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extracting value from a small handful to a few dozen families in exchange for seldom delivered "services",

letting their lands fall into disrepair while living in fleeting luxury and toadying up to those with actual power,

constantly coveting the holdings of their neighbors and contriving schemes to increase what they own,

fully willing to ruin people's lives (incluidng hiring mercenaries/the authority of the state) if they think the land you live on would be more valuable used some other way.

Then just slap a fantasy filter over your own worst landlord stories and let your party deliver catharsis on your behalf. In my own example, there was the time that I and my fellow broke college students humble villagers were living in a cramped apartment with too many stairs fronteir logging settlement high up in the mountain valleys, which was probably illegal given that it wasn't up to code in any way left off the royal tax register so the lord could pocket all the money. When we had moved in settled there, it had been owned by one of the most widely known landlords in town most prestigious noble houses in the realm, but after a year or two few generations it got handed off to his shitass "handyman" brother who never fixed anything without explination an idolent second son who was denied his larger inheritence. The land lord never awnsered complatins about the mice monsters, the total lack of heating or cooling harsh seasons, or the mold problem creeping sickness and would only show up without warning every couple of months years to make changes no one had asked for. Things got very bad near the end when he alternated between not collecting the rents for months years at a time and trying to intimidate us into moving out for playing him... all because as he turned out he had forgotten how logging into his bank/email worked under the infuence of a minor demon of sloth.

I’ve read up on why (in the original dnd manual kobolds looked like weird lizard dog people and afterwards some creators focused more on the lizard aspects while others focused more on the dog aspect, which resulted in some creators depicting them as any random animal they like) but in folklore kobolds are literally just the German version of gnomes, or the Scandinavian nisse/tomte.

They are both small and dress like the peasant class of their respective countries, they both have the ability to transform into animals and inanimate objects, though they tend to change back pretty quickly suggesting they don’t have the “stamina” to keep the illusion up for long, they act as house helpers and protectors but will turn nasty if disrespected sometimes going so far as to burn the whole house down, and they also work on ships both as helpers and bad omens. The ship thing overlaps so much that if you look up ship kobold or ship gnome (skibsnisse) you get the same pictures.

The only big difference I could find is that folklore kobolds are also known to work in mines, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you get some mine nisse/tomte in Norway or Sweden that I just haven’t come across yet. The Danish nisse variant is also known to have a wide variety of jobs like farmer, church helper, scribe and miller.

My general impression is that folklore kobolds are sliiightly meaner gnomes but not by much, so while I’d never tell fantasy kobold fans to change anything about their beloved creature, if I were ever to make a fantasy world I’d depict them as the bad boy relative of the nisses who are very close knit with humans, even living with them, while kobolts prefer more unsavory or unrefined humans and naturally encountering dwarfs more often in the mines, and have tomtes live in nature with more close relations to wild animals but still relatively close to humans and put them all under the species of gnome.

And then artists and writers had to flesh these stat blocks out and distinguish them in the lore, leading to an explosion of fantasy creatures that were more than the original "magical little folk" or "brutish minion." One interesting example is the gnoll, which began as a vaguely defined monster "gnole" in a Dunsany short story. The name was justified as some sort of gnome/troll hybrid, before writers used it for demon-worshipping hyenafolk.

Drafting the Adventure: What you’ll need before you set out

A friend recently asked me how I prepare for my sessions, and on a larger note, how I prepare for my campaigns. Ironically I wasn’t prepared for this question at all, so I ended up making an absolute hash of describing my process. In formulating my answer for a second attempt, I realized I had a pretty good guideline for those who want some help in the tricky sections of building a campaign.

So this is for my friend, and all those DMs out there that want to improve their storytelling skills. I can’t promise this’ll be the awnser in every case, but just like using plot structure to plan out a book, it’ll provide a scaffolding on which you can improve and improvise through your successive drafts. 

(Since this is mostly a writing guide I’ll presume you’ve found yourself a gaggle of players who can play semi-reliably, you’ve already agreed upon a system, and are now looking at pitching them a game. ( Check out the Brilliant Matt Coville’s video on pitching campaigns HERE) )

What you’ll need first: 

An Idea for what your players are going to be doing during this campaign. ( The Centeral Gameplay Pillar) This is one of the most important things that I almost always see new dungeonmasters skipping, mainly because they’re so excited at the idea of playing ANY d&d that they presume that the default “Catchall Generic Fantasy Adventure” is a strong enough premise to sustain an entire campaign. It’s not. By trying to include every spice on the spicerack your writing ends up a confused mess and your players end up creating characters that conflict with one another on thematic and even genre levels. This IDEA is also not reliant on the STORY: what your players are doing and why they’re doing it can be two related concepts with one inspiring the other, but even if you don’t have the story on lock at this point ( and you shouldn’t) you need to know what the primary mode of gameplay is going to look like.

 For a few media examples:

Lord of the Rings is a story about TRAVEL, with every new adventure being a new region the fellowship needs to get through in order to reach their goal, navigating hazards unique to that terrain in the process. The lore, the thematics, and the brewing battle between Sauon’s forces and the forces of good? All of those are emergant from the process of traveling.

 The Witcher is about MYSTERY, with Geralt being confronted with an unknown threat and being forced to figure out how it’s killing, why, and how to overcome it. While the franchise does include grand politics and world ending threats, Geralt always approaches them as someone who needs to gather clues and work out true motivations before he can act. 

The Mandelorian is about BOUNTYHUNTING, with every new job bringing a new series of challenges that Mando needs to face off against. Rather than sussing out hidden motivations, our heavily armored protagonist generally has all the information he needs, the fun of these hunts comes from seeing just how things go wrong when he’s forced to take stupid risks. 

Comb through your notes and inspirations and find that central gameplay pillar, even if it only happens a few times over the course of your campaign: Big Tactical Setpiece battles are great to punctuate the different acts of your game, where as the rest of your adventures can be about the diplomacy and logistics that determine where and how those battles are fought. A piracy or heist game only needs a few big scores, with the remainder of the adventures being about acquiring the tools/information necessary to pull it off, and the ensuing fallout once the plan goes awry. 

Once you have this central pillar established, THEN you can pitch your party on what the campaign is about, including details like the setting or genre or level of grittiness. Players are going to make wildly different characters if you pitch them on a retro scifi travel game, than if you pitch them on a gothic horror bountyhunting game, than if you pitch them on a classic fantasy dungeoncrawler, but its important that they’re clear on what they’re going to be doing before they start brainstorming their role in it.

 Also note that  not all players are a genresavvy as we DMs, so be sure to be upfront about what’s involved in the central pillar, include a few teases at hypothetical adventures along with your pitch, so they can get a feel for it. 

Heist: The Commodore’s Manor 

Setup:  Overlooking village port on a high and forested hill stands the decrepit home of an old naval officer, foreboding and lifeless like a taxidermied vulture. 

Shunned by the townsfolk as the domain of a murderous hermit, the party is drawn in by rumors of horded wealth, gathered decades ago by the commodore while out plundering foreign shores. The miser hasn’t been seen in months, and surely the threat of a mean old man or the haunting of his stubborn specter  isn’t enough to scare the players away, is it? 

Adventure Hooks: 

When he was a younger and livelier man, the Comodore would descend from his lofty perch to drink with the fisherfolk, sharing a mug of grog and boasts of his glories at sea.  When he was deep in his cups, he’d boast of the fine treasures he’d secured, holds full of ivory and gems, rare spices plundered from ports all over the world. He’d slyly insinuate that however rich he’d made his superiors, he’d always stached the lion’s share for himself in some clever hiding place, and would have his drinking companions attempt to guess where the spot may be. 

While none have directly laid eyes on him in months, some folks report catching glimpses of a strange light burning in the manor’s tallest tower, while others report a man’s shape moving behind the boarded up windows. It’s all the stuff of small town ghost stories, and the local gossips are happy to share grisly imaginings of the lonely miser being driven mad by his own pride, eating rats as his only sustenance or crawling about on the ceiling like a thing possessed. 

Campaign Starter: Adventures in the Golden Valley

First off, I want to congratulate you on making the plunge into DMing, the world needs more people willing to run games for others and I wish you all the luck in your endeavors.

That said, I'm going to caution you against trying to plan a campaign all the way to 20, as a) most campaigns don't last that long b) it's a lot of work c) trying to plan ahead for what's likely going to be months or years of gaming is going to introduce an undue amount of rigidity into the story you end up telling d) concentrating too much on parts of the campaign your party might never see will distract from the parts you’re actually about to show them.  

If you’re feeling shakey, I’d suggest looking through a few published adventures and deciding on what you’d like to run, or if you’d like to run something that’s a Dapper Original: Following the framework I laid out in this post for starting from scratch as a DM

Our Story is set in Haldervine, a fortified town presiding over a seemingly peaceful valley with deep tensions underneath. Haldervine was once ruled by a noble who gambled all his holdings and treasury away on a raucous bender, but decided to hob off to the countryside to become a bandit rather than paying his debts. This has left the valley divided, and the current ruling family in a bit of a lurch as they try to fix things in the valley despite the resentment of their populace.

In our First Adventure: the party has been hired out by a priest in service to the ruling family, who’s seeking evidence that the Dawnfather shows them favor and is seeking an omen of this in a rather dangerous cave.  Following THIS model of first time tutorial dungeons, the party ventures into the darkness to find a glimmering flower and return for their reward.

Second Adventure: An introduction to the region, and general low stakes questing that involves meeting some lovable npcs for the party to relate to.  Save someone’s farm from monster infestation,

Third Adventure: A raising of stakes, pretend that they’re out on another low-stakes adventure to the countryside escorting a merchant wagon but then have their duties interrupted by a gang of bandits looking to rob them and those they travel with. This skirmish might end in a standoff, or in one of their charges being taken hostage. Out in the countryside they’ll need to regroup at the nearest town and then do their best to suss out where these brigands are lairing, only to discover that part of what they stole from the merchants was infact  a trap laid by the ruling family.

Fourth Adventure: Fresh off their latest victory against the bandits and given a little time to rest and recouperate, the party is asked by a vistiting wealthy merchant to explore an abandoned village at the outskirts of the valley in hopes of finding what happened to their missing nephew. While exploring the region, the party encounter a maddness spreading monster that takes the form of a mare, surrounded by a gaggle of villagers ( and a missing merchant’s scion) that have become ensnared by its nightmarish aura. Doing the best they can to perform this rescue mission, the party report back about the beast and find themselves appointed with the quest of slaying it before it can abduct or devour another village.

Fifth Adventure: Here’s where the real adventure kicks in, as deep in the mountains a mystical assassin has just ousted a secretive order of pyromancers from their hidden sanctum. Above the party’s notice to be sure, until they come to collect their reward for hunting the mare monster to find the noble that they’ve been trying to get in good with held at knifepoint by one of this assassin’s minions.  Things all kick off from there depending on the party’s actions: the noble might be killed with the rest of their family blaming the attack on the bandits leaving the party to investigate on their own, the party might save the noble’s life and be rewarded with a keep of their own, they could goad the assassin into all out war at which point making peace with the bandits might be the only way to stave off his assault.

Ally: Sally Watzerface, Diva of Deception

“My Teacher once told me that the art of playing a role was one of understanding want. Once you understood what the character wanted, what the audience wanted from the character, and what you wanted from the audience it was only a matter of occupying that intersecting space and moving through it as the role required. A shame that the folks around here have taken that lesson a bit too closely to heart. The old fool was wrong about most things, and I’d hate for anyone to live out an eternity in one of his misconceptions.”

Setup: The artist who calls herself Sally Watzerface is a very good liar, Good enough to do it professionally. Beginning her career as a rising theater star, Sally realized her calling lay beyond the stage when she began to notice that the suspension of disbelief that audiences extended to her when playing a role seemed to carry on long after the curtain had fallen. So long as she acted the part, no one would doubt her authority when garbed as a constable, or suspect her intrusion at a family function if she passed herself of as a befuddled and travel-weary second cousin. 

As a starving artist is unlikely to look a miraculous gift in the mouth, Sally transitioned from actress to conwoman to freelance spy, passing herself off seamlessly as long lost heiresses, foreign dignitaries, and trusted courtiers in the process. Having amassed a personal fortune and a sizeable list of knowing and unknowing allies over the years, Sally mainly acts for the sake of indulgence these days: Returning to the stage for old times sakes or living out farcical little lives that collapse under their own lack of credulity after just a few days. As she’s grown older, Sally has begun to wonder just where her gift came from.. and what might happen to her life should it leave her just as suddenly as it arrived. 

Adventure Hooks: 

The party is likely to encounter Sally as she’s acting as proxy for some rival or neutral party, hired to stick her nose in where it doesn’t belong. Her presence makes for a great red-herring in a mystery, one that the party can turn to their advantage when they realize that the actress’s excuses don’t quite line up to reality, but her ability to bluff the unwitting is second to none. 

The Watzerface moniker was taken on in tribute to the actress’s love of cosmetics and disguises, which greatly allow her to stretch the roles she can play. What’s more, Sally has learned to temporarily bestow her gift onto others by helping them get “ stage ready”, wrapping them up in her inscrutable aura after an hour or two of affixing paint, prosthesis, and hair pieces. If the party needs to perform an infiltration, it just might be worth hiring Sally and sitting through her lengthy postulations on the art of acting while she does their makeup. 

Something has been….. off, about Sally’s gift recently. On recent jobs she’s had her veil of illusion fail as soon as she’s walked “ off stage”, or lost herself in a role so deeply that she’s forgotten all about her life outside of it for days at a time. What’s worse, several of Sally’s previous offcast identities seem to have taken on lives of their own, being sighted going about their buisness in faraway settlements, and in one case actively hunting Sally down wondering who this “imposter” is. The party may be hired by one of these old-roles to hunt Sally down, only to discover that their quarry is the real thing and their employer is a fake.

Writing Mysteries for tabletop games

It’s no wonder I’ve had a lot of requests for how to write mysteries, compelling adventures that account for the party’s choices are hard enough to write on their own, to say nothing of what happens when the challenge you’re having them face off against is meant to be a brain teaser.  Mysteries are difficult to get right, too obvious and it’s not a mystery at all, too difficult and your session will run up against a brick wall. Finding that middle point isn’t just a matter of gearing the numbers a certain way or preparing the right number of clues, it requires doing a certain amount of work to understand the story of the mystery as a mechanism both in its initial construction and in how it’s presented to the party.

Characters: At it’s core, solving a mystery is a character study, how the life of a perpetrator led them to have a particular set of drives and restraints, and how a very particular set of circumstances led to those drives running wild and destroying other people’s lives in the process.

The cast: notice how the previous entry referred to characterS? A mystery is an ensemble piece and since a person can generally remember up to seven things at once, it means you get to include up to seven detailed or semi-detailed characters to play with in your drama (including victims). That isn’t to say that there can’t be bit players in your story, but its a good idea to associate them strongly with one your main cast. For each major character you either have to give them a reason why they’d want to commit the crime, or a piece of evidence that ties them directly to it. Likewise, they all need to have a secret/hidden motivation, which will guide how they act as the mystery proceeds.

Placing clues: mysteries leave clues like a bomb leaves shrapnel, with the tricky business being that a good portion of it ends up buried in the wall and it’s hard to tell which bits are the bomb and what parts are just the mundane objects that got caught up in its explosion. Again, following our rule of 7, we can further set out that about half of the clues at each stage of the investigation will be hidden, while another will be obvious, while separately 2/3rds of the clues are going to be either red herrings ( complete dead ends) or only be helpful in fully discounting one of the suspects.

On the Clock: Taking a page out of my own advice when it comes to running a fancy ball, you’re going to want to have your mystery plot occur over a strict timeline, which will change who’s available to talk to and what clues are revealed over the course of the investigation. Generally time sensitive evidence will be worth more, while evergreen evidence will exist to provide context to other clues, or need to be paired together to make real progress. Shifting the timeline along also means that NPCs can enact their own plans, whether it means pursuing their own investigation, altering, uncovering, or destroying evidence, or attempting to escape.

Wheels within Wheels: Often mysteries are nested together, as the fallout of one wrongdoing goes on to provide the motivation for another. A party who’re investigating will likely receive evidence that’s a jumble of their main mystery and its nested mysteries, and by solving these lesser steps the party can either shed a light on motives or help discount other avenues of search.

Consequences: Just like every other d&d adventure, one of the most important steps is making the party care about the adventure and its outcome. They have to be at risk of losing something they care about, or have already lost it and are looking for revenge. This can be anything from a promising job opportunity, their reputation, an npc they enjoy the company of, or their own freedom. Likewise, you need to have an idea what happens if the party fails to solve the mystery. How does it affect the heroes, or the characters that are part of the mystery, or the world at large?

Adventure: The Curse of Captain Bledheart 

“ You are marked, Pirate” spat the priest, clutching his symbol to the wound, even as his heart’s blood welled up to stain his cassock. “ May the waves be stained by your passage, so that every beast and brigand on the seas may know your cruelty no matter how far you try to flee from it. May you drown in the blood you have cast your life to shedding.” 

-Tales of Captain Bledheart, volume 3: The Gutting of port Garth 

Setup: No recounting of infamous pirates is complete without Captain Ruford “Bledheart” Braddock, the so called “Vampire of the Lapis Sea”.  While not in fact undead, the Captain’s love of grisly cruelties was legendary, attacking targets without the promise of plunder and leaving behind mutilated victims to spread his dread even further. 

The greatest of these savageries culminated in the sack of a temple full of townsfolk that had taken shelter from one of his raids. Bledheart cut down everyone inside, but not before suffering a terrible curse at the hands of one of his victims:  whenever he set out to sea, the hull of  vessel would begin to bleed, befouling the waters and causing all manner of misfortune to befall his crew.  Sickness plagued the ship as the bilge and lower decks filled with blood, which  also trailed out, attracting all manner of predatory beast which harried the already weakened pirates. Finally, the blood itself refused to disipate on the water, creating a miles long trail that could be followed by rival ships or navies looking for revenge. 

It was a flotilla of these vengeful vessels that finally did Bledheart in, tracking him back to the cove he was sheltering in and overwhelming his fatigued crew with righteous ferocity.  Since then, the Captain and his curse has lived on only in stories, a literal and thematic stain on the legacy of those who’d seek glory and adventure under the black flag. 

Adventure Hooks: 

While traveling along with a trading vessel (either as passengers or crew), the party awakes one morning to find that their wake has turned red, staining the sea behind them and already attracting hungry sharks. The curse of Captain Bledheart has struck them without explanation, and they must find the cause before something worse than sharks finds them.  In truth, one of the packages carried by the ship contains the splintered remnants of Bledheart’s flagship: the Dirge, salvaged from the ocean bottom and smuggled aboard to be sold to a collector in the next port.  If the players fail to identify the source of the curse by sundown, the ship will be attacked by a sea monster, forcing them to beach themselves on a nearby island to repair  and give them time enough to sift through the red-stained hold. 

Since his infamous defeat, the heart-and-droplet crest used by the sanguine captain has been used as a brand of shame by the brethren court of pirates. Those who commit heinous deeds against their fellows, or deemed to savage, too bloodthirsty to trust on a crew are branded with such a mark, showing their untrustworthyness to any employer. One such marked is Cossetta Corvo, an aspiring seaborn sadist who’s hit upon the idea of recruiting the outcasts into a crew full of killers and reclaiming Bledheart’s legacy for herself.

The Cove where Braddock and his crew met their end is today known as “Lamprey Bay”, both for the numerous bloodsucking creatures that live there, and for the fact that at low tide, the waters still turn red with the remnants of the old captain’s curse. Rumors of Bledheart’s great treasure persist, and though the area was picked mostly clean by fortune seekers long ago, there’s still a chance the party could find something by discovering some hidden seacave, or diving down to the wreck of the Dirge, far below the hungry waters.  

Adventure: On the Hook

Sometimes it’s biting off more than you can chew what gets you, sometimes it’s the lil nibble that signals trouble down the line.  

Adventure Hooks: 

Seeking transport across the waters, the party has negotiated a meeting with a amenable captain to set sail during that evening’s tide aboard his ship “The Able Hook”. When they get there however, they find a vicious gang has taken over the ship in the dark, and is curling hauling the captain’s slaughtered crew out into the bay before absconding with the ship and its cargo. This brutal act of stationary piracy was intended to happen fast and brutal, with the pirates escaping on the same time the party was supposed to venture out on. 

With a grisly multiple homicide dropped into their laps and thier travel plans thrown into complete chaos, the party will need to decide between alterting the authorities, or taking the Hook themselves and venturing off wherever they might be going.  This decision might be made for them as the orcish Firstmate Phruma pulls herself from the water, scarred, half bled-out, and looking to avenge her crewmates.   Phruma will steer the party towards taking vengeance on any of the pirates who might have escaped, as well as whatever larger organization put them up to the bold-as-brass act of attacking a ship while docked in a semi-respectable harbor. 

Each of the murderous pirates bore a similar mark on their body, sometimes resembling a squid, sometimes a jellyfish, sometimes thunderbolts descending from a stormcloud. Different designs to be sure, but a clever eye can pick out the hidden sign contained within. Several more nautical adversaries will bear this brand in the future, all ruthless, all in service to a mysterious cabal working out of a dangerous stretch of reefs and atolls in a stormwracked stretch of sea. 

Setup: The Pirates that attacked The Able Hook are agents of a group that calls itself the Hungering Gyre, who trace their lineage back to a band of raiders and warrior mystics exiled from their homeland. In the centuries since they were forced to settle on an out of the way archipeligo  the gyre has evolved into an insular cult, venerating strength above all and extracting tribtue from the freebooters who seek shelter in their shoals and pay them to keep storms out of their path. Recently however a new factor within the Gyre has turned its ambition to farther climbs, actively recruiting pirates to their cause and forcing them to swear oaths of fealty, converting their onetime clients into vassals. 

In the longterm, the Gyre seek to cultivate enough fear and funds as they can in order to create a pirate armada, one strong enough to claim a stretch of land for their own and defend it against the maritime powers, rather than simply sniffing after scraps on their plate. To this end they will murder stabalizing factors among their local pirates, as well as assassinate priest of other sea gods in a hope of drowning out other voices. At the pinnacle of their hubris, they will attempt to summon seamonsters and other monstrosities to decimate their foes, giving rise to any number of horrid creatures transplanted from the depths that’ve outlived their original purpose and have since gone rampaging.  

very often i see players only stating one of these. either “i wanna open the door” or “i cast firebolt on the hay bale.”

D&D is so bad at teaching you how to play it that we often don’t realize how bad it really is until you start to consider that the basic language for taking actions in the game is something the players will be interacting with WAY MORE than they’ll even be rolling dice.

I as the DM need to be able to adjudicate whether or not dice need to be rolled and what DC they’re going to need to obtain their goal. Letting me know your intent lets everyone get what they want.

All of this of course comes out of the days of adversarial play, where you had to sucker the DM into saying YES to your bullshit plan before putting it into action, so players learned to keep their cards very close to their chest.

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?

Advenure: Hunger for Knowledge

“ I don’t care if they’re first editions, forget the books and RUN.” 

Setup: The monastery at Galsenhill is widely known as one of the greatest repositories of the printed word on the continent, home to ancient scrolls and agust tomes collected by pilgrims or secular scholars and given over to the holy brothers and sisters of Galsenhill for safe keeping.   

Generations the monks guarded their library, through civil war, disastrous fire, and even the marauding of a biblophilic dragon.Nothing it seemed could part them from their sacred charge, atleast until a pack of some several hundred hungry grey wolves suddenly appeared inside the monastery’s walls, slaughtering monks at their whim and seemingly intent on claiming the monastery and its shelves as their new den. 

Now homeless, with almost a third of their order either dead or missing, the Galsenhill circle scatters in hopes of finding someone who can free their monastery of beastly occupation.

Adventure Hooks:  

Players run into a monk named Lixana at a local tavern, road weary and near penniless save for the charity she’s been able to beg, she’s not stopped traveling long enough to clean the mud, spilled ink or splattered blood from her robes.  She’s more than happy to relate her story, and even happier if the party could spot her the coin for a good meal, a bed, and a hardy mug of beer. She can’t offer them much in the way of reward herself, but is sure that there’s a fortune in furs to be had if the party escorts her in her mission to rescue some priceless volumes from her wolf-infested home. 

Old Count Marseille is marshaling his forces for a full out war on wolf kind. Not only has his family supported the monastery at Galsenhill for generations ( a prestigious honor), but in the weeks since the initial slaughter, the beasts have begun striking out at the surrounding farmsteads, having exhausted whatever prey they could find on the monastery’s grounds and now striking out for more food. Facing down a battalion of starving wolves is not the Count’s idea of a good time, so he’s happy to pay well for sellswords to bolster his ranks.  

Somewhere in the monastery’s archive there is a book, an ancient velum tome bound in monstrous hide and written in a primal elvan tongue. This book is the memoir of a long passed archdruid, detailing the various spirits, beasts and enchantments they encountered in their long tenure, intended to act as a guide for their successor. One of the chapters details the archdruid’s clash with a curse-flinging spirit named Saevis, who delighted in tormenting farmers and others who would put civilization above nature. The wolfpack was summoned when a scribe began the work of translating the book, inadvertantly activating one of the curses Saevus had placed on the tome in order to protect his secrets. 

Mini Dungeon: The Desolate Climb

Adventure hooks: 

With a large journey looming, the party will need to make a decision as to whether to take a large detour around a chain of impassable mountains, or utilize a notorious dungeon as a shortcut. The decision to go by way of the dungeon could shave weeks off their travel time, but will involve a brutal gauntlet of climbing and fighting as they ascend the ancient towers hundreds of floors. 

A map has fallen into the party’s possession, claiming to present the location of a fabulous treasure secreted away by a master thief before her capture. The only rub is that this thief was an Aarakocra, and the bird-folk had no need of denoting WHICH of the floors she hid her stash in. 

When attempting to teleport back to a spire or other ancient building, a mishap strands the party half way up the Desolate Climb and scatters them across differing floors. With no way to get their bearings, the heroes will have to regroup and fight their way free. 

Random Encounter: The Old Door

“….please, please, take pity on a poor wretch, just a crust of bread, just a splash of clean water, please, I beg of you….”

Adventure Hook:  While exploring a dungeon, ruin, or other derelict structure, the party hears a weak voice calling to them through the dark. Originating from an innocuous but highly secured door.  The voice claims to be a prisoner, kept captive for long, miserable years by the cruel masters of the dungeon. Wavering and shaky, they plead for the party to seek out the key needed to free them, or even for a little food and water to ease their wretched fast.

Setup: The door is not what it appears, as careful inspection will reveal a warping in the surrounding stone as if the slabs, bricks, or other surrounding matter had been pushed aside to make room for it. Though the wood and reinforcements of the door are old, they do not match the style or exact weathering of the surrounding structure. Likewise, there is a constant cold breeze trickling into the door, like a continuous intake breath. 

The prisoner is similarly suspect, as no light will penetrate the depths of the sell (they claim that this is part of their torturous imprisonment) and all that can be seen of the prisoner is the pale, reaching hand that extends through the slat at the bottom of the door.   While the prisoner knows many secrets about the dungeon (and freely trade them for promises of aid), they are very spotty on their own name, the date, or even the countryside outside the dungeon, steering the conversation away from such matters, or blaming their spotty memory on the horrors they’ve suffered while imprisoned.

As you may have guessed, this door is a trap, a devious portal to the shadowfell that appears surreptitiously in dark, abandoned places and attempts to bait delvers into opening it. If appeals to mercy fail, the “prisoner” claims to have some treasure with him, scattering a few gold coins (of an unknown make) before the slot in hopes of preying on the adventurer’s greed. Getting through the Old Door is easy, is weak enough that any serious attempt will pull it from its corroded fetters, the lock is easy to pick and will secretly mold itself to fit any key.  

When opened, a great wind blows through the dungeon corridors, snuffing torches, knocking the adventurers off their feet, and sucking anything not nailed down ( including said adventurers) into the realm of shadows. 

Drafting the Adventure: Spelljamming

It’s been a while since I penned my initial thoughts on sailing the astral sea, and since that time, a few things have changed:

WoTC revived the setting with kickass art and not much else, disappointing just about the entire fandom and yet again requiring us the players to do the design work for them.

I binged all of @dimension20official‘s “A Starstruck Odyssey”, which not only got me really hype to run a space game but showed me a mechanical basis on which it could function ( seriously friends, go watch Starstruck)

 My Friend group decided to rewatch Treasure Planet, one of the formative pillars of my love of fantasy, and it got me thinking about how amazing the concept of space-pirate-fantasy is. I am and always will be a slut for cosmic wonder and there’s just something about the combination of these concepts that makes my brain come alive.

And so, I’ve decided to take a crack at overhauling Spelljammer, partially to bring it in line with my own version of the d&d cosmos and partially because as a game designer I can’t help but stare at all the negative space WotC gave us and imagine various possibilities. Mine’s not going to be a be all end all, and just like every homebrew fix I encourage you to look at different options until you find one that feels right to you and your table.

Now, below the cut I’m going to go into things about the spelljammer setting and specific mechanics I think will be useful, but before I do I’m going to give you folks a little preview of my opinions by going off on a meaningless tangent:

WHY THE HELL ARE SPELLJAMMING HELMS CHAIRS? No really, think about it. Apart from the fact that “Helm” specifically refers to the wheel and steering apparatus of a ship, the fantasy that spelljammer is supposed to be pulling from is nautical adventure; steely eyed captains masterfully piloting their vessels along the edge of a storm, the ship and their body pulling as one against the elements. The decision to make the helms chairs that channel magic rather than a wheel that requires sill turns the act of cruising through the cosmos into a mostly passive act, which I suppose mirrors the design decision to not actually require any input on the part of the jammer’s crew in order to sail it.  It’s not even that the designers were trying to emulate other popular sci-fi properties like starwars/trek, because despite the fact that people sit down while piloting in those settings, ships have an entire crew manning different stations and doing things. It’s almost like in trying to simplify a complicated game system, WotC decided that it would be better to remove ANY chance at interesting gameplay rather than put out a rules system that wouldn’t please everyone.

D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."

I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?

Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.

I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn't think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.

Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.

anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times they’ll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.

they’ve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.

Like I'm sorry to tell you, but if you keep playing shit that tells you some races are inherently evil and deserving of eradication, then yea. That will absolutely seep into your subconscious beliefs and worldview.