GamesMaster Notes

I'm quite pleased.

We're now two decent sessions in to ym Dragonlance 5e campaign and we've covered a good amount of ground. The players are successfully getting into the system, learning the background, etc, and I've been very pleased to see them react just right.

At this stage, having replaced the Innfellows entirely (those characters no longer existing in the timeline, the party have reunited after five years of wandering searching for evidence of the old gods still left in Ansalon. They reunite in Solace to discover not only they they have each found something. Each has a piece to a puzzle which leads them to Xak Tsaroth, fearful of approaching armies they have all heard are coming from the north. Armies of DRAGON-men.

Their first encounter with Draconians they found very interesting, and they were suitably very shocked when they started turning to stone or exploding! The party are now VERY concerned that those Draconians were pretty damn tanky to start with, and theres evidence of armies marching around.

Thankfully they were too amused by Fewmaster Toede, so he survives to annoy another day.

We’re a couple of months away (maybe) from the start of my Dragonlance 5e campaign, and I’ve pretty much got the last of my planning down for it. I’ve got monster lists prepared, Draconians sorted and ready, and with one exception my players have character concepts which we’ve fitted neatly into the world and found the best locations for them. We’ve also established a few stories for their earlier adventures, and I’ve rewarded them with some abilities and special equipment for their efforts. All is good!

My final bit of planning is of course the story.

Continuing to put my notes together for my upcoming Dragonlance game, and I turned my attention to the basic enemies for at least the first few chapters of the story.

As I explained previously, the party will be playing new original characters, but taking the place of the Innfellows in the main narrative. The Innfellows (Tanis, Raislin, etc) will be gone, entirely removed from history, and new heroes will play their parts in history.

I’m getting all of my notes together, because come 2020 I will be running a D&D campaign which will likely be a long running one - Dragonlance!

THis is one of my favourite settings, as I remember reading the old novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman when I was very young. I can probably credit them with the first tiny spark in my soul which eventually became a fully fledged tabletop roleplay and D&D enthuasiast. So having the chance to go back to them and run the original Chronicles story - the opening trilogy in what became hundreds of novels in the setting - is fantastic.

This is the basic briefing on the world I’ve so far given my players:

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THE WAR OF THE LANCE takes place in ANSALON, a continent on the world of KRYNN. The world's major gods are the High God and his children: good Paladine, neutral Gilean, and evil Takhisis, opposed by Chaos, who seeks to destroy Krynn. Evil chromatic and the good metallic dragons are things of legend, and tied to the gods as divine beings. Humans are Krynn's most common humanoid race, but Elves, Dwarves, Kender, Gnomes, and Minotaurs occupy the world as well. Clerics derive magical powers from their gods, and wizards derive their power from the three moon gods.

At this point in history, it has been three hundred years since the Cataclysm obliterated the great empire of Istar and changes the entire surface of Krynn. The Age of Despair followed, during which the gods were entirely absent, having left behind the world they felt had abandoned and shunned them. The disrespect of the Kingpriest went on, ignoring the thirteen warnings sent, convinced by his own hubris that only he – a mortal – could defeat evil.

The gods sent a “fiery mountain” to completely destroy Istar and the Kingpriest, the impact shattering other areas of Ansalon, drowning some areas and raising new mountains. Following that, contact with the gods was cut off entirely.

So.

I just published my first two short adventures on DMs Guild.

Hopefully these will be the first of many as I get my style and format just right, but I’d love to get as much feedback as possible from anyone with experience as a DM or player. If any of you are willing to give them a look and let me know what you think, I’d appreciate it!

(And also maybe spread the word and get other people to pass on any feedback too!)

The Metamorphic Cloud

Someone asked a question on Reddit, and being really bored while packing for a trip, I did some working out to answer their question.

And worked out how to turn a D&D character into a Tarrasque.

It also just works as a way of defeating a Tarrasque.

BEHOLD:

There are a lot of gods out there, and the available Paladin Oaths cover quite a few of the more combat-ready ones. But what about those Paladins who serve gods of other, less fighty things?

What about the gods of trade and commerce?

Here you go:

A recent idea that I’ve fleshed out into a simple guide. I’m thinking I’d love to throw this at the DM Guild at some point, maybe start getting a few of my other past modules written up and on there too. Before that though, I’d love to get some feedback on both the general concept and on the presentation as I’ve written it up here.

So if you can, please do have a look and let me know your thoughts.

https://www.scribd.com/document/383643772/The-Dungeon-Builders-0-3?secret_password=2spWeXGWkQMnm1zFxcVL

Here’s the concept: the players become the Dungeon Builders.

This guide is designed to help putting together a quest/adventure string in which the player characters are tasked with the job of building a dungeon like those they as adventurers have been through before.

They are tasked with designing, gathering the materials, actually building, and at each step they essentially find themselves engaging in more adventures to gather what they need. They find themselves opposed by enemies and monsters. They find themselves on a deadline because of approaching danger.

For the past three months I’ve been running a limited run Shadowrun game for my regular rpg group, and with it coming to end I thought I’d share a final thought.

I’ve played Shadowrun on and off since second edition. Its a game, rules set and setting I’ve always loved and always wanted to go back to. It was actually my very first RPG back when I was first getting into the hobby, so its always had that special place in my heart.

From the start, the rules were never the most streamlined. I remember looking through the FASA versiosn of the rulebook and thinking that agic just looked far too complex for me. I was young, and I preferred gun-carriers as characters anyway, so it wasn't an issue.

But as the game has progressed into the Catalyst game Labs fifth edition, it has gotten worse. Other games such as D&D have streamlined after going through complex past editions, but Shadowrun has overcomplicated things to the point where it affects and slows down gameplay and make sit hard as a GM to manage it all. My group of five players were all using essentially a different complex rules set, with their own list of potential actions and ability rolls, and in some cases their own sets of attributes that only they have.

I was dealing with someone in the Matrix doing things unique to them, somoene in the Astral Plane again performing unique actions, and three characters in the real world doing the more mundane violent stuff. Except one fo them, who was also remotely operating vehicles.

Fifth edition is well made, and reasonably balanced, but far too complciaed a game to run on the short term. Its a game you need to study and learn, maybe even take an exam and give a presentation. Its not a game you can just sit and play without too much effort, nor do i think its particularly good for new players with little experience either in this system or to RPGs in general.

Shadowrun Fifth Edition is a game you need to invest time into getting right. The whole system feels like it was built by people who liked previous editions, and continued the trend of the existing system. They made a game not for all players and to draw in new ones, but for people they assumed were like them and wanted the same, but more.

A Paladin.

Sworn to gods such as Shinare (Dragonlance god of wealth and trade).

Whose Oath is to Contracts.

I’ve toyed with this idea in my mind for a little while, and wanted to put some thoughts into words to better refine them before I put together anything more concrete, but the general premise is quite simple.

Rather than storming through a dungeon in pursuit of loot or some great treasure, the party of players (preferably higher level) are tasked with the construction of a dungeon.

Here’s the starting point - the players have been given, entrusted or have found something/ Something extremely dangerous which needs to be kept secret and safe.

They either have their own ideas or have been told though that the item is either too valuable to be lost (either for historical reasons, or because it might be needed one day), or it is somehow completely indestructable (either by design, or perhaps the blessing/curse of a god).

Maybe mix that up - say the object is given to them by an oracle who says it will be needed one day, and it must be hidden so that only the chosen one can find it when the time is right.

What we have though is a simple proposition - it is an item that people will want. Something people will hear about in legend and will seek out. And the party, unlike their normal kinds of adventures, are to be paid (or have accepted the noble quest) to find or build a place where it will be safe.

I think you see the general premise I’m setting up here. Player characters - in character - having to construct a dungeon.

The concept came to me while thinking about where all these dungeons in the world must have come from, and an early concept of higher level adventurers simply deciding to retire their old magical items.

In this case, they would see it as fitting that the items be hidden in hard to find places so that future adventurers would come across them, just as they themselves had.

In order for this kind of adventure to work of course, the player characters would need access to resources, but if the amount of gold they have is insufficient, I’d imagine they can find creative ways to get hold of what they need.

Things like digging and consturction can be handled either by the strongest in the group or by the spellcasters, and perhaps those of more combat orientated leanings cna set themselves the task of capturing (not killing) some kind of beast which can sit as the guardian of this dungeon, with help finding and tracking such a beast from their Rangers or Druids.

Rogues of the group can set themselves the tricky task of setting up the traps within, whilst any Bards can perhaps set themselves to writing and fashioning the legend of this place that will inspire the adventurers of the next age.

I quite like the idea of this perhaps being the adventure that seals the lid on a group of player characters who have achieved Lv20, and are maybe considering retirement, but can just as easily see it as a stand alone adventure for higher level characters at any stage of their progression.

It can even be an overacrhing storyline, putting the party on other adventures to to either find the resources they need or simply to study the mechanics of other dungeons to see how their traps and mechanisms work.

Maybe the party will need to rescue a Wizard who knows a certain spell to keep the place hidden. Or perhaps a Cleric who can bless or curse certain elements.

The potential is fairly broad, and one I’ll be looking to forming into a specific guide I think. I’m going to start writing this idea up and then I’ll present it out there to see what other people think.

A couple of years ago I ran a fair length and in-depth Deathwatch campaign, and for it wanted to put together some more unique foes for my team to battle against.

Deathwatch is a fairly interesting system based on Fantasy Flight’s percentile system which they used in Dark heresy, and refined a little for this squad-based rpg. It is extremely combat heavy, really assuming that almost everything you’re doing is going to be a fight of some kind. you are afterall genetically enhanced warriors, who entire lives are defined by contant battle.

In setting up a game of then, what you’re basically doing is planning extended combat scenarios. A battlefield into which a single squad ventures to achieve a goal.

I’m a player of Warhammer 40,000, and since their first released have always had a Dark Eldar/Drukhari army. They are my main force, and probably always will be.

So in running Deathwatch, they are who I wanted to throw out as my main enemy for my players to battle. I set up a city to explore, and populated it with cowering civilans and these vile pirates torturing them.

I had to invent the stats for the Dark Eldar though, and this is what I came up with for the units I used:

And to go along with that, some basic weapon stats:

Something I’ve found as a quick and simple way of engaging players in a fresh new world is to base that world on something familiar. Take something, a genre or franchise, that players have a decent grounding in and translate that world into a fantasy setting, replacing the characters and, places and attitudes with those from D&D lore.

The example I’ll use is one I set up, but never actually had the chance to run: Babylon 5.

So lets be clear, I’m not talking about running a sci-fi game, or a game set in the babylon 5 universe.

I’m talking about using the themes and ideas from the show/universe as a template for a fantasy realm. By doing so, players can come in and already have a good idea of how races act and interact with other. They get an idea of the politics, the dangers, and the characterizations of those around them.

For those who unfamiliar with the show, it came about shortly after Star Trek: Then next generation, and was based on this singular space station called Babylon 5. Humanity had engaged in a war with a vastly more powerful race called the Minbari, who at the very last with Earth in their grasp had surrundered for mysterious reasons.

The two races come to peaceful but strained relations, and the station is built as a nuetral place for them and other races to meet and discuss diplomatic matters. Many races would send ambassadors there as a sort-of UN kind of organization which would eventually become a galactic allience.

The Station

Translation the station itself is quite easy. It becomes a singular city standing either at the border of multiple empires, or in unclaimed territory. Many races or empires send ambassadors there, so thats why you have a vast cosmopilitan population with an understanding for respect for each others cultures in this one place.

The station needs easy fast travel, so we put in next to a river, and the station orbited a planet with a mysterious device on it, so we have a nearby mountain containing.....something.

Humans/Mimbari as Humans/Elves

Humans are easy. They’re Humans. Humans are everywhere.

But their war against the Minbari requires a high race in the grand scheme of things with a somewhat “better than you” attitude. Great, thats Elves.

We can even break down the caste system of the Minbari into different Elf types - High, Wood, Eladrin, Drow, etc.

So in our fantasy setting the Humans and Elves first meet, and engage in a war in which the humans get absolutely wrecked, until the Elves suddenly stop. The reasons for that can follow along the lines of the show (Elf souls reincarnating as Humans, so they can;t kill their own) or take a new path of your own choosing. Regardless, the Human and Elven nations find a way to come to peace.

Centauri/Narn as Dwarves/Halflings

Two of the other main characters of the show are the ambassadors from the Centauri and Narn peoples. The Centauri had occupied the Narn homeworld for a long time before recently withdrawing (in the first season), so we get two races with a dislike for each other.

The Centarui are a high race, not as high as the Minbari/Elves, but still at a decent level, who have had many long years of dealings with Humans and a decent trade treaty. So my thinking is that they would be the Dwarves, slightly imperialistic translated as the Dwarven monarchy.

The Narn would need to be a race who were oppressed despite a long cultural history. Its a slight tweak from the original concept, but my thinking is Gnomes or Haflings, mainly based on thinking of what race the Dwarves COULD subjugate.

Other Races

Other races, such as Teiflings, Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, and whatever else can stand as simply other races who inhabit the station and have their delegates there.

Shadows

The undead. A simple, unending and powerful foe. Simple.

I play video games, and was a big fan of the Legacy Of Kain series started by Crystal Dynamics and Silicon Knights, later taken up by director Amy Henning at Crystal Dynamics and turned into a grand epic piece of storytelling. At the time of release, it ewas one of two series of games I could gaurantee I would preorder and pick up on release day, and if there was a special edition I would pay out for it. As I write, there is an action figure of Kain sitting on a shelf next to me (the annoying McFarlene one which with a face that looks nothing like the character). I liked it. A lot.

So with that in mind, I’ve often tuened that way in looking for inspiration for some of the D&D campaigns I’ve run. If you’re unfamiliar, the basic premise is that in the fictional realm of Nosgoth, an ancient threat is kept out of the universe by a monument called the Pillas of Nosgoth. They become corrupted, and the vampire Kain turns out to be the only one capable (because of destiny) of saving them.

And is then foolishly given the chocie of whether to sacrifice hismelf, or rule the world in damnation. Thus kicking off a convoluted but incredibly well written time-travelling adventure. Its good. Look for it. Play it.

Recently I put out my ideas for how the Infinity Stones could work as D&D McGuffins, objects of great power which propel both a plot and the power level of the party who wields them.

With the Legacy Of Kain being a great inspiration to my past games, the central McGuffin of the Reaver blade is also an item I wanted to look at and bring in to my thinking as a D&D item. As such, those ideas are presented here.

Whats important to remember with the Reaver, is that it travels through time. Not by itself, its just carried there by various people, and keeps encountering itself causing serious temporal paradoxes. THe concept of a time travel game is one I;ve really wanted to have a decent go at, my past attempts failing because I was young, stupid and not planning it through very well. My players were also far more liberal and successful at engaging in travel to tiemframes I hadn't planned for. But tis still something I want to try again at some point, because the concept is open to possibility, and offers a really engaging quest for a group of players - to restore or improve a timeline. Maybe the classic “save the future”. I may write up some notes on that in the future.

Its fairly common amongst our community, but I’m a comics guy. I’m also a Marvel fan, and having recently seen Infinity War, yeah I like that.

Anyway, I got to thinking recently about the stuff I love, and the many fun little things in them that I’d love to share with my friends by bringing them into our games. The McGuffins which really make the great films, books, video games that I truly love.

So I started to think of how they would work, and thought I’d offer my thoughts on the obvious first choice - the INFINITY STONES.

Yeah, I know, I said Stones rather than Gems. But movie audiences, you know?

Anywho, these are my ideas for the stones - six primordial artifacts as magical items for use in D&D:

No Gauntlet just yet. i figure thats an item far too powerful to have on a table top, but I may add it at some point.

Let me know what you think!

This is a story from quite some time ago. I was still somewhat new to GMing and approached games from the perspective of a storyteller, laying out a tale that players were parts in.

I hadn't learned yet that games work better when players have agency, and are part of the storytelling process. THis was before I learned that a sandbox is much better to a linear path, and that steering the group rarely resulted in an enjoyable game for everyone.

This was a university assembled group, and some of the group were new to the game (which maybe makes it worse) so at their request I pre-prepared characters for them. In doing so, I crafted a world and also crafted specific characters within the current story of that world.

We had a nation under attack from a “Dark Lord”, and a contest for the throne. One of the party was specifically the rightful heir, and so became the centre of the quest. To see her proven and ascend to the throne, to save everyone. She had an official guard protector, and a collection of escaped prisoners to make an interesting partner.

But in making a world and a story in which they played roles, I “thought it would be cool” if one of the party was secretly working for the bad guy. Sabotaging the party.

The trouble this caused was that they were far too successful. It got to the stage where the party thought I was blocking them, because everything they did resulted in a barricade. The person they needed mysteriously died. The item disappeared or was broken. Their efforts came to nothing.

Eventually they got frustrated, and I was too engrossed in the “humour” to realise it, which i regret and learned from much later. They decided to abandon the plot I had crafted, which I got annoyed at, and made a line straight for the doom-fortress of the big bad guy. They would not be railroaded anymore, and forced a confrontation.

Ok I thought, if thats how they wanted it, fine. I prepared the final battle.

In the process of the game, I had agreed with the player playing the “spy” that they were actually possessed. They were being actively puppeteered by the big bad himself, and now that the party approached the fight, he would reveal his true form and take over the battle.

Here was the mistake. It became set up as a competition, because we had a boss actively trying to win. Its often a mistake for a GM to try to win the game by defeating the players, especially because they wield the power to shape the world, because it results in overpowered enemeies who aren’t fun to fight against. They’re not a challenge, they’re an opponent, and there is a real risk that they’ll be smart enough to win.

TPKs, Total Party Kills, are not fun. They end the game. They make every effort characters have made pointless, and every bit of character development goes out the window. Imagine your favourite televison program leading you down a story, a truly engaging and relatable story, and then suddenly every character dies without resolving anything. The hero who goes looking for a secret never finds it because they die, and as a result the audience (you, the player) never learns either.

Its not fun.

In this case I gave that power to a player, and let them stage an actual contest, with a chance of winning.

And he did.

One man with super evil powers against a party of five adventurers, still with great power as a GM might give a boss but with the added mistake of ambition - a drive to actually win.

I’ve talked with one or two of those players in the years since and gotten their response to my regret over this, and they;ve told me that at the time they weren;t overly happy with it either. The five players who did “lose” basically ended up agreeing amongst themselves that the ending I narrated after the big bad won was not “canon”, and that THEY had actually won that encounter by virtue of not screwing the other players over.

Even the guy playing the spy agreed.

It wasnt a fun or fulfilling resolution for the players.

What I learned from this has helped shape how I’ve run games since, and it came from a shift in focus.

Before, when I set up and ran this game, I had shaped a world and created  a story within that world into which I placed characters. My story, which I was telling, was about the world.

What I should have done, and what I’ve tried to do since, is make sure that the stories I tell as a GM are about the characters. I can provide a bowl into which the food goes, but the characters are the dish being served and which should be enjoyed.

My big bad, though I tried to stage him as an interesting character in his own right, was not the protagonist. He was the backdrop. Something for the player characters to learn about, but it was still the player characters who were the focus. It was their journey, and their story, which we (all of us as players, including the GM) were all telling together.

Something I haven’t touched on when talking about Shadowrun, is that you can effectively have three seperate combats going on at the same time, technically in the same place, that do not effect each other. And sometimes that can get weird and confusing.

The way Shadowrun works, is that there are three overlaying realities. They CAN interact, but with difficulty during combat.

First is the basic material world, where people are getting shot and stabbed. Then you have the Matrix - the digital world - which views the material as icons and files which can be interacted with but contains its own dangers and possibly combat.

Then you finally have the Astral Plane, the magical world which is basically the same. The material is seen as auras, and can be viewed or breached into, but again has its own dangers.

In a single combat, these three worlds move at the same pace with slight Initative adjustments, but you can have characters in all three worlds at once and it can become a bit.....confusing.

In a combat I ran in a recent session, we had a fight going on in the real. Two fo the party were engaged in a battle with a pair of armed assailants, trading fire across an apartment.

A third member of the team, a Technomancer, had only sent his Matrix self into the situations so was viewing th world via WiFi. He saw icons flaring as guns fired, and was in a position to hack into the enemy weapons and deactivate them.

The fourth member of the team was unconscious in the van outside, because her Astral form had entered planning to manifest and attack as a spectral form. She was able to move through walls, scout the area, and view the auras of the enemy figures, giving vital information.

The immediate trouble is setting up logical obstacles. My players are playing as Prime Runners - advanced characters with high level skills and equipment, but that doesn't mean that every danger they encounter will be similar. Not every opponent will have full magical/astral defences, as well as highly advanced digital firewalls.

I’m partially saying that, because setting those up is exactly what I did this time. But I know I will not get away with it too often.

The party were chasing a particular person, so I put him in a position where his magical roommate was able to Astrally project to defend in that plane, but he was also a hacker who had set up a series of custom firewalls that the Technomancer would have some difficulty getting through. This worked fairly well, reinforcing the reason the party were after this guy in the first place but also setting up a half-decent encounter. The enemy were still overpowered, but the desire to take them alive held the party back a little. So that helped.

But on topic, the slight difficulty was in keeping three worlds together, and dangerous, but also interacting. I always hate it when a particular character is kept out of a combat by being trapped in a corner. In any game, being trapped and immobile by one particular enemy who also doesn’t move has always bugged me when I’m playing, and thats the feeling I get for those trapped in Astral of the Matrix.

If you’re in either place, you can’t just be forced to fight in that plane alone, but then its too easy to go the other way and say you’re completely safe there, able to effect the material but with no danger to yourself. This is one of those times when you just need to find the right balance, and that means more than just power level.

You’ve got to keep the world logically consistant too. Every plane of existence needs danger, and when combat comes around you can’t have a place players can go and be completely safe from harm while still taking part in the fight. The fight needs risk,

But every world also needs to make sense based on where its already been established. Not every opponent will have full-on Matrix and Astral defences.

So there needs to be something else. Something else which makes the prospect risky, and prevents the Matrix and the Astral plane from just being the easy way.

I’ve got some plans brewing for my current group, and will make some notes on them when i reveal them in game (just in case).

But yeah.