Nightmares and visions lead to a violent confrontation in a dark forest. Occult tomes, mysterious witches, and plenty of mimosas for everyone!
The M-Files: Session 4 Recap
Tag: Donjon
Gates of Despair: Session 4 recap
This session mostly consisted of shopping and role play. I don't believe we rolled any dice at all, other than some random NPCs I generated (mostly using the SciFi Random Generator at Donjon). But they deserved a bit of shore leave, as it were, and in any case this second stretch of sessions (4-6 or … Continue reading Gates of Despair: Session 4 recap
Gates of Despair: Session 3 recap
We played a relatively short session this time, mostly roleplaying and investigation, plus some meta discussion about what to do with the next arc or two. Narrative The crew decides to use a locker key they'd found, so they head down to the cargo hold and I roll on a "Weapons & Supply Cache" table … Continue reading Gates of Despair: Session 3 recap
Forbidden Level of the Creedhall Library
In Gothic Brunch a few weeks ago, the group determined they wanted to go do some research at a library. Now, what kind of a game would I be running if the library didn't have a secret basement with forbidden tomes and unspeakable secrets? For this map, I once again depended on Elven Tower. This … Continue reading Forbidden Level of the Creedhall Library
Coming back to procedural generation in D&D
I started playing Dwarf Fortress again recently, partly inspired by the videos produced by Kruggsmash. He does a wonderful job of extracting the story from a fortress, illustrating it in a cartoonish way, and pulling out a narrative. But a lot of that narrative comes from the game systems, influenced by player actions, through procedural generation. That … Continue reading Coming back to procedural generation in D&D
Dwarves & Dweomers Campaign Review
In parallel with my campaigns based on official adventures from Wizards of the Coast, I also spent most of the year running a campaign for friends based loosely on the world of Dwarf Fortress. (This was the same group of friends in the Weyward Scions campaign, plus one addition.) This post consists of two parts: … Continue reading Dwarves & Dweomers Campaign Review
Building a random dungeon with the 5e DMG
Let's say you don't want to use an existing dungeon generator for some reason. Maybe you have some time to kill in a parking garage and can't reach the Internet. Maybe you want to draw a map but nothing comes to mind. You could do worse than use "Appendix A: Random Dungeons" from the D&D … Continue reading Building a random dungeon with the 5e DMG
Initial Impressions: Fifth Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide
I went down to my friendly local gaming store this morning and picked up the new Dungeon Master's Guide. (They had a 15% discount on all D&D stuff, which gave a little extra bit of unexpected happiness.) A full review of this book would take significant time due to the density and amount of material in … Continue reading Initial Impressions: Fifth Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide
Using Dwarf Fortress as a map generator
The previous article in this series discussed my reasons for generating a new campaign setting. This time I will discuss the maps that Dwarf Fortress generates for a new world. DF allows users to export the world maps and history in Legends mode. This creates great depth via procedural generation without requiring the world builder to design everything by hand. (I … Continue reading Using Dwarf Fortress as a map generator
Microlite20 and solo play: winging it
On quiet nights here at home, my daughter (just shy of 11 years old) occasionally asks if we can play D&D together. Tonight, I told her that we'd try something a little different. Rather than try to slog through a nerfed version of the Lost Mine of Phandelver, we'd do things the way I did when … Continue reading Microlite20 and solo play: winging it
Technoskald's Forge 