Topic: The Dungeon and Dragons Thread

@Darknyht

Man I would love to play CoS again. I ran it once a couple years ago but it was more of a meat grinder (same way I ran Tomb of Annihilation). There are so many interesting things to do in CoS

@Classic603 That's the fun thing with Curse of Strahd. Due to the readings you can replay that adventure and each time it will be different.

@Classic603 I'll echo @taskui in that CoS is unique in that there is the readings to switch things up and the module is written in a way that you can easily adjust the pieces to make it different. I would argue that most of the DND Adventures leave enough space in the canvas for a good DM to make adjustments. You just need to take moment to think through how the change ripples down the story.

My biggest change in DM'ing again was to realize that most intelligent creatures don't fight to the death. If given the chance they are more likely to run or surrender. It is only when they are cornered and think they will die regardless that they will fight to the death. Enemies that flee can become minor villains or complications to other encounters.

@Darknyht
That's a really good point. I did pick up "The Monsters Know What They're Doing", but for some reason it's hard to get out of the turn based rpg videogame mindset, even after DMing for 5 years 😮‍💨

Combat almost always devolves into standing still, taking turns hitting each other. I gotta actively change my mindset to make combat more dynamic

@Classic603 I get it. I grew up with the gold box AD&D games and it was basically move through a maze and kill monsters until you find the next person to tell you look at entry X in the manual you either lost or was falling apart.

Playing on foundry seems to make that mindset worse for me at times. I have to stop and remind myself to visualize the rooms instead of just moving to the next thing to click.

Busy due to the time of year. My group is gonna try to do a holiday meetup, but I don't know yet if that'll involve our usual D&D campaign, a one-shot, or different games entirely.

@Darknyht It reads like you had a very productive CoS session! Regarding your character's goals I mean. While this is fully up to the DM, is there a vague idea how far your group is in the adventure?

I ran Curse of Strahd some years ago. It's a great module, though I wished there was more danger to the PCs.

@Purgatorium

The way I ran it, there was plenty of danger. My PCs all died in the intro module, House of Horrors maybe? And then 4/5 had a new character by the time they entered the final dungeons. At that point there ended up being a TPK and instead of new characters at that point, they laughed and called it a failure on their part.

But Tomb of Annihilation ended the same way, I think I just like to crank difficulty.

@Classic603 Death House, the intro module is pretty hard. I love it. It's super atmospheric and builds a lot of tension.

There are ways to play Strahd so he's virtually invincible but I held back. Maybe it's me and I'm just too nice, lol.

Strahd is a very calculating villian. A good book to read is I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire by P.N. Elrod. You get a real sense of him from that book.

@Tyranexx We have completed three-ish of the tasks of the reading. We have probably done more than we would typically as we stumbled into a few side quests while trying to figure out the primary goals. Our drawing per my notes was:

Charlatan - Someone seeking power a prized book. Nobleman Vallaki.
Three of cliffs - snow covered Craig. Holy place, all will be revealed
Mist card - When the time is near, the dark lord will find you in ravenloft. Moves like the mist and is everywhere and nowhere.
One of coins - Swashbuckler - Vistani searching for her mentor, at the wizard’s tower or the abbey near the mists.
The Avenger - A great house, now fallen guarded by a dragon look at the highest peak.

We should be on our way back to the holy place to complete that particular task during our next session. We are still not sure of the book, but I am starting to think we will not need it.

@Classic603 The start was brutal on our group. We lost two of the starting players out of the gates, and I am the only player with their starting character at this point. Our death count is up to 5 now, but at this point we should be high enough leveled that death (outside of the brutal death save rules) shouldn't be likely.

@Darknyht Definitely slightly over halfway through the campaign I'd say, though that would likewise be dependent on your DM and any other side adventures. Either way, it sounds like a very fun campaign, and I'm glad your group has been able to play.

On another note, have you DMed your group of younger players in awhile? How is that going?

@Tyranexx It has been fun, although it seems to be dragging out for much longer than intended due to schedules. As for my other game, we haven't been able to play due to schedules at Christmas. Some of the players and myself had multiple commitments this holiday season. We are hoping to gather in the new year for the next session.

I hope that your holiday get together goes well. Those one shots can be some of the best since the stakes are usually so low for everyone. It lets everyone play with their most ridiculous ideas, like a Half-Orc College of Valor Bard named Garth Maul.

@Darknyht Par for the course for this time of year unfortunately. Not that my group has met recently or anything lately lol. Due to schedules and illness. I do hope both your groups can meet again very soon for more fun. I may not always comment due to my own piece of IRL, but I do appreciate your updates.

I sort of hope we resurrect what was originally a one-shot freeform "new frontier settlement" type of campaign we started a couple years ago. We've kept the character sheets around in case we can get some, but not all of, the extended group together. Two haven't played in some time and aren't involved in our main campaign since they're very busy parents.

@Darknyht @Tyranexx So for my one shot we have the following. A Shadar-Kai Gunslinger, a Goblin Arcane Archer that uses guns, a Gnome Draconic Sorcerer a Dwarf Barbarian and one other. As I said before it will have a Christmas theme to it. I will update later on once we get through the adventure.

@Tasuki Quite an interesting party mix. Sounds like it'll be a fun one-shot; themed ones can get pretty creative!

@Darknyht @Tyranexx So ran my one shot yesterday and as I said it did have a Christmas theme. So the group came into a town that was very decorated for the winter solstice, streamers, chains made of candy etc. However residents didn't seem to jolly. Well.the reason was every year a group of orcs and we are talking thousands and thousands would come down the mountain to "raid" the town riding sleight. The orcs would go from house to house and gathering the offerings that people left for them under trees. If they were satisfied with the offerings, they would leave the house and occupants alone and go to the next house. This was going on for several decades and no one knew why.

Well after the PCs did some investigating they decided to hijack one of the sleighs and follow the orcs to where they go to once their sleighs were loaded up. The one player who was playing a Gnome sorcerer used a hat of disguise to make them selves look like an Orc while the other PC a Goblin climb into an empty sack and joined the Gnome on the sleigh. The other PCs manged to follow along with one of the players (an elven wizard acting like he was drunk and was wanting to go with the orcs to celebrate the winter solstice with them.

The PCs manged to find that the orcs were taking the loot to the cave where a Frost Giant was living. After an intense battle which caused the Giant to nearly collapse the cavern on the PCs learned that the Giant worked for a dragon that years ago the townfolks hired adventurers to kill. Well it turned out the adventurers never killed the dragon and instead the Dragon bidding its time healed and was having the Frost Giant and orcs steal for its horde. Well now that the Giant was dead and the orcs disrupted the Dragon came forth scarred both emotionally and physically and proclaimed that the town and rest of the world is doomed. And that will be a story for another day.

@Tasuki sounds like it was fun (at least how Siri reads it). I haven’t been posting because my glasses broke over the weekend. I can barely see the screen without them so I have limited my computer time. I will catch up when the replacement pair gets in.

Been busy the last couple of days due to the holiday and worked today, so I'm just now getting around to the forums.

@Tasuki Now THAT sounds like a fun one-shot! I would've loved to be part of that group. Very much a D&D setting, but the orcs in their sleighs remind me a lot of a certain hairy green fellow from one of my favorite holiday movies. Except these many orcs don't seem interested in going up a couple of heart sizes. I especially love the group's creativity in following after the orcs, though I'm curious about how well the Elven wizard pulled off the drunk bit lol.

Crazy twist with that Frost Giant and Dragon though. Sounds like there might be an offshoot of this one-shot? That's quite a cliffhanger.