Tabletop RPG Podcast and Roleplaying Resources

Author: Stan Shinn (Page 49 of 112)

Stan’s RPG Bucket List Updates

I’ve been keeping tabs on my ‘RPG Bucket List’ for a few years. I just added two more items to the bucket list:

Here are some videos describing the above:

I updated my bucket list to check off the following items which I’ve done in the last two years. Wow, I’m really making progress!

  • Develop and publish a GM toolkit (DONE).
  • Develop RPG Convention tournaments or contests (DONE).
  • Help with an RPG Convention (DONE).
  • Run a campaign that starts at level 1 and hits at least level 10 (DONE).
  • Play the same character for more than a year (haven’t done this since the 80’s) (DONE).
  • Run a licensed game campaign that made people go “This feels like playing the Show.” (DONE).
  • Run a Star Wars campaign (DONE).
  • Play or run a Middle Earth Lord of the Rings roleplaying campaign such as 1st or 2nd Edition MERP (Middle Earth Roleplaying, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_Role_Playing), or The One Ring (now in print, Cubicle 7 http://www.cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-one-ring/) or D&D 5e with custom backgrounds (DONE).
    Design an interesting, original magic item (DONE, the clock-ticking-down demon sword in a 1st Age Redmark game).
  • Play or run classic D&D modules which I’ve never played starting with the UK series: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (DONE), When A Star Falls, Bone Hill (DONE) and Nights Dark Terror; then on to Dwellers of the Forbidden City, The Hidden Shrine of Tamochan, The Forgotten Temple of Tharzidun, Against the Cult of the Reptile God (DONE), Scourge of the Slave Lords (A1-4), The Lost City, Queen of Spiders (G1-3, D1-3, Q1), and just maybe (with a character I don’t mind losing) Tomb of Horrors (S1).

— Stan

Redmark Session 01: The Die is Cast, Lots of Luck Gives Visions of the Future

It was 1331 on January 26th dawn broke around 7:30am on a chilly but beautiful morning. Our travelers:

  • Ghost Dancer—a man, with war chants and self proclaimed Indian
  • Ivamel—a man with a stranger past…
  • Lundie—the pious dwarf, devout and strong
  • Marcus—an officer in the IX legion and a roman priest of Mars
  • Quintos—from a noble family and a roman veneficus, a warlock of the IX legion

They had been traveling together by convenience for some time. Each having a different motivation to head to Nimroth, but all walking with a purpose. During the day protecting each other from bandits and at night sharing stories by the campfire, in such a short period of time they had formed a bond, which is rare in this age.

As they approached about 10 miles from Nimroth, the alert adventurers heard a noise in the deep woods, it was the sound of crying. Marcus rushed down the path in the woods, thinking of a woman in distress in this dangerous place. As the bold adventures rounded the bend, they saw a young woman, a priestess, crying and around her the dead bodies of human mercenaries and orc fifth. As they built trust with the young lady, they asked her what had happened and learned of her sadness because she could not raise her fallen companions. During the discussion Quintos, got that look in his eye, as he approach the young and comely woman with more than intentions of friendship… For a moment Sophia started to calm down… Then…

Orcs attack!

Rounding the bend ahead where an Orc War chief and his 4 Orc warriors.. Blowing a battle horn, they charged into the fray… Our hero’s fought bravely and ultimately defeated the Orcs, however during the battle Marcus rushed in-front of his demoralized friends to protect them and was fallen by the war chief blade.. Lundie the pios dwarf, a paladin of his order brought Marcus back from the touch of the roman death god Viduus as he began to separate Marus’s soul.. Marcus is in Lundie’s debt..

Sophia seems to have a secret -- what is it?

Sophia seems to have a secret — what is it?

After the battle, more comfortable with our heroes as they protected her, or perhaps it was the positive advances of charming Quintos, Sophie shares her mission to go to the shrine of the Lady of the Lots. This place is were she was to receive an augury. Her fallen companions the human mercenaries were to be the ones to help her on the quest…. Or as she said under her voice, could it be these new found heros….

The party travelled some two miles to the mound of the shrine of “Our Lady of the Lots” it was a strange area where the cold melted away to find warmth some 500 feet around this strange mound with an 60 foot long giant egg like structure. Sophia lead the party to the entrance. Once inside we knocked on a door and were introduced to Brother Faldelac and other acolytes of the Lady. The Brother was a strange man, but excited to see Sophia. He then announced we must do an Augury. We must roll the dodecahedron and the nought nought is the number we must seek. It seemed that we would roll these two dice to get the highest score of 100 or nought nought, whomever won all rolls would get the augury from their god the Lady of the Lots..

Next the priest and acolytes of the Lady chanting and marching in unison, proclaimed holding their dice cups to their chests that we must roll. We all seated at different tables and after many rolls, the finalist were selected and ultimately Ivamel (the strange… man?) was selected to receive the Augury. It foretold the following:

In haunts of old, sacred gems rest.
The first was from elvish hands wrest.
Now hidden deep, the undead keep
Urthjarl ‘s lost prize to Nimroth’s West.

Lots of Luck at ‘Our Lady of the Lots’

This is when Sophia read from the translated page from Enmyr’s codex (from the 2nd Age) which Sophia let you read:

Stormgate was in olden days created as a small stronghold to serve as buffer against the orc territories. During the reign of Elf Chieftain Calismar, this primitive outpost was expanded into a powerful city-state, its walls and towers erected as the final life-work of the famed wizard Urthjarl.

Thus, in the 916th year of the second age, the eight walls of the city were erected in the shape of an octagon — each appeared, formed and sustained purely by the power of magic. To all appearances, these walls are ordinary stone. The power to sustain these walls was wrought into eight gemstones — each implanted into the crown of a large statue of Urthjarl himself.

Against the encroachment of the orc hordes from the east, the elvish kingdoms prevailed for centuries. Then a traitor did what all the vast orc armies had in long centuries not been able to do. Only a skilled master of magic could unwork the crown’s gemstones and unbind its power. In secrecy of night, an insider with sufficient mastery of the arcane stole each gemstone from the statue’s crown.

By the time the night guard was aware of this treachery, the unknown betrayer of the elves had slipped into the stygian darkness of night. The city lasted only minutes after the gems were removed. At the first rays of dawn, the walls crumbled, and an awaiting orc army attacked, destroying the entire Elvish city of Stormgate.

One messenger alone survived to tell their tragic tale. After many bloody battle, with no stronghold to fortify the pass of the Dragonridge mountains, the elves gave way, and Stormgate and the lands west of the mountains were for many generations lost.

800 years passed.

An adventuring party of Elves, making their way into the Dreadlands, stumbled upon a orc warrior’s tomb deep within the caves of the Deathbone canyons. There they found one of the stones of the Urthjarl Octagon, and in the dead orc chief’s hand he found a scroll containing clues leading to other of the Urthjarl gemstones.
I, Enmyr, was among this party. Numbering five, we were beset by fell beasts as we made our way back westward towards Inlaness. I alone survived to record these events, my friends’ life-blood spilt by nameless horrors.

The runes from the orc chieftain scroll, the clues we have discovered, and lore such as we uncovered in our ill-fated journey I transcribe here, encoded in ancient Zygannian script, in the hopes those friendly to Elves and their allies may find the gemstones of Urthjarl Octagon.

We must find them, and bring these gems of power to friendly hands. Were they to fall into the control of our enemies, Thrëa would fall into darkness, a dead-man’s land where nameless horrors lope through the night.

After much discussion, the party believed this encounter with the priests was not an ACT OF LUCK, but fate itself and the Lady guiding our future. We decide to help Sophia and her order to protect the people of Thrëa and work to secure the powerful gemstones before the orc can get them all.

So we head some 10 miles to Nimroth to safely return Sophia to her order. We then spend the night at the Minotaur & The Emperor. As Quintos plans to meet with Lord Renaldo tomorrow morning

And so the DIE IS CAST as our heroes begin forge their destiny, given visions from the Lady to save the people of Thrëa….

Quintos tried (but failed?) to impress Sophia


Party Level:

  • Characters are 1st Level

Party treasure to date:

  • 1 Scimitar (from Orc War Boss)
  • 12 Squirrel Neck less
  • 3 Leather armor
  • 1 Chain Mail Armor
  • 3 Long Swords
  • 2 Short Swords
  • 5 Daggers

Bankrolled Inspiration

  • John: 1 Point

New Website Features: Photos and Comments Notifications

I added two new features to the website. Let me know any feedback.

Comments Notification

Our group (and occasionally outsiders seeing our site) sometimes leave comments on page, but I don’t think (aside from me) people always see them. So I’ve added an experimental ‘comments notification’ feature which (if it works correctly) will email everyone who is registered on the WordPress site as a user an email with any comments made on the website. If you receive the weekly Dicehaven Monday email digest, then you should also receive comments notifications. I can turn this off by individual users if you don’t want to get those emails.

Photos

I often take photos of the games so I’ve added a Flickr album which is embedded on the bottom of the sidebar and on this page:

https://dicehaven.com/photos/

Going forward I’ll post more picture than I have in the past now that I have an easy way to get them into the site.

— Stan

Things I’ve Learned After Running Three ‘Adventures in Middle-earth’ Games

I’ve now run three ‘Adventures in Middle-earth’ game sessions. I love it! It is a fantastic and very faithful adaptation of the Tolkien material.

There were a few things I got wrong the first time I ran it, and there are some different game-style assumptions that require a slightly modified approach to get the most out of this new, wonderful 5e setting. Here’s my advice to new gamemasters (called ‘Loremasters’) who are thinking of running a Middle-earth campaign using’Adventures in Middle-earth’ (or AiME).

My First 'Adventures in Middle-earth' Game

My First ‘Adventures in Middle-earth’ Game

Journeys and Mapping Are A Key Activity

Journeys are a big part of each game. Players are going to spend more time than you would think having fun strategizing over routes to take, who is going to take on the role as ‘Guide’, and other activities involved in planning and taking a Journey. The mechanics are new but after a couple of sessions things flow pretty quickly.

There’s so much fun looking over the map and seeing places everyone has some familiarity with. ‘Hey, those are the Barrow-downs!’ ‘Say, Amon Sul is the same as Weathertop — that’s where Frodo and company were attacked by the Nazgul!’. It was interesting to play in a world so familiar and rich with history. It felt like we were in a campaign that everyone had been playing together for 20 years.

Journeys Aren’t Like Traditional Hex Crawls

Journeys can be long. You can easily take a journey of 150 or 300 miles before you get to your main destination. As such, the rules don’t follow traditional hex crawl procedures. My traditional hex crawl method was (doing this for each and every hex): enter a hex ➞ roll for encounters ➞ rest for the night ➞ see if anything happens while you’re on watch ➞ travel to the next hex.

In AiME, by default, although you plan a route through a dozen ten-mile hexes or more, you don’t track where you’re at on a specific day. Instead, you may have a Journey Event that takes place at an abstract time and place during the journey. For example, the Loremaster might say: “several days into the journey as you enter the bogs, you encounter a band of orcs”.

I got confused by this the first game I ran a Journey. Worked much better when I didn’t track exact days and distance the following session.

Players Dig Kingdoms, Titles, and Sanctuaries

From day one, you’re immersed into a ‘kingdoms’  focus that feels somewhat like the ‘strongholds’ end-game of the old White Box / BX / 1e D&D days. During the Fellowship Phase players can do things like receive Titles and create Sanctuaries. Sanctuaries end up being a big deal — if you have to routinely make a long journey with no Sanctuary in the middle to stop and recover, you’ll have more negative Journey Events, more enemy encounters and such. Build a Sanctuary mid-way and split that route into two Short journeys and you’ll have much easier travels.

The fact that months or even a full year can pass during a Fellowship phase infuses a grand, epic air into your activities. Very Tolkienesque, even when players are low-level characters!

Different Lands or Eras Requires Extra Effort

The books and maps work best if you run your campaign in the era between the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and place your campaign in or around Mirkwood. If you wan to try running adventures in a different land or time period, you’ll have some additional work. Personally, I like the year 1640 in the Third Age (centuries before The Hobbit) since I can pull out and use my many MERP modules (old Iron Crown ‘Middle-earth Roleplaying’ adventures that used the Rolemaster system).

You’ll have to tweak a few things and use a different map, but I’m doing it and it’s working fine with a bit of effort. See my house-rules and map resources for doing a TA 1640 campaign.

The ‘Wanderer’ class has a ‘Known Lands’ feature that you’ll need to take into account if you use a different map than the one they provide in the Player’s Guide.

Player Abilities Drive Story

One thing I was surprised about was the intense sandbox gamestyle AiME fostered due to features built into the characters. For example, there is a background feature ‘Foreknowledge’ plus Fellowship phase activities ‘Research Lore’ and ‘Meet Patron’ which end up letting players ask questions and get answers at the beginning and end of games. Characters end up asking questions and generating patrons or quests which drives story lines that are entirely of the player’s origin. I love it! Using ‘Dungeon World’ style fronts is a great approach to driving adventures after a session or two of play.

Because of this, and because of the Journey and Fellowship phases, game session structures are quite different than in my traditional D&D game. After three games, here’s how a game that ends up with a Fellowship Phase might pan out for a four hour session:

  1. Resolve Fellowship Phase from last game: 25 minutes
  2. Roleplay Adventure Hook Scene: 35 minutes
  3. Plan and Take Journey to Adventure Locale: 45 minutes
  4. A couple of exploration/roleplay scenes and 1 big fight: 1:45 minutes
  5. Take Journey Home from Adventure Locale: 30 minutes

Note the items in bold — these are gameplay phases that I would often skip or run very quickly in a traditional D&D game. In Adventure in Middle-earth, they can be about half a game session!

Journeys include encounters that can be things like an Orc Band, a Troll, wandering group of singing Elves, or an opportunity to hunt down Herbs or Food (that give mechanical benefits; they’re sort of like magic items). Journeys and the sandbox adventuring that spring out of them are a big part of the game, and also take a chunk of game time. A good thing, but you should budget game session time for these things 🙂

Tracking Journey or Fellowship Phase Information

There are some Journey related modifiers, as well as Fellowship phase events, which can carry over from session to session. I’ve now started to use a publicly visible whiteboard to take note of Journey modifiers as they come up during the Embarkation and Journey Event phases. Helps me not lose track of something.

Ramping Up on Tolkien Canon

You can plunge in to running AiME without being a Tolkien scholar. That being said, it helps to re-read the books (or watch the movies) before or as you run a campaign. I’m found myself gaining interest in reading up on various Tolkien topics.  Some resources I’ve found helpful:

Youtube has some great videos you can give to players. In twelve minutes, you can learn just about all you need to know! Have players watch these two videos (second one is if you’re running TA 1640 campaigns):

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