#campaign module

The first campaign module for Beam Saber, Stardost Memento, is now live featuring great cover art by @bfleuter! Join the Jovangellian Resistance as they make one final desperate strike at the Norrish conquerors:

**OPERATION MEMENTO**

Atlantis! I'd love to see more underwater creatures, kingdoms, societies and cultures! Give me somewhere we can finally put sea elfs, sirens and tritons to good use! Make a kingdom that was submerged by water that is now threatened by pollution or some wild magic that the Surface is doing! Give me underwater magic! Give me Sea Sorcerers!!

Greek Polis! Show me how the Gods would react to mortals as powerful as them. Show me Spartans that refuse to use magic in their armies, give me Athens that uses magic to progress. Show me magic ships and the minotaur terrorizing everyone!! Give me Athena's Paladins and Hestia's Clerics!!

MAGIC. SCHOOLS. C'mon, guys, put Strixhaven to use!! Adapt it for middle schoolers and teens!! Give me novice wizards that have no idea how to use their powers, give me an enormous school that has so many hidden places and creatures that not even the founder knows about. Give me kids being kids while doing FUCKING MAGIC!! Do you know how feral kids would be if they could conjure fire at will?? BRING. THE. CHAOS.

Volcano Dungeons. Make that pyromaniac sorcerer freak out when their fireball has no effect anymore. Take the Fire Plane to their level, make it the most hot and dangerous dungeons. Get a active volcano and they have to run agaisnt the clock to get out before getting thrown out with a bunch of deadly magma and lava.

Defend the Temple. This time your players are on the other side of the story, they have to defend their temple from invasors. Give me Native Empires that are fueled by anger and grief and they are finally getting their revenge. Give me Aztec Gods, give me Inca culture, bring the Mayas back to life. Show the deadliest creatures from tropical forests, give me the Amazon's most fantastic animals (that might not be completely fantasy in the end)

Post-apocalyptic medieval cities! Show me abandoned castles, ruins old as time. How the fields and feuds were reclaimed by nature, how magic build up and took down empires. Give me beasts that are no longer recognizable from zoology books, give me fiends that have gathered thousands of souls from desperation. Show me forests that grew from the foundation of temples and building that were not touched again by nature, deemed evil.

AI test portraits of NPC characters from ‘The Grey Warriors,’ based on the Dungeons and Dragons module, ‘Out of the Abyss’. These were created using Midjourney on Discord. Featured are:

Prince Derendil, cursed elf prince trapped in quaggoth form (barbarian)

Eldeth Feldrun, shield dwarf fighter (her cartoon portraits crack me up!)

Fargas Rumblefoot, halfling explorer/rogue

Sarith Kzekarit, drow warrior (his close up is awesome!)

Broot, warforged juggernaut

Varan Fenhirel, half-elf ranger (the AI couldn’t figure out what to do with his hawk companion, lol)

Lucian Erenaeth, wood elf druid/ranger (I really like how the last portrait turned out, though it still needs work).

You can read the story here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35100307/chapters/87436915

or

I’m still here, just working on two separate campaigns, opening a second location at the restaurant I work at, the beginning of festival season and I’M BUSY AND STRESSED.

I’m not entirely satisfied with the layout, but I’m still working on fleshing out the major villains of the Fiend of the Fire Crags module and making slow progress. This should finish up Hrugor’s entourage and is a direct continuation of the last page, so next we’ll be visiting the criminal element that Gogrum has employed to keep his oppressive vice firmly in place around the Pyrelands.

Hey, still working on that campaign module, and I’m still putting work into fleshing out the villains before I build anything else. I feel like the most important ingredient to making a lasting impression with combat is to give the players a reason to care about that combat. You can have your players kill a bunch of faceless bandits and then have a showdown with their leader, but where’s the fun in that?

This is an example of the relationships between the lieutenants and their enforcers and allows us to see the many degrees of separation between the players and the villains at the beginning of the game.  In just the two NPCs we have Khor’s warband and the individual warriors that make up the barbarian horde. Above that is the barbarian lord himself, Khor, an overwhelming opponent in his own right. Above Khor is the shamed fire giant captain Hrugor, favored of the warlord Gorrum, and above them finally is Gogrum. This is just one of three lieutenants and just one of nine enforcers. Imagine the possibilities!

Figured I’d go ahead and stat these out since I’d mentioned them previously in setting material but hadn’t given the stats to actually put them in a game. 

As you can see, the crag hounds are basically reskinned hell hounds with some minor variations, but the dire crag boar is a whole other beast. This is the thing that Gogrum will be able to polymorph himself into in a pinch and it will make that fight so much more interesting. You finally get Gogrum down to his last 10 hit points and he polymorphs into fully ready to rumble. RIP. Alternatively, these can be encountered in the wild living in relatively peaceful sections of the crags. and I mean peaceful in the sense that they kill off anything bigger than a rabbit as soon as they find it. If you come across a section of the fire crags where you start to feel safe because you haven’t seen any signs of predators, you should probably stop feeling safe immediately.

Sooo I’ve been mulling a story line around in my head for a while and I’ve decided to write a campaign module using it as a base! I’m setting it in a region of the world that I haven’t given much attention to, and I think a lot of good world building is going to come from giving a single area so much attention. 

This is going to be the main antagonist of the first arc of the campaign, a powerful fire giant who controls a vast network of minions, pawns, and supplicants. You’ll start at the bottom in a small, remote outpost on the edge of Gogrum’s claimed territory dealing with minor thugs but will slowly work your way through the rabble toward a confrontation with the war-prince himself. Will you be able to free the Pyre Marsh from the iron-grip of the Tyrant of the Fire Crags? I’m excited to get to work on this so for a while a lot of the content I post will be themed for the campaign. As far as the transformation goes, the stats can be found HERE.

As always, questions and comments are welcome. I’d love to hear your thoughts.