Posts Tagged ‘ adventure design ’

Flux’s Flying Fort: A Beginning

Well, the new year is here, and so it’s time to start a new project. With determination and hard work, maybe this project will get done. “What is the project?” you ask. Well, I’ll get to that in a paragraph. But, first!

In December, I leaped into Dicember 2022, posting almost daily something new at least vaguely related to Old-School Essentials. This weekend, I compiled all the posts into a Word document, did some light formatting and editing, and PDFed it. You can download the PDF via this link.

And now back to that project. I’m shooting to complete two different writing projects, combining them into one. That’s right! I’m tackling both Roy Otus’s Gygax 75 and Sean McCoy’s Dungeon 23. You can read about both at their respective links in that last sentence. Nota Bene: Much of the Dungeon 23 link is hidden behind a Substack subscription box.

Now, practically speaking, since I go back to work on Tuesday, I’m not likely to adhere devoutly to either schedule. Also, since with Gygax 75 I’m writing up the start of a fantasy world, much of what I’m doing at the outset isn’t really coming up with a dungeon room a day for 365 days. Still, I think I’m off to a good start, as shown in the pics below.

The first pic shows the Flux’s Flying Fort. The second pic shows the Eastern Reaches, the rugged environs in which the adventure involving the Flying Fort takes place. I’ll likely run some version of the adventure at OwlCon in February. I might attempt a second run at North Texas RPG Con in June. Also, it’s quite probable that some variation of the adventure will kick off my soon-to-begin Old-School Essentials campaign that I’ll run for my Sunday group.

Huzzah!

January 1st, 2023  in RPG No Comments »

Trouble in Schuhdorf!

So, I’m on holiday until a bit after the new year. At least for now, I’m pretty much done with my Tanelorn Keep Player’s Guide. I’m thinking about starting up a meet-online game to run some players through some of the dangers of the Tanelorn Keep’s environs. Not sure I really have the time for that, so I must mull.

Whilst shifting some of the debris in my library, I stumbled across a few maps I drew on index cards. For example, see the shoe map to the right of this paragraph. I like my shoe map. It’s not great art, to be sure, but it makes me giggle a little, and that can’t be a bad thing. The original shoe map did not include location numbers. The one to the right does.

“Why?” you ask.

Well, when I’m not working on curriculum maps or gracing the family with my presence, I’m working on a short 5E D&D adventure titled The Lady in the Shoe. When done, it’ll be intended for five 2nd-level heroes, but I’ll include notes about how to scale it for weaker or stronger parties.

“So, what’s it about?” you ask.

Well, not to give too much away, but the adventure starts when the heroes return to Schuhdorf to discover that a beautiful but cruel woman has polymorphed the village’s key leaders into goats and flew away with them in a giant shoe. To make matters worse, later that same night eerie music lured several children away from their beds and into Flussenke, the nearby wooded river valley.

Schuhdorf stands in dire straits. Their spiritual leader is a kidnapped goat. The knight who oversees the village’s defenses is a kidnapped goat. Several children have vanished into the woods. Now is the time for heroes!

I hope to have the adventure ready before this coming weekend ends.

December 22nd, 2020  in RPG No Comments »

Goblins, Goblins Everywhere!

I’ve written about just using bears instead of writing up new monsters more than once (for example, see here and here). This isn’t a new idea, and I’m certainly not the first person to just use bears.

Recently on the Facebook in a 5E D&D group, a poster asked about how “to still keep goblins challenging without a fireball wiping them all.” I posted this link to a PDF with four goblins, CRs 1/8 to 2. The goblins are really just quickly done versions of kobold, orcs, bugbears, and a generic druid. I did a little bit of tweaking with ability scores, and that’s about it.

After the picture, you’ll find two more goblins that are really just slightly modified other monsters.

Goblin Hag
Small humanoid (goblinoid), lawful evil

Armor Class 17 (natural armor)
Hit Points 72 (11d6+33)
Speed 30 ft.
Ability Scores STR 12 (+1), DEX 18 (+4), CON 16 (+3), INT 13 (+1), WIS 14 (+2), CHA 14 (+2)

Skills Arcana +3, Deception +4, Perception +4, Stealth +6
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
Languages Common, Draconic, Goblin
Challenge 3 (700 XP)

Amphibious. The goblin hag can breathe air and water.

Innate Spellcasting. The goblin hag’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 12). She can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

At will: dancing lights, minor illusion, vicious mockery

Mimicry. The goblin hag can mimic animal sounds and humanoid voices. A creature that hears the sounds can tell they are imitations with a successful DC 14 Wisdom (Insight) check.

Actions

Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) slashing damage plus 2 (1d4) acid damage.

Illusory Appearance. The goblin hag covers herself and anything she is wearing or carrying with a magical illusion that makes her look like another creature of her general size and humanoid shape. The illusion ends if the goblin hag takes a bonus action to end it or if she dies.

The changes wrought by this effect fail to hold up to physical inspection. For example, the goblin hag could appear to have smooth skin, but someone touching her would feel her rough, warty flesh. Otherwise, a creature must take an action to visually inspect the illusion and succeed on a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check to discern that the goblin hag is disguised.

Invisible Passage. The goblin hag magically turns invisible until she attacks or casts a spell, or until her concentration ends (as if concentrating on a spell). While invisible, she leaves no physical evidence of her passage, so she can be tracked only by magic. Any equipment she wears or carries is invisible with her.

Two-Headed Goblin
Medium humanoid (goblinoid), lawful evil

Armor Class 14 (natural armor)
Hit Points 75 (10d8+30)
Speed 40 ft.
Ability Scores STR 17 (+3), DEX 12 (+1), CON 16 (+3), INT 6 (-2), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 8 (-1)

Skills Perception +4
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
Languages Common, Giant, Goblin
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)

Brute. A melee weapon deals one extra die of its damage when the two-headed goblin hits with it (included in the attack).

Two Heads. The two-headed goblin has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks and on saving throws against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, stunned, and knocked unconscious.

Wakeful. When one of the two-headed goblin’s heads is asleep, its other head is awake.

Actions

Multiattack. The two-headed goblin makes two attacks: one with its battleaxe and one with its morningstar.

Battleaxe. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d8+3) slashing damage.

Morningstar. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d8+3) piercing damage.

July 16th, 2018  in RPG No Comments »

More Beary-ations (on a Theme)

I used to have several issues of Dungeon from the late 80s to early 90s. I don’t have all of them now, but I do still have the issue the cover of which you see to the right. In it, one finds a fun little adventure by Jon Bailey titled “The Moor-Tombs Map”. It’s written for AD&D, specifically for 4-6 characters of 2nd to 4th level. Let’s take the middle road through those two ranges and assume 5 characters, all of which are 3rd level.

Now let’s shift gears as I think out loud (so to speak). In 5E D&D, the DM creates a combat encounter by first determining the adventuring party’s “XP Threshold” (DMG 82). Our party of five 3rd-level characters would look like this:

Easy 375 XP, Medium 750 XP, Hard 1,125 XP, Deadly 2,000 XP

Back to “The Moor-Tombs Map”. Not to give too much about it away, but the first combat encounter encountered on the road away from Moorwall is with a wolfwere and six wolves. A quick-and-dirty estimate of the wolfwere’s CR in 5E? It’s AC 3 (or 17 in 5E), has 5 Hit Dice, can attack twice per round for 2-12 plus weapon, has a magical song that causes slow, cannot be harmed by weapons unless they are magic or cold iron, and has magic resistance. A 5-HD monster had a THAC0 of 15, which is roughly equivalent to a +5 attack bonus.

For 5E, that’s a great AC, but pretty low hit points. It’s got good damage, however. Assume a d8 for weapon damage, and that’s 7 plus 4, or 11 on average. AD&D didn’t have save DCs, so fixing the save DC for its slow is a matter of taste. As an estimate, if I were building a 5E wolfwere using these stats, I’d aim for CR 3 (700 XP). Six wolves come in at 300 XP total. An encounter with seven monsters has an encounter multiplier of 2.5. The XP threshold total for the wolfwere and its wolves comes in at 2,500 XP. That’s a potentially deadly encounter for our adventurers.

Later on, the adventurers encounter 10 giant vultures (threshold 4,500 XP), 6 lizard men (threshold 1,200 XP), as well as a few other encounters, and this is all before reaching the actual moor-tomb.

Obviously, the differences between AD&D and 5E D&D make running an AD&D adventure as-is tricky. It’d be a real bummer if less than half way to the actual adventure one or more of the adventurers died in combat against what is pretty much a random encounter. 1E and 5E are not the same game. They have different assumptions, different maths, et cetera.

Let’s consider in more detail those half-dozen lizard men. As DM, I don’t really want to subject my players’ characters to a hard encounter that is at best tangetial to the main story. I could just remove the encounter, but that takes away from some of the “local color” of the adventure. The players could evade the lizard men or convince them to not attack, but if things go sideways the resulting fight could go badly for the adventurers. I could reduce the number of lizard men, of course. Halving the number drops the threshold XP to 600, making it a much more manageable threat, but I also like fights that involve larger numbers of enemies. That was a feature of AD&D that I miss.

What to do?

Well, instead of using bears (see previous post), I could use kobolds. I take the standard kobold, change its size to Medium, its Hit Points to 7 (2d8-2), and add a swim speed as per lizardfolk. Voila! My newer, weaker lizard men are now a threshold 300 XP encounter. That ought to be a cake walk for the adventurers. It also establishes in my game world that there are levels of lizard men. Sure, today you bumped into a group of lowly hunter-gatherers, but tomorrow you might run afoul of young warriors (goblins as lizard men) supervised by a more experienced fighter (a standard lizardfolk).

Just using bears is an idea with wide-ranging utility that can help a DM come up with new monsters or variations of old monsters almost on-the-fly.

“Inhabiting out of the way places, the hated and feared wolfwere is the bane of humans and demihumans alike, for it is able to take the form of a human male or female of considerable charisma. In either its true shape or that of a man, the wolfwere slyly hunts, slays, and devours its favored prey — men, halflings, elves, etc. … It must be noted that a great enmity exists between wolfwere and werewolves.” (Monster Manual II, p. 127)

Wolfwere
Medium fey (shapechanger), chaotic evil

Armor Class 17 (natural armor)
Hit Points 27 (5d8+5)
Speed 40 ft.
Ability Scores STR 16 (+3), DEX 18 (+4), CON 13 (+1), INT 14 (+2), WIS 14 (+2), CHA 17 (+3)

Skills Deception +5, Perception +4
Tools musical instrument
Damage Immunities bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks not made with iron weapons
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
Languages Common,Sylvan, Worg
Challenge 3 (700 XP)

Keen Hearing and Smell. The wolfwere has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on hearing or smell.

Magic Resistance. The wolfwere has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Shapechanger. The wolfwere can use its action to polymorph into a human or back into its true form of a human-wolf hybrid. Its statistics are the same for either form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn’t transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies.

Wolvesbane Sensitivity. If the wolfwere starts its turn within 15 feet of wolvesbane, it is poisoned and thus has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.

Actions

Multiattack. The wolfwere makes two attacks in its hybrid form: one with its bite, the other with a weapon. In human form, the wolfwere makes one attack with its weapon.

Bite. Melee Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) piercing damage.

Sword. Melee Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) piercing damage.

Call of the Wild (1/Day). When outdoors, the wolfwere magically calls 2d6 wolves or 1d6 worgs. The called creatures arrive in 1d4 rounds, acting as allies of the wolfwere and obeying its spoken commands. The beasts remain for 1 hour, until the wolfwere dies, or until the wolfwere dismisses them as a bonus action.

Lullaby (1/Day). The wolfwere has a magical song that causes listeners to fall into slumber. A total of 22 (5d8) hit points of humanoid creatures within 90 feet of the wolfwere are affected. Creatures are affected in ascending order of their current hit points (ignoring unconscious creatures), and a Wisdom saving throw against DC 13 negates this power’s effect. Starting with the creature that has the lowest current hit points, each creature affected by this power falls unconscious for 1d4+4 minutes. A sleeping creature remains unconscious until the sleeper takes damage, or until someone uses an action to shake or slap the sleeper awake. Subtract each creature’s hit points from the total before moving on to the creature with the next lowest hit points. A creature’s hit points must be equal to or less than the remaining total for that creature to be affected. Undead and creatures immune to being charmed aren’t affected by this power.

January 14th, 2018  in RPG No Comments »

Beary-ations

GMs love new monsters. Gaming blogger-folk love posting new monsters, writing about monsters, et cetera. I’ve posted quite a few new monsters over the years.

But there’s a secret about monsters, namely that I really don’t need very many new ones. Other people have already worked out the stats for all of the monsters I could ever need, and many of the new ones are really just variations on old ones, reskinned with new descriptive bits. In truth, when I think I need a new monster, I could just use bears.

Consider the 5E D&D brown bear:

Now let’s just use bears three different ways. In each case, I made minor tweaks to the brown bear’s stats.

The enormous humanoid shuffles into view. Twisted knots of fibrous tissue cover its muscular body. Its gait rolls, totters, due to legs of unequal length. Its powerful arms end in four-fingered hands that almost reach the ground. One meaty fist clutches the end of a greatclub. Its block-like head juts forward atop a thick neck. Ridges of bone grow from its brow.

Arth
Large giant, chaotic evil

Armor Class 11 (natural armor)
Hit Points 34 (4d10+12)
Speed 40 ft., climb 30 ft.
Ability Scores STR 19 (+4), DEX 10 (+0), CON 16 (+3), INT 4 (-3), WIS 13 (+1), CHA 7 (-2)

Skills Perception +3
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
Languages Giant
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Keen Smell. The arth has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.

Actions

Multiattack. The arth makes two attacks: one with its headbutt and one with its greatclub.

Headbutt. Melee: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8+4) bludgeoning damage.

Greatclub. Melee: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) bludgeoning damage.

The crack of a twig was the only warning of the monster’s sudden attack. Roughly humanoid, seemingly comprised of intertwined branches and vines, the monster rushes forward, flailing with a thorn-covered vine and a heavy branch.

Baavgai
Large plant, unaligned

Armor Class 11
Hit Points 34 (4d10+12)
Speed 40 ft., climb 30 ft.
Ability Scores STR 19 (+4), DEX 12 (+1), CON 16 (+3), INT 2 (-4), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 7 (-2)

Skills Stealth +3
Senses passive Perception 10
Languages
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Woody Stealth. The baavgai has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks in forests.

Actions

Multiattack. The baavgai makes two attacks: one with its thorn-covered tendril and one its club-like limb.

Tendril. Melee: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8+4) slashing damage.

Club. Melee: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) bludgeoning damage.

Like a creature born from a nightmare, part monitor lizard, part mountain lion, its single green eye flashing in the torchlight, the monstrosity drops from the treetop. It lashes out with its serpentine tail that ends with a spiky knob of bone.

Iomair
Large monstrosity, unaligned

Armor Class 11 (natural armor)
Hit Points 34 (4d10+12)
Speed 40 ft., climb 30 ft.
Ability Scores STR 19 (+4), DEX 10 (+0), CON 16 (+3), INT 2 (-4), WIS 13 (+1), CHA 7 (-2)

Skills Perception +3
Senses passive Perception 13
Languages
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Keen Smell. The iomair has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.

Actions

Multiattack. The iomair makes two attacks with its tail.

Tail. Melee: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) bludgeoning damage plus 2 (1d4) slashing damage.

January 13th, 2018  in RPG No Comments »