Daggerford: Intrigue & Investigations

 Game Date: 10/31/2020

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 6

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:

Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter

Ezmerelda (Christy) Halfling Rogue

Khemed (Mike) Half-Elf Wizard

Neven (Steve) Elf Monk

Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

Boo - Neven's Riding lizard 

The Session:

We started the session in Cromm's Hold, and then traveled back to Daggerford.  After a tenday of downtime, we ran into Maechen, our guide.  We'd lost track of her when fleeing the dragon last session, and presumed she'd been killed.  Vanya asked her how she survived, but Maechen said we must have mistaken her from someone else.  This woman had no memory of meeting our party.

A few sessions ago we saw the execution of an evil wizard.  On a hunch, today we decided to dig him up.  "It's not grave robbing.  We're not going to take anything; it's grave voyeurism."  The body was still dead.  We looked for indications that the body was a clone, but the results were inconclusive.  He looked familiar, though.  In fact, he looked a lot like our party's wizard, Khemed.

We made an appointment to visit Daggerford's town wizard in seven days.  We saw town guards putting up wanted posters for a woman named Darwa Dalion.  We did some talking with various authorities, asking for more details about Dalion, and informed Sir Isteval about the Maechen's imposter.  Azul poked around and learned that Maechen was spotted in town while she was simultaneously leading us through the swamp.  

We rode out to the Florshin estate, to speak to Lord Darfin.  There was a lot of construction going on, as Darfin was in the process of building a home for the mentally ill.  Apparently madness has been running rampant in Waterdeep.  I wonder if that will be important later.

We poked around the estate, looking for clues about a recent murder in the library.  Our collective ears perked up when we heard about a fight that had taken place in the crypts.  Apparently some Red Wizards had stolen a key from the crypts.  Also, eight of their servants had been abducted.  

Our investigations led us to suspect the cult of Yan-C-Bin, an evil air god.  We headed back to Daggerford for more research.  Daggerford's priest of Lathander suggested we look for more information in Waterdeep or Candlekeep.  That didn't seem likely.  But Sir Isteval was able to give us more information about the stolen key.  Apparently there are four elemental keys.  Sounds like a good campaign hook.

We asked him about the remaining three keys.  He thinks they're somewhere in the Sword Coast area, and that the fire and earth keys might have already been found.  He also an idea who Maechen's imposter might be.  It was an old foe of his, a Rakasha named Nadir.  Why a Rakasha is so keen on meeting up with a black dragon is beyond our knowledge, but it's probably not good.

We believed our next step was to look for the water key, but we didn't know where to start.  While we waited for inspiration, a Duke came for a visit.  He told us that his sister had been abducted by the Baron.  He hired us to track down said Baron, and rescue his sister.  He was sending teams in three different directions to track down the Baron.  Our route was to lead us through an area called "Laughing Hollow", a canyon run by wild elves.

While riding through the snowy canyon, we encountered some mercenaries.  They fired some warning shots at us, and revealed that the Baron had hired them to keep us away.  We rolled initiative, and proceeded to kick ass.  Khemed took out two of them with a sleep spell.  Then Neven ran to the leader and pounded him into pulp.  Azul rode up to one, jumped off his horse, and skewered a merc with a dramatic dismount.

We finished off the last few, extinguished a burning tree (Khemed's work), and got back on the road.  The route became darker and scarier as we followed the Baron's path.  Ezmerelda suddenly fell asleep.  Vanya rode over to wake her up, when tendrils of grass suddenly started to entangle her and her horse.  

We heard giggling from the distance, and Neven went to investigate.  As he approached some dancing lights, Neven was hit by a sleep spell as well, but he was immune.  Three pixies materialized and started trying to calm Neven down.  They could only speak Sylvan, but Khemed had a Comprehend Languages spell.  They were asking for help.  

They led us down a path.  We saw a humanoid trapped at the bottom of a ravine, and a bunch of goblins were firing arrows at them.  Obviously the pixies wanted us to defeat the goblins and rescue the humanoid.  We had to end the session there, right before the battle was about to begin.

35 xp.

Fun With A 3D Printer

For my birthday I received a "Creality Ender 3 Pro" 3D printer, which I've mostly been using to make D&D paraphernalia.  It's got a sharp learning curve, and I'm not very good with it yet, but I've managed to make a few useful items.

First thoughts:  I can't wait until 3D printers are so commonplace that they just work out of the box, like an ink printer.  I had to build this thing from the ground up, and the included instructions are no help.  You pretty much have to watch a YouTube video to get it put together.  It took me about an hour to assemble it.

Keeping it working is also a bit difficult, as you're constantly having to relevel the bed and other minor maintenance.  It's kind of a good thing that you have to assemble it yourself, because it gives you insight on to how it all works, which may help you fix it in the future.

D&D miniatures are particularly hard to print.  This type of printer simply isn't designed for such tiny details on one-inch-tall miniatures.  My luck has been mixed, but I've made a few decent minis.  The hardest part is placing supports.  

Mini with Supports

Unless a mini's hands are on its hips, then chances are it will need supports to print correctly.  Otherwise, when the printer gets to the layer where the hands start, the hands would be floating in mid-air and won't print properly.  Supports are basically scaffolding that lead up to suspended areas, which you cut off of the mini when it's done printing.  The slicer software you use to prepare the 3D model can add supports automatically, but it sucks at it.  It's better to add them manually, which takes some practice to get just right.

And then if your settings aren't right, or the filament is too old, or the stars are aligned improperly, your print will fail.  If you're lucky it will fail early, because the nozzle was clogged or bed wasn't leveled.  But you could also be 20 hours into a 22 hour print when it suddenly conks out.

Printer Fail, or Time Warp?

And that's another thing - 3D printers are sloooooow.  Most of my miniatures have taken about an hour to print.  My condition rings take about twenty minutes.  But anything of substance takes hours.  The biggest print I've done so far took seventeen hours, for a dice tray that was only 6.5" x 7" x 1.5".

The pics below show some of the better results.  I still have work to do on most of these prints.  I still need to shave off some of the excess filament and paint them.

Condition Rings for D&D Battles

Lots of Condition Rings

Dice Tower, Overhead View

Dice Tower

My 17-Hour Dice Tray

Xenomorph Miniature

Partially Painted Sleeping Bags and Campfires

Many Minis Preparing for Painting

A Somewhat Stringy Samus

Green Knight in Search of Sir Gawain

Gandalf the Green

Partially Painted Pussycat

If the Joker Used a Hit Point Tracker

Sorcerer Spell Tracker

Bard Spell Tracker

Hogwarts

Hogwarts

Hogwarts

Hogwarts

Dice tower in action:

Anyway, so far I suck but I'm having a lot of fun.  It's a very time-consuming toy, and with all my various interests, it's going to be along time before I'm an expert at it.  But that's fine with me.

Daggerford: We Bravely Turned Our Tail and Fled

Game Date: 10/3/2020

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 5

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:

Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter

Ezmerelda (Christy) Halfling Rogue (absent)

Khemed (Mike) Half-Elf Wizard

Neven (Steve) Elf Monk

Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

Boo - Neven's Riding lizard 

The Session:

After taking a long rest in the top floor of the temple, we started down the stairs.  At the bottom was a hallway with several doors.  The hallway was damp and smelled like rotten eggs.  We opened the first door we came too, on the East side of the hallway.  There was a water basin, being filled from a spout shaped like a dragon.  The room was otherwise clear.

We detected a hint of conjuration magic coming from the water basin, but found nothing of interest.   Neven drank from the fountain, and it healed him.  Back to the hallway, and Neven checked a door to the North.  There were ten stone sarcophagi standing against the walls.  Then Neven checked the South door, to find a mausoleum.  

Waiting in the hallway, Azul saw a small statue in an alcove, and it started speaking to him.  It identified itself as Doug, a temple guardian.  Doug offered to give Azul a blessing, and told us that it hoped we would clear out the temple.  He also warned us that the other temple guardian wasn't as nice as he was.

Neven opened another door, and found ten more stone sarcophagi.  He looked at another alcove, and there was a small statue of a female elf.  The statue started cursing at Neven.  We decided to accept Doug's blessing, but he hit us with some radiant damage and cursed at us.

The door at the West end of the hall contained more sarcophagi, and we turned South.  In one room we fought a gray ooze.  It did some major damage to Azul, and damaged his armor, but we finished it off pretty quickly.

Khemed turned invisible and scouted ahead.  As he went down the South hallway, he could hear drums and chanting.  The hall finally opened up to a cave, full of Lizardfolk cultists.  He used a message spell to convince some of the Lizardfolk that they had been chosen by their god, and attempted to convince them to fight each other.   

Unfortunately, he rolled low on his deception check, and they ignored him.  He came back and informed the group, and we formulated a plan.  Neven was about to try talking to them, but Khemed fired a Chromatic Orb and got the battle going.

Khemed put one to sleep right off the bat.  Azul and Neven blocked off the hall, creating a chokepoint.  Vanya fired a Shatter spell into the crowd of Lizzies, killing two, and leaving two more hurting enough for Neven to finish off.

Neven and Azul finished off the final conscious one.  We tied up the sleeping one so we could interrogate it.  Then we took a short rest, then proceeded through a secret door behind an altar.  We found an old, rotting chest, which contained a leather pouch and a silver hand mirror (which Vanya claimed).  The mirror was enchanted to make the viewer look younger.  We double-checked a fire beetle cave behind us, then proceeded West.

A bridge and another stairwell opened up into a huge cavern, partly filled with water.  In the South was a frolicking dragon wyrmling, along with the Lizardfolk queen.  From what we could tell, we were interrupting some sort of ritual.  

Azul tried to convince the wyrmling to attack the queen, then Azul and Khemed fired at the queen.  The wyrmling's parent swooped into the room and fired acid at the party.  We were not ready to face an adult black dragon.  Vanya used Mantle of Inspiration to help the party flee, and we all escaped the the cavern.  

We picked a different direction - up a waterfall, and into another passage.  In one side passage, they encountered a carrion crawler.  It got the jump on Neven, who was paralyzed by one of the attacks.  Azul picked up Neven and tossed him into the river.  He then fell down the waterfall, where Khemed pulled him from the water.

The crawler followed us as we fled back down the waterfall.  It paralyzed Azul, but Neven ran up and finished it off.  Azul found a Ring of Acid Resistance in the crawler's lair, and we resolved to leave the temple.  Again.

We made it a couple of miles before nightfall.  We then encountered the friendly Red Feather tribe of Lizardfolk.  They took us the rest of the way to Cromm's Hold, where we gave our report.  We had a couple of days of downtime, and ended the session there.  

XP: 290

Daggerford: What Goes Around Comes Around

Game Date: 9/19/2020

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 4

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:

Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter

Ezmerelda (Christy) Halfling Rogue (Absent)

Khemed (Mike) Half-Elf Wizard

Neven (Steve) Elf Monk

Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

Boo - Neven's riding lizard

The Session:

Today we jumped right into battle.  We started in a small temple, fighting several diseased Lizardfolk.  Once they were dead, we examined the room more closely.  There were several fire beetles in cages, and a very dirty altar.  After cleaning some of the garbage off of the altar, we saw a depression shaped like a sun.  We continued to explore the temple.

We opened the door to one room, and saw a throne made of lizard skin.  Two giant lizards appeared and attacked, and we killed them.  There was a feeble Lizardfolk cowering behind the throne.  He told us he was a poor old advisor, forced to serve an evil Lizard Queen.  He said that the disease is due to a curse on those who defile the temple.

The Lizardfolk told us that our wyrmling's father was in this dungeon.  The black dragon is working with the Lizard Queen.  We weren't too anxious to face a black dragon, and decided to head back to town.  Our Lizardfolk ally told us it wasn't a good idea to take our wyrmling back to town with us.  We decided to get close to town, and send someone ahead to inform them of new pet.

We headed back out through the swamp.  After a few hours we saw a dark mound in the distance.  As we got closer, we realized that it was part of a boat.  There were several skeletons tied to the ship, and they were moving around.  We killed the skeletons and explored the ship.  We found three pages of music in the ship's cabin.  Vanya played the music on the sheets, and while incomplete, found it to be a masterpiece.

We continued to climb upward into the belly of the ship.  We found some coins from another continent.  In the crew quarters we found a crystal doorknob and a wooden box.  The box contained a worm with a humanoid face on each end.  We closed the box and kept looking around.  We decided to spend the night in the crew quarters.

In the morning we resumed our trek.  Soon we heard a loud shriek, as a black dragon attacked us from the air.  We tried to hide, but there wasn't much to use as cover.  The dragon landed and demanded his offspring.  Azul relinquished the wyrmling and had a conversation with the dragon.  The dragon offered Azul a job as a soldier, which he turned down.  The dragon allowed us to live (for now), and flew off with its child.

We kept trekking through the swamp.  Eventually we came to a ruined gazebo.  It was round, made of white stone, and covered in vines.  Inside was a statue of a female elf, pointing North.  We noticed that there were no insects in the gazebo, and Neven's lizard mount refused to get near it.

The statue was labeled "Aelinthaldaar", but none of us knew who that might be.  We decided to camp there.  The weather was getting cold, but we marched on.  After a few hours, we reached a lake with a temple on it.  We had made a circle.  Some party members gained a level of exhaustion while crossing the frigid river.

We went back into the temple.  The first door we opened led to a room full of stirges.  They swarmed Neven, but Khemed took them out with a sleep spell.  In the stirge room, we found a dead halfling.  We asked our Lizardfolk friend several questions about the layout of the temple, and he told us there were two more levels beneath us.

We opened a few doors but mostly found ruins.  We disturbed some centipedes, and Vanya took them out with a shatter spell.  (That was probably a bad idea, but her rationale fit her character.)  In another room, we found a statue of a black dragon.  In the library we fought another stirge.  In another room, some green slime fell onto Azul.  He shook it off and we burned it.  Neven found a robe and holy symbol.  

We finished exploring the ground floor of the temple, and the only place to go next was down the stairs.  Some of us were suffering from exhaustion, so we decided to barricade ourselves in a room and take a long rest.  We ended the session there, on the same floor of the same temple where we started the session.

XP: 455 each

Daggerford: How To Train Your Dragon

Game Date: 9/5/2020

Location: Roll20
Campaign: Daggerford, Session 3

System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:

Azul (Cliff) Dragonborn Fighter

Ezmerelda (Christy) Halfling Rogue

Khemed (Mike) Half-Elf Wizard

Neven (Steve) Elf Monk

Vanya (Matt) Half-Elf Bard

Boo - Neven's riding lizard

The Session:

We received word that a black dragon was attacking Cromm's Hold.  They needed volunteers to ride to the hold and help out.  Naturally, we all volunteered.  We rode through a storm, arriving to find the hold recuperating from an attack.  We had missed the dragon by a couple of hours.  The dragon had demanded a specific relic - a blue coral altar, which the Baroness relinquished.  After the dragon left, the keep was attacked by some lizardfolk.  

We poked around the keep, helping out, and studied the dead lizardfolk.  They were oddly deformed, and did not appear to be from either tribe we've encountered so far.  We stayed at Cromm's Hold overnight, and had dinner with the Baroness.  She told us about another magic altar located at Elorfinder's Estate, which is Northwest of Daggerford.  She believes the two altars might be connected somehow.  

But for now, we were asked to investigate the black dragon's lair.  They gave us some Potions of Greater Healing (4d4+4).  In the morning, a woman named Maechen approached Azul, offering to be our guide.  She joined the party and led us into the swamp.

As we were trudging our way through, Maechen spotted a large constrictor snake, blocking our path.  We attacked it from range, killing it before it knew what hit it.  We pressed on until it got dark, then set up camp.  During the night, a group of large lizards attacked.  We took some damage, but we got them all knocked out.

Maechen spotted some ruins.  Esmereld and Neven accompanied her to investigate.  They saw a humanoid figure standing guard.  As they got closer, it started bellowing in Orcish.  Soon we were in a fight with some orcs.  After taking a few out, we entered the ruins, and faced more orcs and a shaman.  

The shaman hit Neven with a fear spell.  Khemed calmed one orc with a Charm spell, and Maechen finished it off.  We kept taking them out, and more orcs joined the fight.  Vanya finished off the shaman with a Shatter spell.  Azul hit three of them with his lightning breath.  

We noticed that the orcs looked like they might be half-Orc, half-Dwarf.  After the battle, we found a large egg.  We figured out that it was a black dragon egg.  After much deliberation, we decided to take it with us.  Unfortunately it started hatching as we were rigging up something to take it back.  Azul convinced it that he was its mother, and we decided to lead it back to town.  

We hiked, we camped, and we hiked some more.  Around noon we came to a large lake, with an island in the middle, and a small structure on the island.  We knew it was a bad idea, but we decided to check it out.  We discovered that the structure was a shrine to Lathander.  It contained an altar covered with four fire beetles.  Khemed turned invisible and went in to investigate, and saw four lizardfolk waiting in ambush.  They appeared to be deformed in the same way as the lizardfolk who attacked Cromm's Hold.

We ended the session there, right before a possible combat.  We received 100xp each, for a total 1004.  

Upcoming battle:

Remembrance of Rules Past

The transition from D&D 4e to 5e was pretty easy, mostly because 4e was such an oddball system.  If they'd been more alike I might have had a harder time remembering which rule belonged to which system.  But for me, 5e feels more like a simplified version of 3e.  It's like 3e is chess, 5e is checkers, and 4e is... I don't know, Warhammer.

I can't say I miss D&D 4e.  It was so mechanically structured that even roleplay scenarios felt forced and unnatural.  But I do like certain concepts enough that I would gladly still use them in 5e.  Heck, some mechanics were so popular that many tables continue to use them without even realizing those rules no longer exist.  

One thing about 4e is that it was so hated, that the 5e design team went out of their way to disguise anything that made it similar to 4e.  Like how you spend Hit Dice instead of Healing Surges now.  And 5e has dozens of abilities that contain the text, "Once you use this ability, you can not use it again until you have completed a (short or) long rest."  What a wordy way to say "Daily Power" or "Encounter Power".  Imagine how much ink they could have saved if they weren't afraid of using 4e terminology.

Or look at 4e's Standard/Move/Minor action economy.  To me, that is the standard RPG action economy, and I would probably use the same thing if I designed an RPG.  5e allows you to do approximately the same number of things on your turn, but it's just phrased more vaguely.  In 5e you can move and take an action, and some of the things that used to be minor actions are considered part of moving.  

Remember Double Moving?  In 4e, you could substitute lesser actions for greater actions.  So you could move again as your standard, or do a minor action instead of your move, etc.  You can still move as your action in 5e, but you have to call it "Taking the Dash Action".  If you actually use the words "I'm going to Double Move" in 5e, some pedantic snot will explain that that's not a 5e thing, and frankly I'm tired of trying to get blood out of the carpet.

And don't forget "Bloodied" - 4e had a lot of special rules that would trigger when a creature's hit points fell below half their maximum.  5e has a couple, but instead of having a word for it, it just says "when you are below half your hit point maximum" or some such.  Plenty of 5e players still say "bloodied" today, despite the term not appearing in the PHB.

I've been looking at various RPGs and picking out rules I really like.  I'm not saying they would all work in 5e.  And if I were to piece them together into one big Frankenstein's RPG - well, they probably wouldn't all complement each other.  But hell, it's my blog, and I'm going to babble about standout rules that I liked from 4e and other RPGs.

Square Fireballs (D&D 4e) - Look, 4e's system of magic was kind of silly, I know.  But admit it: You never had to argue about whether something hit or not.  If it said "area burst 3 within 20 squares", you knew exactly which creatures were affected, no protractor required.  You never had to say, "Well, this part of the circle looks like it takes up about three-eighths of the square, does that count?"

Flanking (D&D 4e) - The thing about flanking is it just feels natural.  If you gang up on an enemy, you expect a bonus.  There are math reasons that it doesn't work well in 5e, though.  Plus it defies their goal of keeping 5e's combat rules light.  

Holding or Delaying an Action (D&D 4e) - A lot of people are surprised that this is no longer a thing in 5e.  Like flanking, it was probably kept out for simplicity's sake.  But I've also heard it was because delaying actions complicates effects that last until the end of your turn.  As a DM, I would still allow it, within reason.  If nothing else, in the first round of combat, I'd allow PCs use it to rearrange their initiative order.

Called Shot (Various RPGs) - I haven't seen this since 3e (though there was an unrelated 4e feat by that name).  If a PC wants to target a specific body part, they can take a penalty to their attack roll.  Some 5e DMs allow their players to make called shots at disadvantage, but the designers discourage it.  Personally, if the player's desired effect was within reason, I might allow it.

Minions (D&D 4e) - 4e had single hit point enemies called minions, meant to annoy you with their numbers rather than to challenge you on a one-to-one basis.  1HP kobolds don't seem so weird, but when you got to higher levels, it was kind of odd to see minion Ogres and such.  But as a DM, I liked not having to track the hit points of creatures that weren't supposed to last very long in the first place.  Plus they were a great example of the "Conservation of Ninjitsu" trope.

Stat Generation (Pathfinder 2e) - I can't tell you enough how much I like the way stats are generated in P2e.  Your stats come partly from your ancestry, partly from your class, and partly from your background.  Given my personal vendetta against rolling stats, it's nice to have such a great system hard coded into the game's mechanics.

Initiative (Shadow of the Demon Lord) - There's a lot I like and don't like about SotDL, but it has one of my favorite systems for determining initiative.  No rolling, just a semi-structured way of letting people go in whatever order they want.

BFF / Rival (Various) - I've seen variations of this in several RPGs.  Basically, you designate one other PC to be your PC's best friend, and another one to be your PC's rival.  Note that "rival" doesn't necessarily mean enemy, just someone with whom they constantly compete (think Legolas and Gimli).  It doesn't matter if PC's pair off and select each other, or if player A picks player B who picks C and so on, as long as each PC has exactly one Rival and one BFF.  Whenever a PC does something spectacular (like crits the final hit on a boss), their BFF describes what happened as colorfully as possible.  Meanwhile, whenever a PC fumbles, their rival has the honor of describing their screw-up.

Simplified Stats (Warrior, Rogue & Mage) - I like simple rules.  Sometimes I think some of the stats are kind of redundant, and I'd love to try an RPG that only uses three.  Obviously this only works in a very specific kind of RPG.  

Exploding Dice (Various RPGs) - This probably isn't really compatible with D&D's math, but it sure is fun in the RPGs that use it.  Basically when you roll max on your damage die, you get to roll it again and add that in too.  If you roll max again, you can keep rolling until you stop rolling max.  So your d6 damage die might usually average you 3 or 4 damage... but sometimes you might do 38.

And now for something completely different...

Just to show both sides of the coin, here's some rules I'm glad to see gone forever.  Note that some are from editions I've never actually played, so I might have the wrong impression of them, but they still sound terrible.  Good Riddance to:

THAC0 and Hit Tables - (Early D&D) -  Once they invented the modern system of "roll a d20, add a bonus, beat a target number", there was never any reason to look back.  Even most of the "Retroclones" I've seen use modern attack rolls.  There are just some things that defy nostalgia.

Facing (Various RPGs) - This is still listed as an optional rule in 5e's DMG, but I'll never use it.  I'm sure it adds a little bit of realism, but it also adds an extra complication to battle without adding to the fun factor.

Descending BABs (D&D 3e) - By that, I mean having multiple attacks per round, but with a lower base attack bonus for each attack.  (Example: +12/+7/+2)  The system 5e uses actually works out better mathematically, as it helps keep Fighters on par with Wizards.

Level Drain (Various) - Any effect that requires you to recalculate your character sheet is annoying.  But what really annoys me is that the mechanic treats "levels" as a real existing aspect of your character, instead of just skills your character happens to acquire at the same time.

Races Being Tied To Classes (OD&D) - When they created D&D, they had no idea how much character customization would be available in later editions, so I can't really fault them for having a lack of foresight.  But when I look through older books, and see how non-human races can't be certain classes, it makes my heart hurt.  

Gold as XP (OD&D) - You used to get experience points for finding gold.  This kind of made sense at the time, since there weren't as many ways to spend your gold, so there had to be some incentive for treasure hunting.  In a sense, I see OD&D's gold as your "score".  But characters are deeper now, and not all of them are solely motivated by greed.

...aaaaand that's my list.  Feel free to comment below if I missed any rules you love or hate.

Campaign Ideas: Death in Barovia

Some people are just weird.  A few months ago I was browsing the posts in a "Curse of Strahd" group, and one of the DMs professed an odd approach to death in his campaign.  Basically he advocated permadeath.  Okay, that's fine so far.  I've seen campaigns where resurrections weren't allowed.  It's not particularly unusual.

Except, no, at his table, if a character dies, that player is out of the group.  They can't roll up a new character, they just aren't welcome at the table again until the next campaign.  Basically he's treating his campaign like a reality show.  Several people tried to explain to him why this was a bad idea, at least if he enjoys having friends, but he would not be swayed.  

Oh well.  Hopefully they had fun.  At least he wasn't proposing to kill the players in real life.

Here's the thing, though.  Curse of Strahd is a horror campaign.  Some DMs think this means they're supposed to make it as difficult as possible, but that kind of difficulty is just math.  I'm not afraid of numbers.  I haven't had bad dreams about math since high school.  Anybody can design a D&D monster with high damage dice, but that alone doesn't make it frightening.

The Curse of Strahd book devotes an entire page to tips on ramping up the creep factor ("Marks of Horror", page 7), and none of their suggestions involve making the module more deadly.  Instead, it concentrates on being extra descriptive, recommending that the DM point out any smells, shadows, and claw marks that might give greater depth to a scene.  If I ran it, I'd even have us play by candlelight and have some gothic music playing in the background.  

One of the things that makes CoS scary is the utter lack of hope.  Early in the campaign, the PCs should discover that once you enter Barovia, escape is impossible.  If they try to leave the edge of the map, the fog becomes so thick that they can barely breathe.  Even if they manage to press on through the exhaustion, no matter what direction they go through the fog, they'll just pop out somewhere else at the edge of Barovia's boundries.  Strahd's domain is inescapable.

But you really don't get a sense of just how screwed you are until the first time you die.  It's not until then that you witness the totality of Strahd's power - even in death, your spirit can't escape his cursed lands.  And this is why, IMO, it's important that you allow at least some manner of resurrection in CoS.

The first time a PC dies in your CoS campaign, try reading the following:

You find yourself floating in the air, looking down at your own body.  You can’t feel anything.  No heat, no wind, it’s as if you’re not there.  You suddenly find yourself compelled to look up toward the sky.  Most of it is obscured by thick fog, but as you watch, a hole opens up in the clouds, revealing a bright, blue sky behind it.  A beam of light shines on you, and you can feel the warmth of that beam.  You feel yourself being pulled towards the light, helpless to stop it.  You start hurtling towards it, faster and faster.  Something about the light makes you feel at peace, happy even.  Instinctively, you know you are being pulled toward your eternal reward.

But suddenly, black clouds start to coalesce, in the shape of giant skeletal hands.  The hole closes, and the beam of light vanishes.  A ghostly pair of giant red eyes opens up behind the fog.  One of the misty hands points at you.

You hear a voice.  “Leaving so soon?  But we were just getting started!  I have so much more fun planned for the days ahead.  *sigh*  But I suppose, in the spirit of fairness, I should give you a choice.  Accept my dark gift now, and I will return you to your body.  Otherwise, I will scatter the remains of your soul, eliminating all traces of your existence forever.  Make your choice.”

If the player rejects Strahd's offer, their soul is obliterated forever, and they might as well tear up their character sheet.  If the player chooses to come back to life, they have no memory of their deal with Strahd, but those red eyes haunt their nightmares until Strahd is defeated.  The other PCs didn't see anything that went on in the sky, and they're completely surprised when their fallen friend regains consciousness.  Even if the dead character had been torn to pieces, their body is now whole again.

Give the revived player one of the random gifts from the Adventurer's League "Expanded Dark Gifts" table.  Most of these curses contain both a benefit and drawback, along with a bit of body horror.  It keeps the game going, and it hints that in Barovia, there are fates worse than death.

This doesn't mean you have to keep resurrecting them this way.  I'd say Strahd is willing to revive a PC twice before he gets bored with that character and ignores their fate.  After that, they're on their own.  Maybe the rest of the party can get them to a cleric, but if not, their soul bounces around Barovia, still unable to escape to their own afterlife.  Maybe they'll be reborn as an infant to a Barovian family, or maybe they'll become a restless spirit wandering one of the area's many haunted sites.

All I'm saying is, if you use permadeath in CoS, you're robbing the module of one of its greatest horrors.  And that would be a shame.

Campaign Ideas: Start With A Bang

Typical campaign:  You all meet at an inn.  A merchant there approaches your party, tells you that he's taking a carriage full of wares to the next town tomorrow, and would like to hire you for protection.  On the way, you are attacked by goblins, the merchant's prized MacGuffin is stolen, and you have to infiltrate a goblin cave to get it back.  After killing the goblin chieftain, you find a treasure map which sets up the roots for the campaign.

Not terrible, but zzzzzzz...

If I've learned anything from video games, it's that you should stick an exciting scene right up front.  Let's look at one of my favorite games, Skyrim.  It's starts with you on your way to be executed.  As the executioner raises his axe, a dragon swoops down and attacks the site, and the scene erupts into chaos.  You spend the next few minutes running around, avoiding the creature's fire.  Every time you think you've found a safe spot, the dragon knocks down a wall and breathes fire in your direction.

It's very cinematic, and gets your blood pumping right off the bat.  Of course the scene is actually very easy, and is scripted in such a way that you're never really in much danger.  But at the time it very much feels like you could die at any second.

Another good example is The Last of Us.  The first few minutes have you watching the world fall apart around you, peering through car windows as your father drives you through the early stages of a zombie apocalypse.  Eventually you have to get out and continue on foot, running through the streets while crowds of panicked civilians flee around you.  It's one of the most exciting scenes I've seen in a game, and it's right there in the first fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile, I'm looking back at most of the D&D campaigns I've been in, as both a player and as a DM, and the openings are usually pretty subdued.  More than one started like I describe above, with the PCs meeting at a inn, and/or being hired to guard a caravan.  

Shattered Star began with us receiving a summons to meet with our questgiver at her mansion, to discuss a missing artifact.  Our Scarred Lands campaign began with us attending a festival, which reminded me of the opening of Chrono Trigger.  The Artifact Hunters campaign also started with us preparing for a big social event.

Dragon's Demand had an excellent opening.  We were attending an auction, when it was attacked by several batlike creatures and a drake.  As we finished off these monsters, a giant black dragon swooped down onto a nearby roof, issuing an ultimatum for the town.  With a booming voice, he gave the town two weeks to fulfill a debt.  It was an epic scene, an image that will be burned into my mind forever...  except, no, wait, that didn't happen until our eighth session.  

Session one actually started with... let's see... ah, we were hired to guard a caravan.  Yeah.  See, that's just disappointing.  The title scene should have happened in session one.  Yeah, they probably would have had to change the dragon's deadline to a month or more instead of two weeks, so the PCs would have more time to level up before the climax.  But it would have been a much stronger opening that would make sure the players looked forward to coming back each week.

I'm not blaming any of my DMs, and most of these were published adventures anyway.  But I think module writers shy away from cinematic openings because they're afraid of making an encounter the PCs won't survive.  But there are ways to separate the PCs from the danger without it looking too obvious.

Take the Skyrim scenario, for instance.  Let's say your level 1 party arrives in town just as a huge dragon lands in the town square.  That doesn't mean the party has to fight the dragon.  They can treat it as a series of skill challenges as they run through the alleys, avoiding flaming debris, helping random citizens, and so on.  

If they do fight the dragon, that doesn't mean the dragon even notices their pitiful efforts, as the monster concentrates its attacks on the much more dangerous town guards.  Have the dragon destroy the town around the PCs, and then fly off without even acknowledging their presence.  

The PCs still get to be heroes as they help tend to wounded, and rescue people trapped in their collapsed houses.  Maybe they'll get sent to some of the surrounding towns to seek aid, doing some sidequests to gain a level or two.  Then, they're given their first real quest:  Find out who summoned the dragon.  They won't fight the dragon itself until many levels later, but giving them this early taste of the later threat is really tantalizing. 

So my current goal, next time I start a new campaign, is to have a really memorable first session.  Instead of just having everyone meet at an inn, maybe they'll meet at an inn that immediately erupts into flames, while masked thieves raid the place looking for something.  Or when the merchant starts to lead them over to the caravan they've been hired to guard, one of the wagons is suddenly lifted off the ground by a giant bird, the first of a flock that terrorizes the town. 

But from now on, when I DM, I want to treat it like a movie.  I want an exciting incident to happen within the first few minutes of gameplay, and I want that incident to be big enough to make a lasting impression.  The PCs can introduce themselves to each other after things calm down, but I'm going to give them a taste of excitement first.

Racism in D&D

I generally save politics for my personal blog, and confine this one to more light-hearted RPG babble.  But there's been a lot of social activism in the RPG world this year.  Examples include the Combat Wheelchair, a podcast getting cancelled for themes of sexual assault, and various RPG companies receiving criticism for sexism in the workplace.

One thing I'm seeing more of is people calling out the inherent racism hard-coded into D&D's rules.  Even the word "race" itself seems to be on its way out, as several of the newer RPGs favor less problematic terms like "ancestry" or "heritage" instead.  D&D has always used "race" in a way that many deem inaccurate, as what they call race is actually closer to species.

My thoughts?  Well, I can't say I'm comfortable dissecting the subject of racism, not really having experienced it first hand.  The internet doesn't need another white person's opinion on what should or shouldn't piss off people of color.  So take my ramblings with a grain of salt.  

Personally I think that in a world with multiple types of sapient creatures, the word "race" could come to mean "species" instead of ethnicity.  But I don't feel like explaining that to every D&D newcomer, so it's probably easier to use a more accurate term.  I'll be perfectly happy if the next D&D book refers to races as "ancestries" or whatever, though a certain segment of fans will probably pitch a fit.  You can't please everyone.

Another thing that is bugging people is the concept of "always evil" races.  It would be one thing if they said the evil Goddess Lolth created the Drow, and part of her spirit resides in every one of her creations and their descendants, and therefore they are incurably evil.  Because then the entire species would just be puppets controlled by an obviously evil entity.  But the minute you introduce a single good Drow, you break that rule.  The existence of a good Drow reintroduces free will into the species, which means PCs can no longer slaughter every Drow on sight.

And then there's Orcs.  Now, Orcs exist in D&D because the PCs need an enemy.  They are the Stormtroopers of D&D, an army of warriors you can attack without worrying about screwing up your alignment.  And if D&D had kept Orcs as unrepentant killing machines, mindless monsters who just happen to wear clothes and use weapons, then there might not be a problem.  

But the various rulebooks and novels go back and forth on Orc civilization.  Sometimes they're irredeemably evil, but sometimes they're more like Star Trek's Klingons - a complex society that fetishizes war and has trouble getting along with other civilizations.  And just like the Klingons, as the lore has evolved over the years, it's become harder to justify thinking of Orcs as an evil race.

Obviously, context is everything.  If you encounter an Orc warband standing in the middle of the burning village they just razed, you don't need to ask each one, "Are you good or evil" before you slay them.  But if you see a single Orc walking through a forest, or find one tied up in the dungeon you're exploring, you might want to assess the situation before activating instant kill mode.

A possible patch for this is to make it obvious what god the enemy worships.  Tell your players up front, "Unless I say otherwise, every Orc you see is wearing the symbol of Gruumsh, an evil god of war."  It's pretty safe to assume that if you see a cultist wearing the symbol of Bane on his robes, you can shoot first without karmic penalty.  Consider it preemptive self-defense - anyone wearing a symbol of evil would have no problem killing you if they see you first.  It's not the best solution, but it beats "Hey, it's an Orc, let's kill it because it's an Orc."

Racial ability scores are also causing an uproar.  It's one thing to say that the average Half-Orc is stronger than the average Halfling.  But saying Gnomes are smarter than Dwarves is more problematic, especially since some of these races are uncomfortably similar to real world nationalities.  If both are sapient humanoids, then surely their intelligence will be based more on study than genetics, right?

And what about charisma?  Doesn't it seem like you would find your own species the most charismatic?  Isn't it weird that a Dwarf would find a Tiefling more charismatic than another Dwarf?  If a Half-Orc's culture considers a burp to be a compliment, they're not going to be charmed by the Half-Elf's table manners.

There is a document on the Dungeon Masters Guild website called "Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e" that does a pretty good job of fixing this problem.  It separates each race's bonuses into Ancestral traits and Cultural traits.  Anything that is tied to genetics is Ancestral.  That includes things like size, speed, and innate abilities like a Dragonborn's breath weapon.  Cultural traits include learned abilities like stat bonuses, languages, and skills.  You can take any combination of Ancestral and Cultural traits, which opens up the possibility of cross-cultural characters, like a Dwarf that was raised by Elves.

So given the above, is it truly realistic that a 3 foot tall Halfling could start with higher strength than a 7 foot tall Half-Orc?  Or more specifically, would a Halfling raised by Half-Orcs be stronger than a Half-Orc raised by Halflings?  Surely Half-Orcs have a genetic head start, right?  But the Halfling would have spent more time exercising, just to keep up with their peers.  I don't know, but I do have this one friend who is a foot shorter than me, and he could probably break me in half.  So size isn't everything.

And how does one train up constitution?  You can exercise your muscles and your mind, you can learn social graces, there's all kinds of ways to improve your dexterity, but IMO it seems like constitution would be genetic.  However, this system really only works if all six stats are Cultural traits, so I guess Dwarven upbringing toughens you up.  Must be all that Dwarven ale.

Realistic or not, balanced or not, I do think that "Ancestry & Culture" fixes more problems than it causes.  Even if you're not into it for the "wokeness" of the document, it still has some great options for those who want to fine tune their character to a degree not possible with the PHB alone.  Plus it includes a couple of bonus adventures that take place in multicultural settings.  So check it out, it's worth a look.

An upcoming official D&D book, "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything", also appears to address the problem.  I'm pretty hyped for this book.  It looks a lot like "Xanathar's Guide to Everything", which is my favorite 5e supplement.  Even if a lot of the content was already published in Unearthed Arcana, it will be nice to have the updated versions all in one place.

Supposedly it has new character creation rules that take some of the racism out of it.  I imagine their solution will be similar to the one in Ancestry & Culture, but I can't say for sure.  Bigots are already whining about the book being too politically correct or whatever, despite the fact that the new rules are optional.

Imagine being such a bigot that you don't even want them publishing a completely optional book, just because it doesn't bow down to your narrow worldview.  I've met so many great people while playing D&D, that I sometimes forget that the hobby also draws a lot of toxic asshats.  But why should I be surprised?  D&D creator Gary Gygax himself was no saint, assuming this pic is genuine:

So maybe bigotry is so deeply ingrained in the system that it's impossible to root out.  But I refuse to believe that.  I think the game has become more enlightened in recent years, even if it does have a ways to go.  With any luck, the creators will continue to listen to the more inclusive part of their fanbase, instead of caving to the more toxic side.

Only time will tell.