX DECK!

THEY PRINTED THREE Doc OckS AND A Superior Spider-Man! AND NONE OF THEM CAN LEAD THE SINISTER SIX.

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Overhauling Exploration with the Illuminated Room System

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Despite playing D&D for over 20 years, every so often I'll encounter a bit of DM advice that completely changes the way I run my games. When it happens, it often feels like I've discovered a way we were always SUPPOSED to be playing, solving a problem that I'd had for years and sending me into a rage spiral about why no one seemed to figure this out back when I was first learning the game.

Lo and behold, two of my favourite online DM channels happen to hit upon the same idea mere months apart.

TLDR: To improve the efficiency and clarity of our exploration based gameplay, we should borrow from videogame UI design which makes it easy for players to know what to do by highlighting things players can interact with. From there, escape room design takes over, as interaction reveals new information, challenges, and puzzles. 

More ideas about how to use this system (and my own ideas about spicing it up) under the cut.