Crossing the Streams: Civil War

When I talk about stealing ideas from any source, some may seem odder than others. How about Marvel Comic's Civil War for example?

If you look at the 5th Edition D&D Player's Handbook, you've got the following classes:

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue
• Sorcerer
• Warlock
• Wizard

So how many of those classes cast spells or use some type of magic? How easy would it be to incorporate the idea of 'registration' for anyone who could cast magic? Even if it's just limited to a portion of the setting, it could create complications with most parties.

Imagine in Waterdeep you are automatically tagged and put into a school and have to work for the city.

Imagine in Cormyr you HAVE to be in the War Wizards.

In some ways, the settings often work something similar if at a reduced structure into their settings. But when you push things to an extreme level? They can take on different shades, different meanings.

It can also provide automatic breaks for the campaign. Imagine that it's not ALL magic using classes, just those that are arcane. All of the sudden you're sorcerer and warlock who didn't have to study for their magic, outside of the usual bits, now have to deal with witch hunters from all over the campaign setting. Now they have to deal with clerical spellcasters armed with dispel magic scrolls and a great knowledge of arcane magic.

Imagine the competition so fierce that warlock patrons are being killed off in the campaign by the deities of the setting, forcing people who still wish to be spellcasters to turn to deities for their power.

Pushing the ideas further, imagine groups that were once considered 'good' working on these terms. The 'Harpers' all of the sudden becomes a group that advocates for all mages to be registered and trained specifically so that they don't do any wrongs and that they have to be kept tabs on at all times. They point out the 'rogue' wizards of places like Zhentil Keep and Thay as a perfect reason why these laws must be passed and other countries, like Cormyr, fully agree, on the insistence that while in their country, these wizards work for both the Harpers and the country.

Still further, and you can see anti-magic zones like those created during the Time of Troubles becoming hot spots where the martial classes would gather to plot their works against the wizards of the world.

Still further and you can see countries using mage sniffing demons, hounds, or other entities that could sense and eat/countermagic.

This might lead to mages that don't rely 100% on their magic, mages that are multi-classed or are in hiding by claiming to be clerics or druids.

Comics can be a fun way to see how plot lines and ideas play out. Don't hesitate to steal from them.

Gaming: 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and Warmachine

In gaming, I've been in a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign based off of the Rise of Tiamat.  I'm playing an Old One bound Warlock.

We're still on book one, around the 5th chapter of Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

The GM is kind of not using XP, kind of using it. Sort of an annoyance as I've missed two weeks and am a full level behind the group of new characters that replaced the party that was decimated.

Also annoying is that the game is using critical hits not only for weapons, but also for spells. On weapons the party hasn't been horribly crippled, but have suffered some losses. On spells, we've managed to inflict some impressive critical hits.

But that's a pendulum that will have a vicious swing when it turns back our way.

If I didn't enjoy hanging out with this group, I'd probably wait until we rotated out this game and went into another. I have a good time but the game itself isn't the reason.

In other avenues, I'm a miniature painter and collector. One of my friends has been busting my chops to play more. I've been playing Warmachine. It's a fun setting based in the Iron Kingdoms.

The faction I play, is Retribution.



I've mentioned before that I like the 'angry' elves. The design of their machines are different, being round and smooth as oppopsed to square and chunky.

I've only played a handful of games. I'm still learning the rules. Haven't won a game yet.

But I am going to keep playing. It provides a lot of fodder for my brain in almost every way. The fiction in the line varies. I didn't think too much of my faction's fiction last go round. But the models released? Tops.

A Missed Session and I avoid the TPK

TPK is short for Total Party Kill.

Two weeks ago, I was away on business so missed the game. It also meant missing the XP and getting up to 3rd level.

This week I was ready to go and made the mistake of thinking, "Man, wouldn't it be awesome to take a nap and be super charged for the game?"

After the nap my body was like, "No son, that's no nap, it's actually time to go to sleep." While my back pain has been more manageable, at the end of the week, it catches up to me quite a bit and rest is good. I'm also still recovering from the actual trip out of state.

So I let my friends know I wouldn't be making it and promptly fell back asleep.

Next day, the text. "TPK."

Turns out that there were some failed stealth rolls, some villains played intelligently, some lack of information among the players, and well, my friend running the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, got to have his first TPK in 5th edition.

When I was running the Mines adventure from the starter set, when the party was in the tower and the dragon breathed on them twice, thanks to letting a player reroll the 'charge' on the breath weapon, it was almost a TPK.

But this was a true TPK.

So now the DM is allowing everyone to make new characters starting at 2nd level, the level which I'm currently at.

I can't complain too much as I missed two sessions.

At this point, the people who wanted the 'Blood and Steel' critical hits might be rethinking things as one of them lost an arm to an attack. He then tried to hide in shadows and the GM is very "no nonsense" as he had the guards just follow the blood trail and finish off the hiding rogue.

It's just like those who voted against it said, "the number of attacks coming against the players is always going to be greater than those the players make." The sheer number of attacks, from the lowest level weaklings to the most powerful elements in the game, have the ability to strike critical hits. In such a situation, the players will always lose.

On the other hand, 5th edition characters are much easier to make, manage and level up than previous editions. Still, it would be nice to have some official character generators for the game to make it even easier if you know what I mean.

For other players out there, have you had any recent TPKs? Was it something stupid? Something that the party could have avoided?

How does the GM handle bringing in new characters? Same level? One level behind? Start at first regardless of the levels involved? Something else?

Me? I'll be curious to see what the group dynamic is now. Despite the threat of critical hits, it looks like the group is making more up front fighter types as opposed to what was in the party before. It'll be interesting to see for sure.

Fifth Edition: This Time As A Player

The group I'm playing with does round robin style Dungeon Mastering.

Due to my back issues, I completely missed the Story Teller doing the World of Darkness with pretty much everything goes.

Thankfully, after thousands of dollars, two shots in the back, lots of physical therapy, and perhaps another shot to come, my back pain is under control enough that I can sit and stand and go out long enough to play.

The new GM is running the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I wasn't impressed when I initially read the module but that's okay. I'm not running it so the Dungeon Master can do whatever he likes!

I made a Warlock.

Initially I was going to make a Blade Warlock. The idea seems very cool. Who doesn't want a character that you can form a lightsaber right?

But the mechanics didn't seem to back it. It seems more of a "cool" thing as highly effective.

Part of that goes into the whole dreaded crunch versus fluff. For example, to start off with the warlock, it makes it seem almost like a wizard in their quest for knowledge. But your primary stat is charisma. Probably to represent the bond between caster and pact master. 

But even in the quick build, it's secondary stat is recommended to be constitution.

And if you want to have some effectivity as a warlock with a blade? You'll need strength.

Not going to happen with point buy without some heavy sacrifices in other places.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not such a twink that I can't play such a character.

But I'm also not that interested in min-maxing a character where I need to worry about how best to make a character so I just went with a Warlock that's going to do the whole eldrich blast thing.

I went with the Old Ones pact and the GM is letting me use the default aberrant style baddies in Eberron for it.

He's using a few of the optional subsystems in his game. For example, the passive initiative rule. He's also got the action points going on and is allowing people to use information from the WoTC articles so we have a Warforged in the group.

But he's also using Blood and Steel for critical hits. The old Blood and Steel is a Mayfair supplement for their Role Aids line that was meant to supplement Advanced Dungeons and Dragons back in the day.

It's fantastic if you like horrific combat. It's terrible if you're a player in such a game. It came down to a vote and the people who are against it on the grounds that "monsters are always going to be rolling more dice than characters" lost again "But it's so cool!" and probably a bit of nostalgia since they were in heavy use with the groups I played with back then.

Mind you I was one who voted against them. But that didn't quite matter. Over the course of the game, three critical hits rolled; two against the party, one against some generic monster. Yeah, the prophecy is already coming true.

The GM wants us to have miniatures too. I'm probably going to use this guy:

That's a Bones Miniature, available from Reaper Miniatures unpainted. This particular paint job is from Rich Burge. It's a solid paint job. Mine will not look anywhere near as nice.

On a side note, one of my friends was flipping through his book and a section of multiple pages just feel out. We laughed, he raged and claimed it was the shoddy workmanship of Chinese but a quick read through shows that the book was printed in America. Good job my fellow Americans! He's going to contact WoTC and see if they'll comp him.

So what is everyone else playing or running these days? 

Rivers Run Red Finale!

So when last I left off, the party had lost one member to a fey creature. Another had been cursed and another suffered from a magical trap.

This required magic of a higher level than they had so they went to the city! In this instance, Restov. There they meet with the mayor, hunted down some magic items, sold some of their current ones for cash, had a few social encounters as the mayor held a celebration to welcome the heroes of 'Murkwell', the name of their nation, and they meet a few people.

Now they also owe three quests in exchange for the magical services rendered. Ha! I can throw those in somewhere I'm sure.

They also burned through the last encounters of the adventure. Several of these were role playing in nature ranging from dealing with more fey, at least this time not assassin or poison using, to dealing with the enraged owlbear that attacked their town while they were hex exploring.

For the owlbear, I was super lazy. I just used a fire giant's stats and lowered the CR by 1 as I didn't give it a bite nor allow it to be immune to fire. Seemed to work out okay. Terrible damage, hits you easily, has a bucket load of hit points and little else.

But man, the party is sure tired of owlbears.

Bad new? they have a lot of Kingdom building to do. They did roughly five months.

The next adventure, The Varnhold Vanishing, assumes another one to two years of building.

And one of my friends is getting ready to run.

What?

He's a new dad. He's in school. He's getting out for a semester and is dying to try Numenera.He claims that it's easy to run, he loves the setting and art, and he's only got a limited window of opportunity to run it because once school starts back up, he'll probably be out of gaming for a while as he's got help on the child situation with grandparents, but they're only visiting for now too.

Hey, someone else wants to run? Can you say awesome? I don't mind running but I'm kind of flat on 5e. I'm too used to the rich resources that Pathfinder and 3.5 have and I keep wondering where the hell the new Monster Manual is.

On the other hand, I ain't buying Numenera. It's not an inexpensive book. He's only going to run it for a few months. I suspect I'll be getting there early and reading up on it or hoping for another Bundle of Holding or something.

Part of this is because another of my friends is talking about Dresend Files and the same guy is talking about the Fantasy Flight games like Deathwatch while another is running oWoD when I can't make it to run. That's a lot of money for games I'll probably never play on a regular basis.

I get that if you're playing a game long term, $50 bones isn't that much of an investment. That's like a ticket to a concert or 20 (or less!) drinks at Star Bucks. But I also paint miniatures which require a TON of things if you like experiementing like I do ranging from different paint from different companies, to different accessories like glaze medium, matt medium, brushes, pigments, etc...

So I'm curious to see how Numenera works out and will enjoy my break from running.

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised the group managed to make it through books one and two and even the starting adventure from the boxed set.

What's everyone else doing now? Still playing 5th edition? Waiting on Exalted 3rd edition? Sticking with the OSR?

Dungeons and Dragons: Why Official? Why Magazines?

I have previously mourned the passing of the magazines, Dungeon and Dragon. My blog post on such musings, as well as others about the lack of material for 5^th edition, has recently seen much activity thanks to a sharing of said blog post by +Charles Akins .

One responder, +Ricky Moore, asked “Why do we need the magazines? There’s so much stuff out there now that it’s not necessary.”

I don't want to say that’s always been true but to a certain extent, it has. In days gone by, there were people doing conversions of monsters from other game systems. Bringing magic items from myth and history into the game. People sharing notes and convention war stories. People making up things on the fly or inspired by comics and movies of their time.

The internet has made the sharing of such things even easier.

So in that sense, no, nothing new is needed. But in that sense, Dungeons and Dragons 5^th edition itself was not needed. People already HAD games. People already HAD characters. People already HAD something.

But we have 5^th edition nonetheless.

So are there any reasons outside of a product being sold?

Ed Greenwood. How much money has Ed made for first TSR then WoTC with his creation, the Forgotten Realms, his personal works printed for the Forgotten Realms in both fiction and gaming line?

Ed did not spring whole cloth from the mind of Gary Gygax. He made his bones if you will, in the pages of Dragon magazine.

Ed is not the only one. There were many comics that either started out in Dragon or had a signal boost from being in the official magazine of Dungeons and Dragons. These range from classic comics like Wormy (sadly never completed) to more modern contemporaries like Order of the Stick.

Here at least Wizards of the Coast has been wise enough to allow others, like Scott of PvP, to use their properties to have stories. Scott does a great job in his comic Table Titans of a group playing in the Forgotten Realms. But would you know about that comic from The WoTC site?

Dragon magazine proved to be a fertile ground for many in terms of creators, comics, and artists. 

Larry Elmore and others may not have made their bones in Dragon and Dungeon, but such magazines didn’t hurt in getting eyes on their art.

Again though, there is this whole internet thing where people can see each other’s work on a much broader scale than previously so while the legitimacy of being published by the official makers of Dungeons and Dragons has its appeal, it’s not necessary. It’s another “Nice” thing.

It’s so “Nice” that Paizo has yearly competitions to see who the next “Superstar” will be. These contest draw a lot of attention to Paizo’s site and get people involved in the game in a way that only playing it does not.

Content: This is the era of content and content is king. Comic readers have had thousands of issues of Batman, Superman, and Spiderman, among others, but those characters are still being published, still being put through the paces. New foes and allies arriving with regular frequency.

Look at it from another perspective if you can. If Dungeons and Dragons 5^th edition is your first role playing game, and as a player, you enjoy the barbarian, sorcerer, or warlock, among others as a player, you’re using “new” content. Such classes were not originally part of the game.

Do you enjoy tielflings or dragonborn as core races? Again, not something that was part of the core prior to 4^th edition.

By this whole theory of “let the players make it”, the Player’s Handbook should only have included human, elf, and dwarf for races, and only cleric, fighter, magic user, and rogue for classes. Some would say go back further and only have cleric, fighter, and magic user as the rogue wasn’t part of the “original” game.

Do you get my drift? Your favorite part of the game may be one that’s new to it. And in so being new to it, there may be those who’ve played and would like to see their favorite thing return to the game. For example, me? I’d love to see psioncs hit 5^th edition.  While I have not enjoyed every edition’s versions of psioncis, I like it as a concept and enjoyed a lot of what was done in 3^rd and 4^th edition with it. Not having psionics in this edition is a strange thing to me.

For me, this is where the vast resources of 3^rd edition and 4^th edition make those games feel more ‘complete’ to me.

But you’re the Dungeon Master! You care not for these player bits. You have hundreds of monsters in the Monster Manual.

But do you enjoy the chaotic Slaad or the lawful Modron? These were not creatures that were originally in the 1^st edition Monster Manual. I know, I’m stretching it going back that far.

But the point is there are so many monsters that are different people’s favorites that Dragon magazine would be a good way to bring them to the game. There are numerous types of dragons ranging from ferrous and drakes, to gem dragons. There are numerous types of outsiders including elemental variants and demons and devils that haven’t been updated. Many of them are someone’s favorite.

And magic items? Wow. With the cap on magic items at +3 (which I’m sure we’ll see broken officially at some time), and other changes to how magic items work, having Dragon would allow a Bizarre of the Bazaar to make a return and update some of them. Perhaps not even necessarily on a one per one basis but some game design articles talking about how you COULD update the items.

Content: What? Again? Yes. I mention content again because I don’t go to the official site of Wizards of the Coast that often. Paizo on the other hand… Paizo breaks their site up into many parts. They have upcoming previews for new material. They have short stories that are free to read. They have showcases of what other companies are doing that they think are cool. There is a lot of interaction with the fan base.

Wizards of the Coast? Maybe I'm just missing it, but I found the site so poorly organized that when I tried to find images of their miniatures, I’m directed to other sites. WTF WoTC. WTF. If your own site is so lacking in regular content to draw readers to it, you will wither on the vine.

Content, new content, on a regular basis, is needed to give people a reason to come to your site every day. Sometimes multiple times a day to see if they missed anything previously.

To me? WoTC site for Dungeons and Dragons seems designed to act as a coming soon page with an occasional dip into an article like Unearthed Arcana. Perhaps I’m wrong and I’m not looking at it enough? Are there some hidden gems I've missed?

Nostalgia: Okay, this one is a nonsense listing for the most part. It’s a “Because I want it!” portion. But… but… there are probably STILL people angry that WoTC cancelled the print versions of the magazine. There are probably people upset that WoTC cancelled the electronic versions of the magazine. Maybe I should retitle this one “good will” as opposed to “Nostalgia”.

But there MUST be value in Nostalgia or WoTC wouldn't keep going back to the well. Elemental Evil? Really? Again?

Tiamat? Really? Again? Wasn't one of the adventure paths for 4^th edition Tiamat? Wasn't that based on Red Hand of Doom? What?

Nostalgia has power. It’s been a force in 2^nd edition. In 3^rd edition. In 4^th edition. In 5^th edition. Using well known names, events, characters, and other bits, showcases continuity between editions. It allows new people to play with old ideas. It gives readers who have never seen any of it before, opportunity to go down the rabbit hole and see how far it goes.

Variety: I like a lot of esoteric things in Dungeons and Dragons. I like a touch of technology for example. I was very happy to see that in the Dungeon Master's Guide. I enjoyed the Sheen, a race of robotic invaders from back in 2nd edition. I enjoy Psionics. I enjoy Ferrous Dragons and Linnorms. 

Not everyone does. For example, some people LOVE the two hardcover adventurers WoTC put out. I thought the basic adventure in the starter boxed set shamed those two books. To me, their useless. They are no-gratis products.

By having products like Dragon and Dungeon out back in the day, you were able to have something that probably hit your fancy. Rare was it that a whole issue was useless. Not impossible mind you but rare.

Time: Perhaps role playing in and of itself is a younger man’s game. Unlike say comics, books, movies, or other forms of entertainment that you can enjoy by yourself at your leisure, role playing is a group activity. It is one that requires a further chunk of your life. What does that mean?

If you work more than 40 hours, raise you hand.

If you have outside obligations, like taking care of a diabetic mother, a special needs child, your crack habbit,  raise your hand.

If you have a S/O or children, raise your hand.

If you have all those and still find time to game, raise your hand.

Now having done that, it’s nice to be able to sit back, grab a professionally edited magazine with some appealing art and go, “Man, I’m going to put that in my campaign.”

The days of spending hours, days, weeks, or longer on crafting the perfect dungeon or setting, are gone for many of those who've been playing the game for years and having content created for busy people is a very handy thing to show people, “Hey, Dungeons and Dragons, it’s the game that’s well supported so you can sit back and enjoy it” as opposed to “Hey, Dungeons and Dragons. You finished our boxed set starting adventure and hated the two hardcovers adventurers so make up everything from scratch now.”

And this is part of the problem. It’s not necessarily JUST a lack of the magazines. It’s a lack of resources. There are no official conversion documents. There are no official electronic tools. When such tools are put up on a fan site, they are requested to be taken down. For the most part, the core content has been allowed to roam free and the owner has closed the gates to go check on their more promising, profitable children.

I cannot blame WoTC for that. WoTC is a company and a subsidy of Hasbro. They need to show profit and need to show continual profit.

But again, that’s why I'm concerned that this edition of Dungeons and Dragons, will be the last. If you're the biggest fish in a pond too small to interest the corporate masters, your value is equal to that of the smallest fish.

I enjoyed the spirited debate that popped up last post. Be curious to see if people think I'm just smoking that lovely crack pipe or a little from column A and a little from column B.

Kingmaker: Rivers Run Red

Despite the fact that there are now some odd four players who own the Ultimate Campaign expansion book from Paizo, and assurances after assurances that they would 'blue book' the king building experience so that they could continue onto the 'adventure proper', such an event did not occur.

Rather the first hour or so of game time was taken up with the claiming of hexes and preparation of farm land for the new kingdom. It went fairly smooth but the players who weren't interest in that aspect of the game were less than enthused.

The players then decided to clear out a nearby barrow mound and killed what used to be a wight, that I subbed for a wraith.  The sword they got though was a nice +2 fey bane. I quickly ruled that it required the use attune it and and did an extra 2d6 versus fey creatures.

They also managed to hunt down the hodag, a monster that I gave a fairly high armor class and lots of attacks, but no real 'quirks' to it. Almost like a little juggernaut but I have a full five man outfit here so they made short work of the creature.

Then the party went off to explore some old elf ruins currently inhabited by... you guessed it, evil fey. Due to some inter party conflict between how the players do things, the party wound up almost being apologetic to the 'Dancing Lady", the local evil fey that had unofficial servants that tended to kill annoying adventurers.

With the fey bane sword, the party made quick work of those servants but... One of the players has that lustful disadvantage and made the moves on the lady while the rest of the party left. She did her dance and charmed him. Being alone with a blood drinking fey was not good for said character but the party did manage to overcome the creature in the end although this particular fey grants a 'dying' curse.

The party then went to a larger city as their own didn't have a higher enough level priest, to get a few things fixed and removed. So now the party has agreed to a few quests for this NPC. I may just use that as the launching point for the next adventure as it's a quick plug into the "why does the party care about this other area".

I'm also thinking that while the party is out of their region I'm going to have a group of NPCs tackle the lizard men. The lizard men are relatively low level fodder for the party at this time unless I do a lot of conversions and well, I am a lazy bastard. It'll help to get things ready for book 3 of the 6 part series and free up the party to do some more exploring. Think I'll grab the old Paizo group directly from the NPC Guide as they are a group of wandering adventurers.

Anyone have any good resources on converting monsters from 3rd edition to 5th? The 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide has a good section on making monsters but if there's a quicker way, I'm all ears.

Kingmaker: Rivers Run Red Session Two

I am continuing to enjoy Kingmaker.

Rivers Run Red continues a bit of the wilderness exploration, continuing in the same region as the first book.

This allows the players a home base of operations and a sense of what the River Kingdoms are like. I've tended to play it more 'southern' and 'country' in that the folk tend to speak simple and direct and while most are honest to a fault, there are those whose enjoyment of solitude turns them away from the intruders that the players represent.

Several players have decided to dedicate some effort to the running of the kingdom but have still yet to decide how best to advance. That's okay as outside of 'kingdom management' there are still numerous areas to explore, quests to complete and monsters to slay.

In many ways, these first two books of Kingmaker cleave close to how I often ran in the past. Some encounters with various NPCs to learn the lay of the land, what news from which country, the creation of rivalries and ending of such.

In this case, that would be Akiros Ismort, formerly of the Stag Lord, who turned his efforts to procuring the character's patronage. He wished to be awarded rank and title general but was not awarded such so he continues to toss jibes at the current general and who knows what that former bandit leader does when the players are not there?


After such meetings though, the players sharpen blades and onto slaughter! Just hopefully not their own.

One of my friends joked it was a PC version of Spartacus. "Yeah, we get together, find out some stuff, party a bit in the town, and then unsheath blade and spell and let monster burn or bleed!"

It brings me to worry about what happens when the campaign elements in the background take more center tone. The 'strength' for me is that despite my appreciation of mega-dungeons and dungeon crawls in general, the open nature of exploration, the small locations, such as an outpost or a barrow mound, allow for the illusion of some type of crawl that are more like connected encounters as opposed to say, The World's Largest Dungeon or a standard Dungeon Crawl where whole sessions can pass in dark passages.

This allows me to change things up a bit more quickly and change tone or goal between expeditions whereas a full out dungeon crawl merely requires eager foot to step into waiting maw.

I also find myself doing a lot of on the fly conversions. While I've shared my attempts at bringing the troll hounds and hodag to life, there were many more that needed such a touch that I failed to do.

For example, the classic two headed troll or the not quite as classic, stone troll. Or a troll with a few fighter levels on him. I looked at the ettin and snagged its base damage and gave higher point point totals to it, while giving the stone troll higher armor class and hit points and no bite attack. The 'king' with the fighter levels i just increased his hit point total to reflect him being 'tough'.

This is a 'problem' with using older adventures on a system that has almost as many years of history as I've been alive. The sheer variety of opposition is enough to make head swim if plans are not taken far ahead of time or if you're not comfortable doing some conversion work on the fly.

What's worse is there is no 'easy' solution for this problem. While I haven't reviewed the Monster Manual in it's latest version, I have not found one of its weaknesses to be a lack of variety.  Again, it's the history of the game providing such richness and capturing so many classic monsters including modrons, that prevent every monster possible from being updated.

It may sound strange, but as I'm of firm mind that 5th edition is the last print edition of Dungeons and Dragons we'll see, I would hope that at some point they'll do an Encyclopedia of sorts of the monsters. When 2nd edition was long in tooth, there came compendiums of wizard spells, priest spells, and my favorite, magic items in faux leather. Great stuff that I still draw inspiration from today. Very handy.

If 5th edition is the last print edition, I'd dearly love to see such a collection of monsters. If WoTC intention is to provide tools and get out of the way, monsters are such tools that I would enjoy.

Failing that, some form of license? Some form of official conversion material to take older monsters from one edition to another?

But in terms of the adventure itself? It continues well. The players managed to overcome the trolls without retreat although they had used up almost every healing potion that they'd hoarded both from previous adventure and the Mines bit that I included. They also used up a Necklace of Fireballs that they had found earlier. I was pleased to see the item in use as it lends some firepower to the ground in short term form.

Giving characters such temporary ammunition tends to be one of the 'tricks' of allowing potential TPK's to hit as the party may feel cocksure enough to fight things that may be outside their ability.

Still, the group seemed to enjoy themselves so...

How are your own adventures going? Has your group experienced any TPK's? Any switches of character in mid stream to test out different character mechanics? Any weird magic items or monsters that you're Dungeon Master has thrown into the mix?

Lost Mines: Finished!

And with yesterday's game, the party cleared out the mine itself.

It was almost like someone had the cheat code. They went almost straight to the room with the two unique magic items and then straight to the big bad of the level.

There were six of them and they were a level higher and they are a few well built characters. The druid in particular. His animal summoning ability coupled with most monsters having a lower AC in this edition then in previous editions, makes him a right deadly bastard.

They stomped the crap out of the spectator and the 'black spider'.

The biggest challenge they had was the stirges in one of the early rooms. The ability to automatically inflict damage is a nice one.

Next week? Group spoke and said that they were interested in some actual dungeon crawling instead of more wilderness exploration so the map they found in the mine is going to lead them to the Emerald Spire. I might have them stop in at Thornkeep along the way, maybe meet some raiders or some other vicious random encounters as I have a few of them lined up.

Running the Lost Mine of Phandelver wasn't my best time as a GM. I'm way out of practice for one. For another I'm not as familiar with the 5th edition rules as I should be. I'm actually stumbling more over 3.5 versions of the rules, because I've played Pathfinder, than I am 4th edition of the rules.

Having said that, the adventure is solid. I think between this and the two hardcovers, this is the better value for the money. You get dice, the adventure, the box  itself, some starter rules, and the adventure should hold you over for several sessions.

Anyone else finish off Lost Mine? How did you pick up afterwards? Homebrew stuff? Older edition material? Something in between?

Them Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Blues

I like Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition.

It has a bit of simplicity that harkens back to previous editions that as a Game Master, make it easier to run things on the fly for me than they were when I first started 3rd or 4th edition. Mind you, at the end of 3rd edition I was able to cobble things together off the cuff with the best of them but that was almost a decade of system mastery.

I do not like the support around 5th edition.

The two hardcover adventurers weren't my style and they were expensive. When you talk about inflation, the old hardcovers were 160 pages for $29.95. The two adventurers were $29.95 and were 96 pages each. That's a BIT of a price increase.

The Dungeon Master screen was a wash. Almost useless in the information it provides, it has a great piece of cover art and is very inexpensive.

The meta support for the game? So awful.

In an era where people binge watch some of the greatest media ever created and don't look back, WoTC support strategy seems to be "me'h".

Dragon and Dungeon Magazine, which could easily have acted as a gateway to the game? Not even supported electronically anymore.

Online support? Things to get people coming back to the WoTC site? Minimal. Here's the bad thing. I thing PvP and its creator, Scott R. Kurzt, have brought more attention to Dungeons and Dragons than the official Dungeons and Dragons site. Their comic Table Titans is a great example of using the web to provide small amounts of new material on a regular basis to get readers eyes on the site. WoTC needs something like that of their own, in-house, updated on a regular basis to bring eyes to the site.

Actual support? Wizards of the Coast just released something called "Unearthed Arcana". A few pages with no illustrations and no page design to them. It looks like something that fell off of some designer's desk that WoTC said, "Yeah, put that up online."

This is terrible. People, well, me, I expect some professionalism from WoTC. With all of the stock art they have, with all of the templates for designed books they have, with all of the trade dress they have, the best they could do is this? This half-baked mess? Well, you get what you pay for here.

Here's how I judge it. Have any of my players immediately bugged me to use any of the races or other bits? No.

But what about other aspects?

How about the electronic support? You know, the tools to replace the DDI?

Not happening. Either WoTC didn't know what they were doing when they teamed up with the company they were using or they decided it was going to cost too much money or a squirrel ran by with a bit of shiny because it's been dropped and there has been no tool to replace it.

What about a gaming license so that other companies can make products? Well, companies are making products, but they are all unofficial products so whatever 'skaff' effect WoTC might have gained, have been lost. What would the meme be here? "Bro, do you even OGL?"

My opinion hasn't changed much from my earlier musings on the subject. Unless WoTC somehow surprises me, 5th edition will be the last print edition of the game.

1. Firings continue. The staff was small to begin with.

2. Competition is not going away. Paizo may be producing too much material as its floating around in Half-Price books now in pretty hefty volumes indicating it's not some one off customer dropping these books off, but they're still number one.

3. People have short attention spans. With Kickstarter acting as a marketing machine, role playing companies are using it to effectively engage with their consumer base on levels that WoTC never has.

4. The books aren't legally available electronically.  Remember when WoTC took their ball (aka all legal PDF documents) off of DriveThru? Well, all of the OLD material is back but if you want to legally have a copy of the 5th edition Player's Handbook? Sucks to be you.

I enjoy a lot of the art in the new books.

I enjoy the mechanics.

I enjoy the 'official' feel of playing a game that's "Dungeons and Dragons" and not "Pathfinder".

I also enjoy games with psionics.

I also enjoy some monthly support.

I also enjoy seeing what companies do with a license. The gaming community wouldn't have Green Ronin Games, Malhavok Press, or any number of other former start ups that have continued to spread their wings under the OGL that's still in effect from 3.5.

If WoTC goal is to have a game out there and use that to push along some sales on the PDF front, well, they've succeeded.

Am I way off base here? Does anyone else see this as "The Long Goodbye" of WoTC to the role playing game? Is Dungeons and Dragons just going to be mined for it's IP in board games, card games, video games, and I'm sure WoTC would love it, but I doubt we'll see it, a cable series or a movie?

Return to the Mines

It's been a while since I ran my 5th edition Lost Mine of Phandelver mixed with the King Maker adventure path. The last two weeks though have seen a return to form of sorts.

Part of the problem? After being away from the game for so long, most of the players had no clue where we last left off. Not only that, but the continuity or knowing the NPCs, the locations, and the other minutia were lost on them. This is a real world penalty for taking a month + long break from the game. We'll either get over it or we'll work through it.

Another problem? I've got seven players at the table. Most of them are good solid players who know the system and  can answer any rules questions brought up quickly. But when combat happens, it's still seven players and a simple equal combat can take up a good chunk of the night, even though 5th edition runs much quicker than 4th did.

I also have been playing with my gaming style. Because I mixed King Maker and Phandelver, the characters are fifth level in a section of Phandelver that is for like second level characters. I narrated one of the fights because, well, I didn't have an hour and a half to have them go room to room killing bandits.

Has anyone else ever done that? In my mind, I know I have options.

1. Beef up the opposition: Again, 5th edition is good in that because of the low numbers, you can throw more grunts into the mix and it makes a real difference in terms of resources consumed. Problem is that it is adding more time to the combat.

2. Customize the opposition: Instead of bandits, it's bandit chiefs or some substandard in the middle.  This is the ideal road I should take but I'm using prewritten adventurers because of time constraints and I should really make MORE time to run the adventure as opposed to just winging things like that off the cuff.

But maybe my group is humoring me because they didn't seem to mind the "this is what happens" bit. I guess when you can do it for trips that have no random encounters on them, you can do it for fights in which the likelihood of death is minimal.

The good news is that the party is no onto the last branch of the Lost Mine section and should be finishing that one up soon. I've already done some legwork in possible additions/changes to the last end boss which will vary depending on the number of players that show up as the usual is anywhere from five to seven.

So far, because Wizards of the Coast hasn't released any additional adventurers and hasn't put out an official OGL or anything, the offerings remain scant and if you're looking to get into 5th edition and have an adventure out of the box, I'd still recommend Mines over the Tiamat based hardcovers.

Other opinions out there? People playing the Goodman Games unofficial adventurers? Recommendations?

Stag's Helm: Magic Item For 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

One of the things that is terrible in running 5th edition is the lack of magic items. Well, that problem should be resolved somewhat by the publication of the Dungeon Master's Guide, which if you didn't go 'Black Friday' at your FLSG, you still don't have.

But that doesn't solve the problem of unique magic items, such as the Stag's Helm in the Pathfinder setting. It's an item that the Stag Lord has about him. But it's a relatively simple magic item so here's my take of it:

Description:
This striking helmet is crafted to resemble the skull of a mighty stag. Although made from bone, the antlers and helm are as strong as metal. When worn, the helm greatly enhances eyesight and hearing, granting a +2 bonus on Perception checks. In addition, once per day the helm may be called upon to enhance any ranged attack made by the wearer to make an insightful shot. Activating this ability is a free action, and once activated, your next ranged attack against a target within 30 feet is made with advantage. If you don't make a ranged attack within 1 round of activating this power, the insight fades and is wasted for that day.

A worshiper of Erastil who wears this helm may utilize the insightful shot ability up to 3 times per day.





The Perception check isn't a big deal as both games have Perception skill checks. The original item had a feat and I didn't want to break down the feat and go into all that detail when there was already a mechanic to represent gaining some advantage, in this case, having advantage on an attack roll.

The image is from the Kingmaker Game Master Item Cards. They're inexpensive clocking in at under $10 and can give you some visual cues to various things that don't necessarily just copy the art from the RPG products. The cards are a nice idea but it's rare that the bottom of the deck's stay together and even rarer when I can open the set without inflicting some damage to the box itself. Argh!

Anyone else rolling up new magic items or are people still waiting on the official book?

Death By Dragon: Week Five of Kingmarker with Lost Mine of Phandelver

I've made mention before that my campaign started off as a combination of elements from Lost Mine of Phandelver and the Paizo Kingmarker Adventure Path.

As a quick note, Lost Mine of Phandelver to me, is the best 'official' adventure Wizards of the Coast has put out yet and if you haven't picked up the starter set yet, Amazon has it for $11.99.

I'm still digesting the kingdom rules from the hardcover Ultimate Campaign, so didn't want to run Rivers Run Red just yet. While there are elements that don't rely on the player's having the kingdom in play, I wanted to give the players as much Kingdom awesome as I could and well, wasn't ready. Thankfully the group is cool about that and I mentioned that they should follow up on their missing Dwarf co-Pathfinder member. It costs them!

Instead of using Phandalin as presented, I swapped it out with the River Kingdoms city of Pitax.I felt this worked out well in several ways. First, it's a fairly decent sized city. Important when the players are looking for spells and other mundane items that might take a while to find out their current outpost. Second, I don't know if it's a deliberate attempt or not, but Pitax feels very much like Rome in that it's almost a 'renaissance' city with lots of families doing various corrupt things and having a pleasant facade to hide behind. After watching the series Borgia, I was ready to role play some of that out.

It also didn't hurt that the players will eventually have different things to come to Pitax for in the future if we follow through with the entire Kingmarker series.

In Pitax, the players learned a bit about the city, about River Kingdoms in general, about some of the families here, and sought out information on their dwarf friend whose been held prisoner since oh, week one of the game I want to say?

They learned the whereabouts of a druid who knew the local region well and sought him out. During that bit, they encountered some twig blights. These are little evil halfling treants basically and the party made quick work of them. Why WoTC wants to keep using them as I don't think they've ever been popular since their introduction in Sunless Citadel in 3e era, I can't imagine.

There were also some unique zombies, ash zombies, that had a little extra ability, a nice example of a mini-template.

But the druid? He had the information that the party wanted, but needed a certain young green dragon gone. One of the players had a bit of background in his campaign that I used to include the dragon, Venomfang, in as his main antagonists.

Now the dragon's in a tower. The tower is so many feet wide and so many feet deep. It's basically a cooking oven for the dragon's poisonous breath.

Remember that elf monk I've mentioned in the past? That I painted up a Stonehaven miniature for?

Missed his first save. Took 42 points of damage in first round of combat. Erdan Nailo, who put clan above self, an elf that could hold a grudge? Dead.

The party made some good efforts at killing the creature. The druid casting some resistance from poison on himself, the halfling rogue having an innate resistance to poison. The dragonborn leaping upon the creature's back, which I gave him advantage for as long as he stayed on.

But then, at the player's roll, as few things are as entertaining as making the players roll their own potential doom, the dragon's breath weapon recharged. Another blast and Damaia, a tiefling warlock, who the player hadn't updated to 4th level from 2nd yet, went down, as did Naronel, an elf wizard. The elf player screwed that up and I allowed it, because he mentioned that he wanted to leave the tower, but then didn't actually do so. Who was I to allow him to not stay for the barbeque?  At that point, the dragon had taken over half his hit points in damage, which the text calls for a retreat.

If I had been running things to kill, oh yeah, it would've been an easy TPK but that's no fun. Especially as the dragon was taunting Kontos, the dragonborn who had him written into his background, pissing the other players off who felt that the dragonborn knew more about their foe than he let on.

So the dragon shakes off the dragonborn fighter, who fails his Athletics roll and takes 4d6 falling damage, and the party claims the loot!

At this point I'm giving the new characters 1,000 gold pieces, no access to magic items, and half experience points of the lowest level character. How do other people handle introducing new characters?

The group voted on the experience rules, so I don't feel bad about them, but as the Dungeon Master's Guide isn't out, still a little 'weirded' out by allowing magic items. I might just rule that those killed by dragon breath had all their items destroyed and that their new character can start off with similiar items.

Next week we're taking a break. I'm still reading Ultimate Campaign from Paizo to get the Kingdom building rules in place. Some interesting stuff there. Too bad for the group that they just lost three positions! Take that stupid adventurers!

One of my players is going to do a paladin and wants to use the rules for assimar that are available from the Dungeon Master's Guide preview which I said okay. It's not like the rules are going to make THAT big a difference and the book will be out soon enough. Another is making a wild mage with a charlatan background.

That charlatan background bit is particularly funny to our group because one of the other players, in our last campaign, Warhammer Thousand Thrones, was an Imperial Wizard, who our hedge wizard initially labeled as a charlatan and it stuck with that character till his death.

The last player hasn't decided what she's making yet. Hopefully all of her goods and abilities are fully up to date this time!

Kingmaker: An End To The Stag King

The fourth session of Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition finds a heavy focus on finishing off the first book, Stolen Land. This is the first part of the Kingmaker Adventure Path by Paizo. I've done very little actual conversion work, mainly flipping some hit points to a higher total and cutting way back on the experience points that the villains are worth.

For the most part, it's worked out and the players are relatively happy so that's the good news.

There will be some specific spoilers for this volume so if you'd rather not hear those, read no further but know that this adventure took four sessions to finish. There were numerous random encounters thanks to the chart included with the adventure.

Outside of the adventure proper, it includes several new monsters. Two of them, the elk and thylacine, a strange dog-rat animal, were great for background and flavor of the region but others were not encountered yet.

There are also details on the country of Brevoy, a kingdom to the north of the Stolen Lands and some fiction by James L. Sutter. I've read the whole section of fiction that follows the adventurers of Ollix Kaddar through all six volumes and their entertaining but not a lot of depth to them. Good stuff to give you some flavor for the River Kingdoms and to show how chaotic a region it is.

In terms of the group, all six players were in presence tonight. In order to try and get the Inspiration in use, I borrowed the idea of Initiative Cards that I'd seen the Game Mechanics use in the past. I had players fill out index cards with name, armor class, hit points, perception, trait, ideal, bond, and flaw with the hope that having it right in front of me would provide some reminders to give up the goods on those. Worked a little better as two players earned some inspiration but it actually happened at the tail end outside of combat.

Players in presence today:

Erdan: A monk elf. I remembered to bring the Stonehaven miniature this time. Huzzah!

Damai: A tielfling warlock.

Amun Ramas: Druid from the Egypt style portion of the setting.

Gerak: His halfling manservant (rogue)

Naronel: Elf wizard.

Kontos: Dragonborn fighter.

The players wanted to finish off one of the side quests, that of finding the taztzlwyrms. It was an interesting bit as I actually converted those over earlier. Many more hit dice and changing the poison con damage to 10 points damage on a failed constitution save. On the way to find them though, they did have a random encounter of six bandits that were no match for the group, despite the fact I threw in a bandit leader.

Afterwards they made their plans to snake into the Stag Lords fortress. In one of their earlier encounters, they discovered the secret password to get into the fortress as well as captured the special delivery of alcohol that the stag lord is fond of.

They had some good planning and it paid off. One of the lieutenants, Auchs, was quickly befriended by the halfling who played with the brute and earned his trust. Another lieutenant, Donovan, who I took to calling 'Bowie' because his miniature and illustration seems very 'glam' despite you know, being a bandit in a place where you have your own pots, was caught in a distraction that involved freeing 'beaky', an enraged owlbear.

There weren't necessarily any do or die moments for the party in the encounter as their careful preperation paid off. The Stag Lord, noted as an alcoholic in the book, was completely out as the players waited to see if the camp broke out in celebration at the bringing in of the good liquor and goods.

For the adventure, I bought numerous bandits. Some of these were from the Reaper line, some from Games Workshop (Empire Freebooters), and a few I had from various years of playing. I bought Donovan and the Stag Lord. Ugh on both of them. There are so many tiny little details and bits that it's maddening. I did Donovan up super quick with a few different shades of brown to try and match the illustration and a few washes and layers. That may sound like a lot but by keeping the colors to one tone it went much faster than it otherwise would have.

In addition I finally painted up my Pathfinder Bones Goblins that I had from the Kickstarter as well as some Kobolds. I also wound up buying some prepainted Pathfinder miniatures to try and get some mites as well as buying some Reaper mites. All in all I think I've painted over twenty miniatures for this adventure alone. Many of which will never see use again.

Who knows, maybe one day 3-D printers will allow you to print and recycle the material into another figure. That day however, was not involved in the last few weeks.

I did manage to find my old Savage Worlds blank Game Master screen. I've seen the one that Gale Force 9 has come out with and it is very nice looking and very sturdy. However is it massively reliant on you running the two official hardcover adventurers as opposed to being a general all purpose Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition screen.

So if you know of any landscape rules for 5th edition that would make for good reference, pass 'em on down!

We touched on what the players can do next in Rivers Run Red. They've decided to build the kingdom and have started the process of filling out positions, making kingdom alignment decisions, etc... I then checked out Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign which has an updated version of that system so I might just swap into that system since we haven't delved too much into it yet.

I also have Adventurer Conqueror King but never dove too deep into those rules, instead getting it more as a nod to fond memories of OSR play.

If anyone's done any extensive kingdom building in the game with any of those rules, please leave a comment and let me know how it went for you.

I suspect that the next few adventurers will go well as the players enjoy a lot of the roaming around and exploring but a few are very intrigued by the whole king ruling process. On one hand I'm a little curious to see how it all plays out but on the other, well, four weeks of game play that's almost uninterrupted (except for the Halloween break) is a good run for us as almost all of us are working more than full time and a few have a lot of personal responsibilities. If we stopped playing sometime soon in the future it wouldn't surprise me.

For me as the Game Master, 5th edition leaves me a little cold. Again, I'm so used to the horde of material for 3.5, 4th, and Pathfinder, that I keep wondering, "why am I running this again?" but the players asked me to and I've agreed and it's not bad to GM. The numbers are generally much lower than they were in 3rd and 4th so the match is much easier. The hit points are higher for a lot of the monsters and the game doesn't care that the monsters don't follow the rules that the player's do. That was a strength of 4th edition too.

Hopefully everyone else's gaming is going well!

Kingmaker: Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Week Three

There was no game on Halloween. It's one of my girlfriend's favorite times of the year so I stayed home and watched horrible horror movies. There are worse ways to spend one's night.


This week one of my regulars, the youngest of our group, who plays a dragon born fighter, had a new assignment at work and was unable to make it.


On the other hand, one of my other amigos, a peer in age if not a lot of personal preferences, showed up for the first time.


I started him off at half experience. It's something that I allowed the group to decide on in terms of "Hey, if someone misses a session what do you want to do about xp?"


There was some back and forth about giving them no experience points and giving them the full quantity. I myself didn't vote as I just wanted to hear what the players wanted to do. Mind you, those that miss are already missing out on gold and magic items which I may have to tweak depending on how heavy that effects the game down the road.


This week we had the following:


Naronel: A elf wizard. He's already summoned a familiar, a hawk I believe? I made him name it as it refused to obey any of his commands until he addressed it by it's name. The player was not amused but everyone else at the table was.


Gerak: A Halfling rogue.


Amun: Human druid.


Eran: Elf Monk. I forgot his miniature from Stonehaven miniatures. As I've mentioned before, Stonehaven makes like one of the two elf monk miniatures out there and I forgot it. Ugh.


Damaia: Tielfling Warlock. She has missed one session and with the player running the elf wizard missing two session, and now one player missing this session, I now have an Excel Spreadsheet tracking the different experience point totals of the players. Sigh. One of the drawbacks to not just giving everyone the same experience points.


The players were deciding what they were going to do next. While I did throws parts of the starter set adventure, The Mines into this game, they've been pretty happy to stick with the King Maker saga despite not actually being under charter. They're pretty happy to "take the money and run" for all the numerous side quests and missions that this adventure offers them.


This week, it was find out why the kobolds are acting up. Good deal as I have a ton of Reaper Miniature's Bones kobolds already painted up. Some of them brown, some of them red. The players spoke with the purple shaman kobold leader and agreed to bring back the statue of their people if the kobolds would cease their violent activities.


Turns out the kobolds are at war with mites, more small low level enemies but of a fey nature. Because 5th edition doesn't have stats for the mites, I took used the kobold stat block as a template and tinkered with it. For example, I gave them damage resistance to weapons unless those weapons were cold iron or magic.


Add in that I noted how small the mite lair was and gave any Medium sized creature disadvantage for any melee combat. Made the fights last a little longer and made them a bit more challenging.


Knowing that sooner or later the players would probably fight the mites, I had bought two packs of metal mites that Reaper miniatures makes as well as some blister packs of the prepainted plastic ones for Pathfinder from the Shattered Star set. I managed to get more than a base coat down on the metal ones but I'm probably going to wind up popping them off their bases. They come with medium sized bases and are smaller then most of the halflings that Reaper makes.


This is why I actually like the prepainted plastic ones. They are larger and have a little more detail to them. But in a standard 'brick' of eight packs, I had no duplicates and only had one prepainted mite and one prepainted mite riding a giant spider. It wasn't a giant tick like the guy in the adventure rides, as seen here from Paizo's, but I'll take it.In some instances I needed like twelve mites.


It did make me hate the organization of the Monster Manual thought.


In practice, it makes sense I suppose to have animals and giant insects in one section of the book. Those monsters wouldn't be encountered that often.


I tell you thought, in my three weeks, because it's low level, the players have fought wolves, bears, giant spiders, giant centipedes and who knows what else that's from that section. I think it would have been better off just being in the main body of the work.


Anyway, after the players fought the mites and returned the statue, because the players dealt with the 'shaman', whose actually a reincarnated gnome sorcerer who hates life, the kobold sorcerer demanded the death of the players. The kobold cheiftan turned on the sorcerer and many kobolds were fighting the players.


Cantrips in the new edition are nice and deadly. It's a good way to give the old 'fire and forget' characters some staying power in the game. Of course those nifty tricks now become less and less useful as the players gain in power and ability but start off nice and powerful.


I fudged around with the xp values for some of the encounters as Pathfinder, especially at low levels, uses a much higher experience point base for many of the enemies than Dungeons and Dragons does. Despite that, all of the players are now third level.


Like many, I'm one of those Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition players and Dungeon Masters that is eagerly awaiting the release of the Dungeon Master's Guide. I'm hoping that it can bring a lot to the table because having to guess what magic items do for example? Not a good feeling. From previews and the current free version though, it's annoying that there are no prices for magic items already.


Looking up things like Boots of Elvenkind? The magic items in the free download are anemic enough to not have one of those traditional magic items that stretches back to 1st edition. Ugh. Not a big deal yet as the player's haven't had the chance to use them, but they will next week so I'm sure I'll have thought of something by then.
So three weeks in and we're still messing around with a few things.
1. The five foot step: We've all played a lot of 3rd and 4th edition so we can looking that one up.
2. Rogue flanking.
3. Surprise and Advantage in the attack!
Overall the game runs fairly well but feels very limited by the amount of material out for it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as a consumer, but I'm 'itchy' in that I'm used to the support 3.5, 4th edition, and Pathfinder offer. With no Dungeon magazine and no Dragon magazine, the game feels very 'tight' or 'restricted'. But I know I can 'convert' stuff if I have to, but I have no desire to do that with things like the races which seem to have these weird subrace types and other bits. Heck, there's no Dungeon Master's Guide out yet so how would you even convert magic item with little to compare them to.


Oh well, the Kingmaker adventure path has given us three sessions so far from just the first adventure and I think we'll squeeze two more out of it before it's done the way the player's tend to plan so we'll see how it goes from there.

Kingmaker: Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Second Session

I continue my bastardization of running the Mines adventure that comes with the Dungeons and Dragons starter box set mixed in with the Kngmaker Pathfinder adventure path that takes place in the River Kingdoms.

This week's adventurers included:

Gerak: Thief halfling: The player is using an old prepaint from the Dungeons and Dragons miniature line.

Kantos: Dragonborn Fighter: The player is using an old prepaint from the D&D line. He's lucky that my friend, Tom, whose house we're playing at, has a ton of these. Tom was quite the collector back in the day.

Amun Ramas: Druid: Using a metal Reaper cleric with an Ankh staff to represent his Osiron (Egyptian) character. I painted this for him a few campaigns ago but thanks to the Army Painter dip I used, it's still in great shape. That stuff keeps a nice hard shell around the figure.

Erdan: Elf Monk. Using a prepainted figure from the batch, but that prepaint is not an elf. I just finished painting an actual elf monk from Stonehaven, but the gloss coat I threw on it to protect it hadn't dried yet so I'll bring that over next week. Note, there aren't a lot of figures that fit this race and class combination. I think that Reaper has one and that's about it. Too bad I'm personally not a fan of either sculp but you take what you can get.

Erik, who is playing the elf monk, was running late so the group decided to do a little exploring and to hunt down Tuskgutter, one of the side quests in the adventure. This would be one of the things that set the tone for the game in that monsters look like they have a lot of hit points but that tends to be countered with poor Armor Class values.

The group killed the giant boar and make their way back to the encampment as Eric had arrived at that time. With their elf monk in hand, they made their way down to the bandit hideout, which they knew its location from capturing a bandit in an attack against the outpost. On the way, the encampment leader, Olog, asked the party to check in on the hermit who provides the outpost with potions.

The party had an encounter with some wild hogs, rolled off the random encounter table, but after fighting Tuskgutter, I didn't want to fight out another combat with pigs so I ruled that the party made short work of them and that they continued on their way.

Meeting the eccentric potion maker, they did him a little favor, gathering some various berries, during which time I described a few of the local bits of fauna and flora to give the players more information on the River Kingdoms region. The eccentric old man offered them 25% off potions but hey, when they looked at information on Potions of Vitality, no actual prices. I ruled that if a potion of healing for 2d4+2 was 50 gold, that Vitality, which does a lot more, was 100 gold.

Looking real forward to that Dungeon Master's Guide. The current download also didn't have prices, not does the starter adventure.

A few set encounters on the way to the bandits included some kobolds that were resting in a field of radishes, and a huge trap door spider, both of which the party made relatively short work out of. One of the players got a little too enthusiastic in his cleaning of the trap door's spider lair by using his dragon breath on the lair and set aflame the webbing and some paperwork that was down there.

Ooops for him. It's like when players smash open a chest with potions. If you insist on doing things the violent way...

I had an NPC cleric join the party while they were fighting the bandits. I figured that they were short one character so it shouldn't be that big of an issue. The fight was run with generic bandits and a bandit captain and the players did fairly well although the dice sometimes turned against them.

The party returned to the outpost and encountered a few more travellers who'd either come here due to visions, a priest looking for an ancient temple, or because they were here to 'officially' fight bandits from the home kingdom.

I had the druid of the party have a vision of the White Elk, a herald of 'Old Deadeye', a farmer's god of battle so to say. The White Elk showed the druid where the ancient temple was and the party managed to clear out the cursed individual there who was a maddened Polar Bar (aka Cave Bar variant from the Monster Manual.)

The party made enough XP to get up to third level.

In terms of the original starter adventure, the I switched out the Forgotten Realms city for Pitax, a city of scum and corruption in the River Kingdoms, and the party will probably head there after fighting against the 'Stag Lord', the main antagonists of the first chapter of Kingmaker.

While using the 5th edition Monster Manual, not a fan of it in some instances. In many ways, 3rd edition brought animals into a meaner place with the various 'Dire' versions of things. There's no template for that in 5th edition that I saw but I was able to use various animals like the giant spider and polar bear to make up for most of the things I needed. Running kobolds and bandits also proved easy.

Another quirk of 5th edition? And it could be I'm missing it, no masterwork items. I could have introduced them to the game but m'eh. I'll live with those not being available.

The relatively low armor class of the characters, the highest being the dragonborn fighter with a shield and his armor, was 18. Everyone else tends to be in the 14-15 range.

Still haven't handed out any inspiration. Think I'm going to have to ask the players to write the various bits that they get inspiration for and use it for reference or something. The Dragonborn player described his handling of Tuskgutter well and I probably should have given him a point for that. But to be honest, I'm not feeling the love for this mechanic. It seems very limited, especially if you can't have more than one at a time.

Maybe I'll offer to give them a point if they write up campaign session recaps? Not sure. How's everyone else handling it?

In terms of props, I used the old map tile set Ancient Forest. Let me say that I'm thankful Paizo figured out a better way to store and keep those tile sets? The new one, Forest Trails for example, the new forest pack and it comes in its own holder and has a miniature version of itself on the back. This allows you to see which tiles go with which set and allows you to keep them together without having to rubber band the package? Fantastic work there! It's an actual evolution of a product.

Compared to the flip mats, the tiles are still a pain in the ass. The flip mats, you bust out the mat and slap it down. These you still have to assemble. Mind you, I like a little variety so I have both but in terms of easy of use? Yeah, the flip mats take the cake here. I have the old one by Gale Force 9, but as we're playing at a friend's house, I'm not carrying my whole library over there every week.

Note for those who might be interested in the Pathfinder setting in this region, Paizo offers for free, a Player's Guide that's supposed to allow players a bit of customization to fit in the region here: http://paizo.com/products/btpy8dqh?Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-Kingmaker-Players-Guide

In terms of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition itself, I'm actually kind of disappointed and okay with it at the same time. The dearth of support coming from WoTC, especially in terms of content that would keep me interested in coming back to the site, is amazing in this digital day and age.

On the other hand, the game system, from a few plays so far, seems a lot easier to wing. It seems a lot more compatible with the material that's already available. Good for me, bad for WoTC. I wasn't impressed with their previous hardcover adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen and am seriously thinking about cancelling my preorder for The Rise of Tiamat.  If I can run any of the hundreds of older bits I have, if not completely free range it, my need for actual new product drops pretty close to zero.

How's everyone else finding the system? My players haven't complained about the lack of fiddy bits like Prestige Classes or Feats, which is surprising in it's own one as one of the guys is a master of manipulating game systems. To see him 'cool' with the relatively limited amount of options in the Player's Handbook is interesting.

I still need to find my old make your own game master screen and put together a few of the rules on combat, although we didn't run into any show stoppers this session.

Next week I imagine that the players will take on the Stag Lord and then move back into the starter adventure so I'm curious to see how that goes. They may be a little more powerful but I doubt they'll be much higher.