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Possible Actual Play Campaigns

There’s been some discussions about doing an actual play podcast. I don’t know when schedules will allow us to do an actual play, or who would be the GM when we do kickoff such a thing, but here are some ideas I’ve got were I to be at the helm GM’ing an actual play campaign. In particular, Shadows of Redmark is an interesting possibility since we could play those on some Thursdays (potentially) without feeling like we’re derailing the normal Redmark campaign (maybe I could even tie the storylines together at the end like cross-over comic book series). Anyway, here are my three campaign ideas:

(1) Shadows of Redmark — Game of Thrones meets X-Files. A parallel campaign with different characters centered in the Citystate of Redmark, with events running in parallel with the Chronicles of Redmark main campaign.  In the ancient city of Redmark, your secret society works in service to the Emperor to investigate dangers kept secret from unsuspecting citizenry. But often the most dangerous threat is the vying political factions who wage a shadow war to control the throne. To make things worse, a shadowy cult has reared its ugly head and pose a threat the adventurers must overcome or all of Redmark will fall into Shadow. (We would use D&D 5e rules but strictly theater of the mind, using rules similar to these: https://merricb.com/2017/11/28/a-quick-word-on-theatre-of-the-mind/.)

(2) Eighties Things — The Goonies meets Cthulhu. Reboot or continuation of the couple of demo games I ran. Basically a ‘Strangers Things’ / E.T. / Goonies style 80s adventures using a monster-of-the-week format. (We would use Stan’s Mystique rules, currently in beta).

(3) StarbladeX-Men meets Star Wars. A 250-year-old war rages. Legends say the war started over an insignificant planet called Kradax. Two neighboring empires claimed it, and for reasons long forgotten, thought it was worth going to war over. Nowadays, only a few galactic historians even recall the planet’s name. Those who started the conflict are long dead, but the two empires continue on in a war that has no end in sight. Queen Malkana now rules the empire known as the Monarchy which spans half of known space. Her dynasty of many centuries controls a highly skilled and well-paid galactic navy. Opposing her from his crystal throne sits The Lord Trans-Papal, immortal leader of the Technocracy. The Technocracy is a dread scientific-transdimensional-religious order which rules an empire spanning half the galaxy through its army of zealot techno-clerics who enforce their rigid orthodoxy (along with the occasional mass inquisition). While entire planets die overnight in the ongoing mad conflict, a few heroes stand against the darkness. A group of fugitive have acquired superpowers and various uncanny skills. Aboard their rebel ship they hatch a plan to disrupt the endless conflict between the two major forces in the galaxy: the Monarchy and the Technocracy. Much depends on recovering the fabled starblade, an ancient, alien artifact whose powers both Queen Malkana and The Lord Trans-Papal fear. (We would use Stan’s Mystique rules, currently in beta).

— Stan

Thursday Night Dice: Default Game Roles

Logging this for future reference. We discussed and decided that by default, players would have the following game roles (adjusting things when a player is absent or when a given player is being the Chronicler (in which case someone else would take on their role).

Default Roles:

  • Quartermaster: John
  • Battlemaster: John
  • Soundmaster: Mason
  • Rulesmaster: Jeff
  • Chronicler: Varies
  • Turnmaster: Varies

Redmark Session 24: Ivamel is ‘Banished’ to France

“France has more need of me than I have need of France.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

March 25, T.A. 1331 (Thrëa)

As the party sails back to Tanaroa, Ivamel spots old wreckage along the coastline and he thinks he says a skeletal arm hanging out from the wrecked skiff. The party decides to investigate; they find the skeletal remains dressed in the clothes of Redmark. Marcus & Lundie prepare the body for burial; Ghost Dancer finds a scroll on the body along with a few modest weapons. Quintos says note talks of a “giant black pearl” within the island at a great city; Lundie wonders aloud if this is another Urthjarl stone.

March 27-April 2, T.A. 1331 (Thrëa)

The party arrives at the foot of the great wall at the village of Tanaroa and decides a week of rest is what is best for their spirits. Marcus & Ivamel spend time divining with Mars over Ivamel’s past. Ivamel is suspicions of this, but Marcus insists; some of the answers raise Ivamel’s curiosity. Ghost Dancer divines with the Great Spirit about his pursuit of the buffalo, he is lead to shop keeper in the village. She tells him of the Jungle Walkers, men who go and live months beyond the Wall; they may be able to help Ghost Dancer in his quest. Lundie spends his time at a forge that Marcus is able to make for him fixing items for the locals and creating an amulet of Menerva for Ivamel at the request of Marcus. Lundie happily creates a amulet valued at 20gp for Ivamel.

April 3, T.A. 1331 (Thrëa) to Oct. 24, A.D. 1415 (Earth)

After the week of divinations, Marcus believes that if he casts the spell Banish on Ivamel, that Ivamel will be returned to his home. Ivamel agrees and is desperate to see his family once again. The party gathers in the hut they have been staying in to wish Ivamel Godspeed and farewells. As soon as Marcus casts Banish, the entire party experiences the feeling of flying over the lands. During this they are drawn to what appears to be a statue of an old wizard dressed in blue. As we approach, the eyes of the wizard opens and he says:

“Dark forces seek to divide the Fellowship of the Octagon. I cannot allow this. Seek the Urthjarl stone and use its power to return. Thrëa’s fate is bound to the destiny of 38 years hence.”

The party wakes up in a camp at night around a small camp fire, as the party looks around it is clear they are in a camp of an army. We hear voices around but do not understand them. Ivamel tells the party we are hearing the language of “French” and after asking a local further tells the party we are in the land of “France” on Earth in the year 1415. The party magic users test their spells and none seem to work, a few work for seconds as they grasp the Urthjarl stone around Quintos’s neck. Ivamel states that he is “home” but that this is not really home, his family is not here. Ivamel sees a French noble man with a sword that has a stone in the hilt. It looks just like the Urthjarl stone around Quintos’s neck. Ivamel tells the party that this noble may have a kobold in his capture he uses as a guard. The party plots to take the stone and attempt a return to Thrëa.

Redmark Session 23: The Salvation of Lalago

March 23-24, TA 1331

We are getting closer to saving the villager Lalago. Daily, Quintos using his crystal ball has been tracking and communicating with Lalago and he has located her near the volcano. During these communications, she continues to tell Quintos not to come save her, but we will not be deterred.

We think the creature capturing Lalago is called the pig god. Marcus communes with the lady of the lots and asks if the creature is indeed a lycanthrope and the lady confirms.

As we travel towards the volcano and encounter some of the villagers, while attempting to communicate with them, we hear the sounds of drums and the ritual of the pig god sacrifice beginning. We rush to the village and prepare an ambush for the lycanthrope, sadly we make noise and have to dispatch two villagers as we attempted to prevent the alarm.

Then charging to the top of the hill the party sees a skull head of massive size carved as a multi-level complex in the mountain.

As we enter we have a fight for our lives and defeat a were-boar (the pig god), a were rat, a massive giant with a crazy eye and our enemy the mind flayer. As we defeat them, the volcano begins to erupt and the mind flayer once again teleports away from our wraith. He is the immortal foe of our band of adventures..

We head back to the village with Lalago and convince her to live and using our magics we cure her of the lycanthropy.

We then head back to return her to her village, cured of the curse.

Loot

  • Necklace of black pearl (1500 gp)
  • Tome of Clear Thought (DMG p.206)
  • Manual of Bodily Health (DMG p.180)
  • 6 Arrows of Slaying (DMG p.152) (had an additional 2 that were used)
  • 2 against orcs
  • 2 against giants
  • 2 against shape changers
  • 2 against fire breathers
  • 1 potion of vitality
  • 1 Periapt of Wound Closure (DMG p. 184)

Trial Run of GroupMe for Messaging and Scheduling

Folk, I’d like to try using GroupMe for a couple of weeks for all communication and scheduling for the Thursday Night Dice group. If we have a good experience, we’ll then try it out with the Saturday Night Dice group. If we all still like it after a month, we’ll consider switching over from Meetup to instead use GroupMe.

Until further notice, please respond to BOTH GroupMe and Meetup invites for Thursday Night Games.

Background

We’ve been using Meetup for over a year and although at the time it was the best featured product on the market for community scheduling, there’s been an ongoing complaint from a few about getting calendar notices for campaigns that folks are not in (this is a limitation with how Meetup works). This past week I had a chance to use the GroupMe app all weekend long at PAX Unplugged to chat with my fellow Expo attendees. It was a great experience. GroupMe does everything that SMS Chat does, but it (in my opinion) does it better).

General Observations

GroupMe works essentially like SMS text messages, but it is reliable (Meetup is not), and has a nice Desktop version you can use in your PC web browser. You can have real-time chats that integrate well with calendars and polls. I do think this will give us better engagement, and will let us segment calendars, polls, and chats to individual campaigns. The key downsides of GroupMe are that (1) it has powerful features, but it takes a bit of tweaking to ‘tune’ message notifications, (2) calendaring is more convenient for users, but a bit more tedious to GMs to set up, and (3) there won’t be one ‘global’ view of the calendar, so we’ll have to be extra careful not to schedule games over each other.

All in all though I still am willing to give it a try. (Google+ is still not an option; on iOS Google+ no longer has Events as an option).

Getting Started

Probably the easiest is to just follow the link I will email you (if you’re in the Thursday Night Dice group).

Alternatively:

  • On your desktop, visit GroupMe.com and register for a free account (if you don’t have one already).
  • On your phone, install the GroupMe app.

Getting To the Calendar and Polls

The one thing that isn’t intuitive (it’s a bit like Snapchat in some regards) is getting to the group ‘Menu’). Simply click on the icon of the group once you’re in it at the top right of the screen.

Feature Comparison

Stuff Meetup Does Better than GroupMe

  • Recurring calendar events
  • Waitlist Support
  • Guest Support (you can allow folks to add 0 guest, or maybe 2 guests for example)
  • Website integration (shows calendar on Dicehaven.com; not possible with GroupMe)
  • Month-view of calendar events (it appears this feature will disappear on Meetup after their new software update)
  • Sync with Google Calendar (GroupMe can do Google Calendar sync but it requires https://ifttt.com/connect/google_calendar/groupme app and looks complicated)

Stuff GroupMe Does Better

  • Free with unlimited groups
  • Segment multiple groups with each group having its own calendar events and messaging (we could have 4 or 8 sub-groups, with a specific group for each campaign, plus groups for things like Lone Star Game Expo planners)
  • Configure email reminders for events to be for custom days/times before event
  • Better, realtime chat notifications (Meetup’s are unreliable)
  • Mute Notifications for One Group or All Groups
  • Office Mode (notifications will not be sent to group members in order to minimize distractions)

Key GroupMe FAQs

Also see all the GroupMe FAQs.

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